ENJOY THE SILENCE

The problem was, she’d liked being Charlene.

Not in the way in which her paranoid lover had accused her. She hadn’t been attracted to Rusty Venture, not really; he had reminded her too much of what she got already at home – insecurity, overcompensating arrogance, grandiose plans that were never going to come to fruition.

But she’d liked being Charlene. She’d liked being the temptress in the red dress, seductively fingering the rim of her cocktail glass. She’d enjoyed the feeling of grown men stumbling over themselves like clumsy teenagers to talk to her. Never in her life had she ever gotten to feel like that woman before. Ever since high school, she’d convinced herself that that kind of woman was mindless and shallow, not worth being. But when she was honest with herself, she knew that really, she’d always wanted to be that woman; she was just insecure. When she’d agreed to do the mission, she’d doubted whether or not she could pull off the necessary amount of allure.

But she’d reluctantly broken down under The Monarch’s relentless pestering and agreed to his latest plan to get his arch-nemesis. And the last thing she’d expected was to like being Charlene, perhaps a little too much.

********************

At first, she’d thought she wanted smooth and suave.

So she first experimented during their trip to Lisbon. They were shadowing the Venture family on some mission there. She didn’t bother to find out what exactly. At this point, she was able to organize any Brilliant Plan to Get Doctor Thaddeus Venture in her sleep.

She’d never been to Lisbon before; it seemed a good place to blend in and become invisible for a night.

She lied and told The Monarch that she had an old friend in the city, one from her Queen Etherea Days. They were going to stay up all night engaging in girl talk and reminiscing about old times; she’d be home late, she said.

She knew he’d get bored before she finished describing who the friend was. He didn’t seem to want her to have friends outside the Cocoon, or truthfully, much of a life outside at all. They were a team, he insisted, an arching team – even though he was always trying to tell her what to do. But no, they were a team; that’s what he would repeat whenever she pointed this out. They were a team bound by a common hatred of Doctor Thaddeus Venture, he’d say. (He always said this part with exclamation points in his voice that still gave her lovely shivers; and so she chose to believe him most of the time.)

But he didn’t seem to care about her old life, or what she’d done before him very much; he seemed to not want to know. She knew she could get away with this, as long as she was careful.

So she went out into the Lisbon streets in search of smooth and suave. And thought maybe she’d gotten it, until the night wore on.

She picked an older man, a British ex-pat “doing some time in the city of Henry the Navigator,” as he’d put it. He’d noticed her across the room ordering her Manhattan in the Ritz-Carlton’s cocktail bar. He’d swooped in to buy it for her before the bartender had finished mixing. She’d found it flattering the way he wanted to ply her with drinks and antiquated chivalry. But they spent most of the time talking about his glory days, working for “the greatest team of individuals ever assembled under the greatest genius super scientist of the last century.” Once she’d gotten over being annoyed at how he never asked her any questions about herself, she noticed how much he missed those glory days, and she felt kind of sorry for him.

“Genius super scientists and super villains are kind of a dime a dozen, when you get right down to it,” she said, tongue running nervously over her lips. “It’s the sidekicks that really run the show. You just have to get back into the game.”

“Doctor Jonas Venture was no run-of-the-mill super scientist, my dear,” he told her wistfully, signaling for another round. “He was special.”

“Venture?” she choked the name out. Of all the cities in the world, of all the men, how had she picked a guy with a connection to Rusty Venture’s father? She felt eerily cursed somehow.

“Yes,” he sighed, not even noticing her shock and sudden discomfort. “He was the most perfect specimen of genius and virility that America had to offer at the time. And he chose me to be on his team, the only Brit he’d ever condescended to work with, he used to tell me. He could have chosen so many strapping American lads, but no, he chose me, Colonel Gentleman.”

Once she found that out, she moved along his seduction ploy as quickly as possible. She liked being Charlene, and she’d decided he’d probably still be experienced enough in bed to make it worth the escudos she’d spent on a hotel room ten flights above this bar. But she found him boring and not what she’d wanted at all.

