The Agency IV: The Boy in the Hidden Temple, Secrets, & Revelations

It was a Friday, one of my days off. During such golden days workers are expected to make the most of their twenty-four hours: taking long walks, relaxing in the parks, watching movies, reading a book we’d been wanting to get into, going to nightclubs, going crazy with activities we can’t savor during workdays, bike riding, hiking, road tripping, going to the beach, having long picnics, shopping…What was I doing? I wasn’t doing any of those things. In fact, I was dead asleep in my usual fetal position, my arms wrapped around a warm thick pillow and my head resting on another pillow equally thick and warm, wearing an aqua pajama top, a neon green head-kerchief, and the bed sheets, which nestled around my body like a cloud the color of a robin’s egg. Imagine my miserable surprise when my cell’s ringtone tinkled its alert in my head. Over and over and over again. The day before I had just ended a mission in Slovenia concerning a target who needed bodyguards to accompany him while he returned priceless stolen jewels (stolen by his Ocean’s Fourteen-aspiring son, no less) to their owners before they iced his wife, his son and his three triplet daughters. By the time I got into bed that night, I was out cold. There are two biological clocks in my body: one of them is the work-day-clock—this one tells my body to wake up at six in the morning in order for me to get to work at an early hour; the second clock is called the day-off-clock—this one says that my day starts at midday, and not an hour before. I get along well with my biological clocks. When the phone rang, it upset the natural order of things, messed up my feng shui (or however it’s supposed to be said). I opened my eyes, lifted my head, exhaled, then let my head hang while I repressed the urge to throw up. My groping hand searched the nightstand. I pushed my thumb through the slit in the device, pushed up the flip side and placed it by my ear.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Hello?”

No one answered. I didn’t care if it was an accidental call—perhaps the person didn’t know the buttons were pressed and that a call was being made from his phone. But it was strange that there was no caller ID. I didn’t put much thought into it—someone had woken me up unnecessarily. I kissed my teeth—a Jamaican act that articulated a Jamaican’s annoyance (and this Jamaican was very annoyed)—put the phone away, and went back to sleep.

No such luck. The phone tinkled in my ears again like a dozen metallic snowflakes, and crawled on the glass surface from the vibrations. If I left it alone it would vibrate itself right off the nightstand, smash to pieces on the floor, and I’d have to go through all the trouble of putting it back together again. I pushed up the flip side once more and put the receiver to my ear. There was a note of irritation in my voice.

“Hello?”

“Hey, how are you?”

“You called me earlier?”

“Uh, no,” Tristan said. “I didn’t. So what’s up? Did I wake you from your sarcophagus?”

“It doesn’t matter—I had to wake up sometime.” I rolled onto my back, squinted at the sunlight coming in through the white gossamer-soft curtains. “What are you doing?”

“Calling you—for a favor. Say you’ll do it.”

“What?”

“Come meet me at Applebee’s in an hour. My mom and dad are in town, and they said they won’t leave until they see, and I quote, my special girl. Come over in one hour please? So we can do this and get it over with.”

“Er…um…” I was having something akin to cardiac arrest while he spoke on the other end of the line about me meeting his parents. I knew I would have to see them someday, but I wasn’t looking forward to it, on account of that niggling anxiety my mind had cultivated that maybe they wouldn’t like anything about me. Or maybe they would like me; they would say I was a nice girl, just not nice enough for their son. Because, whether they like to admit it or not, parents already have their trophy daughters-in-law and trophy sons-in-law fantasies. Despite not really giving a flying toupee about people’s opinions of me, his parents had somehow made their first impression of me important in my book. And I was supposed to meet them in one hour. For about three seconds I listened to the sounds of people’s voices, and the ghostly noise of moving air in the background.

“Are you there? Phire?” Sounded like he thought the call had been dropped.

“I’m here—I’ll be there by, um, 10’clock?”

“Yeah. Can’t wait to see you.”

“I’ll—I’ll get ready then.”

I hung up, closed my eyes to fight the reluctance to pull myself out of bed to get ready for the meet-the-parents-apocalypse. Then I sighed and my head fell back into the pillow. Crap.

