Carlawhatever

Today's my birthday!

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:44:00 +0000

Today is my birthday and I wanted to do something special for all the people who have followed my adventures. For one day only, I've made my book, The Codename: Carla Casebook, available as a free Kindle download on Amazon.com! The offer will only be available until 3 am Eastern time (12 midnight Pacific), so you have to act soon. Enjoy six of my strangest missions without any cost to you. C'mon, everybody likes free stuff, so check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Codename-Carla-Casebook-Neal-Patterson-ebook/dp/B00LFMM2X0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1405604359&sr=1-1&keywords=codename+carla

Now I have to run. My Mom and Aunt Trudy are taking me out for a birthday pedicure and lunch. See ya'!

Big Events and an Old Case Reopens

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 15:06:00 +0000

The Fourth of July weekend was one of the best I've experienced in a long time. For once, I was not away on assignment and could spend time with my family. We had a cookout in the backyard, stuffing ourselves on burgers and ribs. Then we drank too much beer and wine and watched the fireworks. It felt a lot like the Independence Days of my youth, except the composition of my family is quite different now.

My new family includes two people with whom I have no biological connection. I'm speaking of my mother's fiance Bradley Huggins and his daughter Roxanne. Bradley Huggins used to be my old high school principal and he and my mother worked together many years ago. After my dad died, he and my mother started dating. It was a big adjustment for me, trying to think of the guy who used to yell at me for putting on makeup in class as the object of my mother's romantic yearnings. I knew intellectually that he was not replacing my father, but emotionally I felt a little bit of betrayal. Anyway, all that's behind me. After all I've been through over the past four years, I'm only concerned with my mother's happiness and, for some reason, Brad (still can't get used to calling him that) makes her very happy.

I'm even getting used to Roxanne. When I met her almost four years ago, she was a bratty, superficial college student who was more concerned with wearing the latest fashions and having rhinestones on her phone than with any serious academic or career pursuits. I thought she was a real lost cause. Today she's...well, she's still kinda bratty and superficial, but she at least has a good job with a public relations firm in DC. She brought along her boyfriend to our cookout. Dark, smoldering good looks and smooth banter. He wore a crisp polo shirt and madras shorts. I wasn't surprised when Roxanne told me he was a lobbyist. Oh well.

Actually, I think I buried the lead. Brad and my mom decided to get married this weekend! It's going to be a small affair with a few friends in our backyard. They know someone who is one of those Internet-ordained ministers, so he will be officiating. Best of all, my Aunt Trudy is in from Wisconsin. I thought it might be a little weird for my father's sister to watch his wife marry another man, but she and my mom are like sisters now. We had had almost no contact with Aunt Trudy for quite some time, but after my little adventure in the land of cheese a couple years ago, Aunt Trudy has become a regular fixture in our lives, even if it's often through the virtual world of email and Facebook. So she's been here since July 3rd and is hanging around for the wedding and my birthday on the 17th.

Which reminds me, in honor of my birthday, I've planned a little surprise. I'll let you know more about it next week. Now it's back to work. It's funny how people never quite go away when you are in the intelligence business. Once you think a case is closed, some aspect of it resurfaces in another form or fashion. The name Horatio Zaman has popped up again. I wrote about him in my book. He left us a little present and there's some very smart people in Princeton who are looking it over. Since I was the agent on the original case, The Colonel has asked me to work closely with the research people up there. I might be taking a long drive up I-95 in the near future.

Returning With Great News!

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 18:46:00 +0000

Yes, I'm sorry. I ran out on you without a warning. I should have at least left a note. The truth is, after my experience in New Mexico back in the fall of 2011, things got a little complicated. The Colonel gave me a promotion of sorts. No pay raise; just more responsibilities. I was so eager to prove my worthiness, I lost track of the blog. Or maybe I didn't need the blog as much.

You see, when I started the blog in the summer of 2010, I was expressing my frustration, my confusion, my loneliness, all the crazy stuff that was swirling around in my head. The new job was making me crazy. It was like my eighth grade math class. As the school year went by, I became more and more lost. I didn't understand what the teacher was trying to convey to me, but I was too ashamed to say anything. I assumed that I was the only one who didn't get it, although I'm sure at least half the class probably felt the same way I did. The algebra train was moving too fast for me and I wanted it to slow down so I could catch up, but admitting that would make me look stupid.

Then, somewhere around the spring, things started to click in my head. Those equations started to make sense. I was getting it, and my confidence soared. That is sort of what happened after New Mexico. Not to say that I haven't had some challenges. At times, I've questioned whether I could keep going in this job that's like a funhouse built on quicksand. But, as the old song goes, I'm still here.

And that brings me to my good news! I've been writing down my experiences over the years during those slow periods between cases. I've shared some of my work in this blog. Some of my more important cases, like the one in Vermont and the other in New Mexico, are simply too involved to cover here and really deserve their own books. And then there's the cases that are somewhere in between. For those stories, I decided to put them together in a collection I call The Codename: Carla Casebook. It's available now as a book with a real cover and pages with words and everything. Or you can do the electronic thing as well. I've included a few of my early experiences before the blog started, my second run-in with those creatures from Las Vegas, a brief return to the Navy, and my most personally challenging case to date. I hope you'll get a copy and catch up with some of my exploits both old and new. I'll also try to post more to the blog.

Again I really apologize for disappearing, but that's what us agents do sometimes. You can't trust us as far as you can throw us.

Country Hoppin'!

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:05:00 +0000

The title sounds like a line dance, but it's what I've been up to for the last couple months. Let's see if I can get everyone caught up.

After Geoffrey's death, I took my boss's suggestion and spent a couple weeks in New York with my college roommate Becky (or Becca as she is now known to all her snooty New York friends and colleagues). Since Becky was usually busy with her job as a fashion writer, I spent most of my time alone doing touristy things, like going to museums and shopping. The one outing Becky and I did do together was when she took me along to Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Fashion was never my thing, but I'm always open to seeing parts of the universe I'm not normally familiar with. To make sure I looked my best, Becky first took me to Bergdorf-Goodman for a quick makeover, then we headed uptown to Lincoln Center. Nothing really exciting happened, except that I met a fairly disagreeable woman there by the name of Vastiana Boatswain. Becky informed me that she was some sort of self-made businesswoman from Seattle. She certainly seemed like a self-made bitch.

Anyway, none of this would have been of any consequence except that, once I got back to work, I discovered that her bodyguard is in our database as a person of interest. I brought this to the attention of my boss, The Colonel, and he thought that maybe I should pursue the lead. This was fine with me since I was going pretty batty hanging around with my mom. No offense to my mother, but I needed a distraction from my thoughts of Geoffrey. At one point, I thought I could exorcise the pain by writing a story about our little adventure in Ocean City, MD last summer, but the writing only enhanced my pain and I abandoned it. Hopefully, I'll be able to share that story, but not right now.

So with a new assignment, I was shipped off to Seattle with a new identity. This time I am Carla Verdugo, a temp working for Ms. Boatswain's labyrinthine corporate empire. The agency got me set up in a nice, little rented house near Holly Park and, when I'm not grabbing lunch at the Pike Place Market or shopping around Westlake Park, I've been a happy little office drone. Actually, I've managed to befriend Ms. Boatswain's assistant, Hector, so I can get closer to Ms. Boatswain and her imposing bodyguard. It took me several weeks, but I've managed to finagle a plum assignment.

So now I'm dashing this post off before I have to get on Ms. Boatswain's private jet for a business trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Along with the woman herself, I'll be traveling with Hector and the bodyguard. My job is to function as a purchaser of Native American art, but I'm sure this is just a cover for something much bigger. I just need to find out what it is. Wish me luck!

Goodbye Geoffrey

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:30:00 +0000

I just got back from Geoffrey's funeral. For security reasons, I can't go into details about his death, but I can say that he went out in a dramatic way and he saved hundreds of lives. It all started Labor Day morning when he received an urgent call from Ryan Mayhew. I didn't want him to go, but I knew he had to. This could be the moment we finally shut this nut down. A few hours later, as I was drinking my coffee at the kitchen table, Chester Schifflet came banging on the front door. This did not make sense.

He pretended to be looking for Geof and made some lame story about needing help with a busted radiator. His jittery behavior betrayed him, but I tried to play it cool. Maybe too cool, because as soon as I turned my back, he threw a duffle bag over me and dragged me to his car. After a few hours of torture, he got zero out of me, but I eventually saw my moment and subdued him. I have a few burns and bruises, but I'm still intact. Chester is in a secure location.

Sad to say, Geoffrey wasn't so lucky. I hope to be able to tell his story one day, because his efforts were truly extraordinary, just as I always knew he would be when the moment came. I just prayed it never would. No body was found, but I was able to identify some body parts. These were cremated, as per his will.

The funeral was held in Geoffrey's home town of Richmond, Virginia. I drove his beloved Trans Am down there. I always thought the car was a gaudy, clunky joke, but on the drive down, I felt like I was letting go of an old friend. Well, maybe not a friend, but a tangible memory. A physical remainder of Geoffrey's carefree spirit.

The funeral was very nice, as was his family. They did not know exactly what he did (no relatives of any field agents do), but they knew it was potentially dangerous. Apparently, Geoffrey sought out danger his whole life, whether it was street racing as a teen or becoming a Navy SEAL, he always fed on danger and risk. His parents and sister seemed resigned to the fact that he might end up dead before his time.

His younger brother Tim was the exception. As he was driving me home to Bethesda after the funeral, he unloaded on me. It started when I chose to use the word "selfless" in describing Geoffrey's actions.

“Selfless, eh?" he barked at me. "No disrespect, but I don’t see it that way. It’s exactly what he wanted. To go down in a blaze of glory. Never mind how we felt. I know my parents put on a good show today, but this is killing them. No parents want to see their kids go before they do. It’s one thing if it’s God’s will or something, like a disease or a flood. But to throw yourself into harm’s way…damn show-off.”

