Free Past Perfect by Susan Isaacs

scar on his cheek, though it ran unromantically in a horizontal line from under his nose to his ear, so it appeared he’d wiped something thick and pink across his face with the back of his hand. He claimed to have gotten knifed while taking over a boat on the Rio Grande de Buba in Guinea-Bissau, though for all anyone knew he could have walked through a glass patio door in Kansas City.
    I’d always gotten on dandily with Huff because, right from the start, I’d chosen to accept whatever he said. This wasn’t because he seemed like a born truth-teller, but simply because I wanted somebody to be able to give me an authoritative “His Highness could be wearing an ankle holster,” so I wouldn’t have to spend hours fighting with Oliver and a costume designer over a line in the script like HH pulls snub-nosed revolver from ankle holster. Within a week of our first meeting, I recognized Oliver would be the type who’d be bellowing, “Only dykes wear ankle holsters!” and I would find myself screaming back, “It’s make-believe, for God’s sake! What does it matter?”
    While the cameras rolled, Huff spent about half an hour on the set, sitting on a dirty wing chair abandoned by some other production company. Resting his head against soiled yellow damask, he stretched out his long legs and half closed his eyes to show how unthrilled he was. Once the director called, “Cut,” Huff moved excessively close to Dani and told her breasts (as the rest of the cast and crew gathered close to listen to him) about machete fights with rebel commandos in the Philippines and outwitting the KGB in Romania. Having listened to Huff’s guts/gore/glory oeuvre many times, I told him I’d meet him in my office.
    “Hey, K,” Huff said to me an hour later. “Que está acontecendo?”
    “What?”
    “It means ‘What’s happening?’ in Portuguese.”
    “Nada,” I answered tentatively.
    “Your other half still cutting up elephants at the Bronx Zoo?”
    “Whenever he can.”
    “He must have a strong stomach!”
    I decided not to take that personally. “Besides what we talked about on the phone, Huff, about how someone Dani’s size could take out a man built like a defensive lineman, say around six-feet-five, three hundred pounds: I need something else.”
    “What?”
    “I’d like you to track down an Agency alum for me.”
    “From your era or my era?” Chutzpah, though technically not a dig. Huff was at least ten years older than I was. But he had retired from the CIA only five years ago. I hadn’t been there since 1990. My time there now seemed so over that my colleagues could have been flying reptiles.
    “She’s definitely from my era,” I told him. “For all I know, she could still be there. Her name is Lisa Golding. She was involved with training foreign nationals whom the ICD unit brought over here to live.” His forehead looked about to crease at the acronym, so I added: “International Cooperation Detail.” He still looked puzzled. “The unit that placed people who did us huge favors. The people we promised to bring here if things got hairy for them.” Little doubt we’d promised many, many more, but the ICD was responsible only for those promises higher-ups determined were worth keeping.
    “Oh, I know what you’re talking about. It’s called the JLC now. I’ll have to check what it stands for.”
    “You don’t have to — ”
    Huff didn’t let me finish. “This is for the show?” Was he annoyed at having to do a little extra work for his flat fee? I wondered. He was eyeing my toile wallpaper with a pissed-off expression.
    Okay, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the sudden withdrawal of pleasantness, but I was. And I had no idea how to respond —a perfect example of why I was so much more comfortable with fiction than with life. In books and on TV, it’s always easy: that next line of dialogue comes right away. What if it takes three weeks to think up? No one knows how long it took to create