I woke up early, as usual, but instead of hitting the gym, my plan for the day was a nice, long run. I hadn’t noticed when Emmy had come to bed, but there she was, snuggled up on the other side of Angela, sleeping peacefully.
As quietly as I could, I dressed and slipped out the door. I found Mia in the kitchen sipping a cup of coffee when I stopped to grab a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Goin’ out for a run?” she asked. She looked as if she’d been up all night. Not in any sort of tired and disheveled way, just like it was the end of her shift and not the start.
“Yeah, I’ve got a loop I like. It works out to be a little over ten miles.”
“I kinda miss running,” Mia said, a bit wistfully. “Hey, there’s some things I want to talk to you about when you get back, alright?”
“Sure, no problem. I have a nine o’clock with the designer and the builder- we can talk after that,” I suggested.
“Cool,” Mia replied. “I’m gonna hit the rack for a few, then. See you at eleven?”
“Perfect.”
The cooler morning was a nice change from how warm and humid it had been the last time I did my lap of Roosevelt Island, but the views were just as impressive. Meditating on the difference between New York City (well, Manhattan, at least) and West Los Angeles as I ran, I remembered the moment Emmy and I had kissed there at that Hudson River viewpoint. The whole style of living was so, so different, but maybe New York wouldn’t have been the wrong choice after all. I had a few years at UCLA Anderson tying me to Los Angeles, but after that, maybe we should move full-time to New York, just to get a different perspective on life.
Crossing back over the Queensboro Bridge, I made a point of picking out our townhouse off to the left. Now that I knew what to look for, spotting it was easy enough. I stopped and looked really closely, becoming more and more convinced that anybody with binoculars could get a solid view of that upper deck, and anybody on it. It was too far away to really see well with the naked eye, though. Also, the trees did a halfway decent job of screening the view, but maybe some sort of privacy barrier on the north side of the deck wouldn’t be a bad idea. Maybe the design could be incorporated into the sun screen Luisa wanted…
Back at the townhouse, Wally was waiting down in the kitchen, reading the New York Times. On the table sat his customary bag of bagels, which I was glad to see. “I took Luisa to her school this morning,” he announced. “Is there anything else for me today?”
“I’m sure Emmy’s going to want to go shopping,” I said, enjoying a bagel with cream cheese. “And we’ll probably go out for dinner tonight, so it might be a late one.”
“I figured,” Wally said with a nod.
“I have a meeting in a little over an hour with the designer and the builder, so I need to jump in the shower. I guess you can just relax until Emmy is up,” I said, and he nodded and went back to the news.
Emmy was still in bed, but she roused when I came in. “Hey, Leah, did you go out for a run?” she asked, her voice sleepy. I gave her a kiss and asked, “How late did you stay up last night? I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I do not know,” she replied. “Three, maybe? Yes, I think it was midnight West Coast time, so three here,” she answered, sitting up. “We have a meeting with Erich and Charlie, right? When is that?”
“Not for another hour,” I told her as I stripped out of my running gear.
“Wait for me!” Emmy exclaimed, getting out of bed and following me into the shower.
As I washed her hair, Emmy asked, “Did you and Angela make love last night? The bedroom smelled of sex.”
“Yeah, we did,” I answered.
“I am glad that she felt confident enough to do that,” Emmy said. “That is part of why I stayed up late.”
“I thought it might be,” I replied as she rinsed the shampoo from her hair. “Now you need to find an opportunity to get intimate with her without me around, too, so she knows that we’re both O.K. with that.”
“Are we?” Emmy asked as she returned the favor and lathered up my hair. “Are we O.K. with having a sexual relationship outside our marriage?”
“I thought we were,” I replied. “I thought we were both O.K. with sharing Angela.”
“I am,” Emmy said. “I simply wanted to be certain that you are, too.”
“I’ve thought about it a bunch,” I said, “And I think that this could be a good thing for the two of us. Angela can be the things for you that I’m no good at. You can take her shopping, for example. You know I kinda hate that, right? But she’d love that.”
“And she can go with you on your drives, when you know that I do not like that,” Emmy agreed. “I do not feel jealous that you and she had sex last night, and if you do not feel jealous if Angela and I do the same, then I believe that this could work.”
“She told me she loves me last night,” I said as Emmy washed my back.
Emmy took a few moments to think about what I’d just said, and asked, “Do you think she is a gold miner?”
“A gold miner? You mean a gold digger?” I asked, amused.
“Yes, that. Do you think she is merely after our money?”
“No. I mean, sorta, but not maybe the way you mean,” I said, thinking about how to phrase the thoughts that had been forming the last couple of days. “I do think that she’s fallen in love with our lifestyle. I mean, the nice places to live, the expensive cars, the private jet, all that. She wants to be part of that, so in that sense, yeah, she maybe sorta is. But I don’t think it’s intentional, you know?” I said, thinking about it. “I mean, no, I don’t think she’s just out for our money. I think she honestly has fallen for us, but us being rich is part of that package.”