I couldn't argue with him. Perhaps he is right. Maybe all of us in this business are a little selfish, seeking thrills we would never experience in ordinary, civilian life. Is it fair to our friends and family? Maybe not. Somebody has to do the dirty work, though, and thankfully there are those who crave the risk. Whatever. I'm too exhausted to think about it.

So I'm back living with my mom again. Poor woman doesn't know what to make of me, especially since she thinks I work for an investment firm setting up branch offices around the country. Surely, I could settle down by now. I have to wear long sleeved blouses for awhile until the wounds heal. That's a bitch with the heat and humidity. In fact, this endless rain we're having in Maryland reflects my whole mood this week. It's like some dark spectre has descended on the whole state.

Worst part is, I'm on administrative leave, so I can even track down the elusive Mr. Mayhew. My boss, affectionately known as The Colonel, shut me down during a debriefing on Tuesday. There I was, practically a year after my last big failure, having to answer for another botched undercover mission. Last time, I was responsible for the death of one of our targets. This time, I was responsible for the death of one of our own. Okay, I wasn't really responsible, but it felt that way nonetheless. The Colonel was surprisingly sympathetic, but he was not going to budge on the imposed R and R. He suggested I contact my old college roommate, Rebecca. She's working in New York now and he thought I should go visit her. It's unbelievably creepy how he knows more about my personal life than I do.

I told him I'd think about it. Might not be a bad idea. Connect with someone from the past. Someone who knew me before the Navy. Before Iraq. Before this cloak and dagger crap. Seems like a million miles away now.

Damnation Alley

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:33:00 +0000

I have a message for the Carribbean and the Gulf states: We don't send our blizzards down to you; don't send your damn hurricanes up to us!

The last week and a half has been a shaky experience, quite literally! Just as we were hearing the first news on Hurricane Irene heading for the east coast, we get a 5.8 magnitude earthquake rolling up from Richmond, Virginia and sending its shockwaves as far north as Canada. People say they always remember where they were when a earthquake hits, and I can certainly attest that I will never forget my location during this one. I just happened to be sitting on the toilet in Geoffrey's trailer. Not the most expansive bathroom in the world, I was knocked off balance and slammed into the rattling shower doors. I ended up on the floor in a tangle of panties and shorts with one foot wedged between the toilet and the vanity and the other foot between the toilet and the wall. It took me a minute to realize that I had just experienced an earthquake since I had never felt one of this magnitude before. We do get the occasional tremors on the east coast, but nothing like this.

I eventually pulled my dignity back together and hopped on the Interwebs to see what was going on. Turned out everyone was okay and life quickly got back to normal, if you could call my current life normal. The leader of the group we've infiltrated, Ryan Mayhew, has become increasingly more agitated and aggressive. His rants are more vicious and his normal cool is slipping into jittery insecurity and paranoia. Geoffrey tells me not to be too concerned, but I think Ryan is on the tipping point. He's going to make a move very soon. I feel it in my bones. Trouble is, he's extremely tight-lipped about what his plans are. At least, he's tight-lipped with Geoffrey and me, which makes me think he's already on to us. I've been pleading with Geoffrey that we should simply shut this guy down now with what we currently have, but Geoffrey doesn't feel that it is enough.

"We need for him to show his whole hand," Geoffrey tells me. "So far, it's all bluff and bluster."

In the midst of all this tension, Hurricane Irene came knocking on our doorstep last weekend. Given my pensiveness, I decided to head further inland and spend the weekend with my mom. Geoffrey didn't want to leave his trailer, so he stayed behind and toughed it out. The storm was pretty rough even in Bethesda, but no major damage and my mom's power never went out, so we felt pretty lucky. I was a little uncomfortable seeing my mom after such a long separation, but we fell right into our old routines and had a pretty pleasant weekend. The threat of the storm probably made us more tolerant of each other.

The weird part was being away from Geoffrey. He's been my tent pole through this whole assignment (that sounds a little dirty now that I read that over). This was the first time we had been apart in months, and I got the sense that maybe he wanted me to go away for awhile. Perhaps I've been leaning on him too long and he's feeling some strain. When I drove back to Centreville on Monday, I made a silent vow to show more courage in his presence. My first test came when I discovered that he had no power or water.

He said that the storm was a wild ride, but he'd been through worse. Having no power and living on bottled water was a bit of a hardship. He had taken the precaution of filling the bathtub with water ahead of time so we could flush the toilet. By Wednesday afternoon, we finally had power and I could get back to communicating with the outside world.

So here I am, still a little shaken but with clean hair and a clean body and fresh food in the refrigerator. Life should be getting back to normal and I should be looking forward to the Labor Day weekend, but something's still a little off. Something wicked this way comes, I just know it.

P.S. - Kick some Falcon butt tonight Ravens!

Queen of the Trailer Park

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:32:00 +0000

When I was a freshman in high school, I had a major crush on a boy who will remain nameless on the very off chance that he might stumble onto this blog. He was a sophomore and a wide receiver on the football team. I was on the gymnastics squad and, in the early part of the school year, we both trained outdoors. My training really suffered because I was forever daydreaming about that beautiful hunk in the tight spandex pants. Of course, there was no chance at all that we would ever hook up. I had my sturdy little gymnast body and he had a girlfriend with much more to offer in the chestal region. God, how I pined over that boy, spilling my guts into my journal night after night.

As the school year progressed, I slowly got over the guy, eventually resigning myself to the fact that it just wouldn't happen. Once I came to that realization, life seemed a whole lot better. I suddenly woke up to all the other things in my life that I enjoyed so much (e.g., my friends, going to the movies, the camraderie of my gymnastics squad, etc.) and got on with life as most teenagers do. I even got asked out to some dances, although the boys were never worth taking seriously. Once I was feeling better, I wrote in my journal less and less, until I finally stopped altogether.

This is my roundabout explanation for why I haven't been posting as much in this blog as I used to. Originally, I needed the blog when I was in Las Vegas, all alone and in over my head with a very strange assignment. When I returned home, I continued out of habit and because I needed to vent about my strange life with my mother. Then I was alone again on my new assignment on the Eastern Shore and feeling pretty depressed.

Fortunately, Geoffrey came along. He is my partner in this assignment and, dare I say it, my partner in personal matters as well. It's amazing how much another person can stabilize you when you are feeling so adrift. Geoffrey's a little older and more experienced in field work, so he gives me confidence. The past few months have been so blissful with him that I haven't felt the need to write lately. In fact, I fear I might be too complacent.

Geoffrey and I have been living in his trailer in Centreville. I gave up my apartment in Chestertown and quit my job at the bar since the commute was more hassle than it was worth. My boss, Prune, was understanding, but I knew he was chagrined to see me go. I think Geoffrey wasn't so keen on me quitting either since it was a good cover, but with our targets living further south, I just didn't see the point in driving up to the bar five or six nights a week.

Also, it's given me more free time to volunteer my services to the home grown terrorist cell we are monitoring. I've been doing research for them on various plots in the works. Our leader, Ryan Mayhew, will not disclose which plot we will eventually put into action or when. He's a master manipulator and paranoid as hell. It's a little creepy to be this close to people like Mayhew, but just like the Vegas job, I've learned to detach my true self from the role. Geoffrey has helped me to hone that skill even more. I hate to entertain the thought but I almost feel like Geoffrey and I could find the right balance of work and personal life.

We managed to get away for about a week on sort of a holiday, although it started out rather strangely. A few days before July 4th, Geoffrey received an odd text from his younger brother who's been spending the summer in Ocean City between semesters in college. His girlfriend had disappeared under mysterious circumstances and he wanted our help. The situation was indeed strange and I think it may be best if I save it for one of my short stories, but the experience shed some light on the bizarre sightings I had of the creatures in the white van. I'm hoping that, after the events in Ocean City, they won't be back to bother me anymore.

Since we were down in Ocean City, we managed to find a vacant room and spent a few extra days there. It was nice to forget about our crazy lives and jobs and just be a couple for awhile. Driving down Coastal Highway in that ridiculous black Trans Am of his, my head resting on Geoffrey's shoulder, I felt like I was in college again with my first real boyfriend and the world was still a brightly wrapped box filled with exciting possibilities.

Now I'm back in Centreville, playing Carla, Queen of the Trailer Park, but it's fine. I removed the orange streaks from my hair after the Orioles made complete fools of themselves in Boston a couple weeks ago. With the NFL on the verge of signing a new collective bargaining agreement, I'm ready to put Ravens purple in my hair and watch some football!

I also have a birthday coming up this weekend. Never mind how old! I've given up on counting. I'm just looking forward to Geoffrey's surprise for me.

Always Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:52:00 +0000

In typical Maryland fashion, the promise of spring was drowned in days of rain and now we are rushing headlong into the stifling heat and humidity of a premature summer. Those glorious days of dry, cool weather that we characteristically associate with April and May were crammed into one week early in the month. Okay, I should stop bitching. At least it isn't snowing.

I'm afraid I've been in a horrible funk for the last few weeks. My job has lost its novelty and now I feel like I'm just serving drinks and killing time. The jokes from the regulars are as stale as the beer stains on my T-shirt, and there's nothing to stimulate me mentally. I've become lazy and feeble minded. The other day, I stepped on a scale that was on display in a store. I couldn't believe I had put on 11 pounds! Even when I was wallowing in Las Vegas, I worked out five days a week. For the last month or so, I haven't even practiced my yoga, which at least keeps me limber and toned. Geoffrey tried to console me by saying it suited my cover, but I can't stay on top of my game if I'm overweight and sluggish. It could get me killed.

