James Hudson wasn’t sure why  he attracted the attention of the woman in the smart business suit and mirrored sunglasses. What was it that distinguished him from the other men at the Quilters Guild? Perhaps the woman noticed how James closely watched and listened to everything going on at the meeting, even the most mundane moments.

Of course, James spotted the woman in the suit as soon the stranger had slipped into the back of the room. James managed to keep an eye on the stranger while continuing to listen to Hank Gilmer’s lecture on Amish quilt patterns, just the sort of skill a spy-recruiter for the government would be seeking. No one else seemed to even notice the woman who had entered the room full of men, sitting in the back rows of seats, her arms folded, a briefcase on her lap. Her hair is short and black, James thought. Her shoes are shiny, and she wears sunglasses indoors. James had seen the type in movies, but the woman’s appearance at the Quilters Guild meeting was unexpected. Something told James the woman had come to speak with him. He felt a twinge of excitement. He excused himself, saying he needed to use the washroom, and was not the least bit surprised when the woman in sunglasses followed him into the lobby. He wondered how the woman would initiate contact with him. It would seem untoward for a woman who hides her eyes behind mirrored lenses to suddenly strike up a conversation with a member of the Quilters Guild, James thought.

The woman veered toward James and, while facing slightly away from him, extended her hand and passed him a small slip of white paper, as if it were the sort of thing that always happened in the lobby outside Quilters Guild meetings. The woman gave James the paper in such a smooth motion that she didn’t even need to pause in her strides. As soon as James had the piece of paper in his possession, the woman continued on out of the lobby, out into the parking lot, where she disappeared among the bright glares of sunlight reflecting off cars. James didn’t feel safe reading the piece of paper until he was in the bathroom, in a stall with the door shut securely.

The slip of paper looked exactly like a fortune from a Chinese cookie, with the words printed in blue ink: "Your first assignment is to report on the Kilroys."

He tore the paper into eight pieces and flushed them away. The Kilroys. I should have known. There was always something... untoward about them. The paper had revealed nothing about the woman in sunglasses: who she was, which governmental agency she worked for, how to contact her with the information he would retrieve. But James was certain it would all become clear. He tried hard to conceal his excitement as he returned to his seat to hear the remainder of the lecture.

The reports he took  in his small spiral-bound notebook were meticulous. "Mrs. Kilroy," he noted, "appears to have three pairs of slacks: one gray, one black and one navy blue. She wears them in that succession every three days." He paused to admire his work. He had chosen those words carefully. In that succession. He smiled, but wondered if he were being a bit harsh on Mrs. Kilroy. Perhaps she had several identical pairs of pants. He considered whether he should make a note about this possibility in his report, but he decided it would be unnecessary. I’ll leave that sort of thing up to the analysts, he thought. I am merely collecting field data.

Now that Mrs. Kilroy had left for work, James trained his binoculars toward the Kilroys’ kitchen window. What was Mr. Kilroy up to? James caught vague glimpses of his neighbor moving in the kitchen in his apron, but he couldn’t be sure if Mr. Kilroy was washing, cooking or doing something else. Nevertheless, James thought it might be important to document the man’s whereabouts at this exact moment. He checked his watch and wrote: "9:02 a.m., Tuesday, Sept. 30 — Mr. K. in kitchen; performing undetermined tasks." James held the bottom of his pen against his chin, thinking that he could have phrased that entry better. He thought he should have written: Mr. K. seen moving about in kitchen. That would have been more precise and accurate. But he did not want to desecrate the page by scratching out his words, so he left it the way it was. He looked into the binoculars again.

James found another slip of paper  resembling a fortune-cookie fortune stuck to the inside of a kitchen cabinet. Very clever, he thought. It’s in a cabinet where my wife never looks, the one with all of the cleaning supplies. He peeled off the paper, noticing that it was stuck to the wood with an adhesive substance similar to that used in Post-It Notes. The blue letters on the paper instructed him to leave his espionage report under a flower pot on the back porch. He was slightly disappointed, having hoped he would have another chance to see the woman in sunglasses. He wondered when she had been in the house.

James told his wife  he planned to run over to the Kilroys’. Evelyn looked up from her magazine. "The Kilroys? Why?"

"Oh, nothing special," he said. "I just thought I’d stop by and see how they’re doing."

"OK. Tell Gladys I’ll get that, that — that thing back to her in a couple of days." She vaguely pointed in the direction of the garage, as if that would make it clear to James precisely what she was talking about.

"All right," he said, wondering, What thing? He thought he should make a note about this in his reports.
  

