By Friday, I couldn’t wait to get home. I had beer in the fridge, a cigar I planned to smoke on my terrace, and I was sure there would be something good on television. I was also exhausted. I’d been briefing all day about the impending Delta Force Intelligence officer’s arrival.

As it turned out, it was a female named Kalliope Tyson. An unusual name, and I’d been thinking about it all afternoon. I had no idea what she looked like, but with a name like that, I’d expect her to be beautiful. However, with a job like Intelligence officer for Delta Force, she was probably a bookish nerd, with little to no personality, who wouldn’t find me remotely amusing, or charming. She’d be wrong, of course, because I’m most certainly both of those things. Not to mention, devilishly handsome, but that was neither here nor there. Kalliope was just another meeting to attend, really, and at least I had the weekend to myself before having to spend an entire week with her.

A feeling of discontent had been looming for weeks, and I suspected it had to do with being back in the United States being a desk jockey for so long. The days of sneaking through dark alleys for meetups, exchanging information for payment in the bodegas of Madrid or the Doha in Qatar, seemed like a hundred years ago. The realist in me was well aware of how dangerous, filthy, and sometimes nefarious, the job could be, but the adventurer the dreamer in me—that guy missed the excitement. Nothing interesting happens in Virginia, and in some ways, I suppose that was the point.

I poured myself a tumbler of scotch and went out to my terrace with my Cuban. Feet up on the chair across from mine, I lit her up, puffing a large plume of smoke into the night. Cubans aren’t quite as hard to come by these days, particularly if they were acquired from another agent while on a mission that he could neither confirm nor deny even happened. It was an ongoing joke in the office, and with other spooks, that we could neither confirm nor deny just about anything.

I chuckled quietly to myself as I thought back over my short career in the clandestine services. Making friends wasn’t easy when you couldn't tell them what you do for a living because half of what you say is a bold-faced lie. You become extremely good at lying, and I suppose that's one reason why the divorce rate is so high for our profession.

As far as dating goes, well, I wasn’t. I didn’t really know how to pick up girls. I like to crack jokes, to my brother especially, about exotic women in exotic locations, but it was mostly bullshit. Women generally came up to me. I’m a confident and good looking guy, with the nice guy haircut, and clean-shaven, I have a good job, so in the rare circumstance in which I found myself out and about at a bar or some other such place, I didn’t really have to try. No relationships ever formed from these shenanigans, mostly because I was always lying about what I did, and who I was, to an extent. It was almost like practicing my craft, keeping my super secret spy skills up by pretending. Was it a fair practice? Probably not, but I’d never promised anything I could not deliver, whether it be an amazing evening in the sack or nothing at all.

I could always tell by a woman’s body language if she was going to try to turn a one-night stand into something it wasn’t. Or, if she was looking for more than an evening together. In those situations, I don’t even go home with them, because it’s nothing but trouble. I’ve got no desire to hurt anyone’s feelings, I was in it for the “right now,” and I’d always been honest about it. There’s never been anyone in my life I was serious about; likely because I refused to let anyone get close. I’d had one foot out the door my whole life, which was why clandestine life was so appealing to me. I could change anything about myself to achieve my mission, whether it be what my role with the U.S. government was, what my name was, anything really.

Having that covert attitude about life all day doesn’t lend itself to building the foundation of a loving relationship. Part of me would like to have what my parents have. They’ve been married for a hundred years, they’re all over each other, even in retirement. It’s actually kind of weird to watch my dad chase my mom around the house, trying to grab her ass at Christmas. I’d love to blame the alcohol, but the mimosas and screwdrivers don’t start flowing until at least ten a.m. and he’s at it with a cup of coffee in hand. They’re fun though. They genuinely enjoy each other’s company. You’d think living in the town where the CIA was, there would be a lot of smart chicks, professionals with a good head on their shoulders, working on their D.C. careers, that kind of thing. But not really.

I stopped even attempting to meet people romantically, well over a year ago, and it probably wasn’t too long after I took the job here that I gave up completely. Nothing but a couple of good times for today, but nobody I’d care to chase around the house on Christmas, trying to grab their ass, that’s for sure. Thinking about my parents made me happy. I puffed my cigar and sipped my scotch, also a high-end gift from an unnamed source. The warm liquid burned slightly as it made its way down to my gut, where it warmed me all over, relaxing me.

A friend of mine had invited me out for drinks at the fancy hotel downtown, but after the week I’d had, I declined, choosing to stay in. My restlessness waned on the weekends, and I wondered if maybe I just wasn’t cut out for a desk job. I was still plenty young enough to travel, even to do my old job, which was bringing back more and more good memories, and tucking the bad ones away where I couldn’t find them.

That evening, I just enjoyed the quiet.

The next morning, I got up and went for a run before heading to the gym inside my building. I lived in a gated complex, with pretty tight security, that had everything you could need. The gym downstairs was as nice as any club you could join on your own and was included in your lease, so I took advantage of it almost daily. The building was mostly full of government workers, and there was a handful of people I recognized from the office from time to time. But the nature of our employment trained us not to socialize in certain settings with colleagues, as we didn’t know who did what, and if we did, it wasn’t the business of any bystander who could be haphazardly, or even intentionally, listening. My life was strange.

After I ran some bullshit errands, for food and other crap I needed at home to survive as an adult, I read up on some international hostility I'd heard about and did my usual weekend chores. Once I'd finished everything I wanted to do to keep my house in order, I decided that a couple drinks out of the house would be nice. I called my friend Mike, who I'd declined an invitation from the night before, but he had plans with his girlfriend. The last time we'd gone out, he told me that he was planning to propose, and I did everything I could to talk him out of it. I have zero skin in that game—it didn’t matter to me if he was married or not—so why I spent the better part of an evening trying to convince him that love wasn’t real, and even if it was, why did you have to legally bind yourself to someone. Obviously, I was drunk, and most definitely projecting my fear of commitment on him. But luckily for me, Mike didn’t give a shit what I thought about marriage, and he was happily planning a secret vacation where he could propose.

I decided I was going to go out by myself. Being cooped up all week, I didn’t want to regret not going out, and after my cigar and scotch on the terrace the night before, I’d stayed in and chilled out enough. It wouldn’t hurt to go out for a little bit. Since I’d not been to the new bar at the hotel, I decided to go there, and practice my spy routines on some helpless maidens in town for a bit. I hadn’t had the company of a beautiful woman from out of town in some time, and it was high time I enjoyed myself. Lord knows the next week was going to be pure hell.