All the Old Knives Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.”
    â€œIt?”
    â€œYou’ve left everything behind.”
    I can see from the lowering of her hands and the sudden lack of expression in her face that my words are not as light as I mean them to sound. Then the curtain comes down, the smile returning, and she tilts her head and stares at the high frame of the window beside us for maybe three full seconds. Then back to me. “Yes, I suppose I have. That stuff—Vienna, the Agency, the things we did there—that’s not here. It’s an entirely different universe.”
    She leaves it hanging, so I say, “And?”
    â€œAnd that’s the way I want it, Henry.”

 
    7
    Ponytail returns with our glasses, mine sweating cold, and gives me a coy smile, almost like flirtation, but not really. It’s more like pity. The bartender, I gather, has told her of my thwarted desire. I’ve ended up in a town that pities gin drinkers.
    Celia sips her Syrah and washes it around her mouth expertly, tongue undulating to spread the manna over all her bitter and sweet buds. I try to stay away from association and largely fail. I gulp down Chardonnay like a barbarian as she says, “You didn’t answer about Matty.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t.”
    â€œWell?”
    Matty leapt into my life a week before Celia packed her bags and walked out on all of us. Austrian, twenty-six, five foot two. Energetic beyond any proven laws of physics, a manic without the required depressive periods. “She exhausted me to death.”
    Celia leans back, regarding me. “She was a bit much, wasn’t she? Quite the talker.”
    â€œScientologist, too.”
    This draws her back, hands on the edge of the table. “You’re kidding. ”
    â€œShe was desperate to become an Operating Thetan. I ran into her a few weeks ago, and she’d made it to something called the Wall of Fire. I suppose she’s communing with the aliens now.”
    This earns a measured laugh. “Anyone else in Henry’s life?”
    Sure, I think. There was Greta and Stella and Marianne and Linda, each three-night stands, each one leaving me with fantasies of a wife and mother in California. I say, “No one.”
    â€œNot a confirmed bachelor, I hope.”
    â€œBaptized, maybe.”
    â€œAnd the old office?” she asks, deftly swinging away from sore points.
    â€œVick runs it like a fiefdom. Nothing changes.”
    â€œWhat about Bill?”
    Bill Compton was her chief during most of her time in Vienna. When she worked the street Bill received her reports, and once she moved inside he became her mentor, maybe even a father figure. “Well, he retired over a year ago. You didn’t know?”
    Finally, a flash of something that resembles embarrassment—something to cut through her self-satisfaction. “We haven’t talked.”
    The relief sparkles through me, though I hide it well. I worried that Bill had called her, and the fact that he didn’t makes my job here that much easier. She’s unprepared. “He lives in London now,” I say.
    â€œSally’s doing, I bet.”
    â€œExactly. He hates it.”
    â€œShe’s an Anglophile bitch.”
    I don’t know Sally well enough to reply, but the venom in Celia’s voice is unexpected. Five years, and she’s still angry with Bill’s wife. Maybe the old life doesn’t disappear so easily.
    But she’s changing the subject. “They still have you on the street?”
    â€œNot for a while,” I say. “I’m entirely air-conditioned now.”
    â€œMust be a nice change.”
    â€œSafer, I suppose.”
    â€œI remember quite liking the change,” she says. “But I was never good at beating the pavement.”
    â€œNow you’re being modest.”
    She shakes her head, serious.
    â€œThese days,” I tell her, “I’m wasting my time with dusty files. Vick has me looking into the