The Blonde by Anna Godbersen

all her stays there, she had never seen it before, but she went ahead, opened the door, stepped inside.
    “Hello?”
    “N.J.,” he said. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
    “Yeah, well …” She brought the bourbon to her nose, just to smell it.
    “We must be careful on the phone now; you never know who is listening.”
    “Oh?” she replied disinterestedly.
    “How was your day, my dear? You sound tired.”
    “It’s over, Alexei. You can snuff me out or ruin my career or whatever it is you’ve been planning. Kennedy’s a dead end.”
    He took a breath. “Are you sure? What happened?”
    “I fucked him. No pictures, no proof, no information. No state secrets, no honey trap. It’s over. He’ll move on to the next blonde tomorrow, and I’ll be useless to you.”
    “Hardly, my dear. We were never after anything so pedestrian. And you forget: There’s no such thing as a next blonde after you.”
    Ignoring this, she swallowed hard and said: “If you have a heart, you’ll tell my dad how badly I wanted to meet him, and that I did my best, but it’s hard, when nobody’s ever really loved you, to have the confidence to do a thing right …” And there she stopped herself, for fear she might cry. She’d been putting it on a bit, but found herself moved by her own performance.
    “You made love,” Alexei went on, without acknowledging her outburst. “A little soon, perhaps, but not the end of the world. You must have talked first? Or afterward.”
    “Not really.” She squeezed her eyes shut and took a gulp of whiskey.“Just some nothing flirting at Mosey Moses’s, and then we agreed to meet down the road. We didn’t talk at all before—and then afterward, I think I offended him.”
    “How?”
    “I asked what it felt like to have a father.”
    “And?”
    “And he said it felt like never being good enough.” Suddenly her eyes were open and her heart skidded.
    On the other end of the wire, a low whistle. “He told you that?”
    “Yeah, well … I think it just slipped out.”
    “Good work, my dear.”
    “Huh?”
    “He’s a Kennedy. They are extremely clannish; they never talk about family with strangers. But he did with you.”
    “You mean, that’s good information? Information you can use?”
    “Very good.” He was speaking to her as gently as he had that first day at Schwab’s.
    “I’m done, then.” Wonder filled her chest. “I can meet my father soon?”
    A faint sound, as though Alexei were clucking his tongue. When he spoke again it was still gently, but this time in the way people are gentle when they break bad news. “Oh, no, my dear. You’re the girl Jack Kennedy will talk to. This is only the beginning. But for now just try to get some sleep, all right?”
    “But I’ll meet him soon?”
    “Kennedy?”
    “My father.”
    “Soon enough. But in the meantime, proceed slowly, as you would with any man. When you are in New York next we will go over some precautions, some rules about how you and I should contact each other. As for Jack, the best thing you can do now is forget him. Spying is not unlike seduction, which you understand perfectly—if you move too quickly, you ruin themystique. Always hold the thing your mark wants a little out of reach—a man is never so naked as when the thing he wants is just out of reach—and always let him come to you. Anyway, Jack will be most useful to us if he wins the presidency, and we must be careful that your affair builds slowly, not peter out before he reaches highest office. For now we must play the long game and be patient. Can you be patient, my dear?”
    What had she ever been but patient? She’d waited her whole life to meet her father, surely she could keep herself hard and cold a little longer. She was already hard and cold. She couldn’t feel her hands, but watched them put the phone back on its hook. Beyond a row of bushes she heard a girl laughing, and then a man calling after her, “Oh, baby, are you gonna get it!”