Fifteen minutes was spent throwing outfits of all styles and colors on the bed. If I knew anything, it was that I had to dress for the parents, not for Tristan. They were the ones I was going on the date with. Tristan, he was nothing more than a fourth wheel. It was easy to consider putting on a T-shirt and jeans, because these were the ones that kept the real me hidden. The shirt Tristan made for me floated to the front of my choices, but what would his mom and dad think of me? That I was a naïve carefree, childish, love-struck girlfriend? Heavens, no! I wanted them to think he was in good hands, good, respectable, caring, mature hands. I could imagine they wanted me to dress in a sophisticated-meets-comfortable way. And Tristan always said they were artsy—they’d be assessing my outfit on all levels, analyzing what it said about the wearer. I settled for a purple satin blouse with several sharp folds and gold-rimmed crystal buttons that added that air of class, a pair of dark blue skinny jeans, a pair of purple and gold wedges, a purple ring, and gold knob earrings. The make-up was chosen with the assemblage in mind. For the hundredth time I gave myself a pat on the back for smartly selecting suits and accessories that matched, and not buying everything that caught my eye then not being able to put anything together because the colors, patterns and styles were all going in totally different directions.

My phone rang again. I was in the bathroom, trying to prove that I was a man by doing the impossible: taking a shower in the space of ten minutes. Ten minutes! I haven’t taken such a short time to shower in ages. Thinking it was Tristan calling to make sure I hadn’t exploded from the sudden stress, I flew out of the bathroom, a storm of water-and-towel.

No caller ID.

“Hello? Hello.”

Silence.

Air was forced through my nostrils in a bid to calm myself. I decided to speak again. “Hello?”

No one answered.

I hung up, wandering why the idiot wouldn’t make use of the autolock application that came with every cellular phone.

I jumped out of the cab that had left me on 674 West Arrow Highway in San Dimas, by the aforementioned restaurant, feeling for the first time since I had gotten out of bed that maybe I didn’t have anything to worry about. Maybe they would like me. And I wasn’t too hard on the eyes either; several heads turned involuntarily and voluntarily as I passed. Oh, I was on a mission alright. A mission to seduce my boyfriend’s parents and make them fall in love with me. I was already forcing myself to fall into a pace that said I was confident and comfortable with the situation, because they might have been craning their necks to see his special girl approach the restaurant. Pity I nearly rocketed out of my shoes when my cell rang again.

I honestly thought of not answering it. Whoever kept calling my number was getting on my wrong side.

“Hello.”

“Yeah. I thought Dracula didn’t get out of bed until midday.”

“You called to tell me that?”

“No,” Ri replied, “I can find better things to do with my minutes.”

He really was Styx’s brother. For a fleeting moment I wondered about the mysterious Styx.

He continued. “Kat sent me to the pharmacy because—and I can’t believe I’m about to say this—her time of the month came unexpectedly and her period’s irregular. Ugh! I’m gonna have to wash my mouth out with soap. Yuck.”

“And?”

“She wanted a special brand of sanitary napkins called Always, but I can’t seem to find them. I need a second-best brand, Phire.”

If Tristan’s parents were watching me talking on the phone, walking slowly from the sudden distraction, what were they thinking? That she doesn’t respect us enough to make our first meeting memorable by turning off her cell phone? That if her attention is always so divided then she doesn’t deserve our son? “Ask the pharmacists. They’ll know what to suggest.”

“Would you believe that the people working in here right now are all guys? What are the odds, right? Select a brand, so I can forget about this mind-scarring experience.”

“What about Tampax? Does she use tampons?”

“Stop that! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Come on! You know what? Find Libresse or something!”

I hung up, put my phone away, hoped the parents hadn’t already formed a bad opinion of me, pushed open the polished door and stepped inside the dim interior lit with low watt bulbs, smelling the odors of different kinds of foods without realizing immediately. My eyes rested on Tristan, who was waving so I could see him. He turned his head, and I read his smiling lips telling his parents that’s her. There she is. I passed a few tables before coming to a stop at the fourth one. The moment of truth.

“Hey!” His mother slid out of her seat to envelope me in a warm hug. I smelled a sweet citrus fragrance on her neck. She hugged me like a mother, which I truthfully had not expected. “I finally get to see my Pumpkin’s special girl. My name is Aurora Scott, and—well, I’m going to let my husband introduce himself. He doesn’t ever want me to introduce him. He wants to be the man and do it himself.” She laughed, looking at her husband. Aurora Scott was a bohemian woman—that much was evident by the airy, flowery amber blouse, the flowery sunflower yellow shirt, amber boho skirt, soft gold-lined burgundy slippers. She is interior decorator. Aurora wore this easy smile that gave everyone the impression she thought all was well with the world, and her eyes had a youthful twinkle to them. And when she looked at me, it felt as if I was the only other person in the world, as if my words were too important to let slip.

