“If I’d known it was going to be like this,” I said, sweaty and panting, “I’d have made damned sure I was home a long time ago.”
“We have missed you very much,” Emmy said, draped across my naked body. “And Angela has become insatiable recently.”
“I can’t help it,” Angela said. “I’m just in the mood all the time now. The doctor said it’s normal, because of elevated hormones. She also said it’s good exercise.”
“I need to remember to give the good doctor a nice bonus,” I said.
“The only problem is, well, this,” Angela said, cradling her growing belly in her arms. “It makes it kinda hard sometimes.”
“I imagine Emmy has been helpful in working around that,” I said, leaning over to kiss the unmissable baby bump.
“She has,” Angela agreed, her voice tender.
“I’m sorry I’ve been missing so much of it,” I said, nuzzling her belly. “Both of yours. I promised I’d be with you, but instead I’ve been off doing stuff…”
“It’s alright,” Angela said, brushing my hair back from my face as I continued to kiss her tummy.
“You have your duties, and you take them very seriously,” Emmy said, sitting on her knees.
“My most important duty is to you two,” I said, laying a hand on Emmy’s not-quite-as-large belly. “To you four,” I corrected.
“You are back now, and it will still be months before our babies are born. Do not feel guilty for neglecting us. We know that you love us, and we understand that you had things that needed to be dealt with.”
“Em’s right, Lee. I have three more months to go, and she has almost five. In three months I’ll expect you home every day, but now? If you need to do something, this is a good time,” Angela said. “Besides, we start the North American leg in a little over a week. It’ll be nice to be home in between the shows when we can, but you don’t need to come on tour with us the whole time.”
“I hate being away from you guys,” I said.
“That’s fair,” Angela said. “We hate it when you’re not with us.”
“When you are with naked Miami party girls instead,” Emmy added.
“Yeah, that’s the worst,” Angela agreed.
“Naked Miami party girls are O.K., I guess, but all I could think about was how much I wished you guys were there with me instead.”
“Next time,” Angela promised.
As much as I hated leaving the comfy bed with my two sleeping beauties, I got up early to go to the fight gym to work out. It had been too long, and an hour of swimming a day was no substitute.
I was waiting when Eddie arrived to open the place up for the day.
“Hey! Long time no see,” he said as he got out of his car to slide the chain-link gate to the parking lot open. “Where ya been?”
“I had some stuff to take care of,” I said. “But I’ve been lazy, so it’s time to put in some hard work to make up for lost time.”
“Your idea of hard work ain’t like most peoples’,” he said, stepping aside to let me pull the M6 into the lot.
As the regulars drifted in over the course of the next three hours I got a long string of greetings and comments. They ranged from a simple, “Welcome back!” to “It ain’t been the same around here without ya!”
“Good to have you back,” Richie said when I took a break to sip some water. “We weren’t sure you were ever actually gonna come back, you know,” he said, indicating the gym in general. “We just never know with you.”
“I had some stuff to take care of,” I said with a shrug.
“Someplace sunny, judging by your tan,” Richie replied.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It was sunny and hot.”
“Do I even wanna know?”
“Judging by the fact you’re fishing, I’d say you do,” I said.
“Got me there,” Richie admitted.
“It was nothing, really. Just some… well, family business,” I said.
“Someplace hot and sunny.”
“Yup,” I said, nodding.
Realizing he was getting nothing else from me, Richie threw his hands up in dismay. “Some day I’m gonna find out if all this is real or not, or if you’re just yanking my chain.”
“But not today,” I told him.
“Didn’t expect you in today,” Nash said, sticking his head in my office. “You’ve been working remote so much lately.”
“Well, that’s because I’ve been remote. First in Colombia, then the UK,” I said.
“That’s pretty remote, alright,” Nash agreed. “But hey, now you’re back, I’ve got some properties for you to look at.”
“You know I’ve handed all that over to you,” I said.
“Yeah… these are over the threshold I’m comfortable with,” he admitted.
