Waking up in the morning with somebody snuggled up to me that wasn’t Emmy was a momentary shock, until I remembered bringing Luisa to our bed, since she’d been so traumatized.
I slid my arm out from around her and my shoulder from under her head as I climbed out of bed. Sure, I’d only gotten maybe three hours of sleep, but my body said it was morning and time to get up. I quietly grabbed my running gear, then silently slipped into the bathroom to get dressed.
Emmy and Luisa were still asleep when I emerged, so I took a moment to look at Luisa. Her face was a bit of a mess, since she’d cried a lot, then went to bed without washing off her makeup. Understandable, but one more little thing to deal with once she awoke.
Stopping in the kitchen for some water, I found Grant at the breakfast table drinking a cup of coffee and eating some sort of pastry from the little bakery over on First Avenue.
“We had some excitement last night,” I mentioned.
“Yeah?” he asked, looking up from the newspaper crossword. “What happened?”
“A tweaker pulled a gun on us, so I beat the crap out of him,’ I said, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Oh. Serves him right,” Grant replied, then went back to the puzzle.
Figuring that was the end of the conversation, I went for my run. I opted to go a different way this time, heading up 50th street to Fifth Avenue, then into Central Park. By this point I was getting used to the rhythm of running on Manhattan sidewalks. Thankfully the pedestrian traffic is light at five in the morning, so I didn’t have to dodge that many people as I ran. I’d also learned to look half a block up at the stoplights to time my arrival for green lights. Stopping cold at a red light really sucks, and I did my best to avoid it whenever I could, either by slowing a bit or sprinting to make the light.
Central Park itself was really nice- I stuck mostly to the outside-most paths on a counterclockwise loop around the park and enjoyed the scenery quite a bit. Even at that early hour there were quite a few runners, cyclists and skaters out for their morning workouts, which I was happy to see. My Roosevelt Island loop was generally a solitary affair, but the park was filled with others enjoying the early morning.
Back at the house, I slipped into the bedroom as quietly as I could, and to my complete lack of surprise Emmy and Luisa were still asleep.
After my shower, I peeked in the bedroom again, only to find that they were awake, but talking in low, hushed tones to each other.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I asked “How are you two doing?” Honestly, I wasn’t worried about Emmy, just Luisa, but I didn’t want to single her out.
“I guess I’m O.K.,” Luisa said, not sounding too convinced. “I’m still not too sure what actually happened. Did that guy actually try to shoot us?”
“I’ll tell you what. Get up, take a shower, get dressed, and I’ll explain everything over breakfast,” I said. “See you in the sunroom in an hour?”
“Yeah, O.K.”
“Hey, I’m going to head over to the bakery on the corner for some stuff for breakfast. You two want coffee?”
Receiving two enthusiastic yeses, I wandered down to the kitchen to see if Grant was still there.
Finding no sign of the guy, I strolled over to the bakery and got some croissants and some breakfast sandwiches in addition to the four coffees. It was nice, just doing normal things like an ordinary person. Not getting to cut to the head of the line because Emmy is a celebrity, not getting special treatment because I’m a millionaire. Just getting some coffees and baked goods to take home, that’s all.
Bemused, I walked back to the townhouse, thinking about how crazy my life had become. It’s not that I regretted it in any way, mind you. It’s just that every now and then I’d have a moment like that, when I’d just sort of stop and marvel at how things had turned out.
Half a block from home I spotted Grant looking at the front of the house, so I strolled over to where he stood.
“What do you think?” I asked, offering him a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the cup. “I think it looks pretty good from a security standpoint. After the windows get replaced and the shades installed, there won’t be any risk from sniper fire-“
“Sniper fire?” I asked, interrupting. “Is that really a concern?”
“Most likely not, no,” Grant conceded. “But that isn’t the same as zero possibility. You have the money, the windows should be replaced to current standards anyhow, may as well close off that risk, right?”
“Yeah, O.K., I can see that. But then, wouldn't a sniper merely wait until we walked out the front door?”
“Sure, that’s a possibility, but if they don’t know the glass is security-rated, they may try for the easy shot to set up.”
“All right, so what else?”
