The Faithful Spy

Wells racked his brain for an appropriate response. He failed to find it. America seemed to have gotten a lot chattier in his absence. He vaguely remembered television talk shows like Jerry Springer. Now the whole country seemed to be auditioning for one of those reality programs. What kind of person told a total stranger that his wife had walked in on him with the maid?

Rich looked at him and pressed on. “I mean, Barb wasn’t supposed to be home. She comes in, she starts screaming, ‘Fuck you fuck you,’ really screaming—”

So much for being polite, Wells thought.

“You have any dignity?” Wells looked Rich in the eye, a stare that had frozen guys in places much tougher than this. “You even know what that word means? Telling some guy you never met about how you cheated on your wife and got caught. I don’t know you and I don’t want to. Thanks for the Coke.” Wells picked up his bag.

“You don’t understand,” Rich said. “I’m under so much pressure. You know what it’s like trying to pay for two houses and three cars? I can’t remember the last time I slept with my wife. I just needed to touch someone. My life sucks—”

“You know what sucks?” Wells said. “Stepping on a land mine and getting your legs blown off. And you’re four years old. Riding around in a Humvee waiting to get torched by a bomb you can’t even see, like our guys are doing in Baghdad right now.”

“I know—”

“You don’t know shit. You don’t have a clue. You can’t imagine how most people in this world live. And most of ’em have never in their lives bitched as much as you did in the last five minutes. Divorce your wife. Quit screwing the maid. I couldn’t care less.”

“What the fuck do you know about how tough the world is?”

Rich said. “You’re sitting here watching TV just like me.”

“Not anymore,” Wells said. He slapped a ten-dollar bill on the bar for his Coke and headed for his gate.

wells sat outside gate C-13 furious with himself. What if the guy had swung at him? So much for keeping a low profile then. But Wells didn’t understand his countrymen anymore. They owe me an upgrade, Rich had said. No. They don’t owe you anything. Wells knew he needed to relax. Rich the salesman was an alcoholic with a lousy marriage. He would get his act together. Or not. It wasn’t Wells’s business. Yet as Wells looked around the bright, clean airport he wondered whether he would ever belong in America. b u t w h e n h e woke the next morning in Boise he felt almost elated. He hadn’t imagined he would ever see Montana or his ma again. He could have flown straight to Missoula, but he’d wanted to drive, to be alone in the Rockies. He remembered driving down with his dad over Lost Trail Pass for weekends fishing. They’d go to Boise to watch the Hawks, the Class A minor-league baseball team, and buy his mom a present from the jewelry store downtown. “Don’t tell,” his dad always said. “It’s a surprise.”

His dad had been a surgeon at the hospital in Hamilton, south of Missoula. His mom was a teacher. His father had wanted a big family, Wells knew. But his mother had almost died when Wells was born — she’d been hospitalized in Missoula for a month — and her doctors said she could never get pregnant again. So they were three: Herbert, Mona, and John.

Wells had respected his dad, a gruff taciturn man whose skills as a surgeon were renowned across western Montana. Most days, Herbert exhausted his energy in the operating room; when he got home, he would sit in his high-backed leather chair in their living room, sipping a glass of whiskey and reading the Missoula paper. He was never mean, and he wasn’t exactly distant either. He always cheered for Wells at football games. But Herbert had rules, in and out of the operating room, and he expected those rules to be followed.