“Alright, I’ll take a look. I assume, since they’ve gotten this far, that you’re thinking they’re good investments?”
“Well, yeah. Like I said, the dollar figure is high enough that I thought it was best to get your sign-off,” Nash said.
“Sure. Leave ‘em here with me. I’ll check them out,” I assured him.
“It’s good to have you back,” Nash said.
After dinner that night Emmy and Angela didn’t want to do anything but snuggle on the couch, and I was perfectly happy to have the two of them piled up on top of me. Their combined weight and warmth, plus their gentle voices as they talked, lulled me into a relaxed, drowsy state before too long. The last thing I remember thinking before drifting off to sleep was that this was the best thing in life.
Once again, I made myself sneak out of bed (Emmy and Angela had woken me up to come to bed when they’d realized I’d fallen asleep) to get to the gym when Eddie opened.
“Two days in a row?” Jake asked when he spotted me walking into the office after my workout.
“I’m going to be around for a little while,” I said. “At least until Emmy’s tour starts up again. Oh- before I forget, these are for Makayla,” I said, pulling a half dozen concert tickets from my pocket.
Taking the tickets, he looked at them a moment before recognizing what they were.
“These are for the Downfall show at the Coliseum?” he asked incredulously, even while holding the evidence in his hands.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“You said Emmy was her favorite,” I reminded him.
“Six tickets? This says these are over four hundred bucks each!” he said, examining the info printed on the tickets. “I can’t take these- it’s too much!” Jake protested.
“Well, they aren’t for you, are they? They’re for Makayla. And some friends, and presumably a chaperone of some sort. You know I told Emmy about her way back when, right? She never forgets that sort of thing, so when tickets were released for the LA show she made sure to grab some for your granddaughter. The truth is, since this is the band’s home show in a sense, a whole lot of the seats there in the VIP section are going to be giveaways.”
“She’s gonna go apesh- She’ll really love this,” Jake said, waving the tickets. “Thanks for this.”
“LA is the last stop on the tour, so it’ll be a month and a half until the show. You might want to give those to her soon, so she can figure out who’s going,” I suggested.
“I’m gonna talk to her parents today,” he agreed, pocketing the little pieces of card stock worth over two grand- even more than that on the scalper market.
“I’ve seen maybe half the shows so far this tour, and I can tell you, they do them up right,” I told Jake.
“I’ve heard that no two shows are exactly the same?”
“That’s true,” I confirmed. “Every show has its own setlist, and sometimes the way they play the songs is even different. And of course, the intros are always improvised, so they’re never the same,” I confirmed.
“Maybe I should hang onto one of these for myself!” Jake joked, patting his pocket.
“I don’t think you’d regret seeing them live,” I agreed.
Angela skipped out on driving the next morning and I can’t say that I blamed her at all. She wasn’t huge huge yet, but she was definitely well on her way, and getting thrown around and having the seatbelt push her tummy just wouldn’t be fun at all.
When the guys asked where she was, I explained that she’d probably be skipping any spirited driving until after the baby was born.
“Wait- baby?” Stein asked.
“She’s five months pregnant,” I said.
“When did that happen?” he demanded.
“Well, it started, oh, about five months ago,” Teddy Bear volunteered, earning him a look from Stein.
“I mean, we just saw her and she wasn’t showing at all,” Stein responded.
“You just saw her a couple of months ago, before the South America leg of the tour,” I told him. “And she wore clothes that hid her slightly less flat than usual tummy.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Stein admitted. Turning to Teddy Bear, he asked, “How long have you known?”
“Um, maybe four months, I guess? Leah told me that both Angela and Emmy had gotten pregnant, but they wanted to keep it on the QT until they got all the health tests back,” Teddy Bear said.
“Emmy’s pregnant, too?” Stein demanded.
“Yeah, she’s not quite as far along as Angela, but both babies have passed all the tests with flying colors. Healthy, vigorous pregnancies for both of them,” I said, just as Jimmy came back rom the mini mart with a Red Bull in his hand.
