The Perfect Weapon Ending 1Chapter 1001: Part 1 Section 4 of 7
Ending 1 Chapter 1001 Part 1 section 4 of 7
What if...
What if...
What if....
She hated that question. Always would. If she could solve Rambaldi, she would never have to face that question again, never face regrets. If she knew the future. There would be no ‘what if’ if you knew the future. It would just be ‘what is.’ There was true safety - in certainty.
But that night, that night, though, she had found certainty, as she always had, then, in the look in his eyes. In the warmth of his body. In his smile. As he lay above her and asked, “What if my arms became your home? Your querencia? What if?”
She had looked over his shoulder, at the sky, at the immeasurable reaches of the stars and space and wished her choices were so infinite, so boundless, that their time together was as, could be as endless as the game. Closing her eyes for a moment, then opening them and refocusing on his face, his happy face, she reached up and kissed him. Cupped one cheek in her hand, which then had not seemed too big, not like now, clutching the white sheet wrinkling across her knees. Touched his face and told him the truth, for the moment, because she had to live in the moment, after all and said, “Home? My home is here.” And twisting her neck, leaned forward to kiss his heart for once. “My querencia.”
For five years, she thought, with a pang.
But her words were the truth, she corrected herself. His heart would belong to her and hers to him forever and a day, she thought firmly. She pushed the fear down into that tightly-locked box within, even as her body still throbbed with passion and need.
Smiled as he - did he sense something? - as he gathered her closer and gave her a gentle squeeze, whispered in her ear, “Non si preoccupi, appena goda il momento. Ti amo, ti amo, Laura, mi querencia.”
She relaxed at his words, at the warmth surrounding her, thought she would always have it in some way, even if just in her memory. And he was right, she should not worry, just enjoy the moment. He would understand, he was in the game too. Of course he would understand when....
With a genuine smile, hearing “appena goda il momento" in her ears, she took his advice and enjoyed the moment. She squeezed his shoulders, reached up and kissed him. Then said honestly, “I love it when you speak Italian. So beautiful with your voice. And I love that word, the way it sounds, what it means to you. Heart’s home. Querencia. Someday, we’ll have to travel to Italy, don’t you think? It’s warm there, in the southern...” she trailed off, sensing he was not attending, as he played with her hair.
“Hmm,” he mused, thinking something, she could tell as he spread her hair out on the blankets under her. “Someday if we ever have the money, we can buy a summer home and name it, ‘Querencia.’ Put your glider on that front porch. Or, with what we get paid, it might have to be a retirement place,” he laughed. “I bet you’d like that... Sitting on a front porch, going back and forth, watching our grandchildren on some warm summer night? Like this one?” He asked and rolled to the side and took her with him. Then tucked her against his warm body when she shivered slightly. “Someone walk over your grave?” he asked, rubbing her back with his large hands.
“No, just a little cold,” she said, trying to burrow deeper into him.
“Let’s go in then-“
“No, I don’t want this to end and I like looking at the stars and the moon and-“ The words poured out rapidly and she clutched at him with her strong grip.
“Shh. It’s okay.” He smoothed her hair and smiled at her. “I have an idea. How about we do this? Put on your nightgown and take these blankets and go sit on the front porch on that squeaky glider you love so much?”
“Wonderful,” she sighed. “Jack...you do know, you do.... that...” If only... What if? She hated that question, but that one had been easy to answer. With the truth, the simple truth. Lifting her mouth to his, she whispered, “Your heart, you, became my home the minute you put your arms around me for the first time. I didn’t know it then-“
“No? Then what was that little ‘oh!’ about?” he asked, dropping a kiss on her mouth and vaulting to his feet. Holding out his hand and pulling her up with him. Reaching over to the rose bush, he grabbed her nightgown. She held her arms up and he dropped it over her head.
“That? Oh, that was because you gave the best kiss I’d ever had in my life,” she said teasingly. They both knew the truth, that the 'oh!' had been an exclamation point of her discovery of their feelings, the beginning of their feelings, anyway.
“Hmm. Just remember that mine will be the only kiss you’ll have for the rest of your life,” he said, laughing, putting his hands on his hips and giving her a fierce glare, mocking her possessiveness. She laughed too. Then laughed again, allowing a little glimmer of hope to enter her heart, that his statement could be truth.
