Cost of Life by Joshua Corin Read Free Book Online

figures. They hadn’t spoken in twenty years, not until the day Madeline—spike-haired, sun-kissed Madeline, Madeline of the lickable dimples—came to see her in the garden.
    Xana didn’t get up. She didn’t even look up. She merely said, once Madeline was within earshot: “I’m not going to insult you and ask how you knew I was here.”
    Madeline sat cross-legged with an effortlessness that belied her age and replied, “So I heard you drove into a house.”
    “That’s what they tell me.”
    “You don’t remember?”
    “I remember.”
    “Yeah. That’s always been you. The bad memories stick and the good memories slide away. No one has ever clung to their misery like you, except maybe Oedipus Rex.”
    “What can I say, Madeline? I’m a special girl. Want to make out?”
    “Sure. Then I can help you stab out your eyes with these shears.”
    “Tease,” said Xana, and finally looked her ex-girlfriend in the eye. “Christ, you haven’t changed at all.”
    “I’m a Republican. We hate change. But let me ask you something. When you get out of here…”
    “If I get out of here.”
    “I don’t even want to entertain any self-pity. That’s not why I’m here.”
    “Why are you here, Madeline?”
    “Well, answer me this, Xana:
Are
you going to go back to the Bureau?”
    They were alone in the garden. Most everyone else had spotted the marbleheaded clouds and headed indoors. A thousand plants bent in a swelling gust. Xana cupped her hands over her delicate tomato sprouts to keep them from being plucked into the wind.
    “Look at you,” said Madeline. “So nurturing. Who knew you had it in you?”
    “I’m listening. Make your pitch.”
    “My pitch?”
    “If you recruit me to join your little private security firm, do you get a commission? Do you get a bonus? How much of a potential windfall did it take to induce you to fly down to see me after all these years? Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand?”
    “Bellum Vellum is hardly a ‘little private security firm.’ We provide on-the-ground private military support for a number of multinational corporations and nothing guarantees success better than fine intelligence and with sixty-two percent of our operations occurring in Central Asia, having someone as well versed in that part of the world as you are would be a godsend. And you mentioned money. Do you want to know what your starting salary would be?”
    “I already have a job.”
    “You drove into a house! You think that’s the kind of thing people forget? I’m offering you tabula rasa. Who else in your situation would get an opportunity like that?”
    Xana picked at the clump of sod around the sprouts. The sod darkened. The whole world darkened, drenched, as the rain came down upon it. Madeline got up, brushed herself off. Xana stayed in the sopping mud, and essentially roosted there for the next hour.
    But at least her tomatoes ripened.
    “Well, well,” nasal-noted a Georgia-accented male voice. “As I leave and breathe. If it isn’t Xana Marx.”
    Del Purrich was striding from the elevators, taking his time, that ever-present shit-eating grin spread across his thin lips, and he wore his Harris tweed jacket because even though this was Atlanta in July, he would remain Del Purrich twelve months out of the year, so help him Jesus Christ.
    As he signed for her on Mikkelson’s clipboard, he asked her: “They give you early release so you could celebrate the Fourth with us? Or have you completed your rehabilitation?”
    “It’s good to see you too, Del.”
    Mikkelson waved Xana toward the metal detector. She walked toward it.
    Del stood on the other side, obstructing her path.
    “Can I be honest with you, Xana? I’m surprised to see you. I am. You want to know why I’m surprised to see you?”
    “Because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”
    “Ha! That’s amusing! No. I’m surprised because I would have thought you wouldn’t be allowed back on the road just yet. Now, you didn’t