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How To Be A Domestic Goddess
by Nicola
Rating: R
Spoilers: #3.13, 'After Six'
She sits at the kitchen table and drinks a cup of coffee. She stares for 15 minutes at the smeared, brown ring left on the surface after the coffee cup has shattered on the floor.
She phones home and listens to her mother talk at her for 25 minutes. She hangs up realizing she has not heard a word.
She bakes oatmeal cookies from a recipe she learned in 9th grade. She forgets to turn the oven on and they sit on the middle shelf for 30 minutes, cold and uncooked. She tries one anyway and it sticks to her teeth.
She watches cartoons on TV for 5 minutes before the noise and colours begin to give her a headache.
She washes a week's worth of dirty dishes in the sink. In pink rubber gloves, she scrubs diligently for 45 minutes. She stacks them in the drainer, and then restacks them. She restacks them a final time before tossing the whole lot on the floor.
She lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling. She bought a big, kitsch clock to hang on the wall soon after they were married. Today its ticking seems even louder to her ears; the comedy timer of a bomb clock. She closes her eyes and tries to fade into the memories laid beneath her; ghosts of caresses, embraces, smiles and soft laughter: the small moments, embroidered by careful deceit, that existed only in this room.
Everything is so perfect in their house. It's in a nice neighbourhood; close to the good schools, and their neighbours all have families. The interior is professionally decorated, with a few accent pieces that she picked out. She and Michael look happy in the pictures that hang on the walls.
Sark had left her in Istanbul two days ago. His tongue had curled lazily over her clit a final time, and as the heat and intensity — shuttered windows thrown open a low skyline blurring an orange sky — shimmered away her mind, he had slowly begun to kiss a trail up her body. He had whispered goodbye into her fiery, sunset-lit hair, and left her with a final long kiss on the lips and the taste of herself.
She'd spent 13 hours slowly dying of heat and shame; handcuffed to the brass bed frame and languishing in sweat and sex. The maid, startled but not shocked at the scene she found, had collected the keys from the chest of drawers and released her, receiving a bullet for her trouble.
She'd reached the airport without incident, but the clock had already begun to tick inside her chest. She did not fear a sniper or a bomb. Sark did not kill his friends; for them, he reserved pure destruction.
She is a snared rabbit now, caught in her own perfect trap of domestic bliss. The Covenant is ruined and she is exposed. A dossier to reveal her identity waits on a desk somewhere deep inside the CIA compound: a sharp intake of breath and her house of cards is fallen. She could run, of course, but Julian knows that she won't. This is her assignment and she needs to see it through.
She skates on the surface of sleep, slow circles in her mind through her hopes and fears. She dreams him home, and she can't help but smile as he appears at their bedroom's threshold.
"You must be tired from your trip," she murmurs. "Sit down. I'll fix you a drink. I'll make you dinner. We could rent and movie, see what's on TV. I could run out and buy you a newspaper. It's cold in here. Put on a sweater, I'll get you a blanket, some slippers. You must be so tired . . ."
He doesn't move, and nor can she.
"I don't know who you are," he says quietly.
"I'm your wife."
The thing that made her cry on her wedding day was how delighted her father was. Finally proud of his little girl. Gone was her restlessness of youth; the petulance and irresponsibility that had spun her axis through the best parts of Europe and the worst kinds of men. But now, to be married. A perfect man and a perfect home.
He smiles down at her from the wall, and frowns in the doorway. Sark didn't want to kill her, but he might have done anyway, had the necessity presented itself. Vaughn, she knows, would never kill her. But he wants to. She can feel his hands against her throat; sticky bruises as he listens to her heart slow. His knife in her face, cutting away the beauty that made him fall. Blood but no sex, and tears but no sweat, and she's still chained to the bed.
"You're not my wife," he says, and leaves.
March 2004
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