So I've been trying to rally myself, but it's a struggle. I can't ignore how unhappy I am in this interminable assignment. The longer days and sunnier weather makes me yearn for times when I was truly happy, even if the emotions are just a trick of memory. You know those times, when everything just seems so perfect your heart aches. Songs can make me feel that way sometimes. The first time I remember it happening was when I was seven or eight. I was playing at a friends house. She had an older brother who was listening to an alternative rock station. They were playing Always Saturday by Guadalcanal Diary. I was too young to fully appreciate the lyrics, but there was something about the music and the singer's voice that filled me with a weird feeling I can only describe as melancholic happiness. I wanted to live in that song forever, holding on to the feeling, but of course it ended and the outside world of Barbies and Strawberry Shortcake on the TV encroached.

God, where did that come from? I guess I'm just sick of the people I have to associate with right now. Chester's girlfriend Amber miscarried her baby. I was at Chester's house when it happened and had to help her through it. Not an experience I care to revisit.

She hadn't told Chester about the pregnancy yet, so this was all a big surprise to him. The next day, Amber visited me at the bar. She had some bruises on her face. I finally got her to confess that Chester had knocked her around a little after I left. Not really sure what was going on in that twisted head of his. Apparently, he was mad that she hadn't told him about the pregnancy and even more mad at Amber for losing the baby. Either he thought she did it on purpose or she wasn't strong enough to bear his child, I don't know. I was about to go over to Chester's house and kill the little bastard, but Geoffrey talked me down. We still needed the creep, no matter what I thought of him. I had to be a good soldier and let it go.

I was so tempted to call The Colonel and ask him to reassign me, but that would shoot my career right down the toilet. I haven't earned the right to pick and choose my cases yet. Maybe I never will. As it is, Geoffrey and I have worked our way into the inner circle of this strange cult of Ryan Mayhew. They have multiple terrorist plots in the works. Everyone is assigned specific tasks related to each plot. No one knows too much about each plan and no one knows which plan Mayhew will ultimately command us to carry out. He says this is for security purposes. He's paranoid as hell, but given the fact that Geoffrey and I have already infiltrated his little clan, he has good reason to be. So far, Mayhew has had me researching the price and availability of various chemicals and mechanical parts online. Lucky me, I'm now an accomplice to a crime.

Anyway, with all this going on, I had to make a change. My dreary apartment, which suited me just fine when the winter weather was equally dreary, seemed hopelessly cramped and depressing now that the sun shines for 14 hours a day. I needed a little space and someone to prop me up, so I moved in with Geoffrey. Yes, his trailer is pretty small, but there is a little land around it, so I can sit outside on my nights off and watch the stars. I even planted a little flower garden along the side of the trailer that faces the sun most of the day. It feels sort of like a home, and I have a man next to me in bed every night.

Every day doesn't feel like Saturday yet, but maybe Friday afternoon.

Between the Holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 06 May 2011 13:36:00 +0000

It's been a strange couple of weeks. Not that you would know it from any outward appearances, but emotionally, I've been all over the map. It started with Easter weekend, which actually turned out to be very nice, thank you very much.

When I arrived at my mom's house, I was relieved to see that Mr. Huggins wasn't hanging around. We went out for a little dinner, and then stopped off at the neighborhood beer and wine shop to pick up a couple bottles of moscato. During the course of the night, we consumed said bottles of wine and talked about so many things. In vino veritas, as the saying goes. I unloaded all my negative feelings about mom being with my old high school principal, how I couldn't stand his insufferable daughter, and my general lamentation about losing the family feeling we once had. Surprisingly, mom understood it all and kind of agreed with me. She also pointed out that nothing was ever going to be the same now that Dad was gone and I had to accept change even if I didn't like it. It all sounds so trite and simplistic as I summarize it here, but these were things I couldn't accept and needed to hear. Despite my headache the next morning, I did feel better.

Easter was fun. Mr. Huggins broke out Dad's old charcoal grill and cooked a leg of lamb that mom had marinated the day before. It was a pretty spring day until late in the afternoon when a thunder storm rolled in. Mr. Huggins brought the lamb in from the grill just in time before the heavens broke open. The food was delicious, and I felt much more comfortable with our new family than I did last Thanksgiving.

Easter Monday I was back at work. Geoffrey started bringing Chester and Ryan around to the bar. Ryan finally admitted to his having a little group that meets secretly at Chester's house. After several days of beer fueled conversation, Ryan finally relented and said we could come to the next meeting. Things are moving ahead.

Of course, this week was all about Osama bin Laden. I felt a certain amount of relief that we had finally taken him out, although I couldn't bring myself to cheer and wave flags. Counterterrorism is a nasty business, and killing people, even ones that deserve it, isn't exactly like winning the Super Bowl. Besides, I know first hand that there are still threats to this country. A strain of virus has been killed, but the disease marches merrily on, and we have to keep doing our jobs. Still, I'm glad we didn't have to face the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with bin Laden still out there.

As soon as the news broke, good ol' Chester had to start his conspiracy rants. "Why can't we see the body? Kinda convenient that they buried him at sea, don'tcha think?" "DNA tests? That's as phony as Obama's birth certificate!" "Obama bin Biden is just creating a distraction so people won't talk about what a rotten job he's doing!" On and on. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, the boy doesn't know how much he doesn't know.

It's wearing me down, listening to all this crap day after day, and I can tell it's wearing on Geoffrey. He's the consummate pro, but he's also human. That easy swagger feels more forced than it once was. He also snaps at the most insignificant things, like when the mailman didn't close his mailbox lid all the way and his mail got slightly damp from the rain. I'm starting to feel a little uncomfortable around him sometimes.

Then, in the middle of my shift yesterday, he calls me and asks me to move in with him. It's not like I haven't been spending time at his place, but it still felt out of the blue. He rationalized that, since Chester and Ryan lived closer to him, it would make more sense for me to be living in Centreville rather than Chestertown. I don't think that's the real reason, though. He's feeling adrift and he wants someone by his side. I was hoping he would be my rock through this assignment. Now I think he wants me to be his. I told him I'd think about it, and the disappointment spilled through the phone. I don't know what to do.

Anyway, I can put that off for a few days because I'm going home to see my mom for Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Is it Easter Again Already?

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:24:00 +0000

I'm about to hit the road and head down to Bethesda to spend the Easter weekend with my mother. I had every intention of avoiding her this Easter, but last week when one of my Twitter friends (@maddjudd) asked me to "Say hello to your momma," it gave me pause. I know I'm all conflicted about her relationship with Mr. "Call me Brad" Huggins, but that isn't really her fault. That's something I have to deal with. Meanwhile, she's still family and, at this point, I have damn little family to lean on right now. Maybe it'll be good for me to put Carla Puckett in the closet for the weekend and go back to being Angie for a few days, especially after this past week.

On Sunday, Geoffrey (a.k.a. Hank) and I went down to Chester Schifflet's house on Kent Island for his cook out. Good thing he had a nice deck because his back yard was a swamp after all the rain we had on Saturday. Sunday, however, was bright and crisp and beautiful. Can't say the same for the company. We spent the afternoon drinking cheap beer and eating burnt burgers-from-a-box while Chester's friends "entertained" us with crude jokes and narrow-minded opinions about how to fix the world's problems (or at least the tiny scrap of world they choose to acknowledge).

Geoffrey has a much easier demeanor when it comes to this sort of thing, so he did most of the socializing. I spent most of my time with Chester's girlfriend, Amber, who seemed even more quiet and reserved than usual. At one point, she looked like she was on the verge of tears, so I corralled her into one of the spare bedrooms where we could talk privately. It turns out that Amber is pregnant with Chester's baby, but she hasn't told him and is not sure she wants to have it. She knows that Chester and his best friend, Ryan Mayhew, "are planning something big" in the next few months, and she fears for what will happen to him. Amber doesn't want to bring a child into the world just when the father may be dead or in jail. The poor girl cried on my shoulder for about an hour. Unfortunately, I didn't know what to tell her. I'm against abortion as a rule, but I don't want another racist loser coming into the world either. What's more, I had to know what this "something big" was all about so Geoffrey and I could stop it. That meant getting closer to Ryan Mayhew.

After I had managed to get Amber calmed down with promises to get her help, I walked into the living room where Geoffrey was already engaged in a passionate conversation with Mr. Mayhew himself. They were having a "scientific" discussion about racial purity and how certain races have genetic imprinting that predisposes them to bad behavior like violence, lack of industriousness, and criminal tendencies. Geoffrey's deep brown eyes blazed with intensity as he wowed Mayhew with a hate-filled diatribe so unlike the real Geoffrey I know. It chilled me to the core. Between Amber and Geoffrey, I was emotionally drained. I just wanted to go home.

Geoffrey returned to his old perky self as we headed up to Chestertown in his growling Trans Am, but I knew this performance had to eat at him. The next couple of days, he was still out of sorts and Tuesday night, he got completely hammered at the bar. I offered to drive him home and I spent the night there. We were up until dawn as Geoffrey unloaded about his divorce and missing his kid. Playing duel roles in the same body had taken its toll, and he was beginning to regret ever entering this profession. I was beginning to have doubts as well. Despite telling myself that I would never have romantic notions about being a counterterrorism agent, I had romanticized it all the same. What I didn't factor in was that I would have to play people I would otherwise throw mud on if I saw them on the street. Once you fall into these roles, you can't help but wonder how much of these characters are really you.

Anyway, I asked Prune if I could have off this weekend and now I'm heading home to forget all this for awhile. I know my mom will not like the orange highlights I put in my hair. People in Bethesda are mostly Nationals fans, but the customers at the bar in Chestertown are mainly Orioles fans. I thought the orange streaks might give the struggling team some luck, but so far the results are mixed.

I'll let you know how the weekend went. In the meantime, here's some Easter humor from my favorite comedian, Patton Oswald:

The Best of Times and Worst of Times

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:48:00 +0000

This morning I find myself in one of those strange moods where I just feel out of sync. Jittery, restless, full of anxiety but not sure exactly why. It's as if all the chemicals in my body got jumbled up overnight and created whole new compounds that do not sit well with my organs. I don't want to stay in my apartment, but I don't want to go out. At least I can understand the not wanting to go out part.