“Well, I don’t much like the terrace outside your office. An intruder could come over from the condo building’s roof, but with security windows and door they would have a hard time entering. The same goes for the little back terrace outside Luisa’s apartment. It would take a ladder to get up onto your roof from the condo building roof, then a drop down to that back terrace, but again, it’d be tough to get in from that point, so I guess we’d have to consider those avenues to be pretty difficult ways to gain entry."
“Sounds good so far,” I said, sipping my coffee and looking at the house along with Grant.
“The front door is plenty stout and the locks are good, and if we replace the inside entry door at the top of the landing with a security door we can retain the original front door, no problem, while still maintaining good security. I’d like to install some hidden shriekers in that front entryway to make life miserable for anybody trying to penetrate that way.”
“Shriekers?”
“Alarm sirens that are so loud all you can do is cover your ears in agony,” Grant explained.
“Sounds nice,” I chuckled.
“Cheap and effective,” Grant agreed. “If they can’t even hear themselves think, getting past the interior security door is virtually impossible.”
“And you’ve put them on Erich’s list?”
“Yep,” Grant agreed.
“What’s next?” I asked.
“I guess it would have been called the servant’s entrance back in the day. That set of stairs going down to the little mud room, then the laundry room. Again, we can put a set of shriekers in that mud room, and a security door going in from there. Some sensor lights out of easy reach in the actual stairwell along with a hidden camera and that blocks any easy access by that route,” Grant said. “So far, it’s all been easy to do, and relatively cheap.”
“Well, how about the back?”
“Getting into the little garden patio would take some work. There’s no access from that side,” he said, waving at the embassy to the left. “And the wall between your patio and the ground floor condo on that side is eight feet tall, so it would have to be ladder work. Then, getting into the house would require getting through the security doors into the dining room, which would be difficult. So I think we can consider the house reasonably secure with what’s already been discussed. I would like to do what we talked about and make it so the sub-basement can be sealed off in case of invasion, however unlikely.”
“How likely do you think it actually would be?”
“Very, very unlikely,” Grant admitted. “You’re right next door to the Moroccan embassy, which has a full-time security staff, for one thing. I went out for drinks with the head of their security detail last night, and he told me there is zero, and I mean zero, crime in this block. Also, he mentioned the local police precinct house is just three blocks that way. He’d tested their response times and they are pretty damned quick to respond, so realistically all the security windows and doors need to do is hold out for five, maybe eight minutes at most. Against any but the best-prepared and committed intruders, the precautions already planned would do the trick.”
“But?” I asked.
“Well, but nothing. From what you’ve told me, any Night Children that would try to attack Emmy would do so at night, by stealth, right? They aren’t going to come in here with trained squads and shaped charges. They’d sneak up, try to find an open window or unlocked door, right? But they won’t. For them, it might as well be Fort Knox.”
“Good enough for me, then,” I said. “Thanks for doing this.”
“Hey, it’s my job- of course I’m going to do whatever I can,” Grant replied. Then, he turned to me. “Leah, you know I’m a no-bullshit kind of guy. ‘Subtle’ is not my name, so I’m just going to come out and ask. It seems like Luisa is going to be here by herself most of the time, right? Would you maybe consider taking on somebody who could be here and take care of security, maybe basic maintenance, things like that?”
“I’d been sort of concerned about her being here alone,” I agreed. “So what are your thoughts?”
“Well, I know you haven't met her, but my oldest just finished her four years active, and she’s thinking about college. If she had a place to stay, New York could be a really good experience for her. She could do the basic maintenance I mentioned, maybe odd chores, whatever, in return for free rent in that other apartment upstairs. She’s a good kid, dependable. I’d really appreciate it as a personal favor to me,” he said, seeming a bit uncomfortable even asking.
“Your daughter? I asked. “I can assume she knows how to kick ass?”
“With the best of ‘em,” Grant agreed.
“And as a Marine, she knows how to shoot. She see any action?” I probed.
“She did a tour in Afghanistan, got herself into a few firefights,” he confirmed.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“What about if I hired her, gave her a real job as security slash bodyguard? Would she be O.K. with that?” I asked.
“Well, that might make it hard for her to attend school,” Grant hedged.
