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January 23, 2004
The Man with the Silver Hand
My socks were bulging with microfilm. That's how they spotted me. That's also why I couldn't outrun them. You have a beautiful country and I was happy to take the assignment to come visit because I knew that we could have delightful conversations in the cafes you frequent. I also knew I could save a little bit of money on hotel fare by spending a few evenings in your bed.
I knew that not only would you find time to tell me about your childhood, but also that when I handed in my expense reports, the fact that you're a light eater and insisted on paying 50% when we ate out would reflect well on me.
So the nights I told you I had to work late, I was dressing in black, taking notes while watching guard rotations through binoculars, then eventually dipping stuffed animals in steak juice and BBQ sauce as decoys for attack dogs, scaling walls and taking photos of blueprints for my government.
But to tell you the truth, alone in darkened building, the only sound my feet softly scuffing the industrial carpeting of dignitaries file-storage rooms, I want you to know this-- I was thinking of you and it gave me an erection.
If I wasn't so pressed for time, I would have happily found an ambassador's desk, lowered my lightweight shadow camouflaged pants, and perhaps used the lubricant I carry for lock pick work while imagining an evening alone with you on your rumpled red sheets.
I got out of there, no problem. The trouble came when I had to pull a similar trick during a fancy dress party. Do you remember, I mentioned to you at the Green Glass Café that when I was a child, I thought that at fancy dress parties everyone had to wear a fancy dress? And you laughed, imagining me arriving in a dress to find myself surrounded by Vikings, vicars, vampires, and BDSM aficionados sipping fruit punch.
On the night in question, I dressed up in a tuxedo and spray-painted my left hand silver. I told everyone that I was an international super-spy and that my left hand had been bitten off by a half-man/half-crocodile henchman of an international super-terrorist.
"Don't worry," I told them, "I did manage to save the world."
And when couples were finding corners to make out in, I found an upstairs office chock-a-block with microfilm. Once you grab a few rolls, it's hard to know when to stop, and that's why I only made it half a block, on the run from your country's remarkably efficient secret police.
I was spotted by a sharp-eyed counter-spy who cannily noticed how the microfilm in my socks ruined the line of my trousers. I appreciate the fact that he approached me discreetly, offering me a glass of fruit punch, and saying "I heard about the crocodile man incident earlier this evening. Did a similar monster do something to your ankles, requiring them to be replaced with a bulky mechanical substitute?"
"Are you coming on to me?" I asked him in a poor attempt to stay in character.
"No," he replied. "I am asking about your ankles."
"That's what I thought," I replied, arching an eyebrow as if scoring a rhetorical point. While he looked puzzled, perhaps trying to figure out what rhetorical point I thought I had scored, I said, "Excuse me," and went into the hallway, then down the hall and out the front door into the street.
It was cold that night and I didn't feel I had time to retrieve my jacket, since I was already running flat out. I heard voices shouting after me, but my thoughts were already on the victory espresso I was hoping you would make for me in your tastefully decorated apartment.
My thoughts are still on that espresso, and on you. I miss you terribly and wish more than anything that I wasn't so out of shape. That I had gotten back to you safely, instead of tackled and stripped of my microfilm and my freedom.
I forget why I started to write this letter. I don't have any stamps. Your secret police were polite enough to give me some stationary and a pencil, but no stamps. I don't blame them. The elastic on my socks is stretched out and they say that spies don't deserve clinging socks. I don't blame them.
The spray paint is coming off of my left hand. This room doesn't have a window and my government doesn't know I'm here. I wish we were having sex right now. Right at this moment. Yes I do.