I seated myself beside Tristan who kissed the side of my head.

“Sorry I woke you from your tomb-like slumber.”

I grinned. “It’s ok. I’m meeting your parents.”

“Hi,” his father said, smiling as easily as his wife. “I’m Lennox Scott, but you can call me Lenny.” He shook my hand, not firmly, but in a loose and friendly manner. His eyes seemed as happy as Aurora’s as well, but his eyes reminded me of America’s idea of St. Nicholas. His handlebar moustache certainly added to my imagination. As for the rest of him, he was a slim man, just as nicely built as his son, and still just as strong. He wore a dark-green sleeveless shirt with graphics of black guns and red roses, and blue jeans. Lenny is a mechanic, and loves his job. His arms were decorated with tattoos, and, being a body art fan, I tried to steal glances at them until Lenny asked if I had weak eyes. He was serious when he asked the question. He really thought I had weak eyes.

“No, Dad,” his son said, laughing. “She’s trying to take in all your tattoos. She likes that stuff.”

He laughed, and showed them off. There were, item: a picture of a gun blooming from an open blood red rose, a portrait of his wife when she was twenty-three, a portrait of his son when he was two months old, a dove, a Harley bike, a coil of barbed wire wound around the name of his mother, Margaret. He was, he proudly told me, a mama’s boy, and would beat anyone to a pulp if they said anything bad about his mama. It was at this point that his wife kissed him lovingly on the cheek.

I don’t rightly know who started the conversation about love and marriage. I can very well imagine it was me—unintentionally. It was just one of those sentences that slip out, and the tide can only flow in one direction. They liked talking about it.

“Yes,” said Aurora. “We really love each other. Not the Britney Spears and K-Fed type of love either—yes, I know those people, them and their antics. When I first met him, he was a twenty-two year old mechanic working in his father’s business. He still works there, at Drew’s Gararge.”

“She didn’t like me,” her husband cut in. “She didn’t like me one bit, because I hung out with my brothers, and they loved to spit and cuss and flirt with anything in a skirt. But she realized that I wasn’t like them when she gave me a chance.”

“The only time we ever crossed paths was when he came to the diner that my parents owned across the road from his workplace.” She laughed. “He would always come by when he knew I would be there.”

“Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. She left school at four, went to the diner at five, sat around or helped out. I was a real tough guy. I used to pretend that I didn’t care whether she lived or died. But she saw through it. We became best-friends before we became anything else.”

“You wouldn’t look at him and see that he likes many of the things that I do—Lenny loves poetry and novels, among other things.”

“And she likes mechanics when it suits her. Aurora can fix a car, you know. Tell her, Tristan. Aurora can fix a car like any man can.”

Tristan nodded. “It’s true. She’s Supermom.”

“He loved to insult me,” she continued. “My hair always looked weird, or plain, or what I was wearing was crazy. He loved to get on my nerves.”

“I didn’t want her to know that I liked her that way; I thought she would laugh at me. And if my brothers heard.” He rolled his eyes and grinned. “They wouldn’t stop with it. But she hung around me all the time. I remember when Aurora said she didn’t understand why, but she liked being around Lennox Scott.”

“We weren’t the same type of people,” she said. “But there was this—this connection. A feeling like we were meant to be, and there was nothing else to it.”

“Mom!” Tristan protested. “You’re weirding her out with your Sid and Nancy stuff.” He turned to me. “I swear, she loves this love story above all else.”

“It’s true,” she said. “That’s how we felt. But I won’t weird you out anymore. We were made for each other.”

Lenny shifted in his seat. “That’s not to say we didn’t have our arguments and disagreements. We were still two different personalities.”

“But we were devoted to working through them. In the first ten or so years we had many arguments, but we didn’t want to stay away from each other. Even though at times he made me scream down the house.”

“She used to throw vases at me.”

“I used to throw vases at him. I threw a chair at him once.”

“But we learned to compromise, and that was easy once we tried to put ourselves in each other’s shoes. I think our love grew after that.”

“I believe so too.”

“No one is perfect,” said Aurora, “but if the both of you are meant to be, you’ll work around the flaws.”

I looked at the both of them, the tattooed mechanic and the artsy interior decorator so comfortable with each other, and hoped to God I’d be as happy and as fortunate as they were in finding The One. And who knows, maybe I’ve already found him. I smiled at Tristan, and felt him hold my hand underneath the table.