The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller by J. M. Porup Page B

major. About a month ago he asked to borrow all my books from college.”
    I laughed. “Pitt can barely read.”
    She shook her head, the blue fire keeping me in its sights. “Pitt always tells people that. He’s a speed reader. Could do it faster than anyone I’ve ever met. Went through all my books in a week.”
    “Any idea why?”
    She shrugged. “Afterward, he got drunk and puked in the corner.”
    “I can see that.”
    Her lips lifted in a half-smile. “The smell reminds me of him.”
    I put Søren back in his place, crouched to check out the bottom shelf.
    She said, “You going to answer my question?”
    A lump throbbed in my throat. I swallowed hard. “What was the question again?”
    “Do you think I’m beautiful?”
    “Pitt must have thought so. He married you, didn’t he?” A copy of
Crime and Punishment
lay sideways on top of the bottom shelf. I pulled it out.
    “Then can you tell me—why did he prefer to sleep in here, alone?”
    The sound of swishing silk, a judge’s robes as he enters the courtroom. I stood in time to catch the final ounce of
niqab
sliding to her feet. Janine stood naked in a pile of silk.
    She was beautiful. Too beautiful. Breasts to melt the resolve of the mightiest sinner, hips that twitched, waiting for hands to command them. A long full head of soft brown hair curved at her throat, tickled her collarbone. Four kids didn’t show.
    The cigarette burned my lips. I spat it out and crushed it with my shoe. “Thought you said you didn’t want to cheat.”
    “The spirit is willing, but the flesh…”
    I swallowed. “The flesh.”
    “The flesh,” she agreed, eyeing my crotch.
    I tried not to look at her body. “You could always pray for strength,” I suggested at last.
    She shook her head, a triumphant smile on her lips. “I pray. But no help ever comes. Why do you think that is?”
    “Maybe you’ve stopped trying,” I offered.
    She nodded. “I’m just no good. I never will be. Maybe that means I’ll go to hell.” Her body tensed at the word, shivered. “So be it. I don’t know any other way to be.”
    She stepped out of the silk, her thighs sliding against each other. She took the book, put it on top of the shelf. “If you’re a friend of Pitt’s,” she said, and clasped my hand, cupped it to her breast, “if you know him as I do, you will understand that.”
    “I can’t,” I said, but didn’t pull away.
    “You know,” she said, her face close to mine, her eyes burning a path through my skull, “he hates it when I dress this way.”
    “You mean naked?”
    “No, silly. The
niqab.
Says that he’s got nothing to be jealous of.”
    “Then why do you?”
    Her mouth quivered. She looked like she was going to cry. “Because I love him.”
    She grabbed my head with both hands, pulled me down to her mouth. Her tongue slithered between my teeth. I wondered how she could stand it. When did I last brush? I couldn’t remember. Yes. I could. A year ago. The day we arrived in La Paz, Kate and I, the baby in tow. Pain stabbed at the back of my brain, and I stuffed the memory down as far as it would go. I stroked an open palm down her lower back, across her hip and up between her thighs.
    “Like that,” she hissed, and ran her fingers through my hair.
    To avoid her mouth I kissed her neck, trailed my way down to her left nipple. I sucked on her breast, tit flesh filling my mouth, rubbery against my teeth like moldy cheese, and choked on a mouthful of milk. She pulled away but I held her tight, swallowed. When she was dry, I took my mouth away. There was milk in my lungs. I stifled the cough.
    “No idea where he might have gone?” I asked.
    “Gone?” She ground herself down on my hand.
    “Pitt.”
    “Something heavy,” she sighed into my shoulder.
    “Heavy.”
    “On his soul.”
    “You mean like guilt?”
    “What else would I mean?” She pushed me away, as though trying to control herself, then clutched at my back, clawed my scalp and dropped