“Why don’t we go upstairs first and you can put away that necklace? It must be heavy,” he suggested, even as he leaned forward and kissed it a sworl peeking out above the neckline of her nightgown, then kissed the skin of her collarbone above it.
“Are you sure?” she teased. “You seemed to really like seeing me wear it.”
He sighed with happiness and hugged her close. Then lifting her and the blankets in his arms, he began bringing her inside. “I only wish I’d had a camera....”
She knew she was taking the bait, but could not help herself. “Jonathan Donahue Bristow! If you think I’d let you take a photo of me like that, you’re out of your mind.”
“I think I was, tonight. How about you?” he asked softly, as he set her down on her feet in their bedroom and nodded in the direction of the pile of golden sari fabric on their bed still glimmering in the moonlight pouring in through their windows.
“Out of our minds or finding a piece of them, a piece of ourselves, Jack?” She asked, wanting to press, hearing Dave telling her that she allowed too many clues to Jack’s mind to evade her. When he shrugged and walked over to the bed and began carefully folding the fabric, she said suddenly, “You gave me that after we were engaged. You told me....Wait, you told me it was wedding fabric.” She walked over to stand next to him, put her hand on his arm. “You wanted me to wear it, didn’t you? For our wedding. Why didn’t you tell me, Jack? I would have. I would have for you, you know that.”
“Every bride should chose her own wedding clothes, not the groom. I....I wanted you to wear it as your choice. Whenever that was. It didn’t matter when. And wasn’t tonight more like a....Won’t you always remember this night?”
He trailed off, looked down and she smiled, kissed his cheek, whispered, “I’ll never forget a single second of this night.” He smiled and looked down again and she smiled as she always would whenever he did that, whenever she saw a glimpse of the real Jack he tried to hide. And those words were only part of the story she knew. She’d pursue that momentarily, he was not going to evade her tonight. Not when a door had swung open. No, she was not going to ignore that as she had in the past, as Dave had accused her.
Her eyes narrowed as he suddenly picked up the camera and said, “It’s not too late, you can still take off that nightgown and let me-“ She rolled her eyes. The old Laura would not have noticed the misdirection, but she did. “C’mon. Or how ‘bout your waist with the chain?” he asked.
“Oh, stop it. I thought we were going to put away the jewelry.”
“I didn’t say that. I said you should take off the necklace- Oh, you cannot be serious. Don’t be such a neat freak. It’s the middle of the night and-“
“Are you whining?” she turned and gave him a fierce look.
“No. I just don’t understand your priorities,” he said, as he grabbed a pile of gold from the floor. “We could be outside on that squeaky glider, but...” he sighed, “Here we are....” And she picked up the rest of the jewelry and joined him in the closet as they worked together putting away her jewelry, laughing and talking about when he had removed each piece.
Finally, she exclaimed, “Oh! We forgot this one...,” tapping her chest. They both sighed as he reached up and unclasped the fastener that was itself a work of art. Holding it in his hands in front of her, he looked down at it and she watched his face soften.
“Thank you, Laura. I always wanted to see you wear it. But I never even imagined what you would look like out there in the moonlight, standing.... You were...spectacular. And I....Thank you.” He leaned forward and gently kissed a slight red mark on her chest left by the necklace.
When his lips left her skin, she murmured, “I feel naked without something around my neck now.” Watching him carefully rewrap the necklace in its special bag and close it in the drawer, she thought about her multitude of choices. Plucking the necklace with the three diamonds from Brussels out of the pile she put it around her neck and turned her back so that he could fasten it.
“You wear this all the time....” he commented as he closed the clasp. “Is this your favorite?”
“Yes, three diamonds like my engagement ring. You know I like things that match....”
“Let go, Laura. Life is messy.”
“Only if you don’t clean up,” she said crisply and closed a drawer with a snap. He began to laugh and yawned suddenly. “We’re still going to go outside and sit on that glider,” she said suddenly. “Aren’t we?”
Looking down as he put away an armband into a drawer, he smiled and shook his head, “What is it with you and that glider? And the screen door?”
“I...just want what I want,” she said, nodding her head.
“No kidding,” he muttered, picking up another piece of gold. “The whole neighborhood knows what you want after the other day. Slam and squeak.”