“Did I hear ‘babies’?” Jimmy demanded.
“I’m just as blown away as you,” Stein said.
“If you don’t mind me asking, who’s the father?” Stephen asked.
“I am,” I said proudly. “It turns out that if you really, really work at something long and hard enough…”
“Forget I even asked,” Stephen said, laughing.
“So, anyway, Angela is due towards the end of September and Emmy six weeks or so later,” I said. “So no driving for Angela until after then, and after the girls are born I’ll probably stay home for a while, too.”
“You say that now,” Geoff said. “But the two of them will probably be begging you to get out of the house and go do something quicker than you know it. Linda only wanted me around full-time for about a week after Eileen was born, then she pretty much demanded I go back to work. I think it was like two days with Virginia.”
“I got no advice on this matter at all,” Jimmy said.
“And if you did, it wouldn’t be good advice anyhow,” Stein retorted.
“No, prolly not,” Jimmy admitted.
“So Angela not coming today is why you brought that?” Stein asked, waving his paper coffee cup in the direction of the Porsche Safari.
“The story gets better,” I said. “Angela wants the two of us to go rally racing. Specifically in that car.”
“That’s not a really rally car, though, is it?” Geoff asked. “Wouldn’t you be better off in a Subaru WRX, or one of those Ford RSes?”
“Sure, probably. Actually, absolutely. But I don’t think being competitive is the point for Ange. I think it’s about having fun in style for her, and she just loves the Porsche. Actually, she loves the attention the Porsche gets, and the idea of hauling the mail out on back roads in Newfoundland in that car in specific…” I said.
“I guess I get that,” Teddy Bear said.
“Yeah, for sure. The car wouldn’t be competitive, but it’s certainly fast enough to feel like you’re racing,” Geoff admitted.
“Right. The race she has um, targeted, is held in September or October. Obviously we can’t do it this year, so that gives me a bit over a year to come to grips with this bad boy and get a real feel for it, you know? So it’ll probably be my primary toy for Saturdays for the foreseeable future.”
“You’re talking about that paved rally stage race, right? From what I understand it tends to rain a hell of a lot that time of year there,” Stein said.
“Yeah, a lot of the videos Angela showed me were in the rain, so I’ll need to go up to the Northwest and get some wet road practice in this winter,” I agreed.
“She showed you the videos?” Jimmy asked.
“This was all her idea,” I said with a shrug. “Ange is the one who wants to do it- I’m just along for the ride. Well, the drive, since it’ll be me behind the wheel, but…”
“What does Emmy think of all this?” Geoff asked.
“She says she’d be perfectly happy cheering from the side of the road,” I laughed.
“You hit such a fucking home run in life,” Stein said, shaking his head.
“That’s no lie,” Teddy Bear agreed.
At lunch, Geoff asked where I was going to take my Safari for service. When I told him I was this close to pulling the trigger and buying an area Porsche dealership, he said he’d thought I was joking about that.
“Well, I looked into it, and neither Porsche nor BMW have any restrictions on cross-brand dealership ownership. Neither of them want the other dealership mentioned in any sort of promotional fashion, but behind the scenes they don’t care. As long as I keep the overall ownership out of public sight, I can own all the BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes dealerships I want.”
“How many do you want?” Geoff asked, curious.
“Honestly? They don’t make as much money as you’d think, so really, it’s a fairly poor use of my capital,” I admitted. “And owning dealerships just so I have technicians to work on my cars, well, that’s even stupider. But they can make money, so it’s not a loss, right? The Porsche dealership I’m considering buying is just barely hanging on, but I think that’s mostly piss-poor management as a result of bad ownership. I’m certain my team can come in and sweep the place clean and turn it around.”
“So that’d be a Porsche dealer on top of the two BMW shops you own now?” Geoff asked. “Any others in the pipeline?”
