Where's the passion?

The day was as clear as it could be. From the terrace of the tenth floor of the Equity Tower, one could see for miles and miles. Evan was standing there, in front of the glass, just millimeters away from a one hundred meter drop. But he wasn’t looking downward. He was looking across the park in front of the building and a little bit upwards. There was some sort of bird flying around, possibly after having spotted a delicious rat or something down between the trees. It was a majestic site.

 Evan didn’t move a muscle, as he looked on, mystified by the gracious movements of the bird. It was so agile and beautiful, only an event that could’ve been created by nature itself. Evan didn’t want to miss the moment for one second, as he knew it could end soon. And so it did: the bird suddenly dropped from the sky, flying downwards at top speed. It disappeared between the trees. Evan waited for several minutes, but the bird didn’t resurfaced. Maybe it had been successful. He wanted to believe that.

 Evan moved away from the glass and walked slowly towards his kitchen. Mind you, Evan had no clothes on: no socks, no underwear or shirt. Not even a towel or a baseball cap. He was naked as he always was at that time of day, which was past midday. The man was one of those people with so much money that they didn’t need to care about schedules or time in general. Besides, he loved to do his work and other commitments at night, when he felt most comfortable. During the day, he would rather sleep and eat.

 In the kitchen, Evan fixed himself a bowl of his favorite cereal. He poured some almond milk on it and then started eating it right there, just by the coffee machine. His empty cup was in the sink, as well as plates and other stuff from past days. Evan wasn’t a good cleaner and he preferred when he came back from work and everything had been cleaned and organized for him. But the lady that did that was sick and he did not want a stranger to come into his house just like that. He’d rather do it all himself.

 So after finishing his bowl of cereal, Evan did something he hadn’t done in a long while: he did the dishes and then checked his refrigerator for rotten vegetables or fruits or products past their expiration date. Nothing was out of order and he was able to get it all done in a matter of minutes. He wasn’t one for doing those sorts of things but the truth was that his work had begun to feel repetitive and boring to him. A change of pace would suit him right, as well as doing things he wasn’t used to do. The moment made him have several ideas, right on the spot.

 One might think he could’ve wanted to put on some clothes on before going ahead, but he didn’t. He decided to check every single drawer and closet in his two-story apartment and get everything he didn’t want to keep out of the house. He looked for some big garbage bags in the kitchen and then started on the living room. There wasn’t much there besides his bar, fully stocked at all times with the most expensive wines and spirits from around the world. However, he did find some underwear that wasn’t his. He just smiled and moved on.

 There were lots of drawers in his studio. He threw away a bunch of office papers that he wasn’t going to use anymore and several other notes and small objects he just hated. There were things inherited from his grandparents and parents and he really despised some of them. There was this bowl of marble balls that was supposed to be an ornament but it had always made him crazy because it reminded him of how strict his father was. When he wanted to use the marbles to play, his father would practically yell at him.

 There was never real violence on his house. After all, he didn’t really have a relationship that strong with his parents, he didn’t even see them enough during a whole year. It was rather sad but he always smiled telling the story of how he learned his parents birthday dates when he was about to enter college. The funny part, according to him, was the fact the he learned those facts by accident and not because they wanted him to know. It was like learning the birthday date of a beloved movie star. A far away star.

 He filled a whole garbage bag in the studio before moving on to his downstairs bathroom. There was not a lot there, only some old flu medicine and ointments he used sometimes when he was sick. It was funny that he had all of that there, as he would never use any of that. His parents only intervened in his life when health was an issue, probably because they knew that if he died, there would be no heir of blood running the company. As if it mattered, but it seemed important enough to them.

 After so many years, he still did things to keep them happy. He would do parties in his apartment with various friends of his family and the company, even if most of those people barely knew his name. He treated old friends of his parents and grandparents as if they were elders of great wisdom, but deep inside he knew there was no way he could really trust any of them. They were all around because of the money. Same happened with his so-called friends, vultures flying around him waiting for something to fall on their lap, a job or some money or compensation.

 In his bedroom, he threw away various pieces of clothing. Being naked, he smiled and thought of the whole situation as ridiculous. But then, he realized it wasn’t an accident that he liked being naked around his home so much. Back when he was young, Evan had been thought that the human body was practically something to be ashamed of. It was only during his years in college when he learned that shouldn’t be the case, when he started to explore his body and those of others.