“Nah, we could make that work. If she can act as home security, and like you said, maybe do the occasional maintenance, she could be free during the days to attend classes. Luisa has a day job teaching art, and we’re O.K. with that taking her days during the school year. If your daughter can drop everything and come here so I can meet her, we could see if we could make it work.”
“She’s in Raleigh, North Carolina right now. I can have her drive up,” Grant said, looking hopeful.
“Call the office, in,” I said, looking at my watch, “three hours and have them get her a plane ticket. I’ll shoot an email confirming it right now,” I said pulling my phone out.
“Thanks, Leah,” Grant said. “This means a lot to me.”
“When I offered you the job, I said I’d take care of your family as well as you. I wasn’t just yanking your chain.”
“No, I guess not,” he agreed as we walked in the front door of the house. “I’ll look into what it takes to get a bodyguard license here in New York” he added.
We found Luisa and Emmy in the sunroom, chatting. It seemed as if Emmy was the one holding up the conversation- Luisa still seemed a bit out of sorts.
Grant and I sat down and as he handed out the coffees I took out the various breakfast goodies and laid them on the table for everybody to take what they wanted.
“Oh, god,” Luisa groaned. “Leah, I don’t even know how you can look so awake this early after last night,” she groaned.
“Well, my ten mile run this morning helped quite a bit,” I said, not intending to be snarky.
“You what? Are you kidding me?” she asked, disbelieving.
“Yeah, she was out the door a little before five thirty this morning,” Grant confirmed.
“Jesus, that’s inhuman,” Luisa said with another groan.
After a few sips of coffee and half her breakfast sandwich, Luisa was revived enough to ask “O.K., so what exactly did happen last night?”
I explained the whole incident, both for her sake and to describe it to Grant. I figured he’d have some good input in a debrief, after all.
“I swear I thought at first you’d shot the guy,” Luisa admitted. “I mean, you had the gun in your hand and he was lying on the ground all crumpled up like he was dead or something.”
“No, I just pistol whipped him pretty good,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee.
“And here you are, talking about it like it was something you just saw on T.V., like it was no big deal,” Luisa said. “I don’t know how you can be so casual about it all.”
“Luisa-” Emmy began, but I interrupted her.
“Well, here’s the thing. I did what I needed to do to take care of the situation. There was no time to freak out- I just had to act, and that’s it,” I explained. “Then, once the situation was stabilized, it was too late to freak out. At that point, everything was over and done with and all I had to do was deal with the police and get you guys taken care of. Nothing else mattered.”
“But that guy was all fucked up!” Luisa said. “You smashed his face in, broke his hand and I don’t even know what else! That guy isn’t ever going to forget last night- and I don’t think I am, either.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m going to be thinking about the encounter for a while, too,” I replied.
“What do you mean? You look like you’re already completely over it!”
“On my run this morning I gave it a lot of thought, and something I realized is that I fucked up on a real fundamental level,” I admitted.
“What do you mean?” asked Luisa.
“I saw the guy half a block away and identified him as a problem,” I said. “Honestly, I should have just taken you two back into the club and avoided the whole scenario.”
“That’s right,” Grant said, throwing his two cents in. “The best fight is one you don’t even get into at all.”
Luisa looked back and forth between Grant and me for a few moments, then said “You want to know something? I don’t think that’s right. In this case, I mean.”
“Why not?” Grant asked, curious to hear what she had to say.
“Well, that guy was a junkie, looking to rob somebody for some drug money, right? If you hadn’t put a stop to him, maybe somebody would have gotten shot, you know?”
“I guess,” I said. “But I can’t protect the world from guys like that. All I can do is protect my own people.”
“Am I your own people?” Luisa asked.
Catching her eyes, I said “As far as I’m concerned, you are until you tell me otherwise. If you don’t want to be, that’s fine. But if you do, I’ll do what I can to take care of you.”
Luisa really had no response for that, so after a few moments she mumbled something about getting back to work on the wine collection, then left the sunroom.
Grant, who’d been silent through that last exchange, said “Well, I know which way I would choose,” and left to go do whatever it was he was going to do.
“Leah, you may be correct about avoiding the trouble entirely, but Luisa is also correct in that you may have saved the life of someone else last night. You did a good thing.”
“Thanks,” I said, relieved that she felt that way.
“Do you have any plans for today?” she asked.
