Living the Normal Life 3
Mar. 25th, 2010 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nell65Title: Living the Normal Life
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Rating: A very mild R, I think
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: Longish
Summary: What is life like for a widowed parent on the run?
Author's Note: I'm posting this in sections that fit the lj window, rather than conceptual chapters, which are short for this piece.
************
Eventually, with Adam’s encouragement – or pestering, depending on Michael’s mood – Michael did call Marie. It cost him considerable thought to decide what was the next appropriate step. He didn’t want to thrust her on Adam or Adam on her, but he wanted her to be fully aware of what it meant that he was the single parent of a thirteen-year-old child. He decided on inviting her out to diner, but pointedly framing the invitation in terms of using the time between dropping off Adam off at a friend’s for pizza and a movie and picking him up. He wasn’t sure at all how he felt when she cheerfully agreed.
Again, despite his concerns, he enjoyed himself. Marie charmed him with her French, with her avid, aggressive intelligence and her thirst for professional acclaim. She actually had him laughing out loud telling stories about her ongoing struggles to teach French literature to generally ambivalent and uninterested University of Minnesota students.
He also rediscovered he enjoyed the simple pleasure of being in the company of a woman. Coming to see single women as hunters with himself as prey, he’d forgotten how much he liked spending time just with women, the sound of their voices, the softness of their faces, the light in their eyes when they were feeling confident in themselves and their abilities. This of course had been one of his great natural strengths as a valentine operative, he genuinely liked women, he always had.
Living with and raising Adam combined with his choice of house painting as a profession had thrown him into a predominately male world; adolescent boys and working men dominated his days and his nights. Yes, he certainly did socialize with women and work for and with women and there were plenty of women at their martial arts studio and at church, but most of these women were partnered up already or merely casual acquaintances. Focused only on missing Nikita, he hadn’t noticed until now just how much he missed having women, or rather, a woman in his life.
For their third date, Marie invited him to a Christmas concert. For their fourth date, he invited her to join him for Christmas shopping and dinner at the mall. Each time when he got home, Adam quizzed him on his progress and encouraged him to see her again. After the shopping date Michael asked him why he was so enthusiastic about Marie.
Adam looked at him seriously. “I worry about you Dad. Its like, sometimes, you’re alone even in a crowd. You need a girlfriend.”
Michael was sure he looked as nonplused as he felt. “Oh.”
“Besides,” Adam tossed over his shoulder as he wandered out of the room, “if you have a girlfriend, maybe you’ll stop paying attention to every single thing I do.”
Michael raised his voice, to be sure Adam heard him, even in his retreat. “Don’t count on it.”
************
Because of the post Labor Day start dates at both the ‘U’ and the public schools, school continued until nearly Christmas Eve, classes breaking for the winter holiday on December 22. Marie left to visit family in Montreal, but first extracted a firm commitment for a New Year’s Eve date from Michael.
As for Michael and Adam, they kept very busy with activities at Church over Christmas itself. Christmas was one of the reasons that Michael had chosen to make their Church such an important part of their lives. Without extended family and with only each other for company, Michael had feared that Christmas could be an unhappy time for him and his son. The Church community stepped in and filled what might have been a very lonely week almost to the bursting point.
Adam had always been involved in the Christmas pageant for the younger children, usually as a shepherd, last year as the innkeeper. Now that he was an altar boy, his commitments were even greater. Not only was he one of the three kings at the early pageant this year, he was also scheduled to serve at the midnight mass.
To give himself something do besides sit around and wait for Adam, Michael had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to play his cello with the small ensemble that provided the instrumental music for the main Mass. The church members and musicians who put the Christmas ensemble together were quite serious, most of them playing professionally and teaching music in the twin cities. One of them was Adam’s violin teacher, which is how Michael was roped into playing. It was always a somewhat ‘scratch’ affair, with only three rehearsals in the days prior to Christmas Eve, so it wasn’t a large obligation. And it wasn’t as if he was expected to do much besides fill out the sound.
On Christmas Eve itself, Michael and Adam joined the youth group members and parents for potluck dinner before the children’s pageant, so they arrived at Church around 5:00pm and didn’t leave until after midnight.
As usual, the Christmas ‘midnight’ Mass, which actually started at 10:30pm and ended at midnight, was extremely heavily attended. The small instrumental ensemble, with Michael near the back of the group, began playing at ten o’clock as the crowds filed into the main church, then the two chapels and finally the parish hall.
Michael listened with an unexpected sense of wonder as the familiar Christmas story was retold. In general he considered himself a nonbeliever. He had seen too much, done too much, to accept that there was only one God, if there were any at all. And he was sickened by what was done by so many, believing they acted in their God’s name. Because religious fundamentalism fueled so much of the terrorism that he had spent more than ten years of his life fighting, he was also intensely suspicious of the global claims that lay at the heart of most of the world religions, including those of the Catholic church. The notion that the sacrifice of one man was enough to compensate for his own multitude of sins, much less those of the mass of humanity over the last two millennia struck him as too fantastical to be credited. Nevertheless, here he was, and literally millions like him around the world were celebrating the birth of a baby who, when grown, would die in their name. This year, the celebration of the miracle of birth, of the hope and possibilities that are the promise carried within each newborn child, even the possible salvation and redemption of mankind, however unlikely, moved him almost to tears.
By the end of the service, when the lights dimmed to leave the congregation illuminated by candlelight, and led only by the powerful soloists in the choir the assembled worshipers sang “Silent Night,” Michael felt his heart lift and soar with the music.
As the last notes of the carol reverberated in the crowded, shadowed sanctuary, Michael wondered where Nikita was tonight, what she was doing, and whom she was with. He wondered if she was still holding steadfast in her faith in the innocence of children, the promise of infants and the possibility of redemption for all seekers. Seizing his revived sense of the magic of Christmas, Michael closed his eyes and sent the message closest to his heart into the stillness of the hush that fell across the church. I love you Nikita. Merry Christmas.
Once the recessional was completed and they were free to leave, Michael and Adam walked out onto the front steps of the Church into the thinning crowd. The night was so clear that despite the lights of the city they could make out the major constellations in the sky. Their breath floated above them as they looked up past the yellow halos surrounding the snow-shrouded lampposts and into the depths above, sharing a quiet moment after the steady bustle of the evening. To Michael’s surprise and pleasure, Adam took advantage of the momentary height offered by being a step above his father to throw his arm across Michael’s shoulders, saying, “Merry Christmas, Dad.”
“Merry Christmas, Adam.”
************
On New Year’s Eve, Michael escorted Marie to a Black-Tie dinner and dance celebration held at one of the elegant old downtown hotels in Minneapolis.
Marie told him that she had always wanted to do something like that – actually wear an evening gown when it was appropriate. She had laughed when she told him, saying that faculty members didn’t usually need and couldn’t afford that kind of nightlife, but it was clear she really wanted to do it.
As for Michael, the thought of wearing an ill-fitting rental tux made his skin itch, but he sternly reminded himself that a house painter had absolutely no need for a personally tailored tuxedo, especially not of the quality he had once routinely worn. So, gritting his teeth, he rented a classic tuxedo from the shop at the mall, thankful only that at last year’s Oscar’s ceremony the leading male fashionistos in Hollywood had stuck with the most traditional look, sans any silly details of color or detail.
Michael thought the whole event slightly surreal, filled as it mostly was with middle-class Midwesterners aping the rich and famous, but Marie had a wonderful time. Wearing a striking brown sheath gown, with her hair dressed up in masses of ringlets, she positively glowed with happiness.
When Michael dropped Marie off at her apartment building, she was obviously disappointed that he declined her invitation to come up for a nightcap. He begged off with the, true, excuse that he had to be up in four hours to collect Adam and leave on a three-day snowmobile trip with friends.
Once Michael and Adam returned from the brief vacation, Michael spent the last few quiet days of the winter break struggling to decide what to do about Marie. He liked her, he had enjoyed their dates, but he couldn’t make up his mind about how much further he wanted to pursue the relationship.
She was clearly interested in the possibility of sexual intimacy – and Michael didn’t lie to himself that he wasn’t. He was. He’d gone so long now without touching or being touched that he was beginning to feel parched. He could almost see the fault lines in his own skin as it got brittle from disuse. He was fully aware of his strong desire for sensual contact – it was an aspect of his personality he had begun to explore early in puberty, somewhat to his parent’s dismay he recalled with a newly sympathetic sigh, and had fully developed by the time he was in his teens. But what lessons prison had not taught him about keeping that part of himself firmly under control, Section had been relentless about driving home. For several years the close physical contact he enjoyed with Adam – hand holding, hugs, tussling, sitting close together for reading stories aloud or watching movies, even the close contact of teaching Adam to hold a rifle or a fishing pole ¬– had been enough to assuage that desire.