It started a couple of days ago. I was working at the bar and decided to take a break by sneaking into the alley. That's where the cooks and some of the other waitresses usually hang out when they want a smoke. I don't smoke myself, but I don't mind hanging out with the smokers if only to get away from the din of the bar. Anyway, I went into the alley, but no one else was out there. The rain had finally subsided, leaving only a chilly damp breeze in its wake. I just stood there, enjoying the cool, fresh air when I heard some shuffling behind one of the dumpsters down the alley. Natural curiosity caused me to take a few steps closer to the dumpster, thinking I might spot a cat or a rat. Once I got a few feet from the can, however, a person stumbled into view and started to run away. I only had an instant to see his face, but I could have sworn it was one of those creatures I ran into in Vegas so many months ago. It froze me to the core, flashing back on an event that seemed like a lifetime ago. I ran into the bar and went back to serving drinks, hoping to block the whole event from my mind.

It almost worked too. After sneaking a few shots of bourbon, I was feeling pretty numb by the time I went home. The next morning, I was beginning to chalk it up to a trick of the light. Probably just some bum with dark eyes and a funny complexion, I reasoned. Then, while eating my Special K, I spotted a white panel van parked in the lot. This was too eerie, too sinisterly similar to last summer. Rather than risk what happened last time though,I chose to ignore it rather than confront them head on. That's what my boss, The Colonel, told me to do. This just isn't in my nature, though.

I was grateful to see Geoffrey last night at the bar. I hate to sound all girly and soft, but he's really become a rock for me. He's always calm and ready with a joke. It's not false bravado either. He's just genetically impervious to stress. Also, I think he's really enjoying this character of Hank that he's playing. He was already sporting the 70s hairdo and the cheesy moustache, but when he picked me up for a date last week, he pulled up in a 1977 black Trans Am like the one in Smokey and the Bandit! I think he spent too much time watching TV as a kid and he's developed Burt Reynolds disease. Anyway, it's kind of cute, except when he starts talking about turbo-charging and horsepower. Here's a picture I took of Geoffrey's Trans Am outside his mobile home:

It's a cramped little place he lives in down in Centreville, but he keeps it maticulously clean. Lucky had a much bigger trailer in Vegas, but he was a bit of a slob. I actually wouldn't mind moving in with Geoffrey and get out of this little dump I have now, but I wonder if it would be taking our cover too far. I already feel like I'm falling for him, and I suspect he has feelings for me too. I just don't know if it's wise to get too attached. What happens after this assignment is over? Will my attachment to him cloud my judgment at a critical moment? As my boss always says, romance does not mix well with our profession.

Speaking of the job, there's where the sweet meets the bitter. I love being with Geoffrey, but these racist, anti-government hardheads that we have to play eat away at my soul a little bit. We've been spending a lot of time with this kid Chester, playing into all his paranoia and alienation angst. Geoffrey is quite good at it, but I don't say much. It makes me squeamish. I'm afraid I might blow our cover because of my reticence, but since Chester's girlfriend is also pretty quiet, I don't think Chester pays much attention to me anyway.

We know Chester is friends with Ryan Mayhew, our real target. and it looks like we might actually get to finally meet the guy. Chester inherited this nice house on Kent Island after his parents were killed in a car accident a few years ago, and he's inviting a bunch of people over on Sunday for some grillin' and chillin'. We hope this will be our opportunity to find out what exactly this Mayhew person is up to.

Wish us luck! I'll let you know how it goes.

Becoming Lost in Another Life

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:05:00 +0000

One thing I was not prepared for when I went to work for my little federal agency with no name was how lost I would become in my undercover personas. It's almost eerie how I begin to forget who I really am and start to think like the role I'm playing. For the last month or so, I've become completely consumed by the character of Carla Puckett, smart-ass waitress and party girl.

Although I never thought in a million years I would like working in a bar, that's exactly the case. My boss, Prune, is a real character, always ready with a new joke or some ridiculous story that he "swears on a stack of bibles is the God's honest truth." Most of the regulars seem to like me, and my partner in the operation, Geoffrey, stops by most nights to flirt with me along with passing on bits of information about his progress on infiltrating the anti-government group we are spying on. We've even gone on some pretend dates. Not really dates, I guess, but group outings with some of the people he's trying to impress. We've gone to the movies and some clubs. If I could just focus on Geoffrey without the others, I might actually enjoy it all.

But then there's Chester Schifflet, the guy who's supposed to lead us to the real target. Chester is a born loser and mad at the world for it. He hates everybody (except us apparently) and doesn't hold back any of his venom. Every ethnic group, every person he perceives as having more than he does, everyone who ever slighted him in some way is woven into his lengthy diatribes and given no mercy. The racial crap is what gets me the most. I feel my stomach twisting in revulsion from his hateful epithets, but I have to hold my tongue and go along with him. We are, after all, trying to present ourselves as like minded. It kills me inside, though.

I've talked to Geoffrey privately about all this, and he keeps me buoyed. With a lot more experience at undercover work than I have, he seems better able to compartmentalize the different facets of his life. I can see a perceptible difference between the real Geoffrey and the role he's playing. He turns it on and off. I get lost somehow. Intellectually, I know the difference, but emotionally...

Speaking of role playing, I think I've finally put my old Carla Fontaine character in the rear view mirror. She haunted me for some time, as did the events that happened in Las Vegas, but I see that whole period now as something that happened to another person. For example, last summer when I was living in Las Vegas, I had a pretty strange experience which got me thrown out of my apartment. Originally, I planned to write about it and post it to my Web site but, for some reason, the whole experience upset me to the point where I didn't feel comfortable putting it out there for public consumption.

Not that I haven't had some strange adventures since starting this career, but that confrontation with the old lady and her dog was different. Nothing ever added up. I became obsessed with it, even while I was absorbed in other work. For months, I combed through the office database and searched the internet for any tidbits that might bring better clarity to those events, but nothing has come together. Anyway, I figured maybe by just writing it out and letting other people read it, I might be able to move on. If you want to look at it, it's here.

Meanwhile, I'm still working in the bar, totally detached from my real life. I'm starting to miss my mom, but I don't know how to put on my Angie face and visit her. It's like when you leave a job and you promise to stay in touch with your co-workers, but time passes and they become echoes of a past you can't return to. It's almost cruel to talk about my mother that way, but that's the way I feel right now. Hopefully, it will change one day.

The Game is Afoot (Finally!)

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:15:00 +0000

Once again, I stopped posting for awhile mainly because...well, not much has happened in the past month and it has been a generally crappy month anyway. Although the weather forecasters said that the La Nina in the Pacific would bring us a mild winter in the Mid-Atlantic states, we have had to contend with some vicious cold since early December. Then we had a bizarre thundersnow blizzard which dumped eight or nine inches of very wet, very heavy snow that refused to melt because of the freezing temperatures.

This week, we finally got a reprieve with temperatures in the 50s and 60s, but there are still giant mounds of filthy snow in the parking lot of my apartment complex. Anyway, it's been just plain dreary and, to make matters worse, Geoffrey did not make contact with me during the entire month of January. I thought at first I had thrown off his game by taking matters into my own hands and getting a job at a bar in Chestertown where he was operating. We ran into each other one night while I was waitressing, and he came in with a couple of his construction buddies (Geoffrey's masquerading as a construction worker named Hank). We made eye contact, but he never said a word to me. The plan, worked out back in December, was that we would somehow become romantically involved (for pretend sake, of course). I thought for sure, once he saw me working in the bar, he would start showing up and courting me, for lack of a better term.

That did not happen.

Instead, I spent night after night, serving drinks and cleaning up vomit in the rest rooms, waiting for Geoffrey to come around. Strangely enough, I haven't really minded working in the bar. My boss, Prune, is really easy going and the patrons, for the most part, are pretty cool. You get the occasional asshole on a Saturday night, but that just gives me an excuse to practice some of my hand-to-hand skills. I think Prune appreciates having a strong arm around to handle the rowdy ones.

Outside of the bar, however, things have been just as gloomy as the weather. I've spent most of my off hours working on the novel I started back in November. Although I have the basic story down, I'm going back through, polishing and elaborating on the events. Initially, I just wrote down what happened to me during my assignment in Vermont last fall. After reading through it, though, I realized how flat it all sounded, like a dry assignment report I would submit for work. If anyone was going to want to read this, I thought, I needed to spice it up, even if I had to play fast and loose with the facts. Although the main story is what I experienced, there's some creative license on certain specifics, just to make it more fun to read. No one will believe it anyway, so I might as well turn it into a tall tale.

So that was January and a good bit of February. I was reaching a boiling point with regard to Geoffrey and I was just about to contact The Colonel for advice when, last Saturday night, who so happens to walk into the bar but Geoffrey, aka Hank. He came in with some people I hadn't seen before, three guys I would guess were about 10 years his junior. The fact that he was buying them beers probably had something to do with the easing of any generation gap, and they were getting pretty loud. I could see Prune eying them nervously from the bar, so I took the opportunity to show a little tough love to my so-called partner.

"Say, you guys wanna keep it down," I said to them. "My boss gets jittery when the decibel level gets above 150."

"Who do you think you're talkin' to?" Geoffrey barked back at me. "Do you see how much cash I'm puttin' in your register? You've got some f___in' nerve talkin' to me and my friends like that!"

Blah, blah, blah. Lots of bravado and crap. I started giving it to him right back, and the rest of the customers got kind of silent. Finally, I grabbed Geoffrey by his flannel jacket and hauled his ass out the door and into the alley.

"All right, now just what the hell is the game plan here," I yelled at him in a whispered tone so no one but him would hear. "You know I've been in this bar for a month and a half now and you've made no contact. I'm ready to bug out and head back to DC if this shit keeps up."