“No, not really. I need to get some work done, and I guess I should do some review for my finals, but that’s not really a plan, more like a vague suggestion of things I really should do,” I said. “Why? Do you have anything going on today?”
“There is a guitar shop I would like to visit,” Emmy said. “If you do not mind.”
“Why would I mind? But I have an idea. Take Luisa with you,” I said.
“You do not wish to go?”
“It’s not that, really. I think she needs a little time away from me, and since you’ll inevitably play some music, she’ll get a mini concert out of it. It’ll cheer her up. It always does for me,” I responded. “And I really should get some work done.”
After the two left with Wally, I went upstairs to spend some time in the wonderful world of local rental market predictions of various regions of the Bay Area. My mind wasn’t really on it, though, so I went out for a walk. New York isn’t a city that really encourages strolling. It’s full of pedestrians, sure, but they aren’t out for walks. They are walking to get someplace, and not for enjoyment. As a result, if you simply amble along you become a rolling roadblock, and impediment for others to have to get around on their way to some other place.
I’d mostly been enjoying this trip to New York, and enjoying seeing Emmy be so enthusiastic about the house and going out. Sure, last night ended badly, but up until that tweaker tried to mug us it was a fun night out.
But this, this walking along with the flow of people in a rush around me, the long, straight canyon of buildings disappearing into the distance, the fumes, the sounds… This really wasn’t for me. Sure, I could see spending more time here, but living here full time? I was not ready for that. As much time and money as we were sinking into the townhouse here, I was more and more convinced that our future really lay back in California.
When I got back to the house it was still empty, so I went down to the wine cellar to look at what Luisa had done. She’d been busy, that much was obvious. Maybe a third of the bottles had little red twist ties around their necks. I figured those were the bottles that had been recorded already, so I didn’t mess with anything. I just sat there for a while in the coolness of that wine cellar, sipping an old can of Coke I’d found in the wet bar’s fridge. I intentionally didn’t think about how long it might have sat there. I figured it was printed with the current label, so it couldn’t be too old, right? And who knows how long the shelf life of that stuff was, anyway?
I was working on a second can when Luisa came into the cellar, letting out a little squeak of surprise to find somebody already there.
“Did you guys have a good time?” I asked.
“Um, yeah. I mean, I did, and I think Emmy did, too,” Luisa blurted out. “What are you doing down here?”
“Nothing, really,” I admitted. “Just… thinking. Well, not even that, really. Just vegging.”
“Down here? It’s freezing down here!” Luisa said. “You’re not even wearing a coat!”
“I guess it’s just my hardy Southern Californian blood,” I said, laughing.
“Well, Jesus, you’re making me cold just looking at you!” she said, setting down her desk lamp and laptop on the old farm table.
“Luisa,” I said.
“Yeah?” she asked, looking up from where she was plugging the lamp in the wall socket.
“What do you think? Do you want to be one of my people?” I asked. “All joking aside, this is a real question.”
“I- well, I need this job, and you guys have been good to me so far,” she said, nervous. “I’m still a little bit shook up from last night. I mean, the mugger was one thing, you know? But the way you kicked his ass like it was nothing- I guess that has me a little bit spooked.”
“Are you afraid of me?” I asked, surprised.
“No. Well, I mean, I guess… no. I’m not afraid of you per se. I mean, I don’t think you’re gonna pistol whip the shit out of me or anything like that. It’s just…” she trailed off, at a loss for words.
“It’s just?”
“It’s just that you knew that guy had a gun, but it didn’t bother you. You were like a machine or something. You just grabbed him, smacked the living shit outta him and then waited for the police, with your foot on the guy’s neck. I know for a fact that when you told him you’d kill him if he moved, he believed you. I sure as fuck did. You were so stone cold. It’s like you weren’t even angry. He walked up, pulled a gun, you put the beat down on him, end of story. He might have just as well stepped in front of a train. You didn’t care any more than that train would have cared,” she said, letting out what had been bothering her.
“Is that it? You’re worried I’m some sort of psychopath?” I asked.
