The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott Read Free Book Online Page A

fixed my gaze on the coffee rings. “Confused.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Angry.”
    “Angry?”
    “Yes.”
    “Look.” He closed the folder with my name on it. “We see something in you.”
    “What is this about?”
    “We’re good at spotting hidden talents.”

CHAPTER 3

THE TYPISTS
    Fall had come to Washington. It was dark when we woke and dark when we left the office. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees and during our commute we’d walk with our heads down to avoid the wind whipping through the spaces between buildings, careful not to slip on wet leaves or roll our heels on the slick sidewalks. On mornings like that—when the thought of getting out of a warm bed to go stand on a crowded streetcar under some man’s armpit just to spend the day in a drafty office under harsh fluorescent lights almost made us call in sick—we’d meet at Ralph’s for coffee and doughnuts before work. We needed those twenty minutes, that dose of sugar—not to mention a better cup of coffee. The Agency’s own brew, though brown and hot, tasted more like the Styrofoam cups we drank it from.
    Ralph was actually a little old Greek man named Marcos. He’d come to the States, he told us, just for the chance to fatten up pretty American girls like us with the pastries he woke up at four o’clock each morning to bake. He’d call us “beautiful” and “exquisite,” although he could hardly see us through his cataracts. Marcos was a shameless flirt, even though his wife—a white-haired woman named Athena with a bosom so large she had to take a step back when opening the register—was always right behind the counter. Athena didn’t seem to mind, though. She’d roll her eyes and laugh at the old man. We’d laugh in return and touch his arm, hopeful he’d put an extra powdered doughnut in our bag and hand it to us with a cloudy-eyed wink.
    Whoever arrived at Ralph’s first would get us a booth in the back. It was important to get a booth in back so we could keep an eye on the door to see who came in. Ralph’s was not the closest coffee shop to HQ, but the occasional officer would wander in from time to time, and much of what we said during our morning meetings we did not want overheard.
    Gail Carter would usually get there first, having walked only three blocks from her studio apartment above the hat shop on H Street. Gail roomed with a woman who was a third-year intern on the Hill and whose wealthy father owned a textile factory in New Hampshire and paid all her living expenses.
    That particular Monday morning in October started out with the same back-and-forth. “Pure hell,” Norma Kelly said. “Last week was pure hell.” At eighteen, Norma had moved to New York with dreams of becoming a poet. Irish American with the strawberry blond hair to prove it, Norma had gotten off the bus at the Dixie Bus Center on West Forty-Second and, suitcase in hand, made her way to Costello’s to rub elbows with the Madison Avenue ad men and freelance writers for The New Yorker. She eventually figured out that both were more interested in what was in her pants than in the words she wanted to put on paper. But it was at Costello’s that she also met a few Agency men. They’d encouraged her to apply for a job only as a way of flirting, but she needed a paycheck so pursued it anyway. Norma tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stirred three sugars into her coffee. “No, this week was worse than hell.”
    Judy Hendricks cut her plain doughnut into four equal pieces with a butter knife. Judy was always on some sort of fad diet she read in Woman’s Day or Redbook. “What’s worse than hell?” Judy asked.
    “This week, that’s what.” Norma took a sip of coffee.
    “I don’t know,” Judy said. “Last week was pretty bad. I mean, that meeting about the new Mohawk Midgetapes? I think we can understand how to click Record without a two-hour orientation. If that man pointed to that diagram one more time, my eyes would’ve