Free The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

out, then bag her.”
    “What kind of bag’s gonna hold a thirty-foot snake?” Frank asked. He was smiling, egging Anderson on. They’d entered the OSS together, but Frank had risen to the top while Anderson stayed stuck in the middle. Frank was still handsome, still maintained the physique of the college track star he’d been thirty years earlier. He was the kind of man who believed anything was possible—especially with himself at the helm. But there was something off about him that night. Twice I’d seen him standing apart from the guests, looking out over the slowly churning Potomac. I wondered if the rumors were true that he’d suffered a breakdown after the Soviets put an end to the Hungarian uprising he’d helped orchestrate.
    Anderson took another swig from the flask and cleared his throat. “Good question, boss. We sewed a bunch of burlap sacks together, then rigged a giant zipper down the middle.”
    Frank grinned. He already knew the ending, of course. “And it held?”
    Anderson took another swig. “I had five guys holding the bag, two to zip it up when the snake came out, two standing by with pistols, and me supervising—just in case something went wrong.”
    “What could go wrong?” I asked.
    “What couldn’t?” Frank said, and the crowd laughed louder than the boss’s joke warranted.
    “I’ll tell you!” Anderson answered. But before he could continue, the Miss Christin lurched and the engine stopped. Someone went to ask the captain what was going on and found him not on the bridge, but enjoying a drink in the saloon surrounded by the wives. The captain went to check with the engineer, who confirmed that a fuse had blown and said he’d call the marina for a tow back to the dock. Frank told the captain to wait another hour before calling, and the party continued, unmoored.
    As we bobbed along, Anderson continued. He said they smoked the snake out of its hole with a tear gas canister and when the snake came out, they zipped her up in the bag, but the snake, a fighter, busted out within minutes. But not to worry, Anderson was standing by with his pistol. “Right between the eyes,” he concluded.
    “Poor thing,” I said.
    “Bullshit,” Frank said.
    Anderson placed his hand over his heart. “Swear to God.”
    Fact was, Anderson’s wife, Prudy, had corroborated the story the first time I heard it—over a steak dinner at the Colony—confirming that the snakeskin was indeed stored away in their basement, slowly disintegrating in an old refrigerator box. “Why he ever brought that nasty thing home, I have no idea,” she’d told me.
    I squeezed Anderson’s arm and excused myself and joined Bev on the stern.
    She leaned in and lit my cigarette. “Hey, stranger,” she said. “Story over yet?”
    “Finally.”
    The Jefferson Memorial was lit up in the distance, the District asleep behind it. Under the orange night sky, the city looked peaceful, the power plays and constant angling at rest for the night.
    “This isn’t so bad, is it?” Bev asked.
    “Not bad at all, Bev.” I’d surprised myself by actually having a good time. After the war, I’d come back to Washington with the promise that I could land a job at the State Department. And I did. But instead of a cushy job at State with my own office, they stuck me in the basement sorting records. I could only take it for six months before I quit, after which I distanced myself from the old boys’ club.
    I’d been many things, but I was no record keeper. I couldn’t even pretend. I’d been a nurse, a waitress, an heiress. I once posed as a librarian. I’d been someone’s wife, someone’s mistress, fiancée, lover. I’d been Russian, French, and British. I’d been from Pittsburgh, Palm Springs, and Winnipeg. I could become just about anyone. I had one of those faces—the wide eyes, the ready smile that suggested I was an open book, someone who had no secrets to keep, and if she did, wouldn’t be able to keep them anyway.