 He remembered wearing ties every single day, not only to school but also in the house and to all formal events to which his parents were invited to, and there were a lot of those. His former house was one of the gigantic mansions where you might imagine a caped crusader living in. But nothing of the sort happened there. He did imagined to be an orphan many times in his life, but he was reminded many times that he did have parents and that it was important that he was their son.

 Evan’s future had always been in the company. He had no control of his work life and, to be honest, he didn’t want control over that. In college, he soon discovered he wasn’t really interested in something in particular. He liked numbers and sometimes watching movies and also music. But would have never thought of been an accountant, becoming a filmmaker or learn to play any kind of instrument. He had no passion for any of that. The only thing that ignited passion in his heart was his private life.

 He lived to invite random people to his house. He met them at galas or bars or even cellphone apps. Sometimes he would say how much money he had and other times he would create some sort of story, like the one where he was a caretaker for some rich people and how they paid him the bare minimum to take care of their houses as they sailed through the Caribbean. And people bought all those lies because they wanted and also because Evan was a very good liar.

 He got four garbage bags filled to the top. He took them all himself to the deposit downstairs, wearing a hoodie and some gym pants. As he put on the bags on a large container, he saw a picture escape one of the bags and fall softly, like a leaf, on the floor.

 Evan picked it up and saw his own face looking at him. It was a very old picture, from his early youth. He was maybe five or seven years old. And he was smiling. He seemed so happy and eager, so full of life. Evan wondered what had happened to that little boy, to his spark.

The ninja (Part 2)

  The ninja covered his face again, being able to stand up after being smashed against the ground. Kevin was still in shock, almost paralyzed, very close to were he had stood when that familiar face had looked at him with the eye that had gazed upon his so many times in the past. The ninja did not stay to chat; he was agile enough to open the wind and exit through there. How did he not fall to his death? Kevin had no idea. To be honest, he wasn’t even thinking of that.

 That night, he wasn’t able to sleep. He decided to go to work early and check on the records again for the incident that had taken the life of his husband almost two years ago. As he drove to work in the middle of the night, he remembered that day clearly. They had been fighting a lot, the reason been that Paul wanted to have more missions on his own. He didn’t want to be paired up with his husband every single time. Kevin took this the wrong way.

 For a week, the tension in their home had been very high. They would only spoke to each other if they had to, avoiding each other completely at work. However, they were assigned to the same mission once again and Paul wasn’t up to complaining about it with his superiors. He knew it wasn’t a good way to try to start his own thing as an agent so, in order to win everybody’s trust as a capable guy, he accepted the mission without asking any questions.

 It was a very straightforward mission: they had to infiltrate a very secure compound where a very wealthy businessman kept his private documents. In them, he supposedly had proof of the existence of several chemical and biological weapons that had been sold illegally to countries that wouldn’t know how to manage any of that. Their mission was only to copy the documents and come out as soon as possible.

 Entering the compound was very simple. The three agents they had sent were able to step in undetected, all very well trained in martial arts and everything needed in order not to make noise or activate any of the alarms of the place. They were able to reach the library, where the documents were being kept. It was Paul who took the pictures of what they needed and finished just when Kevin stepped in the wrong direction and activated an alarm.

 They had to knockout several of the businessman’s thugs, which was easy at the beginning. But on their way out, one of them was able to take hold of Paul and Kevin was sure he had heard the snapping of his neck and his body falling to the ground. He was sure he had seen his body hit the ground just as his body went numb and the other agent had to help him run faster.

 The information was lost that day. However, they were able to retrieve all of it months later, in a raid the special forces of the state had been authorized to do in the compound. Of course, they had no opposition of any kind. They didn’t find any bodies on the premises or recently dug areas. Even like that, it was very unlikely that Paul had survived that. The guy that grabbed him was taller and bigger in every sense, his hands being larger than Paul’s face. He had to be dead, that’s what Kevin had to convince himself to believe

 There was a funeral for Paul and everyone in the agency attended. Kevin got to meet his parents, which he had never met before. He didn’t get close to share his grief, instead looking from afar and realizing that, despite having gotten married in secret, they still didn’t know a lo about each other. The fact that he had no idea what Paul’s mom looked like before the funeral made him feel awful.

 And that was two years ago. As he drove into the office building, he realized he had no idea what route he had chose to get there. He had barely paid attention to the road and he felt bad for that for a second, before returning to those days once again, before Paul disappeared and they were happy, back when they had decided that they wanted to live together forever and ever.

