by Rose Marie Zurkan
No one was renting the room next to mine, so I had gotten into the habit of leaving open the door to the connecting bathroom. Reading in bed one night, I heard a knock. A woman's voice asked, "Is it all right if I close the door?"
I jumped out of bed. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know anyone was there."
"I just moved in."
She was older than me, tall, good looking. I told her my name and said, "Welcome."
"I'm Alex Topal," she said. She closed the door and locked it. I heard the water running and returned to my book. A short time later, she knocked again. I said, "Come in."
"Are you tired?" she asked. "Feel like talking?"
"Sure." I put down my book and gestured to the only other chair. She dropped into it. "I've been traveling all night, but I'm not tired. Jet lag, I guess."
"Oh, really? Where from?"
"Argentina," she said.
"Wow. I've never been there. Were you on vacation?"
"No, I was working. It's great, you should go."
"Fat chance," I said. "I just got here."
"Who do you work for?" I told her. "Me too."
In Washington, D.C., it's not unusual to meet someone who works for the government. To meet someone who works for the same specialized agency as I did, however, was unusual. "So, can you tell me what you were doing in Argentina, or is it a secret?"
Instead, she launched into a description of the city of Buenos Aires and the handsome Argentine she had left behind, so I guessed her job was secret. She ended her story with, "Next thing I knew, the sun was just coming up over the water. I looked over, and he was still there."
Well, I knew what she meant by that. She seemed very sophisticated to me. A woman of the world. In contrast, I felt callow and naïve.
We met again at dinner. We lived in a boarding house — breakfast in the morning and dinner at night. They would even keep your meal warm for you if you asked and if they remembered.
A tall, handsome, dark man entered the dining room with her. Had her handsome Argentine followed her? "Mind if we sit at your table?" she asked.
There were four tables in the dining room, six chairs at each table. All the tables had empty seats, with only one person, or at most two, sitting there.
"Of course I don't mind," I said. "This is Mary." I indicated the woman sitting next to me, "And that's Tom." Alex's glance slid off Mary but rested on Tom, a hunk. His blond head and Mary's mousy brown one butted up next to each other as they both pored over the same page in Tom's textbook. I happened to know that Mary was helping Tom with his studies at the local junior college. Tom never had much to say, but I liked Mary, and not just because she gave me a lift to work every morning and refused to accept payment.
Clearly, Alex wondered what a good looking guy like Tom was doing with such a plain girl as Mary. I hoped she wouldn't say anything later because I didn't know what I would say.
"This is Kirk," Alex said.
"Curt?"
"K.I.R.K." She spelled it.
"Are you staying here too?" I asked.
"Sort of," he admitted.
"Kirk and I are leaving in a couple of days," Alex said.
Did Mrs. Hurd, our gimlet-eyed landlady, know? I wondered. She never missed a trick.
None of my business.
Kirk didn't talk much, but, when he did, had no accent, so he wasn't Alex's Argentine. Where did she find him so soon? Did she already know him? That was none of my business either. Except, if she did meet him here, I'd have liked to know where.
Meeting men in DC isn't easy. Ten times more women than men live in the District of Columbia. Somehow, the men always know when new, young blood moves in. Don't ask me how.
I met Keith at the Shoreham Hotel early in the summer — hot and muggy, like all DC summers. I had to walk only two blocks down to the Shoreham's pool. You didn't have to be a hotel guest to use it. I paid the admission fee, selected a chair, and spread my towel. Then I went for a swim and lay down on the chair. I had not been there long before he came over.
He was a lanky Australian, a junior diplomat. I considered him a prize. But I made a mistake. I mentioned him in the office.
I worked for four men — two civilians, Charlie and Mike, and two military men—Commander Card and Colonel Yatsevitch. Both men wore their uniforms to work every day. Commander Card was a Navy man and a misogynist. He was always talking about how you had to "get 'em young, treat 'em rough, tell 'em nothing." I wasn't sure about Colonel Yatsevitch's origins. He spoke with an English accent, but he wasn't English, and he wasn't American. Mike, who taught me to curse in Serbian, told me one day that the Colonel had plans for me. I asked him what plans, but the Colonel walked in at that moment, and Mike clammed up.
Mike was the youngest of the four men. He could barely write and couldn't spell at all. I had to guess at what he was trying to say and rewrite his reports. I think they kept him around because he spoke Serbian. He was always complaining about his wife. He claimed he loved her more than she loved him. I said, "She married you, didn't she?" and thought that clinched it, but he wasn't convinced.
Charlie was balding, and every time we talked he rubbed his hand back and forth over the top of his head. Last Christmas he asked me to accompany him downtown and help him pick out a present for his wife. Mike advised me not to go so I refused. Maybe that's why Charlie told me I shouldn't see Keith, my Australian, any more.
"Why not?" I asked.
"He's a foreign national," Charlie said.
"He's Australian!"
"Don't sell your country down the river," Charlie said, adding that he'd have to report me if I persisted in seeing him. I guess I could have lied about it, but I was afraid I'd forget and mention him again.
So I wanted to ask Alex where she had met that handsome young man of hers, but before I got the chance they moved out. After that, I almost always remembered to lock the connecting door.
I didn't like Charlie anymore. Mike didn't like him much either. Mike told me things about Charlie that I didn't know. How he was tired of doing what he was doing and longed for a promotion, but nobody was giving him one. Mike said he had reached the top of his grade, and he explained it meant that Charlie wasn't getting any more raises.
I was still living at the boarding house. From time to time a young air force recruit came to stay while taking classes before being shipped out. Gil was one of these. He had just finished law school. We started dating. I wondered if Charlie would find something about Gil to object about. Anyway, I didn't tell him.
Gil was leaving after Christmas for two years to take up a post in Greenland. After that, it was anybody's guess what he'd do. He said he wanted to return to Texas and practice law, but two years is a long time. We said we'd write, but neither of us was ready to make any sort of commitment.
I wanted to make this Christmas special and thought for a long time about what to give him. The best idea I could come up with was something from one of the museums.
I was standing in the Smithsonian gift shop when I spotted Charlie. That wouldn't have been so unusual except he was alone. I hid behind a display of airplane models. Charlie looked at his watch so I guessed he was waiting for somebody. The man he was waiting for walked up from behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Charlie jumped. The man was shorter than Charlie but a lot wider. They exchanged envelopes. Charlie handed him one of our envelopes. The other man handed Charlie a smaller one. He left, and Charlie left a few minutes later. He didn't see me behind the display.
The next day at the office I thought about whether to tell Mike. In the end, I told him. A few days later, Charlie disappeared. Mike said he had been selling our secrets. Charlie was the one who sold his country down the river. Not me.
Gil left for Greenland in January. We wrote to each other for two years, and when he returned we got married. But that's another story.
