Surveillance

The first time Marco taught me how to read a room, we were in a hotel bar in Prague. His palm rested on my knee, warm and steady, while he pointed out the three men in the corner—corporate spies, he said, or maybe just businessmen who looked like they were hiding something. I was twenty-three, drunk on the novelty of him, on the secrecy that coated everything we touched like gold leaf.

Seven years later, I'm swimming laps in a hotel pool in Key Largo, alone. The palm trees lining the deck cast fractured shadows on the water, and I count them like I used to count exits—eight trees, two doors, one staircase at the far end. Old habits. Marco's habits, really.

He left six months ago. Not because he stopped loving me—his voice cracking on the phone told me that much—but because his handler said it was too dangerous. The company he'd been infiltrating had eyes everywhere. I was a liability. I am a liability.

A cat jumps onto the lounge chair next to my towel. A mangy calico with one torn ear, watching me with considering yellow eyes. I tread water, suddenly cold despite the Florida heat. You learn things, living with a spy. You learn to notice when you're being watched. You learn that nothing is coincidence.

"Are you following me?" I ask the cat. It yawns, unconcerned.

The woman at the pool bar has been reading the same magazine for forty-five minutes. The man in the room next to mine always takes the stairs at 3 AM. And now this cat, appearing on my third day, watching me with knowing eyes. Marco warned me about this—the paranoia that never really leaves. The way your brain starts connecting everything, making patterns out of nothing.

But his palm on my knee in Prague had been warm. His voice cracking on the phone had been real.

I swim to the edge and pull myself up, water streaming off me. The cat doesn't move. I sit beside it, dripping, and for the first time in six months, I let myself wonder: what if Marco wasn't the spy? What if I was? What if the company that came between us had found someone closer, someone he'd never suspect? What if I'm still working for them?

The cat pushes its head against my wet hand, purring. I scratch behind its torn ear and watch the palm trees sway, their shadows stretching across the water like dark fingers reaching.

Some questions, I realize, are safer left unanswered.