Now, though, physical contact with Adam was about as frequent as a month with five Sundays. And in the months since he had reckoned up just how long it had been since he had been with anyone at all, he couldn’t stop thinking about how much he missed sex, not just love and human touch, but sex itself. A lot. If he allowed himself to dwell on it too long his skin actually hurt. So the possibility of a sexual relationship with Marie was very tempting indeed.
It was also fraught with any number of difficulties, not least of which was that he still had Adam to worry about. He didn’t want Adam to feel that in spending time with Marie, he was somehow rejecting Adam. Not that this really seemed a problem, Michael acknowledged to himself. Adam was, if anything, pushing Michael harder than he wanted to be pushed into Marie’s arms. And Michael was sure that this was not entirely out of Adam’s interest in his father’s wellbeing. Something else was going on, and Michael was concerned that he wasn’t certain what it was.
Another important issue was the question of whether or not Marie would be willing to accept the limits he put on the relationship, or if she would want more than he could give. That part, he simply didn’t have enough information to decide.
In the end, he convinced himself that he didn’t have to make up his mind right away, that he could wait and see how events played themselves out.
************
As the gossip carrying the astounding news that Michael was actually, finally dating gradually spread among their various circles of friends and acquaintances, Michael endured what felt like nearly constant commentary and teasing. He had Adam to thank for spreading the news. He couldn’t decide which was worse, Cindy’s lascivious remarks or Father Jon’s openly expressed relief. It reached the point that if one more man clapped him on the shoulder, saying “Atta boy, Mike!” he began to seriously worry that he would hurt him very badly.
As for Adam, he continued to play the role of lead cheerleader, master-of-ceremonies and meddlesome fairy godfather. If more than three days elapsed without the next date scheduled, Adam became nearly relentless in his nagging – suggesting possible activities, reminding him to call Marie, and generally making himself obnoxious. Short of losing his temper with him, there was nothing Michael could say or do to make him stop.
“Why is my relationship with Marie so interesting to you?” Michael knew he sounded as exasperated as he felt. Until now, Adam had more or less ignored any aspect of his father’s life that didn’t revolve around him. They were on an after-supper grocery run – Michael having discovered quite by accident that these were not only a good time to shop, but that it was often a good time to talk with Adam. Tonight though, Adam had immediately launched into a series of suggestions for his next date with Marie.
“I dunno.”
“You’re diving me crazy.”
Adam looked up from the cart he was pushing with an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“So, why?”
Adam stopped the cart to drop in four boxes of Cheerios. At Michael’s raised brows, he reached for a fifth. Michael shrugged, figuring that what ever didn’t get eaten this week, would next. It amazed him that Adam could eat so much and stay so wiry. But then, Adam was in nearly constant motion, even in sleep. After resuming their progress down the aisles, Adam responded to Michael’s question. “Its like, everybody always asks me who you’re dating. It’s like, weird, you know, that you never date anyone. I mean, like, people ask me why doesn’t your dad date? Some people have even asked me if you’re gay.”
Michael put several bags of frozen fried chicken into the cart before saying, “That should hardly keep me from dating.”
Adam frowned slightly. “Ha Ha.”
“What do you say when people ask?
“I say I dunno – ask him.”
Michael didn’t actually believe this was all that Adam said, but wasn’t sure he was ready to know more. “So, it must be a relief to say I’m dating Marie.”
Adam ducked his head and grimaced before sighing an embarrassed, “Yeah.”
Michael caught Adam’s eye, “Glad as I am that my dating Marie makes your life easier...”
Adam heaved an exaggerated groan, a smile lurking in his eyes. “Oh man, daad.”
“But, whether or not I keep seeing Marie is up to me and her.”
“I hear you.”
Michael doubted this, but let the matter rest there anyway. “Go get a bag of dog food and meet me at the check out.”
Driving home, Michael cursed his own blindness. He had certainly been aware that his determinedly single status was somewhat unusual, but he had never guessed that it would provoke so much comment, or that Adam would be expected to explain it. He realized, very belatedly, that it would have been much better to have dated casually from the beginning, no matter how little interest he’d had in it. Not dating at all had been too unusual, too weird as Adam said, and now that he was dating someone, it was such a dramatic break with his previous behavior that it made people who knew him sit up and take note. He realized that if he broke it off with Marie, that too would flood the gossip among their friends and neighbors. It was a sobering reminder that everything he did, even his small steps to create a life for himself independent of Adam, was part of their cover – and had to be evaluated as such.
************
With or without Adam’s help, Michael continued to see Marie. She seemed cautious herself about what she wanted out of their relationship, so there were no more awkward moments. While she continued to make her interest in him apparent, she did nothing that would provoke either outright rejection or its opposite. So, feeling confident that things were moving along in the direction he wanted, but slowly enough that no one was being thrown off balance, he allowed himself to begin responding to her small steps to increase their physical intimacy, even taking some, very small, steps himself.
The first week after school started up again, when he met her and some friends of hers at a bar for a drink and a game of pool, he didn’t move away when she shifted in her seat to bring them to shoulder brushing shoulder on their tall bar chairs at the small round bar table. When she turned her face up to his, he dropped his head and kissed her lightly on the brow before they parted, having arrived and so leaving in their own cars.
Though he converted her invitation to diner and a movie into an invitation to join him and Adam for diner at a friend’s home, picking her up and dropping her off with Adam in the car, when she came up to him in the kitchen and wrapped her arm around his waist, he dropped his own arm lightly across her shoulder and left it there until the general movement broke the moment.
He invited her to join him and Adam and a larger group for a Sunday afternoon snowmobile outing. So they spent four hours together with her riding behind him on his snowmobile, her arms locked around him for security and balance, and something more – that was of course limited by the bulky outer clothing they wore. However, he managed to arrange it so that after a long day and supper, she rode back to the cities with friends of friends so he did not have to navigate the city streets pulling the snowmobile trailer.
Most often though, he met her for lunch at various restaurants around the campus near her office, sometimes as much as two or three times a week. He was painting several remodeled lofts downtown and it was easy to get together. These lunch dates were a welcome change of pace from the usual vulgar and obscenity laced lunchtime conversations among his employees about women and/or the NBA, NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball – whatever was in season.
It was at these lunch dates that he most enjoyed her company. He usually caught her right in the middle of some problem in her research, writing or teaching that she wanted to thrash out – so the conversation was rapid, interesting and absorbing. For Michael, no small part of the pleasure during many of these lunches was that they spoke in French. Occasionally she brought along a friend or two. Michael suspected that Marie’s friends were checking him out, but he did not mind. That their lunch dates began and ended with a kiss seemed, if not innocuous, certainly less significant in the lunchtime bustle than they might have elsewhere or at another time of day.
And January was over.
************
The first weekend in February, Michael was to pick Marie up and they were going to go out for dinner, trying one of the new French restaurants that had been getting a lot of press.
When he arrived at her apartment building Marie wasn’t waiting in the foyer, so he parked and went in. She buzzed him up. When she opened her door, he heard jazz playing in the background and smelled food cooking. Her hair was unbound and tumbled down her back and she was wearing silk charmose pajama pants under a loose sweater that fell just off one bare shoulder as she raised her other arm to gesture him inside, several bangles clacking together on her wrist. “I thought it would be more fun to eat in. You can try my French cooking and tell me what you think.”
She smiled a slightly defiant, slightly tremulous smile, her heart in her eyes.
Michael felt his own heart sink to his toes. For a moment he only thing he could think was, “Oh shit” and the words ran frantically around his brain for several long seconds, searching in vain for some more constructive thought. Knowing his first impulse to turn on his heel and flee was cowardly, he smiled back and said “of course,” as he stepped across the threshold and heard the door click closed behind him, impatiently banishing the sudden image of the white room door from his mind’s eye.
Moving through her cheerfully book cluttered apartment, accepting a glass of wine and a slice of cheese, going through the motions without paying any attention to what he was drinking or eating, he tried to figure out what to do next. It was suddenly, appallingly clear that he was not ready to begin an intimate relationship with Marie, now or possibly ever.
She on the other hand was clearly ready, now. Looking at her slightly flushed skin, listening to her voice, pitched a note higher than normal and speaking just a bit too fast, he realized that she was playing an unaccustomed role as the pursuer. Nevertheless, she had every right to expect that he would accept her invitation, that he would welcome it, maybe even that he was waiting for it.
