The M.I.L.F. Man

Rae

I didn't want to quit and leave Kat hanging, but I was totally over EE after that pow wow. I could not give myself, however mindlessly or even platonically, to anyone else--even Richard would have to go.

Of course, Richard had a way of re-inventing "us" in such surprising ways. In fact, we'd begun to just chat from time to time. Deep and sometimes frightening conversations, mostly about his former lives. They haunted him so...

What I wanted most, though, was to broach the subject of immigration with my actual father, Sinjon, who had dealt with all the intricacies—and frustration—of immigration laws for so many years.

My final decision was an innocuous text:

Got into an argument about the 'marrying for a visa' script a student friend is writing. If a woman married for love but moved out after discovering her husband had cheated, she'd be in danger of being deported, correct?

I knew he'd respond because it physically pains him when films oversimplify legalities in ways that might actually do harm. I received some links in return quite quickly, followed, predictably I suppose, by:

Been a while. A bit worried, to be honest...

Which was almost too quickly followed by a message from my sister Clemence:

This 'Asking for a friend thing.' Interesting...

Which gave me slight pause solely because I knew she'd probably heard about the "I've met someone" conversation I'd had with Ma Mere. And Ma Soeur's greatest joy in life was inventing or sussing out possible intrigues or other complications in the lives of her siblings—most especially moi.

She's almost as bored with life as I'd been—angrier about it than I was, though. Adulting, for her, was a huge disappointment. Our wealth, you see, meant there was no intrinsic "need" for us to do anything in particular.

A few generations removed from the wars and things that compelled my father to "active duty," I'd taken to wandering, aimlessly, in the hope that I'd crash into something worth living for eventually. And I had, finally. Or so it seemed.

She, at eight years my senior, hadn't collided with anything or anyone the least bit interesting yet and was tiring of the endless cycle of meaningless social obligations that come with our kind of money.

She handled her anger by rushing from a restaurant mid meal or leaping out of bed just as the latest lover gave her that telling touch or flying off to some odd destination without word to anyone. Until she also married without word to anyone, about a year before I met Cici.

Looked something like love. But she'd announced recently that there would be no children, as a prelude, I feared, to announcing that there would be no marriage, either, soon.

So to discover a complication of such magnitude looming on my horizon would have given her something to fill the void perhaps. She loved to bat wounded things around like a cat, that one.

I was waiting for that shoe to drop when Kat rang and blurted out a breathless, "Listen, I just cleared your schedule. This one did the Oscar, Emmy, Golden Globes hat trick this year, Chastain--how fast can you pack?"

"What in the—"

"Look, I'm not kidding. Wheels up in, say...two hours?"

My jaw dropped when I found out whose "wheels" we were talking about. It was truly a "make or break" for our branch--I even got a call from Patti about it. Commiserating with me about Cici, bless her, but also warning me that there would be corporate consternation if I balked.