LUDIC LOG

We argued again last night, before some dinner party with her friends from work. She had asked me to lie about my job. Well, not to lie, really. To leave out the truth. That's close enough to lying for me.

"Just say you work for the government," she said. "You won't be lying."

I asked her for the thousandth time if she was ashamed of me, ashamed of what I do. She didn't say she was and she didn't say she wasn't. People in her profession have a great talent for these sorts of lies by omission. Sometimes I don't even know where she's coming from, so empty are her responses. The argument ended up where it started, which is absolutely nowhere.

Nobody at the party even asked me what I did for a living. I guess if it's not advertising, it's not worth knowing about.

----

Every time I think it's not about the money, she'll mention her father, or her grandfather, or her mother's "people", and I'll know it's about the money. I don't have any "people"; just a mother and father who worked themselves to an empty retirement and waited for death, and a small gang of cousins I don't ever see anymore. I'm GS-12, Step 8, which means I make close to 20 grand a year more than she does; but I don't have made millions waiting to die at the other end of my family tree.

But really, it isn't about the money. We've been over this and over this. It's not that I work with my hands (that was one of the first things she asked me; I asked her if she drove her clients around in a buggy). It's not that I don't work with my head (she says she thinks I'm smart. I never asked her if she did, and the fact that she tells me she does lets me know she doesn't). It's not about anything but blood. She doesn't like the sight of blood.

She she she she. The sound hisses in my head like a knife being drawn.

----

We met at a G.O.P. fund-raiser at the Marina Towers. She was there because her father was a big financial supporter of the candidate. I was there on business. We both voted for him, and she gave me hell about that later.

"I'm still a good Republican," I said. "But business is business."

She wasn't like most of the women I met since going to work for the G, probably because she didn't seek me out. The kind of women who come on to you in this job, it's incredible. I don't know what you'd call them. I'm not a psychiatrist. Thrillseekers, I guess. She wasn't like that. She had red hair back then, and she wore it pulled back tight and held in place with this little gold clip. When we first started dating I used to point at things, so I could watch her turn her head, so I could see the back of her neck, so I could remember the tightness, the streaks of color, the little downward curl.

---

"How do you get into this business? Were you a cop?"

"I took an apprenticeship right out of college. I was actually recruited by the CIA -- this was right before the Myers Act went through."

"But, I mean, had you done this before? Don't you have to have experience or something?"

"No. I tested well. It's all a lot of tests. Psychological stuff mostly. I had the right profile."

"It just doesn't seem right."

"Would you rather have criminals and thugs doing it? Would you rather have there be no legal accountability? Would you rather have it the way things used to be? It's no different than the lottery or the army or post office or any other government monopoly. It's something that's going to happen. This makes it safer and more reliable. This makes it controlled."

"You're rationalizing. You always act like it's just a job. It's not just a job. Being an auto mechanic is just a job."

"Why don't you go out with a fucking auto mechanic, then?"

"Everything has to be 'fucking' with you. I suppose you think that makes you sound tough."

"I'm going to bed. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow."

I don't go to bed, though. Not until I've told her I'm sorry. It makes me sick to go to sleep with things like this hanging in the air.

---

I've never seen anyone as skilled as her at clarifying what she's not saying. She's not saying she's ashamed; she just has to think of what her friends will say. She's not saying she's prejudiced; she just knows how those people are. She's not saying she thinks it's wrong; she's just saying, it isn't normal. She's not saying she's doesn't want to sleep with me anymore; she's just not in the mood right now. She's not saying it's embarrassing; she's just saying it makes her feel uncomfortable.

She's really good at it. I'm learning a lot.

---

She makes jokes about how hard I work. Sometimes she calls me her house-husband, because I'm home a lot. I tell her it's like being a bodyguard: weeks of doing absolutely nothing, and then a few hours of intense danger, then more weeks of doing absolutely nothing, but this time with paperwork.

"Maybe I should have a bodyguard," she says. "Daddy has one. They're sort of your opposite number."

"Maybe you should," I say. "I'd do it, but you couldn't afford me." I meant it as a joke. She thinks I'm making some sort of crack about her salary. She goes to the living room and does crosswords the rest of the night. She doesn't say good night to me when I go to bed.

---

When we moved in together, she insisted on taking her place. It's in Lincoln Park. She says that my apartment was nice but it's not a "quality" address. With her, it's always about "quality". Whenever anything I have or anything I do isn't good enough for her, it's an issue of "quality." So we moved into her place, and the first thing she did was to tell me that I couldn't bring in any of the guns.

"I have to have them," I said. "These are the tools of my trade. They're the most important things I have besides the computer. It would be like my telling you that you couldn't have any sketchbooks or pencils."

"It's hardly the same thing, Daniel," she said. She has this disapproving smile. When she smiles, her lips curl away from her teeth like a flower parting. Her teeth are incredible. She saves this smile for when she wants to tell me I've fucked up, but that she's not mad. I shouldn't look forward to seeing it, but I do. It's so goddamn beautiful.

I have to keep a separate apartment now for the guns. It doesn't cost much but still, it's money right down the drain. I think she looks through my things to see if I'm bringing them into the house without her knowing. And I am. She's just not good enough to find them.

---

It used to be that when some foreign bigwig got it, she would give me this look. She knows I only work domestic, and mostly for private clients, but she'd give me this look anyway.

Eventually it turned into a running joke. Now it's anything -- a coup, a terrorist bombing, even something like an earthquake or a train derailment. We'll be watching the news and she'll give me that look. Cocked eyebrow. The left corner of those crazy curled lips turned down. "Daniel," she'll say with that disapproving tone in her voice, "Is this your doing?"

"Yeah," I'll say. "I slipped over to Sri Lanka yesterday between 2 and 3, when you were at Sherwyn's getting the juicer. I took one of those high-speed jets."

This always cracks her up. I like it too. It almost makes me wish more heavy shit would happen.

---

Mafia wives don't ask their husbands about their work very much, or so I've heard. She doesn't have that going for her. I wish she did. She doesn't like what I do, but that's never stopped her from asking me questions about it. Every goddamn week, it's something else. Insatiable curiosity combined with mild to moderate disapprobation. It's not an attractive combination. Sometimes I think I should have gone with one of the thrillseekers, like Barry Ormand did. His girl's got a spider tattoo on her neck and used to chase after convicts. She seems like she knows how to have a good time.

This week it was about how I get to the mark. How long I follow him around. How I get to know his patterns and behaviors. Do I know who it is beforehand or do they just hand me a dossier like in the movies. Is it like on that stupid-ass fucking show Federal Hit. Do I get to know him. Do I feel like I have a relationship with him. Do I ever regret doing it.

I wanted to say: You'll find out. I wanted to say: But only for a second.

I didn't say that. I said just enough that she couldn't tell if I was telling the truth or lying.

I'm learning. I'm learning a lot.