"Sorry, but I've been tied up," Geoffrey replied, sounding almost sheepish. A far cry from the blowhard he was playing a few minutes earlier. "I've been having trouble winning over our target. I decided to take a new approach. Did you notice the guy at my table with the red hair and denim jacket?"

"I guess."

"His name is Chester Schifflet. He's friends with our target and part of the domestic terrorist cell we're trying to crack. I thought if I could get on his good side, he might lead me to Ryan."

Ryan was the man we were really after. I was happy to at least get a progress report, such as it was, but I still felt like I was out in the cold, literally and figuratively. "So when are you bringing me in on all this?"

He beamed his winning smile and, strangely, I felt calmer. "Don't worry. Just keep doing what you're doing. Now sock me in the eye."

The way I was feeling, I was only too willing to comply. I gave him a pretty good shiner, too, given how small my fist is. We stumbled back into the bar, pretending like we had just gone a few rounds in the alley. Nursing his sore eye, Geoffrey told his friends the bar was a dive and they were better off spending their money elsewhere. At least, that's the sanitized version of what he said.

Two days later, Valentine's Day, he was back with some of his construction buddies. I was feeling slightly annoyed by the lovey-dovey couples in the bar, playing sappy songs on the jukebox and making out over their bottles of Budweiser. Valentine's Day is so annoying when you are not attached. Anyway, every time I would bring a round over to Geoffrey's table, he would make some flirtatious remark to me. At first, it caught me off guard, but soon I started giving it right back to him. To strengthen my nerve, I would take a shot of bourbon each time I went back to the bar. After a couple hours of this, I started feeling a little giddy and, yes, a tad bit horny. I started dancing around the bar, flashing some seductive glances toward Geoffrey. By the time I reached the pool table, he had raced over and wrapped me up in a pretty steamy embrace. The crowd started hooting and clapping. I had never been the focus of such a display, but it felt kinda nice.

The crazy thing was, I think Geoffrey was really into it. I've had some play-acting kisses before, and this was not one of them. I felt a little breathless afterward. Even the next morning, my knees were a little weak. I haven't seen Geoffrey since then, but I'm kind of curious what his next move will be.

Where Have I Been All This Time?

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:53:00 +0000

For anyone who was curious, I haven't been shot or blown up or abducted by aliens during the last month. I simply slipped into a strange holiday funk and couldn't bring myself to share my backpack of personal woes with the ether world. Only now that I've settled into a new identity and a new life can I finally work up the energy to talk a little bit.

My malaise started to envelope me shortly before Christmas. The Colonel and one of our field operatives, Geoffrey, were planning to involve me in a case Geoffrey is working on. I was to become a love interest for him during his undercover work on Maryland's Eastern Shore. I would be Carla Puckett, a slightly trashy party girl who sinks her talons into Geoffrey and becomes his constant companion. This would allow me to stay close as he develops a relationship with our targets. Anyway, intel indicated that there was no immediate threat, so The Colonel told me I could start my new assignment after the holidays. Normally this would have been good news, but this year, I knew Christmas would have to be spent with Mom's new boyfriend and his annoying daughter. As the day approached, my anxiety increased. I missed my dad and couldn't bear to make nice-nice with Mom's new "family." On Christmas Eve, I decided I had to leave. After packing my bags, I gave my mother her presents and told her I had to leave on an emergency business trip. She was stunned and a bit angry, but she took it better than I thought she would. By 9 p.m., I was in my car headed for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

No formal arrangements had yet been made for my new cover, so I was sort of winging it. I holed up in a Motel Six near Chestertown for the weekend, watching Christmas shows and football games. The heavy snow kept me pinned down for a couple days more, but I finally managed to get out and apartment hunt by the middle of the week. I found myself a little dump of an apartment to suit my cover. The heat doesn't work all that well and the electric stove takes an hour to boil a pot of water. Didn't matter. The whole dreary vibe suits my mood. Although I was using my cover name and all the fake IDs and credit cards, I didn't tell either The Colonel or Geoffrey that I was in town. I just wanted to disappear from everyone for awhile.

New Year's Eve rolled around, only exacerbating my horrid mood. If you are depressed and alone, there's nothing like a day where everyone insists you should be happy and partying to drive you further down the pit. The nicotine-stained walls of my apartment were closing in on me. By 6 p.m., I couldn't take it anymore and drove out to the first dive bar I could find.

It was relatively early, so the place was mostly empty. I ordered one of their draft beers (something that wasn't Budweiser) and sat at the bar. The bartender, whom everyone called Plum, started to talk to me. Maybe he sensed I was down and needed someone to chat with or maybe he just wanted to strike up a conversation with the only woman in the bar. Either way, Plum was a nice guy. We talked about the bad weather and how the Ravens were going to the playoffs, and then he brought up about how he'd just had a fight with one of his waitresses and she walked out on him.

"On New Year's Eve, for chrissakes," he cried. "What a bite in the ass that is! This place'll be crazy as hell in a couple of hours."

I'm not totally sure what possessed me, but I impulsively told him I would be happy to fill in for the night. In real life, I had never had a waitressing job in my life, but I figured that Carla Puckett must've had plenty of them. Somehow, I convinced myself that this would be perfectly natural.

Plum reached under the counter and tossed an apron at me. "Finish your beer. You're on duty."

The rest of the night was a blur. Having observed waitresses my whole life, I just behaved the way I thought I was supposed to. That didn't make the drink trays any lighter, or the drunken customers any easier to deal with, but it was New Year's and I was totally new, so Plum was forgiving about the broken glasses and botched drink orders. In fact, I must've done most things right because he offered me a regular job.

So that's what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks. The money's not bad, actually, even though we aren't getting the Wall Street crowd in here. Wear a low cut blouse and you can walk away with a tidy sum in tips. The smell of stale beer gets to me sometimes, and some of the guys can be annoying douchebags, but it beats doing online porn anyday.

Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention. I hadn't made contact with Geoffrey yet, but lo and behold, he just happened to walk into the bar one night out of the blue. We made eye contact, but quickly looked away so as to not tip our hands. He was there with some buddies from work. Apparently, he is now Hank, a construction worker. This was perfect. Now we can become involved and it will look completely natural. It helps that he is really cute. My spirits are lifting.

A Little Christmas Interlude

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:22:00 +0000

I've been busy all week doing research and having meetings to prepare for my new assignment, so I don't have much to tell you. Instead, I thought I'd share something that sent me into convulsions of laughter when I saw it a couple years ago. First, a little background:

During my college years, I always looked forward to coming home for Christmas. Even though the family homestead was only a short drive away, I lived in a dorm, mainly because I was an independent sort and wanted to be on my own as soon as possible. All the same, the holidays were one time of the year when I wanted to be close to my family, so after the semester was over, I moved back into my old room for a couple of weeks.

My mom loves Christmas music, so during the time leading up to Christmas, she would keep the radio tuned to a station that played Christmas music 24/7 between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Unfortunately, the station used some sort of music service which provided only a handful of songs that cycled over and over again, many of which weren't very good. So while I was yearning to hear about a White Christmas or that Santa Claus is Coming to Town, I was instead tortured with the insipid tale of Christmas Shoes. This manipulative, moronic song with all the quasi-rock ballad bells and whistles that only a Christian rock band can shamelessly muster haunted those Christmases like the specter of chainsaw-wielding fruitcakes. Here's the video, if you can stand it:

Horrible, right? I had already forced this Christmas nightmare from my brain when I came across this video on YouTube. It features one of my favorite comedians, Patton Oswalt, giving his take on this holiday song accompanied by some really funny animation. Be warned, this is probably not office appropriate, but it is truly hilarious!

Only 14 more shopping days 'til Christmas!

November is Finally Over!

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:53:00 +0000

Sorry I've been mostly absent from the Twitterverse this week. I spent most of the weekend and almost all of Monday and Tuesday writing like a crazy person, trying to meet the all important goal of 50,000 words in order to win NaNoWriMo. Sometime around 9 p.m. on Tuesday evening, I passed that number of words and finished the chapter I was working on with a couple hundred words to spare. As quickly as I could, I hopped onto the NaNoWriMo Web site and uploaded my manuscript so their automated word counter could officially count the length of my novel thus far. How thrilled I was to be bumped to a new page which said, "Congratulations!" It was such a rush to feel that sense of accomplishment. I have never written a story of this length in my life, and it still isn't finished.

Of course, the fear is that I won't finish it. I've dropped projects before, but this one feels really important to me. Not only do I want the sense of accomplishment which will no doubt come from completing a novel, I want this story to be told. I may catch hell from my superiors, but I do hope to have it published some day.

Outside of the novel writing, I took some time out on Saturday to do a little fence mending with my mother's boyfriend's daughter. I was concerned that I may have misjudged Roxanne, or at least judged her too harshly, when she was at our house for Thanksgiving. Perhaps the tornado of emotions I was feeling that day clouded my faculties and my impression of her as a shallow, spoiled bitch was not altogether fair. I was feeling a bit guilty about how things had gone, so I called her on Friday to make a date for lunch and some shopping before she went back to college. To my surprise, she had not picked up on any hostility from me on Thursday and accepted my offer cheerfully, as if we had gotten along just fine the day before.

Anyway, I picked her up at Mr. Huggins house and we went to Lebanese Taverna. After having eaten Thanksgiving dinner two days in a row (thanks to an overabundance of leftovers), I wanted a meal distinctly different from the All-American Feast. Roxanne was not so enthusiastic. While I ordered an array of appetizers from meat pies to lamb tartare to calamari, Roxanne ordered a fairly ordinary house salad and a yogurt dip. This I could have lived with - it's not my place to just people's eating habits after all - if she hadn't been so ridiculously rude to the very polite waiter.

Not only was she abrupt and dismissive, she noticed on the menu that, instead of hummus, they used the variation spelling of hommos. This led to some loud cackling and embarrassing jokes like, "Look, they have a trio of hommos (pronouncing it ho-mos). Maybe they can come over to my house and organize my closet!"