He also realized that there was no way he could turn her down without inflicting wholly undeserved pain and humiliation.
Because there was nothing he could say that at this point that wouldn’t sound utterly ridiculous. “I can’t make love to you because I just realized that I am in love with someone else,” was obviously disingenuous in the extreme, and what could he say to the inevitable questions to follow? “I can’t tell you who. I can’t be with her right now. It’s been seven years. Well, I’m not sure she is still alive, much less still interested in me. She runs the world’s most covert anti-terrorist organization, so now I have to kill you because you know too much.” He would sound like a lunatic. He would sound like he was lying.
Whatever pieces of the truth he shared would not be enough to sound like anything but an excuse for a much colder rejection. I won’t sleep with you because I’ve decided after all that you aren’t desirable enough.
Moreover, he could not think of any lie that would not sound the same.
Saying that he wasn’t ready for their relationship to move to this phase would inflict just as much undeserved pain. They had been dating for more than two months, bumping up against but not broaching the barrier of sex, how much slower could you go and still have a pulse? It also implied a future that he now realized would never happen.
Saying he wasn’t interested in sex outside of marriage would sound like the lame excuse it was because it was much too far into their relationship to suddenly announce a deeply felt moral principle, especially one that came out of the blue and contradicted things he had already said and done.
Claiming a physical impediment was a sick joke.
Positing Adam’s possible objection was just desperate.
If he wanted to preserve Marie’s dignity and self-confidence, he couldn’t leave and he couldn’t turn her down and he would have to keep up the relationship for long enough to ease out of it gracefully.
Reaching this conclusion took only a moment or two; going over it several more times didn’t change the outcome. Recognizing that he had no one to blame but himself for this predicament, Michael set about adjusting himself to a situation he had created by continuing the relationship in the first place. It wasn’t Marie’s fault that he hadn’t really known his own mind until now.
Once he had decided that he had no choice to but to accept the hand he had dealt, the only small hope he allowed himself was that Marie’s courage might fail her and she might retreat before bringing the issue to the test. If he handled it right, maybe he could ease them both out of the situation unscathed.
With Marie’s attention wholly absorbed by getting her elaborate meal onto the table, Michael felt his spirits rising slightly. Maybe she could be gently steered away from making an invitation that couldn’t be ignored. He conceded to himself that this wasn’t likely, but still, some hope was better than none at all.
Clinging to this hope, he did what he could to avoid any physical contact, choosing to lean against the kitchen doorway rather than lean in over the central chopping block she was working on. If she noticed or thought it odd, she did not comment. She kept up an intermittent flow of conversation, relating a complicated story of departmental politics and university policy. At her request, he dutifully left to change the music to a different playlist.
As he flipped through Marie’s ipod, he recalled an irritated, frustrated Nikita telling him that it was his elusiveness that was so seductive. They had just gotten in from a mission where he had once again been put into the position of seducing the wife to get to the husband and Nikita had been running tech from the van. That he had managed to reach closure without actually sleeping with the mark, at that moment, was as irritating to her as the alternative because she was busy comparing his mission choices with the way he managed her.
“You just leave them high and dry don’t you! You get them all stirred up over you, with the promise of relief that’s just out of reach, a promise you never make good on, and you get them to do whatever you want. You get them thinking that they’ll be the one to really get you, and then you slip away.”
She had obviously been talking about herself. It had been two or three weeks since they’d helped Operations and Madeline beat back George and Hilinger by taking out the Cardinal of Red Cell, but except for a short day soon after that, they hadn’t been able to get any shared downtime. He had considered backing her up against the wall and kissing her right there. Operations and Madeline would not have liked it, but by that time they had pretty much given up on outright opposition to their relationship. Instead he had sent her home as soon as he could, brushing her lips lightly with his thumb as he asked her if she wanted company later. Accepting the challenge glinting in her eyes and small smile tugging her lips upward as a “yes,” he followed as rapidly as possible. He had let himself into her brightly lit apartment right after knocking, which he did not usually do, and started stripping as soon as he had the door closed.
He smiled as he remembered her startled expression as she sat up and looked over the edge of the couch. Nude by the time he reached her, her expression had changed to one of satisfied anticipation as she had risen up on her knees and jerked off her own shirt.
“I always keep my promises to you,” was the last articulate thing he could remember saying that night.
Idiot, he thought. Remembering a night with Nikita only made his current situation worse. It made depressingly clear how much he did not want to go through with this love affair, but he still could not think of any way out. And he was reasonably sure that, as with Theresa Viscano all those years ago, Nikita would actually sympathize with Marie in this case, more anyway than she would sympathize with him. She would hold him responsible for Marie’s feelings, and be disappointed in him if he hurt her.
His already dim hope for a reprieve began to flicker out as he responded to Marie’s request to re-fill her wineglass for the third time. She finished off the glass the same time she finished her soup. Rising to clear the table for the entrée, she brushed her leg against his. Reaching for his bowl, she ran the back of her hand against his forearm and squeezing unnecessarily close behind him to get to the kitchen, her hip grazed his shoulder. It had reached the point where he had to start responding or she was going to start wondering what was wrong. He also didn’t want her to drink any more – the false courage would come back to haunt her later.
Of course, he could disregard her feelings and turn her down anyway.
Then he had a vision of an angry, hurt Marie, with her funny, biting tongue, ripping apart some damned Frenchman who was too tied up with his son and his past to move forward. If it found its way into the right ears, it was a story that would spark questions and investigation. The food turned to ashes in his mouth and what once had seemed an interesting prospect, an affair with a bright, pretty woman, was in an instant reduced to another valentine mission, something he had to get through to stay within mission parameters, the mission being to raise Adam in safety and obscurity.
He got the rest of the meal down on will power alone.
Slipping into valentine mode was distressingly easy.
When he realized what he was doing he fought to stop it – he felt he owed, not just Marie but himself, his sincere engagement with what was happening. His relationship with Marie had not been an act, it had no agenda, and she was not some innocent to be used to get to someone else. She was a woman he genuinely liked in her own right, whom he had chosen to spend time with, to cultivate a romantic relationship with. To protect himself now with tricks he had learned whoring for Section was to demean them both.
After they finished eating, Marie said, “let’s go sit in the living room, where it’s more comfortable.”
Suddenly unable to bear any more tentative advances, or the thought of making out on an uncomfortable futon couch, Michael stood up, walked around the table and pulled Marie to her feet and flush against his body. Placing both hands at the base of her neck and brushing her jaw with his thumbs, he looked her in the eye. “I’m sure there are other places more comfortable still.”
Marie looked startled, then holding his gaze with her own, ran her tongue lightly across her bottom lip, and breathed, “yes, there are.”
“There is one thing…’
“Yes?” Marie suddenly looked wary, unsure where he was going.
“I wasn’t expecting this and so I am not, um, as prepared as I should be.” Michael smiled as he said this; aware of and trying to crush his last frantic hope that she wouldn’t be prepared either.
“Oh.” Marie smiled then, and covered his hands with her own and pulled them down to rest just above her breasts. “I am.”
“Good.” Michael skimmed his hands across her shoulders and down her arms, ruefully berating himself for even thinking about last-ditch rescue.
Marie giggled. “Actually, my girlfriends gave me a whole box and told me, ‘just jump him already!’” She ducked her head and blushed rosily as she made this confession.
Smiling at Marie as he took her hand to lead her to her bed, Michael silently rained curses down on the heads of all well-meaning meddlers, not excluding that of his own son.
She wasn’t a particularly sophisticated lover, but she was enthusiastic and energetic. Michael tried very hard to squelch his own relief at discovering that not only did everything still work the way it supposed to, but that he remembered much, if not all, that he had once known about how to pleasure a woman. He firmly reminded himself that, as of now, his only goal was Marie’s satisfaction, not his own. It didn’t work. Looking at her replete and sleepy smile as she nestled in his arms afterward, his own lassitude a reminder that pleasure could and should go both ways, a small persistent flicker of male pride glowed low in his spine.
Another difficult moment came when he rose from the tumbled bed and began to dress.
“You’re leaving?”
“Adam is expecting me.”
“I’d,” she paused, groping for the right word, “thought you might stay.”
Michael leaned in to kiss her temple. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn’t expecting this.” He smiled, then shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not willing to leave Adam alone overnight.” He stroked her hair lightly. “Thank you for dinner,” his voice carrying the implication of all the rest.
“Call me?”
He smiled at her. “Of course.”
