I had a knock knock joke all prepared for when we met with Birch and Aldo; this time at a park on the east side of town. The whole cloak and dagger realm tired me no end and I had to tell a joke before I went nuts; not really nuts, just sliding into a slightly discombobulated sense of unwellness.

And I did. I told my joke. They didn’t laugh. Those guys had no sense of humor. Ava handed them the notes we had taken from the party and they told us to forget everything and walked away.

Well! said Ava in a huffy voice.

They just wanted information from strangers who they thought could get it for them without anyone noticing. We were as useful as a chocolate wrapper.

I thought Birch was . . .

Ah ah ah. No cute comments allowed. No nothing. They said forget everything, remember?

For someone who remembers quite a lot that’s going to be hard.

For both of us.

And it was hard, because the thing about memory is the triggers. You can think you’ve forgotten something, but maybe a scent or event or sound or phrase . . . well I could go on and on. But that’s the thing. Memories might be dismissed, but they’re usually floating around somewhere in your brain. What they should have said is keep it a secret. That would’ve been a truer request. Still, both of us did. Not a word to a soul. It’s too bad Birch and Aldo didn’t honor their own advice. They remembered plenty, because it wasn’t the last we saw of them.

Anyway, that’s how we accidentally became NOCS. That one night turned into a year and then two of assignments slipped to us on scraps of paper or whispered during an innocent trip to the coffee shop, and every time – every time – we were promised was the last time. We lost something dear to both of us: some, not all, but some of our trust – in others and in ourselves. And we wanted it back. We’d become adept at little white lies, both telling them and identifying them. The first one was uncomfortable, the last one made us numb. That was the day we looked at each other with identical understandings. We figured out that our lives were becoming as expendable as the chocolate wrapper I mentioned earlier and that the near misses – starting with the semi that crossed the center line that first night – were just threats. Or maybe not. Maybe the people given harm and maim assignments were just as inept as others thought we were at being sophisticated. And we weren’t, you know. We would never be fancy folk because we didn’t care to be. We just wanted to be ourselves.

We were DONE. We made it clear in no uncertain terms that we would NOT be NOCS, we had never wanted in and we wanted out pronto and no one was going to decide that for us. We’d already decided it for ourselves, and any threats coming our way would be shared with the nearest barista. They tried to strong arm us like the first time (we were in a parking lot), but we were at a point where causing a ruckus was preferred to staying quiet and not attracting attention. We didn’t hear from them again.

Life is regaining some of its simple delight. Slowly. Knock knock jokes still don’t hold the same carefree abandon for me as they once did, although -c’mon – the one about the interrupting cow will never not be funny.

With some of the money that found its way to us during the last couple of years, we’ve begun taking a few classes learning classical antiquity; which looks like it’s going to take up the time Ava would have spent watching mindless T.V. Unlike some of our former forays, we haven’t had any scrapes or cuts, though eyestrain isn’t off the table yet. Some days when we grow tired of it, we play Rummy Roots, which helps our Greek and Latin and during which we are unspeakably unsophisticated. Ava’s begun carrying her mini backpack again – the orange and pink one with the poodle pin. And I couldn’t care less; because in the grand scheme of things, unhidden plain truth is better than a million sophisticated lies.

Image: metin-ozer-HlhgXw-1r8A-unsplash-scaled.jpg; dana-ward-6JffLQi_XqY-unsplash-scaled.jpg