Being rude to wait staff is a huge pet peeve of mine. Since you have to interact with the waiter or waitress frequently during the course of the meal, I almost view them as another dining guest. As such, I want to be warm and welcoming to them, just as I expect them to be warm and welcoming toward me. If one is barking orders at the waiter like he is a common slave, the waiter is obviously not going to feel at ease, nor is anyone else sitting at the table. Therefore, the service will likely suffer and the whole experience is uncomfortable. Needless to say, Roxanne made me uncomfortable and I felt sorry for the soft spoken and clearly injured waiter who had to endure her needlessly rude antics. Besides, he was about her age and very cute. She could've gotten a date out of it if she had played her cards right.

But, alas, I guess she feels she is above such people. God knows why she would think that. She's still in college; she hasn't done anything with her life yet. Moreover, she's the daughter of a high school principal! Get off your high horse, Missy!

After lunch, I wanted to leave Roxanne at the curb, but I soldiered on with our shopping. She generally bitched and griped the whole time about the crowds (it was Black Friday Plus 1, after all), the poor selection of merchandise, and my apparently questionable level of taste when it came to clothes. Granted, I've never been much into fashion, but her snobby attitude wore on my last raw nerve. By the end of the day, I swore never to speak to this woman ever again, which will be quite tricky with the holidays only weeks away.

With a new assignment looming, I'm actually praying that I will have to go undercover and disappear before Christmas. As much as I will miss my mom, I just can't deal with this new family she has surrounded herself with. Moving on feels like the better option right now.

Thanksgiving - The Aftermath

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 18:20:00 +0000

I'm still nursing a hangover as I write this, so bear with me. The tension of spending Thanksgiving with people who are essentially strangers got the best of me, I guess, and I drank more than I should have. Now I'm left feeling like there's cotton in my head and a hole in my heart.

Thanksgiving morning started out like most others I spent at home. I put the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the tube and watched the festivities while Mom and I got the bird in the oven and prepped the other dishes. I was beginning to get that warm and fuzzy feeling I used to have about the holidays when I was a kid. Then Mr. Huggins and his daughter came over.

I've gotten used to Mr. Huggins at this point. He's not such a bad guy. Not someone I would willingly go out to have a drink with, but decent enough in small doses. Since my mom has become quite serious about him, I've learned to accept him. His daughter Roxanne, whom I just met yesterday, is a different matter altogether. Even though she's only eight years younger than I, it felt like we were light years apart. She came all decked out in some trashy looking mini-dress and too much jewelry. In fact, it was too much everything: too much makeup, too much attitude, and too much chatter. Talkative people are not a problem if they have interesting things to say, but more often than not, the people who dominate conversations have the most banal things to talk about, and they go on about them in excruciating detail.

Roxanne should have her own reality TV show, because she is as shallow and insipid as any Kardashian girl and embodies everything that is wrong with our country, in my humble opinion. The Irish government is on the brink of economic collapse, but the U.S. news can't be bothered to cover that because they have to tell us that Jessica Simpson is engaged or Lindsey Lohan is in rehab again. Roxanne filled us in on all the gossip, along with what's in fashion this season and numerous other details I couldn't care less about. And she did it in that exasperating girly dialect where every sentence sounds like a question: "So I went to Sephora the other day? To see if they had the new fragrance by Jennifer Lopez?" I feel like I'm being quizzed on my telepathic ability. After 20 minutes of that crap, I made a tall shaker full of cranberry martinis and polished it off myself.

The meal itself turned out pretty well. Mom's had years of practice and I'm a capable sous chef, but of course we had to forgo Mom's legendary stuffing because Mr. Huggins wanted to bring his own. Okay, I suppose, but there was some strange sweet bit in there, like raisins or something. Not the same. After dessert, I excused myself and retreated to my room. I used my novel writing as an excuse, but I really wanted to escape.

It's obvious to me that the life I knew before the Navy is gone. I took for granted that everything at home would stay the same and that I could retreat to it whenever I was finished with my wanderlust. Now I know that that's not the case. Dad has moved on to the Great Beyond and Mom has moved on with another family. A family I do not want to be a part of. I have to move out of this house and get back to forging my own life, but I don't want to apartment shop just yet. Not with the potential for a new undercover assignment looming in the very near future. Our man Geoffrey has struck up a friendship with our target, and it looks like it's just about time for Geoffrey to find a girlfriend.

But that will have to wait. I have four more days to finish 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo and I'm a little over 40,000 right now. This weekend will be nothing but writing, writing, writing. Wish me luck.

Preparing for Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:23:00 +0000

My novel has been the main priority this week, as I felt like I was falling behind with my word count. I spent most of the weekend holed up in my bedroom pounding away on my laptop. Then I wrote as much as I could at work and during the evenings this week. I'm now at over 30,000 words, but I'm still not sure if I can make it to 50K by the end of November.

Meanwhile, there's still no word about when or if I will be joining agent Geoffrey on his current assignment. He's currently based in Chestertown on Maryland's Eastern Shore, trying to work his way into the good graces of our target. I'm hoping he will choose to bring me in for back-up. It's no secret to anyone who's read this blog that I feel like I'm in office purgatory right now and want desperately to get back in the field. Of course, it would help if I didn't get called in to action until after November, so I can finish this NaNoWriMo activity.

And then there's Thanksgiving coming up. All my enthusiasm for the season is slowing waning as our first Thanksgiving dinner without my father approaches. Last year was the first time in many years that I was able to be with my family on Thanksgiving. During my five years in the Navy, I was always deployed somewhere else during the holidays, but I got used to that. It wasn't until we were all together again that I realized how much I missed being with my family and going through all the usual rituals. It gave me a sense of continuity with my past and was sort of comforting to know that, no matter how much my life had changed in other ways, family and tradition would always be there. Then Dad passed away and that sense of security went with it.

I was hoping Mom and I could still continue those traditions, like eating toast and tea while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then there was all the cooking details: peeling potatoes, cleaning the string beans, and checking on the turkey in the oven. Mom would use the gizzards and other internal bits of the bird to make the most fantastic stuffing. Dad usually handled the turkey carving duties, but I figured I could do that this year. I'm pretty good with a knife.

I even thought we might try to lure some of our relatives from out of state, like Aunt Trudy and cousin Bill and his wife, to come to our home since it would just be Mom and I, but that went out the window when Mom declared that Mr. Huggins would be coming to dinner. It was probably inevitable, given how close my mother had become to my one-time high school principal, but somehow it felt like an invasion. The matter took a turn for the worst when Mom told me Mr. Huggins' daughter Roxanne was coming home from college to be with us. Now, instead of a cozy family gathering, it's going to be an awkward dinner party with me scrambling to conjure up lies about my occupation and Mom telling embarrassing stories about my childhood.

Just to add the final insult, Mom tells me yesterday that Mr. Huggins wants to make his own special stuffing. Apparently, this was his big contribution to their Thanksgiving feast every year, and he wants to hang onto this connection from the past. I guess they didn't realize that my eating Mom's fantastic stuffing was my connection with the past. Oh well, I survived Iraq, I can survive this. He just better not put raisins or something weird in there.

I'll let you know how everything went next week. In the meantime, have a terrific Turkey Day and while you're counting your blessings on Thanksgiving, don't forget the blessing of freedom.

Restless No More!

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:05:00 +0000

What a difference a few days makes! Last Sunday, I was flying high from watching the Baltimore Ravens beat the Miami Dolphins at M&T Bank Stadium. This morning, I'm bemoaning the last minute loss by the Ravens to the Atlanta Falcons. Football season is not for the faint of heart.

Actually, I'm enjoying this fall more than I have in previous years. My summer in Las Vegas was something like a fever dream, and I can see now that being pulled out of there was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. My mission in Vermont was an incredible, mind-bending experience which I am now chronicling in the novel I am writing (20K words so far), and living back home with Mom is giving me a chance to appreciate the way my life was before joining the Navy. After taking a good long gander at those greener grasses, it's easier for me to realize how nice my life was growing up, and it makes me wonder what I was fighting against as a teen.

Who am I kidding? I know exactly what I was fighting: my own eternal sense of restlessness. I get bored easily, and a life of routine quickly wears on my nerves. I got so bored last week that, before going to the Ravens game, I dyed purple highlights in my hair. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as I was leaving the stadium, I realized my boss The Colonel would not approve.

Sitting in my cubicle on Monday, I waited for The Colonel to stroll by and catch a glimpse of me. As I expected, he gave me a long, judgmental stare, but did not say a word. My stomach sank. I was expecting to see a memo circulate regarding proper office attire and grooming. It never came though, and he made no further mention of it.

Later in the week, I discovered why. The Colonel called me into a meeting yesterday. The regular support staff were on holiday for Veterans Day, so the building was eerily quiet and most of the overhead lights were turned off to save on electricity. When I reached The Colonel's office, I was shocked to see him wearing a polo shirt and khaki slacks rather than his usual gray suit (is it the same suit or multiple, identical suits?). Butterflies were already in my stomach because one of the attendees listed on the appointment e-mail was Geoffrey, the handsome operative I'd seen walking in and out of the boss's office for the past couple weeks.

When he arrived, I was slightly disappointed to see that his hair had grown out to an unruly length. What little curl his hair had was pulled down by the weight of his locks and it looked slightly dirty. Even worse was the cheesy, Burt Reynolds mustache he was cultivating. Despite all that, his penetrating eyes and easy smile were still plainly evident and my heart tapped my stomach for an instant. I know it all sounds like silly, schoolgirl stuff, but trust me, he's that hot!

Anyway, the reason we were in this meeting, along with a couple of intelligence analysts, was to discuss a new operation we were laying out to get inside a homegrown terrorist cell on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I can't reveal any details right now, but it involves some Caucasian, working-class people with extreme hatred for the U.S. government. Geoffrey was already making moves to get in with the group, hence his new, shabby appearance. I was being briefed because The Colonel believed that he may need a second undercover operative in place to support Geoffrey. Apparently, when he saw my purple-streaked hair, he thought I had just the right look for the part. Strange how these things work out.