“I don’t actually own the BWM dealerships yet,” I said. “They won’t officially become mine until January first.”
“And the Porsche one?"
“I have a meeting with the sellers in a couple of weeks. It’ll be a cash deal, so it should close quickly. I’ve already been approved by the Porsche mothership, so it’s simply a matter of negotiation at this point,” I told him.
“Well, hurry up. Linda has been talking about trading in the Cayenne for a Macan.”
“I’ll make sure you get the sweetest deal possible,” I told him.
“It sounds like you’ll be in the market for a minivan soon,” Teddy Bear said to me.
“Yeah, we’re gonna have to get something with more room than our X6,” I agreed. “About the opposite of the car I just bought the other day, as a matter of fact.”
“What did you buy this time?” Stein asked, with a ‘here we go again’ expression on his face.
“You’re gonna laugh. It’s a Camry,” I said.
“That’s a lie,” Stein countered. “There is no way in Hell you bought a Camry.”
“Well… It does have a Camry motor. Sorta,” I protested.
“O.K., what would you have possibly bought that has a Camry motor in it?” Teddy Bear asked, his curiosity piqued. “Is this one of those ‘I just bought a fifty thousand square foot house’ things?”
“I guess?” I said, making a thoughtful face. “It’s a Lotus Evora GT. In Racing Green.”
“If you just bought a Lotus, why are you driving that old Porsche?” Stein asked. “That Lotus, even with a Camry motor, should be a Hell of a lot of fun.”
“The Porsche is a lot of fun,” I protested. “But the problem with the Lotus is that it’s in London.”
“You ordered for local pickup? That’s cool,” Geoff said. “I had a friend that did that with his Carrera S.”
“Not exactly. I bought it for local use. It’s wrong-side drive.”
“You got yourself a Lotus for your local driver when you’re in London? Seriously?” Geoff asked.
“I’m gonna have to take wrong-side driving classes,” I said, making a face. “I’ll probably need to take the full test, including the behind the wheel part, to get my license over there. Honestly, I probably should buy a Nissan Micra or something to learn in before wrecking the Lotus.”
“A Nissan Micra?” Stein laughed. “I can just picture it! It’d be like that chase scene in the Bourne movie where he hauls ass in that old Mini."
“I’d watch that movie,” Teddy Bear said.
“Oh, Hells to the yeah,” Jimmy agreed. “Lizzie up on two wheels around one of those big roundabouts they have over there? Would watch!”
“You guys’ll get a laugh out of this. I actually had a meeting with a… well, a representative of the government, and he more or less hinted that they were keeping an eye on me. He did offer to hook me up with a high-performance driving instructor, though, so maybe mixed messages?” I said with a shrug. “He seemed like a decent guy…”
“And that is why you’re so off the hook,” Jimmy said. “You tell us this crazy shit, like, stuff that just doesn’t happen to normal people, and we never know what to believe because it sounds like bullshit, but then turns out to be true.”
“Jimmy’s not wrong,” Stephen agreed.
“No, no, he’s not,” Stein agreed, and everybody else at the table nodded knowingly.
“I mean, who else do we know that owns a race car,” Jimmy said, holding up a finger. “And a movie studio converted into a house,” he said, raising another finger. “Is married to a rock star, but has a top shelf fitness model on the side-”
“She’s not on the side. She’s in the middle more often than not,” I corrected, amused.
“Casually beats up champion MMA fighters,” Jimmy continued, raising another finger.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I said.
“Turns down a spot on the Olympic team because it would take too much time from growing a business empire,” Jimmy said, ignoring my protests.
“Seriously, I get it,” I said, putting my hand on his upraised fingers.
“But still too cheap to buy my sister off me, even after I made her a Hell of a deal,” Jimmy finished with a shit-eating grin.
“I don’t think you could pay me enough to take her off your hands, Jimmy,” I said.
“Dude, all I ask is for a session in your GT3,” Jimmy protested.
“Nope. Just… Nope,” I told him.