Philby and Martini refused to have anything to do with me, and I felt the best thing to do would be to get out of the house for a bit. It was early still, about 6:00 p.m. If Rex was depriving me of a rented movie, I'd just go out and see a real one.
To be honest, in the two years I'd lived here since I'd moved back, I'd never once been to the movie theatre. Rex and I tended to stay in on date night, usually because making out at a public movie might be frowned upon, and he had a reputation to protect. Actually, that was my excuse. I just liked snuggling during a movie with the cats melted all over us.
I stood numbly before ten movie posters plastered to the outside of a faux-art-deco theatre. There were a lot of choices. Too many choices. In fact I had no idea what any of these movies were about. One had two people kissing—so that must be a romance. Since I wasn't getting any romance tonight, I'd skip that one.
There were a couple of films that looked like romantic comedies and a few horror movies, but I didn't find any of these interesting either. Kelly was always trying to get me to go see what she called chick flicks, but I always turned her down. If I went to one without her, I'd be in serious trouble. And I'd take the CIA being pissed at me over my best friend's wrath any day of the week.
I finally settled on one that looked like a spy thriller. The guy on the poster was sneaking around a dark alley, and the name of the film was Spy Diary. It reminded me of the aforementioned night in Qatar, so I picked that one.
After spending what seemed like a week's salary on a ticket, popcorn, pop, and candy, I found a seat in the very back of the auditorium. The lights were already out, and the previews had started.
I tried to focus on the trailers for the eighteenth sequel to this and the twenty-third prequel to that, but my mind began to wander. Who had killed the pizza nitwit? Had he stiffed someone? Was he in the Federal Witness Protection Program? No, that couldn't be right. The feds wouldn't give someone like that a job where they would be in the public eye that much. What if he was a bad guy—sent here to assassinate someone? Pizza delivery guy would be a great cover.
Or maybe he was an undercover cop? He looked pretty young, but that would make him even better at it. But why would an undercover cop be in Rex's driveway? Was he being investigated? I was pretty sure the detective wouldn't like that. Besides, Rex was perfect in every way. There'd be no reason to send an undercover operative to deliver a pizza to him.
At least it didn't have anything to do with me. I gave myself a little mental high five (I really liked high-fiving) and turned my attention back to the screen. The theatre was only about a quarter full, and everyone else was a lot closer to the screen than I. It was kind of like I was the supreme puppet master looking down on the peasants who would do my bidding. Maybe I should've gone for one of the horror flicks. The thought made me laugh.
"Shhhhh!" An angry woman ten rows in front of me glared back at me.
I shrugged and mouthed a little sorry. It was just the previews. It wasn't like the movie had started…oh wait. I guess it had. The spy guy was racing down the same alley as pictured in the poster. How much had I missed by daydreaming?
Two guys jumped out in front of him, menacingly—which was pretty much the only way anyone jumped out at you in an alley. You never heard of anyone coming at you cheerfully under those circumstances. Been there, done that. Ah, the good old days.
The spy on the screen was backed up against the wall. Oh wow. This was familiar territory for me. It would be fun to see how he got out of this one. Some of these movies were so ridiculous. The hero shoots a guy a mile away with a little handgun and hits his target with more accuracy than a sniper rifle placed up against the target's heart.
Or he ran for forty miles without panting or sweating. Or he went thirty-six hours without eating, sleeping, or even sitting in a chair for a moment. And don't get me started on James Bond. If I ate and drank like he did in the books, I would die. Probably within the first twelve hours.
In reality, spies were human just like everyone else—unless they were Russian. I was pretty sure Russian spies were soulless cyborgs. We bleed, get colds, feel fear, and occasionally think about running away and joining the circus (no one ever shoots the trapeze artist). The movie industry wasn't doing my industry any favors by making us look like superheroes.
Who wrote these movies? Certainly not anyone with any experience as a spy. I thought you kind of needed some experience to write about espionage. How could you write a story about a spy without having once been a spy?
Focus, Merry! You paid like $500 to see this stupid movie! I shook my head to clear it and, once again, looked toward the screen.
Instead, my attention was drawn to a man several rows ahead of me. There was something ridiculously familiar about him. It was pretty dark though. Would I be able to use the light on my cell to see him better? No, that would probably make the woman in front of me implode.
Argh! Now I was seeing things. That was it. I didn't know this guy. Give a spy a murder, and she'll give you a conspiracy to go with it. But then I remembered that this most recent murder had nothing to do with me. That made me ridiculously happy.
The man turned his head to the side as he checked out one of the exits. A very spy move if I ever saw one. Wait…I knew that profile…but the hair was too short. It couldn't be. Could it?
Riley? Was Riley here? Last I'd heard from him, he was on a job in the Middle East. And the only other times Riley had been here were when the Agency wanted him to look in on me. And not in the nice way.
The man turned his head back to the screen, and I squinted into the murky darkness. There was no way I was going to figure out if my former boss was here. Not until the lights went up. Then I'd find out my imagination was running away with me. And it wouldn't be the first time that had happened either.
An explosion rang out from the screen, and I saw that the man in the alley had fired his gun. Why did they have to make the sound so unrealistic? One of the assailants kicked the gun from the spy's hand with a noisy and silly roundhouse kick. Seriously? The roundhouse kick was absurd. You were extremely vulnerable in the time it took you to spin around, and as a result, you couldn't land your blow with enough force. And the impact of a foot hitting a face didn't sound like the crack of a snare drum. There was no sound at all. So why add any? Movies. Right?
The spy jumped over a garbage can and rummaged through it looking for a weapon. Any weapon. I smothered a giggle because I'd once done that too. It was like that story I mentioned about being in Qatar and defending myself with a—
Huh?
The spy in the movie had fished something out of the can and began to defend himself with a wire coat hanger.
I almost dropped my popcorn (thank goodness the pop was in the cup holder—that would've been an expensive tragedy). That was a strange coincidence. I guess a writer could've come up with that idea. But what were the odds? It would have definitely been a long shot.
Ugh. Now I was seeing things in movies. I came here to get away from reality. Riley wasn't here, and this movie was just a movie. I settled back into my seat and took a deep breath. In spite of myself, I checked the guy in front. Still there.
What had gotten into me? I was imagining my boss in the front row and was weirded out by a scene in a movie that echoed something that had happened to me. Was this what happened to spies when they retired? They started to see conspiracies around every corner?
Again, I realized I was distracted and tried to focus on the movie. The spy was out of the alley now and stealing across the lawn of a huge mansion in the early twilight of the evening. Ha! I had had a case like that once.
It was in Montenegro. I had infiltrated the home of a gunrunner with a fetish for all things Hawaiian. His house had been filled with palm trees. There had been about a foot of sand on the floor, and his security team had to wear Hawaiian shirts. This guy had even had an entire wall of ukuleles, and I'd ended up smashing a bright purple uke over the head of one of his guards. Maybe I should have started writing this down. I could write a screenplay that would represent my field realistically.
The spy slipped through the door and was immediately greeted by a hallway filled with palm trees, the floor covered with sand.
I'm pretty sure I stopped breathing.
On the screen someone was coming down the hall (I heard the footfall of heavy shoes, which was ridiculous since the floor was covered with sand), so the spy ran into a room filled with tiki gods and…a whole wall of ukuleles. A security guard in a loud Hawaiian shirt came in, and I watched in shock as the spy bludgeoned him with a bright purple ukulele.
When I thought I should write down my past adventures, it'd never occurred to me that someone already had.