I'm being held in reserve for the time being until Geoffrey can get a better lay of the land and a bigger sting operation can be worked out, but it looks like I'll soon be working closely with Geoffrey on a top priority assignment! With this news and the impending holidays, I'm really happy for the first time in quite a long while. The restlessness can be put in closet again.

Halloween Freak Out and a New Agent in Town

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:47:00 +0000

It turns out my little blog and twitter account have been nominated for Mobbie awards in the Baltimore Sun (yaah me!). If you like this blog and/or my tweets, please go to the following links and cast your vote:

@Carlawhatever: http://data.baltimoresun.com/mobbies/2010/voting/?vote_for=6928#6928

Codename: Carla: http://data.baltimoresun.com/mobbies/2010/voting/?vote_for=6927#6927

I'd really appreciate the support! You can vote everyday until the deadline on November 12 at 5 p.m.

Sadly, I haven't been tweeting very much lately because I've been focused on writing my novel for the NaNoWriMo event. Between writing during slow moments at work and staying up late in front of my laptop, I've managed to write a little over 10,000 words. I think that's a pretty good run for just four days, but I have to keep up the pace. I know the Thanksgiving holiday and the beginning of Christmas shopping will become a distraction down the home stretch. I feel a little guilty actually because I'm simply relating the incidents which occurred in Vermont last month. Technically not a novel, but written in a novel style, like what Truman Capote did for the Clutter family murders in the book In Cold Blood. I've altered a few things as well to make it flow more like a suspense thriller. Creative license is what writers call it. I call it smoothing out the rough edges.

The writing has actually helped me focus since I was beginning to feel like I was losing my mind from office work. It came to a head Halloween night. I had volunteered to hand out candy to the trick or treaters since my mother was going out with her boyfriend for dinner. Sitting on the front porch with a giant bowl of candy on my lap wasn't my idea of a great time, but I had nothing else to do. My legs were going numb from the brisk fall air and my mind started to drift from the monotony of children in costumes parading across the porch, droning out the phrase "Trick or Treat" as if they were just as bored with the routine as I was.

Then, hidden between a row of Iron Men and Shreks and Neytiris was this older kid in a completely unique costume. I say older because he stood just under 5 feet tall, and he wore a rather generic blue jumpsuit featuring insignia I was not familiar with. But it was the mask that turned my blood cold. It was made of lumpy orange latex and painted with large brown spots. Shiny black plastic eyes the size of tennis balls were affixed to the mask by what I could only assume were some sort of spinning discs, causing them to move in random directions. The nose and mouth were also lumpy and grotesque like someone experiencing an allergic bee sting reaction. The costume looked exactly like the strange creatures I encountered in Las Vegas last August!

When the kid approached me, he raspily mumbled the requisite line through the latex. Before I dropped the Snickers bar into his pumpkin-shaped bucket, I said, "Nice costume. Where did you get it?"

He merely shrugged and extended his bucket closer.

"No really, I'd like to get one just like it. Where did your Mommy buy it for you?"

The kid didn't move. The longer I looked into that deformed face, the more intensely I felt the horror of that night in the desert heat. I started to quiver inside. I barked, "C'mon, I want to know where you got the mask? Who sent you here?"

The kid stepped back a few inches, but he still kept his bucket in front of me. I was no longer seeing a child. He appeared to me to be a true alien creature. Instinctively, I lunged for him, but his youthful reflexes were slightly quicker than mine, and he bolted down the porch steps. With children screaming and fleeing the scene, I was fixated on chasing down the bizarre figure. After a couple of blocks, I finally tackled him and spun his face around to meet mine.

"Who are you?" I yelled at him. "Who sent you here?"

He reached up and pulled off the mask. The ginger boy was beet red in the face and crying from fear. Suddenly, I regained some measure of sanity again. I released the boy, who scurried into the darkness. In the pale light of the street lamps, I could see children staring and a few adults approaching me with looks of anger and concern. Completely humiliated, I ran back to the house and locked myself in. Fortunately, no one followed or called the police. I'd still like to know where that child got that costume. Or perhaps it was all in my imagination and the costume was actually a fireman or a cowboy. I can't accept that idea because then I really would be going insane.

Work offered an unlikely sanctuary after that night. I've just kept my head low and attended to my business. Except a couple of times I looked up to notice a new field operative, codename Geoffrey. He's about six feet tall with a swarthy complexion and longish black hair. He's well muscled but not overly developed, and he has one of those compact little tushies that you just want to reach out and squeeze. I'm not sure what he's doing at the moment, but he seems to be meeting with The Colonel quite a bit. And the last time he dropped by the office, I believe I detected the beginnings of a mustache. Must be grooming himself for an undercover assignment. I'll have to find some way to introduce myself.

The Calm Before the Ghosts and Goblins and Writer's Block

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:19:00 +0000

Not a long post for this week, mainly because things have been slow at work. I've been gathering notes and preparing myself as much as possible for NaNoWriMo, which will begin on November 1st. As I mentioned in last week's post, I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, which encourages people to write at least 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. I've never tackled any kind of writing project of such length, so I'm looking forward to the challenge. Given how slow things are at work, I'm sure I can slip in some writing while the supervisors aren't looking. Their authority over me is mostly ceremonial anyway. When not in the field, operatives must adhere to the hierarchy of the office and are treated, more or less, like office drones. But only The Colonel has the power to fire us, since we are his private arsenal, in a sense.

I'm looking forward to having some other distraction. To break up the monotony of office work, I've found myself reading books on my Kindle for PC software. Since it's on my PC, the supervisors think I'm reading reports. This is probably not how Amazon wants to advertise its product, but it works. I've also been downloading free reading material from the Project Gutenberg Web site. I'm reverting back to my pre-teen, bookish self lately. Okay for the moment, but I'm itching to get back into the field.

The weather in Maryland this weekend should be picture perfect. Sunny skies and crisp, fall air with temperatures in the upper 50s and low 60s. Not really sure what I'm going to do with myself, although I did volunteer to hand out candy to the little rug rats while my mother and her boyfriend go out to dinner Halloween night. Not really all that thrilled with Halloween anymore. Turning your fears into harmless fun is almost cathartic for children, but continuing with Halloween antics into adulthood seems a little desperate and sad to me. Of course, I get enough opportunities to role play in my job, and some of the things I've dealt with since I started here make Halloween look like the Apple Blossom Festival, so I guess I'm not in a position to judge.

My mom dug out this old photo my dad took of me one Halloween. I look pretty excited about trick or treating. The anticipation of going out on Halloween night was akin to waiting for the ice cream truck to roll up the street. Amazing what food coloring and high fructose corn syrup can do to a child.

Happy Halloween everyone!

New Cover - Writer!

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 19:00:00 +0000

I'm mostly healed from my adventure in Vermont, so the old restlessness is beginning to set in again. Initially upon my return, I tried to set aside the more disturbing and mind-bending aspects of my last assignment by throwing myself into busy work at the office. I suppose "throwing myself" is a tired cliché, but I don't know how else to describe it. I memorized all the new people of interest on our Intranet site. I scoured through the recent reports for any details which may need further investigation. In short, I've been trying to make myself useful so The Colonel might give me a new assignment.

To my chagrin, this was not the best week to get The Colonel's attention. He seemed hopelessly preoccupied and down-right surly toward me. I tried to pull some insight out of his secretary during lunch one day, but she was her usual cagey self. "None of your business" was stamped on her forehead. Worn out from the effort, I've spent the last couple of day surfing the net on tax-payer dollars.

Speaking of which, I was on a stream-of-consciousness stroll through the web regarding creative writing when I came across this web site. National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is designed to stimulate writers and would-be writers to get on with the exercise of creating a new novel. Every year, people sign up and commit to writing at least 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. There's no real prize, but you have the satisfaction of getting a good running start on a novel which could one day be published. I have so many crazy thoughts rolling around my head after the Vermont assignment, I think I might have a go at putting the whole experience down on paper (or pixels, as the case may be). This could be a great form of encouragement and keep my mind off the banality of my current work state.

I've always had some interest in writing thanks to my Aunt Trudy. When I was a little girl, my dad's sister Gertrude was one of those free spirits who traveled around the world writing for various magazines as a freelance journalist. Whenever she found time to visit, Aunt Trudy would sweep in like a whirling dervish full of stories about the Congo and the Middle East and China.With her wiry salt-and-pepper hair, crazy mix of clothes from all over the globe, and deliberate lack of make-up, she seemed so exotic compared to my boring, suburban life. Certainly the polar opposite of my straight-laced father. When she would hug me, a slightly sickening cloud of patchouli engulfed me. The scent still makes me feel sad, although I don't know why.

Anyway, Aunt Trudy's stories inspired me to write just like her, so I would go to my room and scribble down fanciful adventures in my notebook about meeting the King of Japan and helping him fight dragons or some such nonsense. When I would present her with these crazy tales, she would react to the story as if I had really experienced it. "Oh, you are such a brave young lady to fight dragons! I hear the King has a birthmark on his neck shaped just like the island of Hokkaido! Is that true?" I felt a little guilty lying to my Aunt. What a silly kid I was!

I continued writing stories and keeping a journal right into high school. Then I got into gymnastics and working on my body (mainly to impress boys). By college, I had a steady boyfriend and other interests. Only recently, with all the strange experiences of this job and unanswered questions in my life, have I gravitated back to writing. I'm hoping this NaNoWriMo will help me purge some of the brain clutter I've accumulated over the last few months. Wish me luck! Writing begins on November 1, 2010, after the stroke of midnight.

