Dinner is a relatively quiet affair. I ask Pie if she likes it, she says it’s fine and promptly ignores me for the rest of the meal. Normally I wouldn’t mind, I’m not one to force my presence on anyone, but it’s jarring, the flips in how she treats me. Even if my partner was someone who just liked me as a friend, it would be better. Easier. But no, I’m stuck with someone who hates me one second and is hanging off me the next.

‘By the way, what’s out story?’

‘Huh?’ Pie looks up from where she’s sitting, as far away from me as physically possible in the small kitchen. I try not to sigh.

‘You know, like how we met, what we did on our first date, that stuff. All the kinds of things we’ll be asked about at the dinner tomorrow.’

Pie chews thoughtfully for a moment, then nods. ‘Yeah, we probably should talk about that.’

‘What if we… met… at some play? Like we messed up the seats, I sat in yours accidentally or something.’

‘What was the play about?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, resting my chin on my hands, and grinning at her, ‘I was too busy looking at the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.’

For a moment the corner of twitches, like she’s going to smile, but then she looks down at her food. ‘Cheesy.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘And then after the play we swapped phone numbers and met for lunch soon after, and the rest is history, as they say.’

‘That sounds good to me.’

‘How did you propose?’

‘Huh? I proposed?’

‘Yeah obviously,’ she scoffs. ‘This has to be believable, doesn’t it?’

‘Alright, alright. Um, I told you we were going to see another play, except this one was staged outside. And I took you to a park. There were flowers all over the ground, and lanterns and you said yes before I could even ask.’ Pie doesn’t say anything for a moment. ‘Is that ok? Too much?’ I grin a little sheepishly. ‘Sorry. I get carried away with this stuff.’

She shakes her head, looking preoccupied. ‘No, that sounds fine.’

‘Oh good. Wait, do you think we need pictures?’

‘You mean of our engagement?’

‘No, the wedding.’

‘We can say you accidentally forgot all the cameras, so we don’t have any.’

‘Why’s it my fault?’

‘Because we need a reason we don’t have any photos, and I wouldn’t forget something like that.’ The expression on Pie’s face is positively dangerous, as though she’s imagining her real husband – in the future – forgetting the wedding photos.

‘Ok. Is that all?’

‘Those are all the important details. If anything else comes up, I’m sure it’ll be easy to just make it up as we go.’

‘So.’ I lean back in my chair. ‘How was your first day being my wife?’

Pie glares at me. ‘How do you think?’

‘I’m sure it could have been worse.’

‘How?’

‘I could be…’ I pause, then shrug. ‘Well, I’m sure it could be worse somehow. We could be over in Russia or wherever 73 is now, at least it isn’t too cold here.’

Pie glances at me. ‘You know 73?’

‘Yes. Why?’

She smirks at me. ‘He’s my real fiancé.’

I’m left speechless, and watch in silence as she gathers the bowls and puts them in the basin.

‘Hey,’ Pie says, finally.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m going to bed.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

She turns and walks away, leaving me alone at the dining table. A mosquito buzzes somewhere in the room and I remain seated until I can’t hear her moving around anymore. When I finally make my way upstairs, Pie’s already asleep. In the middle of the bed is a wall of pillows, separating our two bodies.

Pie really does hate me.

+

Jane comes over again the afternoon before her dinner party. I answer the door, and she beams at me, reaching in for a hug.

‘Kim! Hi!’

‘Hi!’ I hug back, a little confused. She pulls away, and looks into the house. ‘Where’s Pie?’

‘Eating lunch.’

‘Ah, sorry! Did I interrupt?’

‘Nah, I’d finished. Anyway, what can we do for you?’

‘I just came over to tell you about tonight’s dinner. It should be really good, only a few people are coming. It starts at six thirty.’

‘Ok. Do we have any kind of dress code or something? Is it fancy?’

Jane shakes her head. ‘Casual. But you can wear something fancy if you want, I’m sure we’d all love to see you in it,’ and she winks. I smile.

‘Maybe not today.’

‘Kim,’ Pie calls from the kitchen, ‘who is it?’

‘Jane,’ I call back over my shoulder. Pie’s head appears, poking out of the kitchen. She waves at Jane, who waves back.

‘Hi Jane! Sorry, I was just eating.’

‘That’s ok, Kim told me.’

‘We’re so excited for the dinner party, tonight! I can’t wait to meet everyone!’

‘And I know everyone is excited to meet you too,’ Jane says. ‘I should go, I have to prepare for tonight, but I’ll see you later!’

She gives me another hug, and leaves.

‘What’d she say?’ Pie asks, after I close the door. She’s leaning against the kitchen doorframe and looks vaguely irritated.

‘She just said that it isn’t going to be too fancy or anything, so dress casually, and it starts at six thirty.’

Pie checks her watch. ‘That’s four hours away.’

I fill my cheeks with air and then blow it out slowly. ‘This is the strangest assignment I’ve ever been sent on.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, I’ve never done anything where I could just… sit around like this, I guess. I’ve always been pretty much on my feet.’

I look around, expecting to see Pie ignoring me or something. But she isn’t. She’s still standing in the doorway with her arms folded. ‘So you’ve never done surveillance before?’

‘I mean I’ve had missions where there was partial surveillance but that was never the whole purpose of it, you know?’