As he let himself out of her apartment and found his way to his car, Michael felt completely wrung out. Castigating himself for his stupidity, the tension that had knotted his belly since his vision of Marie, in anger, unknowingly exposing him and Adam, grew into a roiling, living thing. As his nausea mounted, so did his fury with himself. Fury that he had been so stupid as to think he could ever have a normal life or a simple love affair, fury that he derived any sexual satisfaction at all, fury that he was denying himself any honest gratification after having deliberately pursued it. As he started the engine his anger combined with anticipation of Adam’s eager questions, either tonight or at the latest in the morning, produced the effect of a spike being driven in just behind his left eye.
He stopped the car after driving less than a block, opened the door and threw up into the gutter.
************
His office was so quiet Michael could hear the whirring sound of car tires swishing through the slushy streets, turning Sunday’s fresh snow into a messy, filthy stew before they dried it off the roads altogether in the day’s bright sunshine. He could hear the ticking of the second hand of the ancient, battery powered wall clock hanging overhead and the steam quietly hissing from the radiator in the corner. The creak of his equally ancient chair as he shifted his weight was so loud he flinched.
Slumping down again, he went back to idly spinning his pencil and trying to devise clever profiles to bring a painless end to his relationship with Marie.
The sound of the opening and closing of the back door of the storefront he rented in the brick industrial building, so old it was quaint, in an equally old factory district of St. Paul, followed by shuffling footsteps and distinctive thunk of a cane, brought him upright.
Michael looked over his computer to see Joe Knutsen, former owner of Knutsen Painting, appear in the hallway; wrapped nearly to his bushy white eyebrows in a muffler and parka.
Joe got his winter things off, waving Michael away with an impatient hand when Michael rose to help him, then he crossed to sit heavily in the chair behind the second desk in the small front office that overlooked the street. The back room, which was also a garage, housed all the variety of equipment that made up the inventory of a long-time painting business; disassembled scaffolding, ladders of various heights, sprayers large and small, boxes of tape and wall mud and caulk, brushes and rollers of all types, trays of all sizes, buckets and screens, putty knives, drifts of canvas drop cloths and uncounted numbers of paint flecked scrapers.
“No business today?” Joe asked, looking inquiringly at Michael with his bright gray eyes.
“Both crews are out.”
“Oh.”
Feeling some explanation of his presence in the office instead at a work site was owed to the man who was his business mentor, who had started the company he now owned, and his friend, Michael said, “I’m writing up some bids.”
“Without the computer on?”
“It’s on.” Michael banged the mouse to prove his claim, “just sleeping.”
“Ah.”
Eager to change the subject, Michael said, “Here to surf the web where Fanny can’t bother you?”
“Yep.”
Michael rose. “I’ll leave you in peace then.”
“No need.” Joe waved him back down. “Stay and have a cup of coffee with an old man.”
Michael, who didn’t really want to go paint anything this morning anyway, nodded and went to get coffee for them both.
Joe wrapped his arthritic old hands around the warm mug, sniffed appreciatively and sipped slowly. “Ahhh. Son, you make the best coffee.”
Joe leaned back to look up at Michael. “Hear she’s a real nice one, this college teacher you’ve found.”
“What? From who?”
“Adam.”
Adam. Of course it was Adam. Joe and Fanny were as close to grandparents as Adam had, and Adam knew Michael liked and trusted them both, so of course Adam talked with Joe about Michael and Michael’s relationship with Marie. He certainly talked with Michael about it. Fortunately, Adam had been too absorbed in some garishly covered science fiction novel when Michael got home Saturday night to question Michael as closely as usual about Marie, but he had more than made up for that omission on Sunday. He had relentlessly pursued all Michael’s evasive answers until he’d managed to deduce for himself a more or less accurate picture of the prior evening’s events, crowing a satisfied, and irritatingly self-congratulatory, “way-ta-go Dad!” when he realized that his father’s romantic life had hit a new plateau.
Thinking of Adam, Michael grimaced.
Joe looked slightly ashamed of himself. “I asked – pumped him really – after Father Jon asked me about it.” Perking up a bit, Joe continued, “Adam told me you really went all out for her on New Year’s, monkey suit and everything.”
Michael was swamped immediately by a sense of outraged astonishment. All out, he thought indignantly, all out! As if renting a cheap tuxedo at a strip mall and going to a public dance could possibly be measured up against truly going all out!
For Nikita, for Nikita he had gone all out. For Nikita, he had lied, seduced, manipulated, stolen, drugged, and betrayed. He had cheated, terrorized, blackmailed, begged, whored, threatened, bullied, and killed opponents and allies alike without hesitation or remorse. He had defied his superiors, his organization, his commitment to atoning for his own crimes, and what few principles he had had left. That was going all out.
What he had done for Marie was so small, so tiny, so pathetic by comparison it was laughable.
At that thought Michael checked himself abruptly. That Adam should think such a paltry thing was going all out was properly viewed as a miracle, as a measure of his success in creating a normal life for his son. Abashed at his outrage of a second before, he looked down at his hands and said, “yes.”
“Like her?”
Michael looked up to find his old friend gazing at him with some concern. Just to be sure, he asked, “Marie?”
Joe looked expectantly at him.
Michael forced a warm smile. “Yes. Very much.”
“Ah.” Joe paused for a bit. Then, “love her?”
“I don’t know.” This was a lie, but it was also the only acceptable answer.
They finished their coffee in silence. Setting down his empty mug, Joe smiled a little wickedly, “Well, the fun is in the finding out, isn’t it?”
Michael did the only thing he could. He chuckled and said, “absolutely.”
************
Squinting behind his sunglasses at the blinding sunlight reflected off the fresh snow, Michael dialed Marie’s number on his cell phone as he navigated his SUV through the busy Monday streets on his way to one of his work sites to check on Friday’s progress.
“Allo?” It was Marie’s professional voice, clipped and brisk.
“Marie?”
He heard her quick intake of breath, then a hesitant, “Mike?”
“Oui. Cest moi.”
“Bon jour.” Marie sounded cautious and uncertain and Michael mentally kicked himself for waiting so long to call.
He switched back to English, ruefully recognizing even as he did so that almost none of the difficult conversations of his life had taken place in his native tongue – and that after all these years, he preferred it that way. “I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday.”
Marie followed his lead. “Oh. That’s okay.”
He made his voice warm and sincere, as he said, “No. It isn’t. I should have called to thank you again for a wonderful evening.”
Michael was certain he heard her smile when she replied, “You’re welcome.” She lowered her voice, sounding slightly husky as she said, “It was pretty spectacular, actually. At least, I thought so.”
Michael refused to dwell on the concept of spectacular first sex, when he had known it, and when he had not. He kept his voice light. “I’m flattered you thought so.”
Marie only giggled nervously, so Michael continued. “Would you like to join me for an early supper tomorrow evening? Adam will be at school, he’s in the pit orchestra for the winter show and they’re rehearsing then.”
“Sure – that would be great!” Marie paused briefly, then said, “and after?”
Michael knew what she was asking, so made his answer very clear. “And after I’ll drop you off before I go get Adam.”
“Oh.” Marie’s voice hardened with disappointed anger. “I guess nothing’s really changed then.”
Her tone stung and Michael snapped, “Everything has changed Marie. But Adam hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still thirteen. His mother is still dead.”
Michael winced as soon as he said the words. He hadn’t intended to say such a thing, but he had been irritated by the note of bitter hurt in Marie’s voice and his concentration was split by the need to slip the SUV past a semi-truck making a delivery to small storefront from the narrow street, and so he had been unable to check himself.
Marie’s reply was a subdued and chastened, “Of course.”
There was a long beat of uncomfortable silence, when Michael had a flash of inspiration. “You teach on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Yes?”
Marie was obviously confused by the change in direction. “Yes?”
“So, tomorrow’s Tuesday. Where will you be around ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“Um – at my office on campus. Why?”
Michael let his voice carry all the suggestion and promise he could muster. “Well, then, I will visit you there.”
There was silence, then Marie squeaked, “In my office?”
Michael smiled at her discomfiture. “Yes. Why not?”
“I, oh God, I don’t know Michael.” Marie giggled again, obviously equal parts thrilled and terrified by the idea. Her voice rose in pitch with her nervousness. “I don’t think I’m ready to be that adventurous. What if the department secretary guessed? Oh God, I’d die of embarrassment!”
Michael resolutely banished the unbidden memories of all the various locations he and Nikita had resorted to in their bad-old sneaking around days, and sometimes even later on, because they couldn’t wait to get to one of their apartments, they were on a mission, or just for the thrill of it. He said, “Your apartment, then?”
Marie’s voice was low again, and full of excited anticipation as she answered, “my apartment then.”