 It had been a very easy thing to decide. They had been dating for a little more than a year after the relationship had started in the strangest of ways: not four months before commencing their love story, Kevin had finished another one with a former girlfriend with which he had been engaged to be married. He decided to call off the wedding when he realized he couldn’t deny that he felt different inside and needed to process that. Beside, work had been hard, as usual.

 Paul had been working with them for a while, not too long. He barely knew him well and the truth was they didn’t really like each other. Paul saw Kevin as the typical guy that thinks he’s better than everyone else at anything, form his physical appearance to anything he could do with his body and his mind. And Kevin thought Paul was a very smug guy, never really accepting his mistakes or accepting his obvious flaws.

 It was on a mission that took several months to complete, where Paul had saved Kevin from a bomb, practically using himself as a shield in order to protect his partner. From then on, they gained a certain respect for each other that enabled them to form a relationship that grew to be a very stable friendship. But even then, they felt something was off with all of it.

 At the same time, Kevin began his problems with his girlfriend. They got worse as the date of their wedding got near and, after another intense mission where he and Paul single handedly completed the task at hand; he realized she was not what he wanted from life. So he cancelled the engagement and tried to think about everything for a while. Just two weeks after that, he kissed Paul for the first time. And another two weeks after, they had sex. It was then when Kevin realized that he had been very close to making a very big mistake.

 The guard at the office building recognized him and he was able to enter without any problem. Outside, the first glimmer of the new day could be seen very far into the horizon. As he sat in his office, he looked for the files of their last mission and checked every single paper the Special Forces had submitted about their mission there, when the whole place had been swept.

He couldn’t understand what was missing, what had happened. Paul was dead; he had heard his neck snap. He was sure of it. He had been convincing himself of that for years. But now he was alive. Even with that scar on his face and those wild eyes,  it was still him beneath that ninja outfit. He looked in the computer again and discovered that a similar ninja vigilante had been reported before, in a couple of missions by the agency. It seemed he was very skilled and worked both against and with them.

 It was difficult for Kevin not to think about the guy with whom he had slept so many times, kissed so often and felt so close during so many nights. During their life together, they had slept in the nude and Kevin had learned to love to wake up and feel Paul just by his side. He would often hug him tight and kissed him softly. It was difficult to understand why and how he loved him so much but he did. Maybe that’s why it was so hard to see him alive.

 A stack of papers fell from a nearby table. Kevin woke up from his daydreaming and looked in all directions. The papers had been stable moments before and there was no window opened. He got near it in order to check out the exterior but they were too high above the ground. He knew it was stupid to be worried. He decided to grab something to drink from a machine, unaware that the picture he kept there of the two of them had been taken away.

 In the rooftop, Paul removed the cover over his face, revealing his very pale skin and the scar across the side. He looked at the picture, without any particular expression. He seemed to be on the edge of tears for a moment but then he threw the picture from the rooftop and put on his face cover again. The shadow of a soul that had been visible for a moment, was not there anymore.

A Woman

   She knew she looked good. Better than that. She looked perfect, sexy and very attractive in any way possible. She had tried several bikinis earlier to know which one would make her look better in that deck chair she was going to be laying in. She finally went with one with lots of colors that looked kind of small on hair. It was just an optical illusion but it worked just as she had hoped. When she descended to the swimming pool area, at least five men turned their heads towards her. That was the proof she needed.

 She chose a deck chair in the middle of the area and just took off her sandals and purse and lay there for a few minutes. Then, trying to seem distracted or simply too sexy to care, she grabbed her purse and took out a small yellow bottle. She applied that sunscreen all over her body, slowly and touching very single centimeter she could reach. She was sure that man men were looking at her doing what she was doing and she tried not to think of them.

 When she finished, after what appeared to be an eternity, she put the bottle away. However, she grabbed another one from the purse, a brown one that was a special oily solution to get tanned faster. She sprayed it all over and spent even more time with it. She couldn’t really look at all the guy watching her but she knew they were there, almost salivating at the though of her just being there. When she was done, she lay done in a perfect pose and just tried to enjoy the sun.

 Minutes later, a waiter from the bar came to her and told her someone had sent her a drink. She covered her eyes and asked who had sent what. The waiter pointed to a man in the bar area, not far from there. He was very hairy and had only his trunks on. He wasn’t very handsome but he wasn’t an ugly man either. But the thing was, it wasn’t the one she was hoping for. Anyway, she accepted the drink and waived at the man.