‘Yeah.’ Pie moves forward, for a second I think she’s going to turn left and walk up the stairs but instead she walks towards the couch and sits down, looking up at me. ‘I’ve actually only done surveillance missions before. Except… for one. But apart from that, they’ve all been like this.’

‘Really?’ Part of me wants to join her on the couch, but in all honesty I don’t know if she’d allow that. She might consider it too close and leave, breaking whatever this truce is. ‘Do you enjoy them?’

She presses a finger to her chin, frowning. ‘I don’t know if enjoy is the right word. They can be super boring, but when I get the information I need and the person is caught or taken away or whatever it is, it’s satisfying. And it can be fun playing with the different covers they give you.’

‘What other covers have you had?’ I didn’t know much about the missions other agents got sent on. The only other person from the agency I really spoke to was Yam, and she’s worked at headquarters for almost her whole time with the agency. Her first field mission started today.

‘Mmm… I had to be a very wealthy widow once. That was a lot of fun.’

‘I’ll bet. Did you live in a mansion?’

Pie nods. ‘But it was really big. It got a bit lonely after a while. And another one, I was a librarian.’ She looks over at me, and her face is openly curious. ‘What about you? What have your missions been like?’

‘Once I had to go to Siberia because this man had kidnapped someone and was planning to use them to gain access to a big weapons cache.’ It was cold there, cold and white and unearthly. That had been one of my favourite missions. It only lasted three days. ‘And once they sent me to Australia to raid an organization that was feeding information to G.O.L.F. That was the mission where I think it really occurred to me how dangerous G.O.L.F. was. They killed a lot of innocent people.’

‘I heard about that one,’ Pie says, her eyebrows rising.

‘I was there when Agent 24 died.’ I pinch the bridge of my nose, for a moment I can remember – for a moment I’m back in the cloying heat with Agent 24 in my arms, her face lost to my memory but still vivid is the blood on the ground, blood in my hair, blood –

‘Kim?’ Pie is saying. She’s moved closer to me, looking up at me.

‘Ah, yeah. Sorry.’

‘What happened?’

‘Just… remembering.’ I swallow, my throat feels dry and cracked. ‘Agent 24 was the first person I saw die. From our side.’

‘Oh.’ Pie’s voice is low. I glance over at her. She’s wearing an expression I haven’t seen before on her, frowning at the ground, her lip caught in her teeth. ‘You can still remember that?’

‘Yeah. It’s ok though,’ I say quickly. ‘That was a long time ago. One of the first missions I went on. I just – haven’t thought about it for a while.’

‘I didn’t mean to bring up something painful.’

‘You didn’t really. It just caught me by surprise.’ I smile at Pie. ‘Really. It’s ok.’

She nods, not meeting my eyes. There’s a pause. For some reason Pie still looks troubled, and it’s making me uneasy. Quickly I sit down on the couch beside her and pick up the television remote.

‘Do you want to see if there’s anything good on?’

Pie nods.

+

‘Pie, are you nearly ready?’ I call. The clock on the wall is nearing quarter past six, and being late would be especially embarrassing considering how close we live to Jane. ‘Pie?’ I grasp the banister and move up the stairs. The bedroom door is open a crack. I lean over to knock on it when I hear Pie’s voice.

‘I can’t do it,’ she says. Her voice is stiff, brittle, she sounds like she’s halfway between fury and – something else. ‘I can’t do it! Why didn’t you tell me?’

She’s on the phone. I turn to creep back down the stairs when Pie cries out, ‘I can’t work with her! I can’t – send someone else. I don’t care. Send someone else. I can’t – no –’

In the pit of my stomach I can feel something curdle, leaving a heavy weight. Pie makes a final exclamation and then I hear footsteps. She pulls the door open with unnecessary force and freezes at the sight of me.

‘Kim –’

I spin on my heel and walk back down the stairs, not looking at Pie. ‘Come on. We don’t want to be late.’

By the time we reach Jane’s house there are already three other people sitting in her front room. It’s a spacious, airy house with only one floor and plenty of pale blue walls and plants. It smells of cooking and some kind of perfume that clings to the corners of the rooms. Jane approaches us, wine glass in hand, and hugs me for the third time that day.

‘I’m so glad you could make it!’ she says, relinquishing me and beaming at Pie. ‘Welcome! You look lovely!’

‘She does, doesn’t she?’ I say, determined to make up for my mishap the other day of forgetting to mention my wife. It’s true though. Neither of us dressed up as per request but Pie is evidently the kind of person who can make anything look wonderful. Pie links her arm with me and smiles up at me. I smile back.

‘Thank you for inviting us,’ Pie says. Jane waves her away.

‘Thank you for coming! Here, come through and I’ll introduce you to everyone.’

She takes me by the hand and I in turn take Pie’s hand, and we walk through to where the others guests have gathered. They’re all men, two of whom are sitting holding hands, speaking to the third.

‘Everyone, this is Kim and Pie. They just moved next door.’

Pie and I greet the others; they smile back at us. One of them, the one sitting closest to the door, let’s go of his partner’s hand and gets to his feet. He’s quite short, with an easy smirk and very well-shaped fingernails.

‘I’m Puey,’ he says. ‘And that,’ he points over his shoulder, ‘is the love of my life.’

The ‘love of his life,’ blushes slightly, nodding at both of us. The other guest, a tall man in a suit, waves at us. ‘I’m Mike,’ he says. ‘I live just down the street.’