So she was actually grateful for the shock on his face after he’d smugly peeled off her silk brocade dress.

“But – But – “ he sputtered. “I thought…I just assumed…”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You assumed what, Colonel?” she challenged, standing in nothing but her garter as he gaped at her. His eyes traveled up and down her body in confusion.

“But your voice,” he said, sounding pained. “The sound of your voice. I thought you were just dressing the part. I was sure no actual woman could possibly have a voice like that.”

She put all of her angry embarrassment into a vicious slap across his face. It didn’t make her feel any better. She should have been used to this by now, but it had been a long time since she’d been with anyone else, and she hadn’t had to deal with questions about her femininity for such a long time.

He didn’t apologize; he didn’t try to slap her back. He just gaped at her as she silently pointed his way to the door, averting her eyes.

She walked Lisbon’s cobblestone streets back to the Cocoon, more unsatisfied than ever.

**********************

The next time she tried again, they had shadowed the Venture Family to Amsterdam. She’d heard Rusty’s voice over the surveillance butterfly the first day they arrived, telling his sons that they were there to negotiate with “some nice men about a Venture death ray,” but she was pretty sure he was mostly here to restock his cache of pills.

“Gee, Pop,” one of his sons said; she was pretty sure it was the one with Rusty’s red hair. “After that time with those scary Russian men, I thought you said you were out of the death ray business for good.”

“Ah, that was before a certain high-profile Middle Eastern political figure made your father an offer he couldn’t refuse.” She heard the smug, nasally chords and felt a touch of guilty ambivalence. He had started talking about making “Charlene” a honest woman just before she’d disappeared on him forever. She hadn’t been interested in him at all, but it’d touched her how quickly he’d shifted from would-be playboy to lovesick fool.

“Oh,” said the teenaged voice, full of wonder and admiration. She wondered when he would lose that innocence. “I get it,” he said, his voice arch and overdone. “So a sheik of Araby is going to buy your death ray, Pop?”

“Uh…” the man’s voice paused, half-listening. She guessed from the bored, tired sound to his voice that he was completely out of pills and not coping that well with fatherhood right now. “Yeah, boy. Something like that.”

She felt sorry for him all over again. And for his boy too.

“Do you think he’ll bring his harem of beautiful Arabian princesses with him, Pop?” The boy’s voice wasn’t at all lustful, though; it sounded swept away by romance. His father’s reply just sounded cranky.

“A harem? Princesses? Where are you getting these ideas from, Dean? Have you been staying up late watching Lawrence of Arabia again?”  He sighed in histrionic frustration. “How many times have I told you, the only thing you’ll ever learn from television is juvenile delinquency and Negro jive talk?”

The boy sounded truly chided. “Sorry, Pop. I was just…”

“Don’t you sass me, boy.”

“But Pop –  “ 

But his father cut him off with a snarl. “What did I just say about your sass mouth, Dean? I’d quit while you’re ahead, Mister.”

There was silence for a long moment.

“Pop?”

Eventually, Rusty exhaled loudly, tiredly. “Yes, Dean?”

The boy’s voice hesitated. “I was wondering. Will the sheik pay you enough money for Hank’s PhD too?”

Another long, uncomfortable pause.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Dean,” he groaned.

It was only after Dean must have walked away that the surveillance picked up Rusty mumbling under his breath: “Stupid bargain bin black market dealers. What kind of cloning machine lets you select only for brains or brawn?”

***********************

She shouldn’t have been so surprised; but she was.

In an Amsterdam bar, once again in her Charlene clothes, she saw him there.

Not Rusty, but his Swedish Murder Machine, as the Monarch liked to refer to him around the Cocoon.

At first, she’d tried to duck and hide in the back of the bar, but then after a few minutes, she realized that Brock Samson had never actually seen her when she was seducing Rusty as Charlene. After a minute of relief, she began to ponder the astronomical possibilities of having found him here, on this night, in an anonymous city, in the guise of a completely different person.