************
Fandom: La Femme Nikita
Pairing: Michael Samuelle/Nikita Wirth
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Rating: A very mild R, I think
Genre: Post Series Fic
Length: Longish
Summary: What is life like for a widowed parent on the run?
Author's Note: I'm posting this in sections that fit the lj window, rather than conceptual chapters, which are short for this piece.
************
Eventually, with Adam’s encouragement – or pestering, depending on Michael’s mood – Michael did call Marie. It cost him considerable thought to decide what was the next appropriate step. He didn’t want to thrust her on Adam or Adam on her, but he wanted her to be fully aware of what it meant that he was the single parent of a thirteen-year-old child. He decided on inviting her out to diner, but pointedly framing the invitation in terms of using the time between dropping off Adam off at a friend’s for pizza and a movie and picking him up. He wasn’t sure at all how he felt when she cheerfully agreed.
Again, despite his concerns, he enjoyed himself. Marie charmed him with her French, with her avid, aggressive intelligence and her thirst for professional acclaim. She actually had him laughing out loud telling stories about her ongoing struggles to teach French literature to generally ambivalent and uninterested University of Minnesota students.
He also rediscovered he enjoyed the simple pleasure of being in the company of a woman. Coming to see single women as hunters with himself as prey, he’d forgotten how much he liked spending time just with women, the sound of their voices, the softness of their faces, the light in their eyes when they were feeling confident in themselves and their abilities. This of course had been one of his great natural strengths as a valentine operative, he genuinely liked women, he always had.
Living with and raising Adam combined with his choice of house painting as a profession had thrown him into a predominately male world; adolescent boys and working men dominated his days and his nights. Yes, he certainly did socialize with women and work for and with women and there were plenty of women at their martial arts studio and at church, but most of these women were partnered up already or merely casual acquaintances. Focused only on missing Nikita, he hadn’t noticed until now just how much he missed having women, or rather, a woman in his life.
For their third date, Marie invited him to a Christmas concert. For their fourth date, he invited her to join him for Christmas shopping and dinner at the mall. Each time when he got home, Adam quizzed him on his progress and encouraged him to see her again. After the shopping date Michael asked him why he was so enthusiastic about Marie.
Adam looked at him seriously. “I worry about you Dad. Its like, sometimes, you’re alone even in a crowd. You need a girlfriend.”
Michael was sure he looked as nonplused as he felt. “Oh.”
“Besides,” Adam tossed over his shoulder as he wandered out of the room, “if you have a girlfriend, maybe you’ll stop paying attention to every single thing I do.”
Michael raised his voice, to be sure Adam heard him, even in his retreat. “Don’t count on it.”
************
Because of the post Labor Day start dates at both the ‘U’ and the public schools, school continued until nearly Christmas Eve, classes breaking for the winter holiday on December 22. Marie left to visit family in Montreal, but first extracted a firm commitment for a New Year’s Eve date from Michael.
As for Michael and Adam, they kept very busy with activities at Church over Christmas itself. Christmas was one of the reasons that Michael had chosen to make their Church such an important part of their lives. Without extended family and with only each other for company, Michael had feared that Christmas could be an unhappy time for him and his son. The Church community stepped in and filled what might have been a very lonely week almost to the bursting point.
Adam had always been involved in the Christmas pageant for the younger children, usually as a shepherd, last year as the innkeeper. Now that he was an altar boy, his commitments were even greater. Not only was he one of the three kings at the early pageant this year, he was also scheduled to serve at the midnight mass.
To give himself something do besides sit around and wait for Adam, Michael had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to play his cello with the small ensemble that provided the instrumental music for the main Mass. The church members and musicians who put the Christmas ensemble together were quite serious, most of them playing professionally and teaching music in the twin cities. One of them was Adam’s violin teacher, which is how Michael was roped into playing. It was always a somewhat ‘scratch’ affair, with only three rehearsals in the days prior to Christmas Eve, so it wasn’t a large obligation. And it wasn’t as if he was expected to do much besides fill out the sound.
On Christmas Eve itself, Michael and Adam joined the youth group members and parents for potluck dinner before the children’s pageant, so they arrived at Church around 5:00pm and didn’t leave until after midnight.
As usual, the Christmas ‘midnight’ Mass, which actually started at 10:30pm and ended at midnight, was extremely heavily attended. The small instrumental ensemble, with Michael near the back of the group, began playing at ten o’clock as the crowds filed into the main church, then the two chapels and finally the parish hall.
Michael listened with an unexpected sense of wonder as the familiar Christmas story was retold. In general he considered himself a nonbeliever. He had seen too much, done too much, to accept that there was only one God, if there were any at all. And he was sickened by what was done by so many, believing they acted in their God’s name. Because religious fundamentalism fueled so much of the terrorism that he had spent more than ten years of his life fighting, he was also intensely suspicious of the global claims that lay at the heart of most of the world religions, including those of the Catholic church. The notion that the sacrifice of one man was enough to compensate for his own multitude of sins, much less those of the mass of humanity over the last two millennia struck him as too fantastical to be credited. Nevertheless, here he was, and literally millions like him around the world were celebrating the birth of a baby who, when grown, would die in their name. This year, the celebration of the miracle of birth, of the hope and possibilities that are the promise carried within each newborn child, even the possible salvation and redemption of mankind, however unlikely, moved him almost to tears.
By the end of the service, when the lights dimmed to leave the congregation illuminated by candlelight, and led only by the powerful soloists in the choir the assembled worshipers sang “Silent Night,” Michael felt his heart lift and soar with the music.
As the last notes of the carol reverberated in the crowded, shadowed sanctuary, Michael wondered where Nikita was tonight, what she was doing, and whom she was with. He wondered if she was still holding steadfast in her faith in the innocence of children, the promise of infants and the possibility of redemption for all seekers. Seizing his revived sense of the magic of Christmas, Michael closed his eyes and sent the message closest to his heart into the stillness of the hush that fell across the church. I love you Nikita. Merry Christmas.
Once the recessional was completed and they were free to leave, Michael and Adam walked out onto the front steps of the Church into the thinning crowd. The night was so clear that despite the lights of the city they could make out the major constellations in the sky. Their breath floated above them as they looked up past the yellow halos surrounding the snow-shrouded lampposts and into the depths above, sharing a quiet moment after the steady bustle of the evening. To Michael’s surprise and pleasure, Adam took advantage of the momentary height offered by being a step above his father to throw his arm across Michael’s shoulders, saying, “Merry Christmas, Dad.”
“Merry Christmas, Adam.”
************
On New Year’s Eve, Michael escorted Marie to a Black-Tie dinner and dance celebration held at one of the elegant old downtown hotels in Minneapolis.
Marie told him that she had always wanted to do something like that – actually wear an evening gown when it was appropriate. She had laughed when she told him, saying that faculty members didn’t usually need and couldn’t afford that kind of nightlife, but it was clear she really wanted to do it.
As for Michael, the thought of wearing an ill-fitting rental tux made his skin itch, but he sternly reminded himself that a house painter had absolutely no need for a personally tailored tuxedo, especially not of the quality he had once routinely worn. So, gritting his teeth, he rented a classic tuxedo from the shop at the mall, thankful only that at last year’s Oscar’s ceremony the leading male fashionistos in Hollywood had stuck with the most traditional look, sans any silly details of color or detail.
Michael thought the whole event slightly surreal, filled as it mostly was with middle-class Midwesterners aping the rich and famous, but Marie had a wonderful time. Wearing a striking brown sheath gown, with her hair dressed up in masses of ringlets, she positively glowed with happiness.
When Michael dropped Marie off at her apartment building, she was obviously disappointed that he declined her invitation to come up for a nightcap. He begged off with the, true, excuse that he had to be up in four hours to collect Adam and leave on a three-day snowmobile trip with friends.
Once Michael and Adam returned from the brief vacation, Michael spent the last few quiet days of the winter break struggling to decide what to do about Marie. He liked her, he had enjoyed their dates, but he couldn’t make up his mind about how much further he wanted to pursue the relationship.
She was clearly interested in the possibility of sexual intimacy – and Michael didn’t lie to himself that he wasn’t. He was. He’d gone so long now without touching or being touched that he was beginning to feel parched. He could almost see the fault lines in his own skin as it got brittle from disuse. He was fully aware of his strong desire for sensual contact – it was an aspect of his personality he had begun to explore early in puberty, somewhat to his parent’s dismay he recalled with a newly sympathetic sigh, and had fully developed by the time he was in his teens. But what lessons prison had not taught him about keeping that part of himself firmly under control, Section had been relentless about driving home. For several years the close physical contact he enjoyed with Adam – hand holding, hugs, tussling, sitting close together for reading stories aloud or watching movies, even the close contact of teaching Adam to hold a rifle or a fishing pole ¬– had been enough to assuage that desire.
