All these spies began to suspect that their so-called secrets weren’t really secrets anymore.
Annabelle (not her real name) couldn’t help but notice that the manila file folder she was supposed to deliver to Sir Marmalade Skylark (his real name, incidentally) contained nothing but a stack of printouts of vegetarian recipes.
At first, she thought that maybe the recipes weren’t real recipes at all but rather coded messages cleverly disguised as recipes. But then, as a test of her theory, she actually made one of the recipes, and it was fucking delicious.
These lentils! Annabelle exclaimed to no one after taking a little bite of the curried lentil stew (p. 75 in her manila file folder), but then she grew melancholy. Oh, these goddamn lentils.
Annabelle enjoyed the shit out of those lentils, to be sure, but she also felt a deep dismay at what the lentils represented. The lentils represented the end of her innocence. No, that wasn’t quite right. Annabelle had done some gnarly shit in her day; she was far from innocent. The lentils represented the dawn of a new age of spycraft. No, that was too lofty. The lentils represented the end of her inno—no, she’d said that one already.
Fuck, Annabelle thought. She couldn’t think of what the lentils represented, but she knew they represented something important. Were they a turning point? Maybe. A fulcrum upon which the levers…the levers of…
Shit.
Annabelle sat at her breakfast bar and ate her curried lentil stew. She ate all of it and washed it all down with three bottles of imperial Russian stout. In her younger years, she had been much better at coming up with the things that other things represented. She could make those connections at lightning speed, and more times than not she was spot-on. When something represented a sea change in a what-have-you, she was fucking on it like a champ. When something else represented a point of no return in the development of so-and-so, blammo: she was right there to call it out for what it was, or rather what it stood for. When something represented a fulcrum upon which the…levers of…
…tor…torque…
Annabelle sighed. Life had gotten so complicated. Her brain didn’t work like it used to. Those two things were connected, no? Ten years ago, she would have been able to answer that question with total confidence. Now she just shrugged her shoulders and got herself another imperial stout.
The curried lentil stew had filled her apartment with a warm and piquant fragrance. It was nice. In a half hour, it would be time to meet Sir Marmalade Skylark at the local pub. She was already so lit. But a job was a job. Maybe Marmalade already knew that their jobs were a total sham. Maybe all the other spies already understood this, and she was the last one to catch on.
Wouldn’t be the first time, she thought.
Annabelle wondered what Marmalade would have for her. A folder full of fucking Sudoku puzzles?
She grabbed her keys and the manila folder and headed out into a cold and foggy night, which either meant something or nothing, not that any of it mattered one bit.