He wasn’t her type, she thought. He wasn’t too bright, as far as she could tell, and from what she’d seen from a distance, maybe not all that thoughtful either. But there was something safe and finite about that that had its charms. And surrounded as she was by all these overwrought vowels and guttural consonants, there was something comforting about how very archetypically American he was, that made her feel an instant affinity with him where she knew there should be none.

On impulse, she went over to the bar and in her best Dutch, ordered him another bottle of the American beer he’d been tossing back like medicine. When one of the bartenders brought her drink to his table, he looked up to find her, but she noticed, not with much surprise. Their gazes met. She smiled suggestively and walked back to her table, knowing that Brock Samson was a fairly easy mark for a pretty girl giving him the eye. From what she’d seen that night in Nightin’Ale’s, he tended to go for trashier girls than “Charlene,” but she was pretty sure that the promise of sex would be enough to get him to come over.

Remembering the Brit, she made sure to raise her vocal tones several notes when he finally slammed down his empty and walked over to her table carrying the one she’d bought for him.

“Thanks.” He sat down without being asked. “I don’t usually drink this brand, but it’s the only American beer any of the bars got over here.”

She smiled. “You know you’re missing out on like a thousand years of accumulated Germanic brewing knowledge.”

He just shrugged.

“So what’s your name, stranger?” she purred. It seemed to put him on more familiar ground. “Brock,” he grunted.

“And what do you do?”

“Work for the government,” he replied. “Top secret bodyguard gig.”

She arched her eyebrows. “Oh, really? Top secret, eh? You must be doing an awfully good job with the top secret part,” she flirted, “because if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you weren’t guarding anything but that drink of yours.”

She caught the flicker of surprise in his eyes. “You’re not…what I expected,” he said.

“Still interested?”

He thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah.”

She smiled. “What do you like about your bodyguarding gig?” she asked, just for something to say.

He shrugged again. “Not a question of liking,” he muttered. “My government tells me to go, I go.”

She traced the rim of her glass and brought the finger up to her mouth, an attempt to keep his interest. “You don’t strike me as the type of guy who stays for one minute anywhere he doesn’t want to.”

He didn’t answer for a long time. “It’s kind of a quiet gig. It gets kinda boring sometimes,” he admitted. “But it takes me around the world. We get into some good fights sometimes.”

“You relish a good fight, don’t you?” She cocked her head at him.

“Well, sure,” he replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“So that’s all that keeps you there?” She could see he was eyeing her breasts, probably wondering if they were real. Men almost always did, she’d realized after years of working her way through lovers as different as Phantom Limb and The Monarch.

“So uh, listen…” he said with a little bit of discomfort, as if he were out of practice at having to ask for this. “…you want to have sex or what?”

She sighed. Walked over and sat in his lap. Kissed him long and deep. “Eventually.”

He responded with a long kiss of his own – a lot of tongue and caressing her breasts. He was surprisingly gentle, and she found that her nipples responded faster than probably was a good idea. But she didn’t really care that they were doing this in the middle of a bar; the lighting was dim, and she’d done much worse on the dance floor at Studio 54, back in her wilder Queen Etherea days.

It occurred to her in the throes of her growing desire that she’d never given him her name. And he’d never asked.

They spent a long time like that, their own little island of kisses, oblivious to the clouds of hashish and the inescapable thumping of loud German electronica. In the back of her mind, she waited for the moment when his body would nudge her suggestively off his lap, towards a wall in the back of the bar, the way she’d seen him do to that girl he’d picked up that night. But to her surprise, he seemed content to kiss her.

“How long are you in town, Brock?” she asked when they came up for air.

“A few more days,” he grunted.

She’d thought he might try to keep her, but he didn’t say a word when smiled wanly at him, then wordlessly got up to leave the bar. For some reason she couldn’t quite explain, she didn’t feel quite ready for sex with Brock Samson yet.

She didn’t turn back, but she knew he was just sitting there, watching her leave.

************************

She wondered why she found this rendezvous so compelling.

