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“I will,” he said resolutely. Then he peered into the distance and said earnestly, “Maybe I’ll change it to Gunnar… Skywalker.”
Rachel laughed long and loud – again, one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard.
I lifted the bottle of vodka and raised my eyebrows. Another drink?
“Sure,” she said with a grin as she held out her cup.
As I poured her some more, I said, “So you named yourself after Jack Bauer.”
“Better than naming myself after James Bond. Can you imagine? ‘Jane Bond,’” she said with a derisive snort.
“I like it,” Gunnar protested.
“Yes, well, I didn’t need to be endlessly harassed by my coworkers.”
“In MI6?”
“Yes.”
“Was James Bond in MI6, too?” Gunnar asked.
“Yes. Hence the James Bond reference,” she said in a deadpan voice.
He didn’t get that it was a joke.
“Are you a 007, too?” he asked quite seriously.
“Bond was 007,” Rachel explained. “The Double-Oh was just a classification. There was a 006, a 008, a 009 – ”
“So, what are you?” Gunnar asked. “008, or 009, or – ”
She frowned like she thought he was trolling her again. “There’s no such thing. It’s just something Ian Fleming made up.”
“Who?”
“Ian Fleming – the author of the James Bond stories.”
Gunnar looked confused. “What did he make up?”
“The Double-Oh classification. There’s no such thing.”
“Oh,” Gunnar said, clearly disappointed.
Rachel looked over at me like, Is this guy for real?
Gunnar was incredibly smart – for instance, his computer hacking – but in other ways, he was innocent as a child.
Or maybe it was all the weed.
Speaking of which –
“I’m gonna go outside and smoke a bowl,” he announced, then looked at Rachel. “You want any?”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You mean marijuana?”
Gunnar smiled. “Yep. Good shit, too.”
Rachel looked at me. “Isn’t that punishable by death in Afghanistan?”