“I heard that!” she exclaimed, but smiled and kissed his bare shoulder. “Thanks, Jack, for everything. That glider means a lot to me, I don’t know why....”
But she did, she did know why. On one level, anyway. Her need and she hated to use that word, so it must be...desire.... Her desire was so...visceral, it was unexplainable. As they continued putting away the remnants of her jewelry, working in companionable silence, she allowed her mind to drift for once, remembered the first time she had seen a glider, heard a wooden screen door slam, on her first trip to the United States. Driving from New York to California, so that she would have a better feel for the country, to perfect her cover.
One late August day, she had taken an exit ramp into, she always thought later, what had been for her, the land of Oz and had watched entranced as families had gone about their lives. Had wondered, if people really lived like this? Had known there was poverty and disease and distress, but in that moment, she had not seen any of that, she had seen.... possibilities.
She had seen ‘what if?’ and it had created such a pang of something... Was it longing or...
Whatever it was, it was not helpful.
But it had created such an image in her mind, that late afternoon, early evening, when she had taken a wrong turn and ended up in some neighborhood, somewhere. It wasn’t important, she thought, the exact coordinates on the map; these people were home.
As she got out of her car and began walking around, telling herself her muscles needed to stretch, she heard this squeak she could not identify, the swish she learned came from a tire swing, the slam, slam, slam of a wooden screen door, heard mothers yelling for their children to come home for dinner, heard fathers yelling at the children to hurry up, took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of newly-mown grass, wondered why the scent seemed so...green and then and then...
She had come closer and closer to that squeak, the sound driving her crazy with curiosity, then had stopped in surprise. Standing there, breathing the air redolent with the scent of heat and flowers and cut grass and barbecues, hearing radios blaring every kind of music imaginable, a near cacophony of sounds, seeing front yards and stoops with pots of flowers in riotous colors, feeling the warmth of the sun on her back, she had felt overwhelmed with sensation.
And in the midst of all of that, sat a couple on a glider on a front porch. They were the ones making that noise, that particular rhythmic squeak she had never heard before. At the time, she had not known what to call the piece of furniture on which they sat. But there they were, regardless of her knowledge or lack of it, there they were.
An older couple on a glider on a screened-in front porch just sitting there talking as the sun was beginning to set. As she slowed her pace to watch and wonder, as she stopped and pretended to shake the dirt from her sandals, she saw the man reach up and brush back a strand of his wife’s white hair and kiss her forehead, saw the woman kiss his nose, then his mouth and lean back in his arms, all the while the glider went back and forth, and squeaked and squeaked. She had wondered why they didn’t oil it, fix it, make it smooth, make it soundless.
And then had thought, as she walked away, turning over her shoulder for one last look, that she would always remember the smell of the grass, the sight of the purples and pinks and yellows and oranges of the flower pots on the porch, the warmth of the sun, the sound of that squeak and remember that couple...and maybe, just maybe, that was why they kept the squeak. For the memories. For the day when one of them was gone and the one left behind could sit on that glider on some warm afternoon and push back and forth and hear that squeak, squeak and remember another warm afternoon and the look on the face of their beloved.
It would be like...opening a book to the past. A memory book. She wanted it, she thought with a fierceness that startled her. Had wanted the moments, the memories. Had wondered, what if.... Then had pushed it down, reminded herself of her duty, her destiny and had driven west to meet her case officer. To begin surveillance on the man who would become, so inexplicably, the love of her life, the main character in her own memory book, the man whose face she knew she would see in her mind’s eye, the last image she would see before she died, just as it was the last image she saw every time she fell asleep, when she allowed herself to fall asleep, the man who she had known, so very soon, would fulfill that ‘what if...’ she had felt, allowed herself to feel so briefly, as she had taken one last look that late August evening before she reached the end of the road, thinking... what if? She had taken one last look in her rearview mirror and then realized she had driven too far and could only see the curve of the road behind her, not the destination for which her eyes were searching. She looked at her watch and swore. She was late. She turned her eyes forward and headed back to the highway and the straight ribbon of road to the west.
To the game.
To become this Laura. Only she had not realized that she had become Laura the moment she had stopped and pretended to shake the dirt from her shoes and had watched a couple glide back and forth forever, forever, forever, in her mind’s eye.
TBC at Chapter 1001 Part 1 section 5