Now, though, physical contact with Adam was about as frequent as a month with five Sundays. And in the months since he had reckoned up just how long it had been since he had been with anyone at all, he couldn’t stop thinking about how much he missed sex, not just love and human touch, but sex itself. A lot. If he allowed himself to dwell on it too long his skin actually hurt. So the possibility of a sexual relationship with Marie was very tempting indeed.
It was also fraught with any number of difficulties, not least of which was that he still had Adam to worry about. He didn’t want Adam to feel that in spending time with Marie, he was somehow rejecting Adam. Not that this really seemed a problem, Michael acknowledged to himself. Adam was, if anything, pushing Michael harder than he wanted to be pushed into Marie’s arms. And Michael was sure that this was not entirely out of Adam’s interest in his father’s wellbeing. Something else was going on, and Michael was concerned that he wasn’t certain what it was.
Another important issue was the question of whether or not Marie would be willing to accept the limits he put on the relationship, or if she would want more than he could give. That part, he simply didn’t have enough information to decide.
In the end, he convinced himself that he didn’t have to make up his mind right away, that he could wait and see how events played themselves out.
************
As the gossip carrying the astounding news that Michael was actually, finally dating gradually spread among their various circles of friends and acquaintances, Michael endured what felt like nearly constant commentary and teasing. He had Adam to thank for spreading the news. He couldn’t decide which was worse, Cindy’s lascivious remarks or Father Jon’s openly expressed relief. It reached the point that if one more man clapped him on the shoulder, saying “Atta boy, Mike!” he began to seriously worry that he would hurt him very badly.
As for Adam, he continued to play the role of lead cheerleader, master-of-ceremonies and meddlesome fairy godfather. If more than three days elapsed without the next date scheduled, Adam became nearly relentless in his nagging – suggesting possible activities, reminding him to call Marie, and generally making himself obnoxious. Short of losing his temper with him, there was nothing Michael could say or do to make him stop.
“Why is my relationship with Marie so interesting to you?” Michael knew he sounded as exasperated as he felt. Until now, Adam had more or less ignored any aspect of his father’s life that didn’t revolve around him. They were on an after-supper grocery run – Michael having discovered quite by accident that these were not only a good time to shop, but that it was often a good time to talk with Adam. Tonight though, Adam had immediately launched into a series of suggestions for his next date with Marie.
“I dunno.”
“You’re diving me crazy.”
Adam looked up from the cart he was pushing with an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“So, why?”
Adam stopped the cart to drop in four boxes of Cheerios. At Michael’s raised brows, he reached for a fifth. Michael shrugged, figuring that what ever didn’t get eaten this week, would next. It amazed him that Adam could eat so much and stay so wiry. But then, Adam was in nearly constant motion, even in sleep. After resuming their progress down the aisles, Adam responded to Michael’s question. “Its like, everybody always asks me who you’re dating. It’s like, weird, you know, that you never date anyone. I mean, like, people ask me why doesn’t your dad date? Some people have even asked me if you’re gay.”
Michael put several bags of frozen fried chicken into the cart before saying, “That should hardly keep me from dating.”
Adam frowned slightly. “Ha Ha.”
“What do you say when people ask?
“I say I dunno – ask him.”
Michael didn’t actually believe this was all that Adam said, but wasn’t sure he was ready to know more. “So, it must be a relief to say I’m dating Marie.”
Adam ducked his head and grimaced before sighing an embarrassed, “Yeah.”
Michael caught Adam’s eye, “Glad as I am that my dating Marie makes your life easier...”
Adam heaved an exaggerated groan, a smile lurking in his eyes. “Oh man, daad.”
“But, whether or not I keep seeing Marie is up to me and her.”
“I hear you.”
Michael doubted this, but let the matter rest there anyway. “Go get a bag of dog food and meet me at the check out.”
Driving home, Michael cursed his own blindness. He had certainly been aware that his determinedly single status was somewhat unusual, but he had never guessed that it would provoke so much comment, or that Adam would be expected to explain it. He realized, very belatedly, that it would have been much better to have dated casually from the beginning, no matter how little interest he’d had in it. Not dating at all had been too unusual, too weird as Adam said, and now that he was dating someone, it was such a dramatic break with his previous behavior that it made people who knew him sit up and take note. He realized that if he broke it off with Marie, that too would flood the gossip among their friends and neighbors. It was a sobering reminder that everything he did, even his small steps to create a life for himself independent of Adam, was part of their cover – and had to be evaluated as such.
************
With or without Adam’s help, Michael continued to see Marie. She seemed cautious herself about what she wanted out of their relationship, so there were no more awkward moments. While she continued to make her interest in him apparent, she did nothing that would provoke either outright rejection or its opposite. So, feeling confident that things were moving along in the direction he wanted, but slowly enough that no one was being thrown off balance, he allowed himself to begin responding to her small steps to increase their physical intimacy, even taking some, very small, steps himself.
The first week after school started up again, when he met her and some friends of hers at a bar for a drink and a game of pool, he didn’t move away when she shifted in her seat to bring them to shoulder brushing shoulder on their tall bar chairs at the small round bar table. When she turned her face up to his, he dropped his head and kissed her lightly on the brow before they parted, having arrived and so leaving in their own cars.
Though he converted her invitation to diner and a movie into an invitation to join him and Adam for diner at a friend’s home, picking her up and dropping her off with Adam in the car, when she came up to him in the kitchen and wrapped her arm around his waist, he dropped his own arm lightly across her shoulder and left it there until the general movement broke the moment.
He invited her to join him and Adam and a larger group for a Sunday afternoon snowmobile outing. So they spent four hours together with her riding behind him on his snowmobile, her arms locked around him for security and balance, and something more – that was of course limited by the bulky outer clothing they wore. However, he managed to arrange it so that after a long day and supper, she rode back to the cities with friends of friends so he did not have to navigate the city streets pulling the snowmobile trailer.
Most often though, he met her for lunch at various restaurants around the campus near her office, sometimes as much as two or three times a week. He was painting several remodeled lofts downtown and it was easy to get together. These lunch dates were a welcome change of pace from the usual vulgar and obscenity laced lunchtime conversations among his employees about women and/or the NBA, NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball – whatever was in season.
It was at these lunch dates that he most enjoyed her company. He usually caught her right in the middle of some problem in her research, writing or teaching that she wanted to thrash out – so the conversation was rapid, interesting and absorbing. For Michael, no small part of the pleasure during many of these lunches was that they spoke in French. Occasionally she brought along a friend or two. Michael suspected that Marie’s friends were checking him out, but he did not mind. That their lunch dates began and ended with a kiss seemed, if not innocuous, certainly less significant in the lunchtime bustle than they might have elsewhere or at another time of day.
And January was over.
************
The first weekend in February, Michael was to pick Marie up and they were going to go out for dinner, trying one of the new French restaurants that had been getting a lot of press.
When he arrived at her apartment building Marie wasn’t waiting in the foyer, so he parked and went in. She buzzed him up. When she opened her door, he heard jazz playing in the background and smelled food cooking. Her hair was unbound and tumbled down her back and she was wearing silk charmose pajama pants under a loose sweater that fell just off one bare shoulder as she raised her other arm to gesture him inside, several bangles clacking together on her wrist. “I thought it would be more fun to eat in. You can try my French cooking and tell me what you think.”
She smiled a slightly defiant, slightly tremulous smile, her heart in her eyes.
Michael felt his own heart sink to his toes. For a moment he only thing he could think was, “Oh shit” and the words ran frantically around his brain for several long seconds, searching in vain for some more constructive thought. Knowing his first impulse to turn on his heel and flee was cowardly, he smiled back and said “of course,” as he stepped across the threshold and heard the door click closed behind him, impatiently banishing the sudden image of the white room door from his mind’s eye.
Moving through her cheerfully book cluttered apartment, accepting a glass of wine and a slice of cheese, going through the motions without paying any attention to what he was drinking or eating, he tried to figure out what to do next. It was suddenly, appallingly clear that he was not ready to begin an intimate relationship with Marie, now or possibly ever.
She on the other hand was clearly ready, now. Looking at her slightly flushed skin, listening to her voice, pitched a note higher than normal and speaking just a bit too fast, he realized that she was playing an unaccustomed role as the pursuer. Nevertheless, she had every right to expect that he would accept her invitation, that he would welcome it, maybe even that he was waiting for it.