“No,” she said quickly. “I took a year of psychology in college, and I know that a person with antisocial personality disorder can hide it well, but not as well as you do. I mean, the things you do, I’ve seen you do, you do to benefit others. A psychopath can fake it, but they ultimately only do things for themselves,” she explained, the words pouring out. “So no, I don’t think you’re either of those things. I do wonder what it is you really are, though. I mean, I’d just assumed you guys have money because Emmy’s a rock star, right? But the way she keeps asking you about spending money, well, it makes me think I had it wrong. But you don’t act like most of the rich people I’ve met, and working for the Daltons, I met quite a few.”
I made little “Mmm hmm,” noises to let her know I was paying attention and she should keep talking.
“So, I mean, you’re obviously the top in the relationship. You keep going up to the office to work, so I know that you do something, but it’s only a few hours every now and then, so it’s not like a full-time job. But clearly you have the money in the relationship,” Luisa said, her thoughts running at a hundred miles an hour. “But the other day, when you came back from your run- I’ve never seen anybody with a body like yours in real life. Women aren’t supposed to have six-pack abs, but Jesus, you in that sports bra and running shorts- you are so fucking ripped it’s like it’s not even real. I’d half convinced myself I’d imagined it, but then last night the way you took that guy down looked so effortless, so quick and easy… It’s obvious you train for that sort of thing, and train hard. I mean, yeah, you run ten miles every morning before breakfast, but runners don’t look like you do…”
“No, most don’t,” I agreed.
“So,” Luisa said, taking a breath. “I want to be one of your people, but I want to know what I’m getting into here. You aren’t some kind of international assassin or something, right? Please tell me you’re not.”
Laughing, I said, “No, I can promise you I’ve never been paid to kill anyone in my life.”
“What, you do it for free?” Luisa asked, rising up out of her chair to bolt for the door.
“O.K., let me be serious here for a moment,” I said, laughing. “No, I’m not some sort of Jason Bourne-style trained killer for the government, or mafia hit woman or anything like that. I am trained. I train really hard, as you noticed. In fact, I’ve been feeling guilty this week here in New York for slacking off so badly.”
“But you run!”
“Yeah, I’ve been running, and that’s cool, but normally I’d be in the gym for a few hours every day, also. I do mixed martial arts. I used to play volleyball for Stanford, and even was invited to try out for the Olympic team, but chose not to go for it.”
“Stanford?”
“Yeah, I attended on a full athletic scholarship to play V ball,” I explained. “While I was going to school, I started doing real estate investment, property management, that kind of thing. It turns out I’m good at it, and have made a lot of money.”
“While in college?”
“Yeah,” I said, sipping my ancient Coke.
“Christ. I had a part-time job tending bar at an Applebee’s while I was in college,” Luisa said. “I could just barely make rent, and all my school got paid for with loans. And here you are, training for the Olympics, spending hours in the gym kickboxing, and building a real estate empire. It makes me feel kinda pathetic,” she said.
“Eh, whatever,” I replied. “I can’t play even a single chord on the guitar, and my singing voice is better not mentioned. When I compare myself to Emmy, I have no talent at all. And you- you teach art, and do your own art. Me, I wouldn’t even know which end of a brush to dip in the paint, much less the difference between tempera and oil. We all have our skills, you know?”
“I guess…” Luisa said. “So- to recap. You’re an Olympic athlete, professional kick boxer, and real estate tycoon, married to a rock star. You have enough money to buy a ten million dollar Manhattan townhouse on a whim, even though you don’t plan on ever actually living here. Do I have that all right?”
“Well, sort of, some of it, anyway,” I agreed.
“And you’re immune to cold,” Luisa added.
“So, are we good?” I asked. “Feel a little better about things?”
“Yeah, we’re good. And yeah, I think I have a better handle on things,” Luisa replied. “I guess I have only one more question, and don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I’d really, really, and I mean this completely, I’d really love it if you would model for me. I know it’s not really appropriate to ask, and if you say no I won’t ask again. I don’t mean nude or anything, but if you want to do that, that’s cool too…” she said, babbling again.
“Let me see your portfolio, and I’ll think about it.”
“Really?” Luisa asked, hopeful.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Now I should go back upstairs and see what Emmy is up to.”
“Thanks, Leah,” Luisa said.
“I haven't agreed to pose yet!”
“No, not about that. About all the rest. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. It means a lot,” she said.