The Spy Coast

Gossip was the currency of our former lives, before we found our way to this quiet corner of Maine. Ben Diamond was the first to plant a flag here, nine years ago. He’d retired early to take care of his ailing wife, and his search for the perfect town pointed him here, to the village of Purity. It had everything he required: a bookstore, a decent t

Jo looked at the bar, where she’d worked for a few summers pouring wine and shaking cocktails for the hordes from away, sunburned tourists who’d said her little seaside village was quaint and asked what folks did here in the winter. Well, this is what we do here, she thought. We gain weight and drink too much and get on each other’s nerves.

Inside the niche is where I store my go bag. Over the years I have pared down the contents to the basics, just enough to skip town and hunker down elsewhere for a few weeks. Passports, credit cards, multiple bundles of cash in different currencies, and a few tools of the trade.

On US Route 1, the coastal road that led back to the village, Jo drove past the curve where a bicyclist fell and fractured his skull last summer, past the cove where a teenage girl drowned. When you live your whole life in one town, you know all the places where tragedy has occurred, because bad memories are as permanent as gravestones.

I think of the go bag next to my bed and how easy it would be to drop out, skip town, even skip the country. But this is my home now, and I’ve spent two years building this life, settling into its rhythms. I’m tired of moving, tired of searching for a landing spot. This is it. This is where the wandering stops.

When I was twenty-five, I thought I’d never have to look at this version of my face. I had romantic notions of dying in action before wrinkles ever set in, but here I am, looking every bit my forty-two years of age. Living hard doesn’t mean dying early; sometimes it just means those hard years end up on your face.

“What’d she do to you?” I pause, searching for words to describe how Diana lit the tinder that destroyed my career. My life. “She turned me into a traitor,” I say. The truth is far more complicated, but when you live in a world of mirrors, the truth is always distorted. Too often, it’s what we choose to see while ignoring all the inconvenient bits,

Ingrid and Lloyd will of course confirm the boring truth: that we met tonight for a potluck dinner and copious wine and a spirited discussion of The Travels of Ibn Battutah. It’s exactly the sort of evening that we retired folks are believed to indulge in. I doubt the police will ask what we are all retired from, because when you are over the hill,

I don’t want him to show up at my hotel, nor do I want to be knocking at the door of his apartment, because both places present difficulties when it comes to a graceful escape. I am always about having a planned escape route, whether it’s from a firefight or a romantic evening, and a restaurant is a safe place to meet.