He also realized that there was no way he could turn her down without inflicting wholly undeserved pain and humiliation.
Because there was nothing he could say that at this point that wouldn’t sound utterly ridiculous. “I can’t make love to you because I just realized that I am in love with someone else,” was obviously disingenuous in the extreme, and what could he say to the inevitable questions to follow? “I can’t tell you who. I can’t be with her right now. It’s been seven years. Well, I’m not sure she is still alive, much less still interested in me. She runs the world’s most covert anti-terrorist organization, so now I have to kill you because you know too much.” He would sound like a lunatic. He would sound like he was lying.
Whatever pieces of the truth he shared would not be enough to sound like anything but an excuse for a much colder rejection. I won’t sleep with you because I’ve decided after all that you aren’t desirable enough.
Moreover, he could not think of any lie that would not sound the same.
Saying that he wasn’t ready for their relationship to move to this phase would inflict just as much undeserved pain. They had been dating for more than two months, bumping up against but not broaching the barrier of sex, how much slower could you go and still have a pulse? It also implied a future that he now realized would never happen.
Saying he wasn’t interested in sex outside of marriage would sound like the lame excuse it was because it was much too far into their relationship to suddenly announce a deeply felt moral principle, especially one that came out of the blue and contradicted things he had already said and done.
Claiming a physical impediment was a sick joke.
Positing Adam’s possible objection was just desperate.
If he wanted to preserve Marie’s dignity and self-confidence, he couldn’t leave and he couldn’t turn her down and he would have to keep up the relationship for long enough to ease out of it gracefully.
Reaching this conclusion took only a moment or two; going over it several more times didn’t change the outcome. Recognizing that he had no one to blame but himself for this predicament, Michael set about adjusting himself to a situation he had created by continuing the relationship in the first place. It wasn’t Marie’s fault that he hadn’t really known his own mind until now.
Once he had decided that he had no choice to but to accept the hand he had dealt, the only small hope he allowed himself was that Marie’s courage might fail her and she might retreat before bringing the issue to the test. If he handled it right, maybe he could ease them both out of the situation unscathed.
With Marie’s attention wholly absorbed by getting her elaborate meal onto the table, Michael felt his spirits rising slightly. Maybe she could be gently steered away from making an invitation that couldn’t be ignored. He conceded to himself that this wasn’t likely, but still, some hope was better than none at all.
Clinging to this hope, he did what he could to avoid any physical contact, choosing to lean against the kitchen doorway rather than lean in over the central chopping block she was working on. If she noticed or thought it odd, she did not comment. She kept up an intermittent flow of conversation, relating a complicated story of departmental politics and university policy. At her request, he dutifully left to change the music to a different playlist.
As he flipped through Marie’s ipod, he recalled an irritated, frustrated Nikita telling him that it was his elusiveness that was so seductive. They had just gotten in from a mission where he had once again been put into the position of seducing the wife to get to the husband and Nikita had been running tech from the van. That he had managed to reach closure without actually sleeping with the mark, at that moment, was as irritating to her as the alternative because she was busy comparing his mission choices with the way he managed her.
“You just leave them high and dry don’t you! You get them all stirred up over you, with the promise of relief that’s just out of reach, a promise you never make good on, and you get them to do whatever you want. You get them thinking that they’ll be the one to really get you, and then you slip away.”
She had obviously been talking about herself. It had been two or three weeks since they’d helped Operations and Madeline beat back George and Hilinger by taking out the Cardinal of Red Cell, but except for a short day soon after that, they hadn’t been able to get any shared downtime. He had considered backing her up against the wall and kissing her right there. Operations and Madeline would not have liked it, but by that time they had pretty much given up on outright opposition to their relationship. Instead he had sent her home as soon as he could, brushing her lips lightly with his thumb as he asked her if she wanted company later. Accepting the challenge glinting in her eyes and small smile tugging her lips upward as a “yes,” he followed as rapidly as possible. He had let himself into her brightly lit apartment right after knocking, which he did not usually do, and started stripping as soon as he had the door closed.
He smiled as he remembered her startled expression as she sat up and looked over the edge of the couch. Nude by the time he reached her, her expression had changed to one of satisfied anticipation as she had risen up on her knees and jerked off her own shirt.
“I always keep my promises to you,” was the last articulate thing he could remember saying that night.
Idiot, he thought. Remembering a night with Nikita only made his current situation worse. It made depressingly clear how much he did not want to go through with this love affair, but he still could not think of any way out. And he was reasonably sure that, as with Theresa Viscano all those years ago, Nikita would actually sympathize with Marie in this case, more anyway than she would sympathize with him. She would hold him responsible for Marie’s feelings, and be disappointed in him if he hurt her.
His already dim hope for a reprieve began to flicker out as he responded to Marie’s request to re-fill her wineglass for the third time. She finished off the glass the same time she finished her soup. Rising to clear the table for the entrée, she brushed her leg against his. Reaching for his bowl, she ran the back of her hand against his forearm and squeezing unnecessarily close behind him to get to the kitchen, her hip grazed his shoulder. It had reached the point where he had to start responding or she was going to start wondering what was wrong. He also didn’t want her to drink any more – the false courage would come back to haunt her later.
Of course, he could disregard her feelings and turn her down anyway.
Then he had a vision of an angry, hurt Marie, with her funny, biting tongue, ripping apart some damned Frenchman who was too tied up with his son and his past to move forward. If it found its way into the right ears, it was a story that would spark questions and investigation. The food turned to ashes in his mouth and what once had seemed an interesting prospect, an affair with a bright, pretty woman, was in an instant reduced to another valentine mission, something he had to get through to stay within mission parameters, the mission being to raise Adam in safety and obscurity.
He got the rest of the meal down on will power alone.
Slipping into valentine mode was distressingly easy.
When he realized what he was doing he fought to stop it – he felt he owed, not just Marie but himself, his sincere engagement with what was happening. His relationship with Marie had not been an act, it had no agenda, and she was not some innocent to be used to get to someone else. She was a woman he genuinely liked in her own right, whom he had chosen to spend time with, to cultivate a romantic relationship with. To protect himself now with tricks he had learned whoring for Section was to demean them both.
After they finished eating, Marie said, “let’s go sit in the living room, where it’s more comfortable.”
Suddenly unable to bear any more tentative advances, or the thought of making out on an uncomfortable futon couch, Michael stood up, walked around the table and pulled Marie to her feet and flush against his body. Placing both hands at the base of her neck and brushing her jaw with his thumbs, he looked her in the eye. “I’m sure there are other places more comfortable still.”
Marie looked startled, then holding his gaze with her own, ran her tongue lightly across her bottom lip, and breathed, “yes, there are.”
“There is one thing…’
“Yes?” Marie suddenly looked wary, unsure where he was going.
“I wasn’t expecting this and so I am not, um, as prepared as I should be.” Michael smiled as he said this; aware of and trying to crush his last frantic hope that she wouldn’t be prepared either.
“Oh.” Marie smiled then, and covered his hands with her own and pulled them down to rest just above her breasts. “I am.”
“Good.” Michael skimmed his hands across her shoulders and down her arms, ruefully berating himself for even thinking about last-ditch rescue.
Marie giggled. “Actually, my girlfriends gave me a whole box and told me, ‘just jump him already!’” She ducked her head and blushed rosily as she made this confession.
Smiling at Marie as he took her hand to lead her to her bed, Michael silently rained curses down on the heads of all well-meaning meddlers, not excluding that of his own son.
She wasn’t a particularly sophisticated lover, but she was enthusiastic and energetic. Michael tried very hard to squelch his own relief at discovering that not only did everything still work the way it supposed to, but that he remembered much, if not all, that he had once known about how to pleasure a woman. He firmly reminded himself that, as of now, his only goal was Marie’s satisfaction, not his own. It didn’t work. Looking at her replete and sleepy smile as she nestled in his arms afterward, his own lassitude a reminder that pleasure could and should go both ways, a small persistent flicker of male pride glowed low in his spine.
Another difficult moment came when he rose from the tumbled bed and began to dress.
“You’re leaving?”
“Adam is expecting me.”
“I’d,” she paused, groping for the right word, “thought you might stay.”
Michael leaned in to kiss her temple. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn’t expecting this.” He smiled, then shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not willing to leave Adam alone overnight.” He stroked her hair lightly. “Thank you for dinner,” his voice carrying the implication of all the rest.
“Call me?”
He smiled at her. “Of course.”