 The drink was really delicious, filled with fruit juice and little alcohol. She drank almost half of it because of the sun but then she saw someone else coming her way, and it wasn’t a waiter. It was a very tall individual. He was visibly not from around there, very tall and with a well taken care of body. He was very sexy. But he wasn’t the guy she was hoping for. Not him or the guy in the bar.

 When he got to her, the tall guy complimented her and asked her if she could be invited to a drink and she said that it could happen but that she wasn’t interested in knowing anyone at the moment. The man felt visibly sad when she said that but he ordered another drink for her anyway. It was a piña colada, which she enjoyed a lot. And she enjoyed even more when he walked away, a bit annoyed.

 Apparently her work at the pool wasn’t good enough for the man she wanted. She knew his room had a view towards the pool area and she also knew that he had spent the last few days in that same place, swimming a bit or drinking with some of his buddies. She needed him to look at her for a while and then she would have him under him spell or at least that was the idea.  She decided to sit down on her chair and only cover her face with the hat she had brought from her room.

 Her legs were positioned in such a way; she knew it was too irresistible not to, at least, say something. She had very long logs and very beautiful hair that she had dyed blonde just before arriving at the hotel. She had to do it several times until she was satisfied with the results. She wanted to look as sexy as she could and attention would be guaranteed if she looked different from what men would expect.

 So her skin was pretty tanned but she had a long head of blonde hair arranged in a straight ponytail. She had tried several ways to put her hair and she had decided on the ponytail because it was simply and it had worked for her many times before. She needed to lure that guy into the people, into her hands, and the only way to do it was to use every single asset she had on her body.

 She worked out daily. Sometimes it was running and some other it was lifting light weights and dancing and using all the machines in the gym she went too. She was very dedicated and could focus on her body every single moment she was in there and it showed. No one told her what to do or how to do it, she had learned how to do a good routine by doing stuff every single day since had been the current person she was.

 Taken care of herself was also very interesting. She got to do a series of diets and it was interesting how many things she didn’t know about eating properly or even about what things she could eat besides what she had eaten all of her life. Changing those habits was very important for the new her and she had to be very careful with the things she brought to eat and drink. She had forbid herself from drinking but she had ignored that rule in the pool because she needed to succeed.

 She changed the position of her legs and looked around. No sign of the man and she was getting inpatient. She grabbed her phone and browsed through the pictures there. She had one of the guys she wanted: it had been taken during breakfast the day before. He hadn’t even noticed her right then but it was only because she hadn’t tried her best to look great. But now, things were different. He couldn’t resist.

 When she heard a group of men laughing, she instantly moved her head towards them. They were two guys; two jocks typed playing cards in a table not very far. They were too young to be his buddies. She looked away exactly when she felt they were going to look at her. And when they did, it was almost as if she could feel her eyes on her bodies. It was quite uncomfortable but she just pretended not to have seen them. She had her sunglasses on and that could help her deflect some unwanted attention.

 But apparently, not well enough. One of the young men came towards her and just stood there like a lamp, blocking her sunlight. She knew she couldn’t ignore him so she faked a smile and asked him to move because of the sun. It was obvious he hadn’t even realized what he was doing. He jumped to the side as if he had being burned or something and kept smiling towards her.

 Finally, he told her she was a pretty lady that needed a man to take care of her. She only told him he was sweet but that she was a bit busy with her tanning right now. The jock appeared to understand that it was a very important thing, so he apologized and vowed to come back in a few moments when she would be less busy. He moved away still looking at her, almost tripping into the pool. She would have laughed but not in that moment.

 Because right then, she saw him. He was walking slowly by the other side of the pool. He wasn’t very tall and his skin was very white for a person that had been in that hotel for at least three days. His body wasn’t the best one on the area but that wasn’t what she was after. She regained her best pose and moved her legs and arms as naturally as she cool. Through her sunglasses, she saw him taking a chair across her.

 It was obvious he had noticed her. Their game lasted a few more minutes, with her doing all the poses she knew and him just trying not to look. But he finally did and realized they couldn’t avoid each other anymore. They couldn’t ignore what they knew. So he walked to the other side of the pool, close to her. And she sat down with her legs down in the deck chair, not trying to be sexy anymore.

 The man sat by her and told her the weather was nice. She moved her legs aside, putting them near his legs. She got a bit closer and said: “It could get nicer”. She also said something else to his ear, which made him smile. They both stood up and walked away together from the pool. She had achieved her goal. Agent 37 was closer than ever to her objective and nothing was going to stop her.