TRUE, TRUE COLORS
“Just
what color is this thing, anyway?” groused Alexander Scott.
“They’re
supposed to be people-colored,” replied Kelly Robinson.
“Not
for colored people,” grumbled Scotty.
Kelly
paused with the generic Mammoth-Mart brand bandage dangling from his hand, and
looked at the two others already covering cuts on his forearm. They were a bit
pale against his tanned skin, but not terribly noticeable.
Scotty
eyed him sourly, the beige-cream rectangles standing out on his forehead like
glowing signposts.
“I
thought we weren’t supposed to say ‘colored people’ anymore.”
“Well,
if it’s good enough for the National Association For The Advancement Of, it’s
good enough for me.”
Kelly
looked back at the blood seeping from his forearm, and his own only-slightly
pale oblongs, and wrinkled his brow in disgust. “Barbed wire, man. What’s the
point of that? I ask you, who puts barbed wire around a secure, secret
compound?”
“Pretty
much everybody with a secure, secret compound. You going to put your flesh
tone adhesive bandage on that, or aren’t you?”
“Man,
it isn’t ‘Flesh Tone.’” Kelly eyed it dubiously. “It’s, like, I dunno, Bisque.
It’s undercooked muffin tone.”
“As
opposed to your blood, which is bright red, which, you see, isn’t that good a
look on your brand new white jeans. How much do you pay for those,
anyway?”
Kelly
scoffed, “I’ll put ‘em on the expense report.”
“Well,
sure you will,” said Scotty, skeptically, “because Shelly Clavell is always an
easy touch for that sort of thing, right?”
Kelly
looked again at his arm, again at Scotty’s face and his arms, and threw
the pale, limp bandage to the floor. It flipped and wrapped around itself on
the way down, like a minnow thrown from a bucket, and landed in a sticky ball,
stuck to the side of the bedspread. “Hell with this, man,” he said, and
stood up while Scotty’s eyes widened. “I’ll be right back.”
In
the back of the Southwestern Bell repair truck, Russell Gabriel Conway
shook his head slowly, taking in the naughty-little-boy grins of his two best
agents.
“You
understand, don’t you, that spies are supposed to be sort of, I dunno, unobtrusive?
Nondescript, there’s another good word. That’s what spies are supposed to be,
isn’t it?”
“Well,
Gabe,” murmured Kelly, “there turn out to be some problems with that.”
“Go
into any damn drug store! Go into any damn drug store!” He always promised
himself he was going to keep his temper with these two, two men who had brought
him success after success, two men he loved as much as the son who was currently
attending West Point. Some promises were not meant to be kept. “Shelf after
shelf of perfectly ordinary Band-Aids!”
“They’re
the wrong color, Gabe.”
Kelly
was the only one who called him ‘Gabe.’ But Russell Gabriel knew how the name
‘Russ’ hurt him, so he let that pass.
“They’re
flesh-tone! It says it right on the box!”
Kelly
looked steadily back at him. “Your flesh, maybe, Mr. Desk Man. Almost
mine.” He paused. “Not his.”
Scotty
just smiled mildly at him, enjoying Kelly too much to bring anything like
reason to the conversation.
“For
God’s sake...” Conway began, and then trailed off. With those pale-beige
drug-store rectangles all over Alexander Scott’s face, he would have been every
bit as spectacular as both men were now, and far less amusing. “Fine,” he
finally said. “Fine. We’ll bring in another team for this part. Just... Just,
go somewhere. Get the hell out of here.”
“Shall
we, Hoby?” said Scotty, his smile widening.
“I
think we shall, Fred C.” replied Kelly, and they stood, ducking the low roof of
the phone-company truck.
Russ
Conway looked back and forth from man to man, face to face, each criss-crossed
with multicolored, goddamned-hippy-approved psychedelic, mock-tie-dyed plastic
Band-Aids.
“And
next time,” he bellowed after them as they ducked out the back doors, “stay
away from the goddamned barbed wire!”
THE END