She’d waited a day, so she wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion around the Cocoon. But by the next night, she’d cooked up some excuse about getting them supplies. It was easy. The Monarch was so obsessed with his latest plan for the Venture Family that he wasn’t really listening anyway.

This time, she didn’t wait to get her prey’s attention. She spotted him at the back corner table, just where he’d been the other night.  She noticed the empty chair opposite him. She liked to think it was there in the hope that she was going to turn up.

He took another swig of beer when she sat down.

“You want one of them…” his voice searched without much confidence, “…them chick drinks you had the other night?”

“A Manhattan?” She couldn’t help grinning at his discomfort, knowing he was dreading going up to the bar and asking for something he considered any less manly than a beer. It intrigued her that he was apparently going to do it anyway. “Straight up, dry, with an olive,” she reminded him with a chuckle. He didn’t work very hard to hide his grimace, but he went up there. She gave him credit for that.

She greeted him with her most sultry smile when he returned holding the precarious cocktail glass as far in front of him as possible, like it was a bundle of dynamite about to go off.

When she saw this, she made her final decision on the matter.

“Brock,” she said, dabbing absently at the drops of Manhattan he’d spilled on the table with her cocktail napkin. “What are you doing here? Really?”

He didn’t reply for a long moment. Then there had to be a swig before he spoke. “Getting a drink.” The carelessness in his voice was overdone, she decided. “What does it look like?”

She made sure to keep her voice low, still vaguely sexual, trying to keep it nonconfrontational; but she wanted to know. “In a bar where you don’t speak the language and don’t like the beers? In a city where you don’t know anyone and don’t care to?”

As the long silence hung between them, she thought for sure she’d blown it. He was going to get up and walk off. Instead, he just shrugged. “Gotta get out of there every once in a while,” he muttered. “Or I’d kill him.”

“Your boss?”

He took the last swig of his beer, eyes flaring just for a moment. “The U.S. government’s my boss. Doc’s just…the client.”

“He treats you badly?” she asked, instantly realizing it was the wrong question; it was going to make him feel vulnerable in a way he’d find unacceptable and embarrassing.

But to her surprise, he shook his head. “Nah.”

“Do you like your job?”

“You asked me that already.” He turned his gaze directly on her. “Do you like yours?”

She thought about this. “Sometimes,” she finally said. “I like to feel useful.”

He nodded, as if he understood. In the silence between them, the electronic music thumped again into her ears. “The Doc’s kind of a big baby,” he offered. “His dad screwed him up but good for life.” His eyes went somewhere faraway for a second. “It’s all I can do to make sure he doesn’t repeat history.”

“What do you mean?”

He seemed to come back to himself. “Huh? Oh.” Now he looked embarrassed. “Nothing.”

She gave him another sultry smile. “Nothing?” she teased, covering up her surprise. He meant the Venture boys.

He wouldn’t elaborate any more than that. She knew he wouldn’t, so she didn’t bother trying. She heard him exhale deeply, then push the chair back. “Uh…I’m gonna get another beer. You want anything?” He didn’t sound so reluctantly polite this time, and this made her smile again, for real this time.

“Listen, Brock. I was thinking,” she began, “I’ve got a hotel room a couple blocks from here. What do you say you skip that beer?”

His eyebrows raised. She was oddly touched; he hadn’t expected her to be that easy. “Yeah. All right,” he said slowly. Watching her take the rest of her drink in one gulp, his eyebrows arched again.

“You’ve been around a bit, huh?” His voice dropped to a low growl as he threw on his leather jacket.

“Yeah,” she said, consciously adopting his no-nonsense, curt tone for her own private amusement. “You could say that.”

**********************

            It wasn’t that he was some sex machine.

            No, not by half. Oh, he’d certainly practiced with enough random barfly girls to know how to make her cry out with pleasure when he put his mind to it. And sure, there was that government training, which made him damn flexible.

            But none of these things broke through her emotional barriers – the ones she’d carefully constructed between them; she’d put them there not to make sure this never happened again, but to make sure she never wanted it to.

