Dating Is Murder

The other agent said, “Actually, she did sign on for this. This is Kermit, right? Use her.”

Simon’s cell phone rang. He spoke into it, held up a finger to us, then walked outside.

The other agent kept looking at me. “Think you can do this?” he said.

I felt the room around me holding its breath. “Yes,” I said.

He nodded. “Let’s go.”

The room came to life. Two women agents led me to a corner, helping me into clothes they must’ve found in the house, jeans that had to be Maizie’s and a white sweater. They talked calmly and encouragingly. Nothing fit exactly right; the jeans were too short, and the sweater sleeves, but it was all close enough. I smelled like her now, subtle and spicy. It was A

One of the agents apologized, asked me to hold still, and then I heard scissors and saw my hair fall to the floor. Another put foundation on my face and handed me a lipstick and a mirror. Maizie’s makeup. Maizie’s haircut. On my way outside, I grabbed an apron from a peg.

Agents flanked me and we hurried down the path toward the house, the butter-yellow traditional American with white trim. The porch was lit up with the tiny icicle lights. We passed other people, one wearing a headset, others on cell phones, the agents on either side of me protective, as if I were the most important person in the world, which in their world, at this moment, I was. We walked faster and faster, toward the security gate, and it began to sink in, what I was doing. I pushed the thought aside. A man ahead of us opened the electronic gate.

The film was still shooting on Moon Canyon, a generator powering big lights that illuminated the street. Equipment trucks, trailers, and cars were everywhere, street, pavement, and grass, blocking one another. The crew milled around, a small army of cell phones and headsets. I had an impression of sailors on a ship, battening down hatches in preparation for a storm at sea. “Crossing Valley Vista,” an agent said into a radio. “Kermit in place.”

Simon stood by a tree, near the koi pond. He wore a headset too, head bowed in concentration, listening. He looked up and stared at me, his face hard. As when we’d first met.

“No,” he said to his headset. “If there’s a password and you can’t come up with it, we pull her out.” He signaled to an agent near me. “Kill half the lights.”

I heard glass break. The yard went darker.

Footlights lined the driveway. I glanced at my sneakers, nearly the only things left on me that were mine. Maizie would spot the shoes immediately. Fredreeq too. But slouching in sneakers, I was close to Maizie’s height, a detail more important than fashion consistency.

A black car turned the corner from Moon Rock Road.

I could see it, being near the gate. Across the street, the film crew could see it. Because of the fence around the Qui

“Damn,” I heard Simon’s voice say. “Not enough.”

Activity across the street had quieted but not stopped. A burly guy in a tool belt ambled past the generator, carrying a cable. Another balanced coffee cups in a cardboard take-out tray.

The black car pulled up closer and a window began to descend. The windows on the cars were tinted.

I was alone. The agents seemed to have melted into the darkness around me.

The car came closer. So quiet.

“Wollie, don’t turn around.” A woman was squeezed into a crevice made by the gate joining the fence. Very close to me. “I’m Agent Shepphird. I’ll talk you through this. Approach the car. Say hello and shake hands. Say something friendly; Maizie Qui

I stepped forward. I slouched. The car made the turn into the drive, the driver’s window all the way down. A man in a suit, very dark, round-faced, rough-ski

I told my face to smile and held out my hand. There was a man in the passenger seat and maybe more in the back. “Hello,” I said. “Pull ahead and park anywhere you like.”

It wasn’t relaxed. I sounded like a computer. The man was staring. I swallowed. “Nice to see you again, Frito.” The minute I said the name, I froze. I’d got it wrong. Bad call.

But he smiled, a brief showing of teeth. The window went up. The car went forward.

I stepped back, into the shadows, breathing hard.

Agent Shepphird’s voice was in my ear. “Wollie. Good job. We’re in. The next one’s our guy. He’s got his first lieutenant with him. Yosip Kasnoff. You’ve met Yosip, but only once. But you’ve talked to Karl Marx-sorry, Tcheiko-three or four times on the phone. He likes you. Hold on, Wollie, I’m getting instructions on my headset. Okay. You’re cooking tonight. They found the transcripts of your last conversation. You promised him fusion cooking: applying California spa techniques to French recipes using African ingredients. And that’s the password. What you’re cooking for him.”

“Okay. What is it?”

There was a pause. Agent Shepphird said, “We don’t know.”

My heart stopped.

“Make up something,” she said. “He’s not going to be eating it.”

“I don’t cook.”

“Hold on. Di

Wing it?

My mother has always talked about out-of-body experiences. I’d never known what she meant. What an interesting time to understand something about my mother. Tcheiko’s car pulled up just as the first had done. I stepped out of the shadows and approached. The driver’s window went down, the tinted window, and I was looking into the face of a man, extraordinarily handsome, much more than Simon, more even than Doc, with a black-and-silver beard and a nearly shaved head and salacious brown eyes. “Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here. I hope you’re hungry.”

He regarded me calmly, not smiling but not with the fierce look of the man in the first car. I thought of the guns aimed at us. In the dark. I could feel the sweat form under my skin. Now what? Whose turn to speak? What were my instructions? Why didn’t he speak?

“On a fait une réservation pour huit perso

My heart was pounding. I was in the wrong movie; I needed the one with subtitles. My face quivered so badly I nearly-

“Et le menu?” he said. “What have you for us?”

I’ve never been to Africa. I know nothing about Africa. Except-

“Frog,” I said.

“Les cuisses de grenouille?” he said, frowning. “This is not typically local.”

“Au contraire,” I said. “The West African goliath, Conraua goliath, is native to Cameroon. And happens to be the largest frog on earth. Which I am honored to have in my kitchen. As I am honored to have you in my kitchen.”

“How will you prepare it?”

“I had considered an amuse-bouche in puff pastry, but as the goliath is thirty centimeters, snout to vent, his legs are the size of… forearms. He’s now a main course. À la maison Maizie. A little garlic, a bit of flavored oil. Voilà”

He nodded. He smiled. His window went up. He drove forward.

A movement from across the street caught my eye. The film crew had moved out of sight of the black cars, but I was close enough to the gate to see them run silently across the street, to our side, a hundred feet north of the gate. Dozens of them. Every one with guns drawn.