Not much else to report this week, except that I believe I finally figured out why The Colonel was so preoccupied this week. Yesterday, we were told that my old contact in Las Vegas, code name Stephen, was killed in a car accident. Based on The Colonel's serene disposition after the news was reported, I can only presume that his demise was desired and, probably, cogitated. My accusations that Stephen was likely a double agent always seemed to fall on deaf ears, but now I see that this was not true. Rather, I'm realizing that The Colonel, and in fact this whole nameless agency, works in mysterious ways.

My Vermont Vacation

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 18:17:00 +0000

Last time I posted, I was sitting in my room in Vermont about to begin my new assignment. Now I'm back in my cubicle in DC taking a break from mind-numbing case studies. In between...well, all I can say is, it was quite a ride. I'm still sorting through all the details of the case and the potential ramifications. It's like some impenetrable foreign film that you keep thinking about days after you've seen it. The more you ponder it, the more complexities reveal themselves.

My report to The Colonel presented the facts of the case, but I left out some details, not to be secretive, but because I simply cannot explain them in any rational manner. It's quite clear to me now that there is far more to this universe than any of us can ever hope to grasp. I'm toying with the idea of putting down my experiences in a book. My Aunt Trudy, who is a writer, once told me that, if I had thoughts or feelings that kept me up at night, it helps to write them down and, through the process of writing, you can make sense of them. That advice seems most appropriate right now.

It will have to wait though. I'm nursing some cuts and bruises I sustained from the events in Vermont, along with a minor concussion which is causing occasional headaches. It's either the concussion or sinus headaches caused by the change of weather. At any rate, I'm better off than Lucky, who ended up in the hospital after attempting to save my innkeeper from a nasty attack. Maybe I should back up.

On my third day in Vermont, Lucky arrived out of the blue at the Bed & Breakfast where I was staying. Apparently, after he had not heard from me for several days, he decided to take my Tercel and drive across country to find me. I had let slip that I was originally from Bethesda, MD and that my mother's name was Helen, so he tracked her down. By this time, I was in Vermont, but good ol' Mom thought it was okay to tell him where I was. The poor guy showed up and started hounding me right as the case was getting hairy. It turns out he actually was a help, but he paid dearly for putting himself in harm's way. I feel guilty about that. At least, he doesn't ever want to see me again, which is what I wanted. I just didn't want it to be this way.

So the case is resolved, more or less, and I'm back to desk work. This time I think it could be for awhile, not because I'm in the doghouse, but because the agency doesn't like to send agents into the field too soon after a "traumatic assignment." That's how they phrase it anyway. I don't feel traumatized, but I am emotionally spent. I'm looking forward to having a regular schedule, watching football on Sunday, and catching a movie or two. Maybe now I can truly appreciate being home for awhile. Key words there are "for awhile."

Week of Transition

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:30:00 +0000

I'm writing this on my laptop in my cozy little room at a bed and breakfast in Bennington, Vermont. During the course of only a week and a half, I have gone from posing as Carla Fontaine, Internet porn vixen of Las Vegas, to plain old Angela Bayard, chastened office drone in Washington, DC, to Carla Franklin, mousy Manhattan office drone on vacation in scenic Vermont. I never thought I would be put back in the field so soon, but I'm eager to prove my worth after that botched assignment in Vegas.

My brief stint on desk duty shook me to the core. The past year was a whirlwind of training and exciting assignments both here and abroad. The work was shaping up to be just as exciting as I had hoped, but then came the mess in Vegas and I was stuck doing busy work in a gray cubicle. I realized that, if you are not a field agent in this organization, a career here would be just like any other government office job: dull and repetitive and safe. I'm not cut out for that, so I have to do everything in my power to stay in The Colonel's good graces and remain a field operative.

My period in purgatory wasn't all horrible though. I did get to reconnect with my mother, whom I haven't been able to spend much time with since my father died. When she started dating my old high school principal, Mr. Huggins, while I was in Vegas, I was angry and hurt and a little weirded out. I felt like she was betraying my dad or something. Not to mention the fact that I was forced to think of my mother as a sexual being for the first time in my life. It was all too much to handle while living thousands of miles away.

Now that I'm home, I recognize that she was working through her stages of grief completely on her own. I had work and travel to distract me. She had to live in the same house we all shared for so many years, left with all the memories and no inkling of a future. Finding Mr. Huggins was like having extra chapters added to her book of life. It doesn't just end abruptly with no finale. Her story goes on. I understand that now.

We all went out to dinner together last Saturday at McCormick & Schmick's. Strange how someone can seem like a completely different person when you meet them socially. As a teenager, Mr. Huggins was all grim and humorless, relentlessly on patrol for vandals and pot smokers and hall loiterers. He really had no personality, so far as I could tell, as if he were stored in one of the gym lockers during the night and trotted out the next day to continue his reign of terror. Last Saturday, sitting next to my mom, joking about his life and career, he became human in my eyes. Like my mom, he had adored his spouse and was devastated by her passing. Still is, I imagine. He seems happy with Mom though. And as he approaches retirement, he can joke freely about putting "the fear of God" in us kids so he could maintain just enough calm that we might learn something. Turns out, he's even ex-Navy like me, although he served peace time during the late 70s. I was so glad we had that dinner together.

Then, just when I was beginning to feel re-energized, The Colonel smiled upon me and handed me this new assignment. Not the most high profile job: playing bodyguard to a civilian professor working undercover for the FBI. I'm supposed to stage a fake romance with him so I can stay close in case he gets in danger. From porn star to ingenue. Can't say The Colonel isn't a bit sexist, but at least I'm in the field again.

Have to wrap this up so I can get downstairs and eat breakfast. The cooking aromas have been wafting up to my room all morning, and I'm dying to see what Edgar, the innkeeper, has whipped up. He's a bit of an odd duck, but friendly and eager to please. Frankly, I think he has a bit of a crush on me. Anyway, it's breakfast and then off to meet my contact. How thrilling it is to be back in the game!

What Happens in Vegas...

noreply@blogger.com (Neal P) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:29:00 +0000

Sometimes events can turn so quickly your mind doesn't have time to catch up. That's the way I'm feeling right now. The past five days have been a blur, taking me from the heights of anticipation to the depths of disappointment. I guess the only way to sort through it is to start at the beginning.

Last Saturday was the night of the big operation. Stephen and I had been working out our scenario for almost two weeks. I was even simulating my moves by running around casinos to test my speed. Finally, it was the night of the 25th, and I was to meet the online customer known as Hommecornee and his boss, a major arms dealer who will remain nameless. Basically, the plan was for me to show up at the client's suite as sexy call girl Carla Fontaine. I was a little worried that the suite was in the same hotel where Lucky worked, but the chances of him spotting me in such an enormous place were slim.

I met Hommecornee and another hanger-on at the suite where I was told to see the arms dealer in his bedroom. Once I was in the room alone with the client, I was to administer a drug to him which would simulate a heart attack. I was to pretend to have called 911 and two men whom Stephen had hired to pose as paramedics were to arrive and carry the arms dealer away, supposedly to a hospital but actually to a safe house where he could be interrogated. I was to slip away when the paramedics arrived.

All of this had to be precisely timed because the drug we were using could kill our target if he was not given another drug to counteract the effects within 20 minutes. That's why we had to hire outside help with medical experience. Unfortunately, our freelancers never arrived. I panicked and took off before Hommecornee and his buddy could discover that their boss was dead. I was racing to get out of the hotel when I spotted the men pursuing me in the casino. As if things couldn't be worse, I also spotted Lucky having a drink with another woman in the lounge. I was angry and hurt, but I had to focus on getting out of there alive. Then Lucky saw me and came over to explain himself, giving my pursuers time to move in. Only through some quick maneuvering (and the help of some bouncers at the hotel) did I manage to escape, losing both Lucky and the bad guys in the process.

By the time I made it back to Lucky's trailer in Henderson, I knew the operation was a shambles. I dutifully reported everything to The Colonel. He was clearly peeved, but gave me no reprimand. Instead, he ordered me back to Washington immediately. I packed my bags and took a cab to McCarran Airport, leaving Lucky, my little Tercel, and Carla Fontaine behind. By Sunday afternoon, I was back on the East Coast calling my mom for a ride home from the airport. Essentially homeless, I also had to ask if I could move back into my old room.

Saturday night, I was playing a call girl. Monday morning, I was playing civil servant and reporting to the office in my little gray suit. I had a meeting with The Colonel that morning. It didn't go well. Although he didn't place the blame for the operation's failure directly on me, his eyes and body language made me feel as if I was just some inexperienced screw-up. Inexperienced maybe, but I did my part perfectly. Something went wrong on Stephen's end, and I wasn't sure why he wasn't in that room with me getting the third degree. I can't help but think that Stephen is working for someone else.

Anyway, that's not my call. I have to trust that The Colonel will sort this all out. For me, I'm stuck on indefinite desk duty until The Colonel finishes his investigation. Sitting in a cubicle updating files and monitoring field reports is not exactly my natural state. One of the reasons I joined the Navy after college was to avoid the office trap and have some adventure. Then I came to this agency and had some interesting experiences, but the Vegas assignment was my first long-term undercover job. Despite the creepiness of the cover, I enjoyed the freedom of working on my own, away from The Colonel's steely glare. I need to get in the field again, but after last Saturday, I don't know what will become of me.

As it stands, I'm putting in my eight-hour days and coming home to my old bedroom. My mom goes out to dinner every night with Mr. Huggins while I sit alone watching cooking shows and wondering when she'll be home. It's like we've reversed roles since I last lived here. In less than one week, I'm a different person.

I suppose I could pretend the old me never existed except for the texts and voice mails I keep getting from Lucky. There's no way I can talk to him, although a part of me feels like he deserves some sort of explanation. Of course, it would just be another made up story since he can't know the truth. I lied to him; he lied to me. It was all a big pretend game. Best to just put it in the past. As the commercial says, What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Carla Fontaine is buried in Las Vegas.