By the time they made it into the hotel elevator, he was already hiking her dress up over her thighs. She found her back against the wall, the glass-covered buttons of the antique elevator digging into her, his tongue probing, flicking inside her lips until she felt the warm ache down in her hips. She heard the elevator heave and groan with each floor, as if in sympathetic resonance with the desire building within her. A hotel customer, or employee (she didn’t know which; she didn’t pay enough attention to even figure out the gender) got in at one of the floors and quickly exited on the next floor.

            They practically fell out the elevator doors, her makeup sloppy and her dress hitched halfway up her body. She stumbled them over to her room, fumbling to open her purse and turn the key with one hand, unwilling to break their kisses. She threw the key somewhere into the darkness of the room, heard it catch and clatter against what she hoped was the night table, as he kicked the door shut with his foot. They never got around to turning on the light.

 Nor did they make it to the bed.

            Their lovemaking, on the hotel’s outdated shag carpet, was mostly wordless. He entered her one sure motion – nothing like the tentative forays she was used to from men she’d been with. Her fingers explored every inch of his chest as she grazed her tongue along his nipples. As he began pumping into her in earnest, she could smell the hops in his sweat.

            She hadn’t counted on liking it this much. But the way he pulled up her dress and planted kisses along the curve of her hip? The way he paused in the middle of his thrusts to kiss the space between her cleavage? The way he groaned into her ear, like he’d wanted her all his life? It made her glad she’d kept her sunglasses on. It made her glad he had never asked her name. She thought if he called it out, she might lose it right there.

He let her flip him over in the middle of their lovemaking without protest, even though she could tell he had been getting close. He didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact it seemed to turn him on. He liked her powerful. She hadn’t expected that.

She thrust herself over and over on his cock, extracting her pleasure from him in a way she found immensely satisfying. The ends of her long hair, shaken out of its bun way back in the elevator, brushed back and forth along his chest, raising goose bumps. She was so slick and open as she rode him, he almost slipped out of her twice, even though he was as thick and as gloriously hard as she’d hoped he’d be. Every knot, every muscle in her body unfolded open, wracking her with waves of slow, deep arousal. She hadn’t felt this turned on in weeks, no months, no years. Not since her earliest days with The Monarch.

            “Brock,” she gasped, feeling the oncoming implosion within her. She realized she just liked saying his name out loud like a ritual chant. Brock, Brock, Brock.

            He never said a word. But he didn’t have to. The sound of her speaking his name aloud seemed to get him closer and closer to climax, and his cries of surrender as he came rang in her ears like the primal roar of a jungle animal. The sound of it overwhelmed her; she found herself giving in to her own tangled, panicky orgasm.

            It was only then that they finally moved to the bed, lay there panting for a long time. She watched the moon hanging full and heavy in the sky and deliberately thought about nothing at all.

            She heard the click of metal scraping against metal, and a moment later, the crackle of a thin layer of paper burning. She opened her eyes to his hand offering her a lit cigarette. She took it gratefully, even though she didn’t smoke anymore.

            She blew out a nostalgic set of smoke rings with the first drag. 

            “So you leave tomorrow?” she said after a while, just for something to say.

            “Yeah,” he inhaled.

            “Me too,” she said, surprised to realize that she was kind of missing The Monarch all of a sudden.

            “What are you going to do with the rest of your night?” she asked on impulse, stubbing out her cigarette butt on the ashtray by the bed. She didn’t know why she kept asking these misleading questions. She didn’t want to see Brock Samson again for some time.

            He didn’t reply. He didn’t look at her either. She’d almost given up on him even answering when he finally replied in a monotone, “I thought I’d lie here for a while.”

            It stopped her dead in the middle of her graceful departure. With one knee remaining on the edge of the bed, she stared down into his eyes. He deliberately kept them straight ahead, unseeing. So that’s how it would be. Well, she’d known that. Counted on that.

            She shrugged, let her knee slide back onto the sheets and lay back down, bending her head into the crook of his arm. She didn’t ask; he didn’t protest.

They stayed that way the rest of the night, lost in silence, bathed in the Amsterdam moonlight.