Rinsing

"Most of what we do now was perfectly legal not so long ago" Rudi was partial to expressing superfluous knowledge when he rolled his first fag. Once he has had a drink, he shuts up, gets alert, not much of how Rudi has made his living has been legal anytime lately. Maybe in Iraq it is legal.

"What Bella does is legal now. She does it for the Government" So once had I, but then that was a long legal time ago. I looked for Shelly looking at her wine, she looked up at Rudi, sideways, but she did not say a thing. Shelly is the only one of us who has done any significant time in prison and whether it was for something illegal outside of Amerika none of us, least of all Shelley would ever really know. only that the prosecutor was convincing in his manner. Rinsing is like that, legal here, not there, maybe so maybe not, we don't ask those kind of questions, can't afford to.

Was it clearer then? Maybe not, now I am in charge, then I did as instructed and we were not expected not did we want to ask questions. It was necessary to separate thing sin the mind, this was work, this is love, this is how to do the washing up. Women, it seems to me, are good at that, Bella, Shelley, the Author, which pretty much encompasses all the women I have known well enough to talk to. Watching Rude being pensive, Shelley twirling wine and letting a cigarette burn in her fingers, a rare, relaxed afternoon together for the three of us I recalled, with some astonishment the last job I had been on with the author: very compartment.

She came into the hide, said good morning, took of her jeans and blouse, put on the forensics and the surgical gloves. Picked the kit from the open wooden box, assembled it her self, checked every piece herself, checking the sites against her own clear vision measured against a pole we held up at her request. She took the brief, read once, but being a writer of plays it was already memorised, this checking is just a ritual, a calming. "Ready" said logistics lookout. She picked it up, aimed, one shot, then without a moment for breath or murmur or look dismantled, stripped off the forensics, pulled up her jeans and was gone out the tent. She was there less than four minutes. I watched her give a lecture in the British Council that evening since they say that even the coldest shooter can get traumatised but I saw no sign of that with her. Was it kind of legal? Sanctioned. Shelly laughed, she was sanctioned until she gave up her pants in exchange for ten years in orange.