Ed Kilroy commented  on how much he liked James’ perfume and then he poured cups of coffee for everyone. His wife struck a wooden match against the skin behind her ear and lit a cigar. Her left arm was stretched out across the back of the sofa.

"So, James," Gladys Kilroy said. "It’s not that I’m in any rush, but is Evelyn done with my, uh, you know...?"

James anxiously waited for her to finish the sentence, but when it became obvious she wouldn’t, James said, "She said she’ll be done with your thing in a few days. I think she’s got it out in the garage."

Gladys exhaled a cloud of bluish-gray smoke. "I’d hope so. Where else would she keep it?" She coughed. James couldn’t tell if Gladys was upset that Evelyn still had whatever it was she had borrowed. Gladys’ expression was noncommittal. James was already memorizing the words he would use to describe this scene in his reports as soon as he got back to his own house. He tried to take in as much detail as he could without making it obvious that he was spying. He wondered if the woman in sunglasses would want to know about the Kilroys’ interior-decorating scheme or what magazines they subscribed to. There’s so much information to gather here, he thought as he silently read the words on the employee-of-the-month plaque Gladys Kilroy had received from the Internal Paper Products Corporation.

James began to question  his initially eager acceptance of the woman in sunglasses as a spy for the government. Who’s to say she’s not on the other side? he thought, wondering exactly what the other side was, anyhow. One evening, while he was placing recently cleaned pots and pans back into the cupboards and Evelyn was looking for something in the refrigerator, he startled her with the question: "Who’s our enemy now?"

"What?" she said, only turning halfway toward him, keeping her other eye trained on the shelves of the refrigerator.

"I mean, the United States. Now that Russia is — well, it’s Russia now, right? So who’s our enemy?"

"How should I know? Iraq, I guess, or Korea or something." She grabbed a beer and, without looking at him, said, "I’m going out into the garage to try out Kilroy’s thing."

As James sat down to write his latest report, he felt a slight sense of betrayal toward his wife, but it was overcome by the duty he felt to report the truth.

"I have reason to believe my wife, Evelyn Hudson, is in cahoots with Gladys Kilroy. She has made several references to a ‘thing’ that she borrowed from Gladys, which she keeps in our garage. Gladys also referred to the object without saying exactly what it is. Evelyn seems suspicious about my espionage efforts. I know my orders were to spy on the Kilroys, but I’ve decided I should broaden the probe to include my wife, specifically her activities related to the ‘thing’ in the garage. My first line of action was to determine exactly what this ‘thing’ is. I went to the garage."

An inner tube, power tools, little transparent plastic boxes of nails and screws, a discarded radio alarm clock, scraps of wood, plastic cans of motor oil — everything that was in the garage seemed to belong there, as far as James could tell. He felt that it was unlikely Gladys Kilroy had loaned his wife any of the junk that had accumulated along the walls and shelves of the garage. Perhaps one of the power tools. He looked at all of them, looking for one that appeared unfamiliar. They all appeared unfamiliar. James rarely even ventured into the garage, where Evelyn spent so many hours working with the tools. He was afraid of getting grime onto his blouse. He wondered what else might the thing be. He picked up a six-year-old copy of Popular Mechanics from a shelf and blew off the dust.

That night, James was not particularly responsive as his wife reached across the bed and stretched her fingers down into his panties, caressing him. James kept thinking about the thing Evelyn had borrowed from Mrs. Kilroy. He tried to work up the courage to ask Evelyn what it was, but instead he let her pull his body tightly against hers.

James believed the woman in mirrored sunglasses would be disappointed, but he included his resignation with his next espionage report.

"I am sorry to let you down, but the pressure of this work is too much for me," he wrote. "I am afraid it is straining relations between my wife and myself. I am beginning to fear I will never discover what the thing in the garage is, and it troubles me greatly. I wish you the best of luck in your continuing efforts to monitor the Kilroys. Yours sincerely, James Hudson."

At first, he looked only at the power tools  and the larger items stored on the garage shelves, always keeping an eye on his watch so he’d know when Evelyn was coming back home. He always made sure he was in the kitchen or the living room when she arrived.

The power tools presented no obvious clues, so as the days went on, he began to examine the smaller objects, the stuff he had initially regarded as useless debris. He opened the small plastic boxes and carefully held each screw and bolt, feeling its weight, then holding it close to his eye. After a while he lost track of the time, forgetting to check his watch.

When the automatic garage door groaned to life, James was startled, knocking the little box onto the floor. He stood there frozen in the headlights of his wife’s car, waiting for his wife’s accusing questions, staring at the screws scattered across the concrete.