As he let himself out of her apartment and found his way to his car, Michael felt completely wrung out. Castigating himself for his stupidity, the tension that had knotted his belly since his vision of Marie, in anger, unknowingly exposing him and Adam, grew into a roiling, living thing. As his nausea mounted, so did his fury with himself. Fury that he had been so stupid as to think he could ever have a normal life or a simple love affair, fury that he derived any sexual satisfaction at all, fury that he was denying himself any honest gratification after having deliberately pursued it. As he started the engine his anger combined with anticipation of Adam’s eager questions, either tonight or at the latest in the morning, produced the effect of a spike being driven in just behind his left eye.
He stopped the car after driving less than a block, opened the door and threw up into the gutter.
************
His office was so quiet Michael could hear the whirring sound of car tires swishing through the slushy streets, turning Sunday’s fresh snow into a messy, filthy stew before they dried it off the roads altogether in the day’s bright sunshine. He could hear the ticking of the second hand of the ancient, battery powered wall clock hanging overhead and the steam quietly hissing from the radiator in the corner. The creak of his equally ancient chair as he shifted his weight was so loud he flinched.
Slumping down again, he went back to idly spinning his pencil and trying to devise clever profiles to bring a painless end to his relationship with Marie.
The sound of the opening and closing of the back door of the storefront he rented in the brick industrial building, so old it was quaint, in an equally old factory district of St. Paul, followed by shuffling footsteps and distinctive thunk of a cane, brought him upright.
Michael looked over his computer to see Joe Knutsen, former owner of Knutsen Painting, appear in the hallway; wrapped nearly to his bushy white eyebrows in a muffler and parka.
Joe got his winter things off, waving Michael away with an impatient hand when Michael rose to help him, then he crossed to sit heavily in the chair behind the second desk in the small front office that overlooked the street. The back room, which was also a garage, housed all the variety of equipment that made up the inventory of a long-time painting business; disassembled scaffolding, ladders of various heights, sprayers large and small, boxes of tape and wall mud and caulk, brushes and rollers of all types, trays of all sizes, buckets and screens, putty knives, drifts of canvas drop cloths and uncounted numbers of paint flecked scrapers.
“No business today?” Joe asked, looking inquiringly at Michael with his bright gray eyes.
“Both crews are out.”
“Oh.”
Feeling some explanation of his presence in the office instead at a work site was owed to the man who was his business mentor, who had started the company he now owned, and his friend, Michael said, “I’m writing up some bids.”
“Without the computer on?”
“It’s on.” Michael banged the mouse to prove his claim, “just sleeping.”
“Ah.”
Eager to change the subject, Michael said, “Here to surf the web where Fanny can’t bother you?”
“Yep.”
Michael rose. “I’ll leave you in peace then.”
“No need.” Joe waved him back down. “Stay and have a cup of coffee with an old man.”
Michael, who didn’t really want to go paint anything this morning anyway, nodded and went to get coffee for them both.
Joe wrapped his arthritic old hands around the warm mug, sniffed appreciatively and sipped slowly. “Ahhh. Son, you make the best coffee.”
Joe leaned back to look up at Michael. “Hear she’s a real nice one, this college teacher you’ve found.”
“What? From who?”
“Adam.”
Adam. Of course it was Adam. Joe and Fanny were as close to grandparents as Adam had, and Adam knew Michael liked and trusted them both, so of course Adam talked with Joe about Michael and Michael’s relationship with Marie. He certainly talked with Michael about it. Fortunately, Adam had been too absorbed in some garishly covered science fiction novel when Michael got home Saturday night to question Michael as closely as usual about Marie, but he had more than made up for that omission on Sunday. He had relentlessly pursued all Michael’s evasive answers until he’d managed to deduce for himself a more or less accurate picture of the prior evening’s events, crowing a satisfied, and irritatingly self-congratulatory, “way-ta-go Dad!” when he realized that his father’s romantic life had hit a new plateau.
Thinking of Adam, Michael grimaced.
Joe looked slightly ashamed of himself. “I asked – pumped him really – after Father Jon asked me about it.” Perking up a bit, Joe continued, “Adam told me you really went all out for her on New Year’s, monkey suit and everything.”
Michael was swamped immediately by a sense of outraged astonishment. All out, he thought indignantly, all out! As if renting a cheap tuxedo at a strip mall and going to a public dance could possibly be measured up against truly going all out!
For Nikita, for Nikita he had gone all out. For Nikita, he had lied, seduced, manipulated, stolen, drugged, and betrayed. He had cheated, terrorized, blackmailed, begged, whored, threatened, bullied, and killed opponents and allies alike without hesitation or remorse. He had defied his superiors, his organization, his commitment to atoning for his own crimes, and what few principles he had had left. That was going all out.
What he had done for Marie was so small, so tiny, so pathetic by comparison it was laughable.
At that thought Michael checked himself abruptly. That Adam should think such a paltry thing was going all out was properly viewed as a miracle, as a measure of his success in creating a normal life for his son. Abashed at his outrage of a second before, he looked down at his hands and said, “yes.”
“Like her?”
Michael looked up to find his old friend gazing at him with some concern. Just to be sure, he asked, “Marie?”
Joe looked expectantly at him.
Michael forced a warm smile. “Yes. Very much.”
“Ah.” Joe paused for a bit. Then, “love her?”
“I don’t know.” This was a lie, but it was also the only acceptable answer.
They finished their coffee in silence. Setting down his empty mug, Joe smiled a little wickedly, “Well, the fun is in the finding out, isn’t it?”
Michael did the only thing he could. He chuckled and said, “absolutely.”
************
Squinting behind his sunglasses at the blinding sunlight reflected off the fresh snow, Michael dialed Marie’s number on his cell phone as he navigated his SUV through the busy Monday streets on his way to one of his work sites to check on Friday’s progress.
“Allo?” It was Marie’s professional voice, clipped and brisk.
“Marie?”
He heard her quick intake of breath, then a hesitant, “Mike?”
“Oui. Cest moi.”
“Bon jour.” Marie sounded cautious and uncertain and Michael mentally kicked himself for waiting so long to call.
He switched back to English, ruefully recognizing even as he did so that almost none of the difficult conversations of his life had taken place in his native tongue – and that after all these years, he preferred it that way. “I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday.”
Marie followed his lead. “Oh. That’s okay.”
He made his voice warm and sincere, as he said, “No. It isn’t. I should have called to thank you again for a wonderful evening.”
Michael was certain he heard her smile when she replied, “You’re welcome.” She lowered her voice, sounding slightly husky as she said, “It was pretty spectacular, actually. At least, I thought so.”
Michael refused to dwell on the concept of spectacular first sex, when he had known it, and when he had not. He kept his voice light. “I’m flattered you thought so.”
Marie only giggled nervously, so Michael continued. “Would you like to join me for an early supper tomorrow evening? Adam will be at school, he’s in the pit orchestra for the winter show and they’re rehearsing then.”
“Sure – that would be great!” Marie paused briefly, then said, “and after?”
Michael knew what she was asking, so made his answer very clear. “And after I’ll drop you off before I go get Adam.”
“Oh.” Marie’s voice hardened with disappointed anger. “I guess nothing’s really changed then.”
Her tone stung and Michael snapped, “Everything has changed Marie. But Adam hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still thirteen. His mother is still dead.”
Michael winced as soon as he said the words. He hadn’t intended to say such a thing, but he had been irritated by the note of bitter hurt in Marie’s voice and his concentration was split by the need to slip the SUV past a semi-truck making a delivery to small storefront from the narrow street, and so he had been unable to check himself.
Marie’s reply was a subdued and chastened, “Of course.”
There was a long beat of uncomfortable silence, when Michael had a flash of inspiration. “You teach on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Yes?”
Marie was obviously confused by the change in direction. “Yes?”
“So, tomorrow’s Tuesday. Where will you be around ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“Um – at my office on campus. Why?”
Michael let his voice carry all the suggestion and promise he could muster. “Well, then, I will visit you there.”
There was silence, then Marie squeaked, “In my office?”
Michael smiled at her discomfiture. “Yes. Why not?”
“I, oh God, I don’t know Michael.” Marie giggled again, obviously equal parts thrilled and terrified by the idea. Her voice rose in pitch with her nervousness. “I don’t think I’m ready to be that adventurous. What if the department secretary guessed? Oh God, I’d die of embarrassment!”
Michael resolutely banished the unbidden memories of all the various locations he and Nikita had resorted to in their bad-old sneaking around days, and sometimes even later on, because they couldn’t wait to get to one of their apartments, they were on a mission, or just for the thrill of it. He said, “Your apartment, then?”
Marie’s voice was low again, and full of excited anticipation as she answered, “my apartment then.”
************
