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“Most girls don’t start until they’re twelve, and I’m only eleven. Mom isn’t going to say yes.”
“You don’t know that. You haven’t even told her yet,” Annie said.
“She thinks ballet is too hard on my feet already. She thinks it stunts my growth.”
“Your mother is smart. I’m sure she doesn’t think your growth is stunted by exercise,” Annie said. She couldn’t comment on the feet thing.
“Once I’men pointe, I qualify for full-time ballet school with tutoring. I wouldn’t have to go to regular school,” There was a note of desperation in her voice.
“That sounds…”Expensive. Helen was already working two jobs and had taken on a tenant to make ends meet. “What’s so bad about regular school anyway?”
Ashley scowled, but then her bottom lip started to wobble.
“Oh, honey. Oh no,” Annie said.
Ashley lunged at her and buried her face in Annie’s chest. Annie put an arm around her, patting her awkwardly while she wept.
* * *
On Monday, the assistant director, William Baker, intercepted her as she approached her desk. “Weaver, you’re with me today.”
The buzzing in the room stopped, and everyone turned to watch as she followed him. Baker was Bill to his equals and Buck to his buddies in the office. And yet, Baker didn’t even seem to know any of the women’s names. He called them “honey” and asked them to bring him coffee anytime his secretary wasn’t available. They got it for him too.
Annie had met him briefly on her first day.
“Oh yeah,” he’d said. “Our new spy.”
She opened her mouth to tell him that wasn’t why she was here, but he waved her off before she got a word out. “I know you’re as stuck with me as I am with you, sweetheart,” he said. “I suggest you just lie low until you get something to do. No one likes change, and they’re certainly not going to like you.”
Which had been true. Baker might be a bureaucrat and a misogynist, but he wasn’t a moron. No one got to his position by being stupid.
She followed him down to the parking garage and into his car. She didn’t ask questions, though she did check her pager as he pulled out onto the street. She hadn’t received a page since her last call just after New Year’s.
Baker drove in silence until they were on the freeway, then said, “They tell me you did espionage in Eastern Europe.”
“‘They?’”
He laughed and rolled down the window a crack. “You mind if I smoke?”
“No, sir.”
He reached over and pushed in the cigarette lighter, then fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket.
The lighter popped from the dash. “You mind?” he said.
She pulled it out and held it to the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He took a deep drag. The smell reminded her of thecigarettes her daddy had smoked before he quit. She told herself not to equate this man with her father.
“You ever kill anyone over there?” he asked. “Communists?”
“You ever kill anyone?” she shot back before she could catch herself.
He took another long drag from his cigarette, then said, “You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet.”
“I did my job.”
“Very well, I hear, and now you’re here with me,” he said. “Because, what? You’re going to school to be a cop?”
“I’m going to school to have options.”