“I think the same,” Emmy said. “I believe her feelings are honest, but I do also believe that she has fallen under the spell of wealth.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I asked. “I don’t mind buying her nice things, do you?”
“No, I do not,” Emmy admitted. “But I do not want her to think that we are buying her, either.”
“Do you think we are?” I asked, turning to face Emmy.
She thought about it for a moment, then said, “I do not want to think that.”
“Then don’t,” I urged. “Do what you want for her because you want to, not because you feel she demands it. So far she hasn’t asked anything from me. I don’t think she’s a gold digger in that way.”
“I hope she is not,” Emmy sighed.
“Put it out of your mind,” I suggested. “Thoughts like that can be toxic.”
“You are right,” Emmy said.
After our shower we dressed for our day, me in jeans and a button-front shirt, Emmy in a nice dress, casual but classy. I had no plans for the day but dealing with work emails and so on, while Emmy (as I’d expected) wanted to go out and hit some boutiques.
Angela was only about halfway through her workout in the new home gym when we checked in on her, done with the selfie part and down to the serious body sculpting.
“Of course I’ll go shopping with you!” She exclaimed when Emmy asked if she wanted to go. “I’d love that!”
“When you are ready, come find me in the studio,” Emmy told her. Then, turning to me, she asked, “Do you mind if I do not meet with Charlie and Erich with you?”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, giving her a little kiss to let her know I really didn’t mind.
Erich was early for the meeting, but Charlie was running late. At least she’d texted to tell us, so we didn’t wait for her and just went straight into the discussion with the contractor. I told him everything looked great, and he explained what the holdup was on the elevator, apologizing it wasn’t done yet.
“Hey, I understand it’s out of your control,” I said. “It’ll get done when the parts get here, right? It’s much more important to me that it be done correctly than it be done quickly.”
Erich pointed out the items left on the punch list as he and I walked though the house, and it seemed he had a really good handle on the details, so I assured him that I had no problem releasing the funds when the list was taken care of. “You’ve done an excellent job,” I said. “I’m glad you were recommended for the job.”
“Thanks,” Erich replied. “Word of mouth is my only advertising, so please, feel free to tell your friends that you’re happy with my work.”
A taxi dropped Charlie off just as Erich climbed into his work van, the two waving their greetings at each other in passing.
“Sorry I’m so late,” Charlie apologized as we entered the townhouse. “I had a complete dumpster fire I had to put out first thing this morning.”
“No problem,” I said. “It happens.”
“I wish it didn’t, but sometimes it does,” she agreed.
We made another walk-through, Charlie pointing out details here and there, while I mostly said “It all looks great,” over and over.
“Emmy had said you didn’t want any decorations or art, but the house looks unfinished,” Charlie complained, waving at the bare walls.
“We’ll take care of that,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that she was complaining of lost margins on all that stuff. I can’t really begrudge her, since that was how she made her living, but Emmy and I had been clear on that. No dead twigs in vases, no baskets of fake flowers, nothing. Designers seem to love cluttering up the place with useless bric-a-brac nonsense, and that just wasn’t what we wanted.
Charlie had done a phenomenal job on the paint colors and the style and materials of the furniture, so I had to praise her eye for those things, but I wasn’t going to have some reproduction vintage French travel poster framed on the wall merely to take up the empty space.
There were a few pieces that she’d ordered that hadn’t come in yet, mostly for the library and my office, but otherwise she was done with the project. I told her, too, that I was fine with releasing the final payment, minus the last of the furniture, if she wanted to get an invoice to Luisa.
“It’s been a pleasure working for you two,” she said as she left.
I wandered upstairs to find Emmy, since she and Angela hadn’t left yet. They were in the production booth, listening to something Emmy had recorded earlier.
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“We are almost ready to go out,” Emmy said when the song ended. “Would you like to join us?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got to talk to Mia, and do some work. You guys try to have a good time without me.”
“We will do our best,” Emmy said gravely, looking doubtful of their ability to enjoy themselves shopping. Laughing, I pulled her in for a kiss.
“Do not neglect Angela,” Emmy said when I let her go, so I wrapped Angela up in my arms and kissed her, too, which Angela reciprocated.
“See you guys later,” I said. Then, “Hey, have you made any dinner plans?” I asked Emmy.
“I will do that,” she replied. “Should I plan for Luisa and Mia to join us?”
“Why don’t you text them both and ask if they’d like to go out?”
“Text them?” Emmy asked, puzzled. “Where are they?”
“Mia’s here, but Luisa’s teaching,” I said.
“Oh, that is right. I had forgotten,” Emmy said, and pulled out her phone. A few moments later, a group text came through, including me in the conversation.
“All right,” I said. “See you two later.”
Since I was at the top end of the house anyway, I checked Mia’s apartment but she wasn’t in, so I headed all the way down to the sub-basement, finding her in the little security office.
“What did you want to talk about?” I asked, dropping into the other chair.
“Well, there’s a couple of things,” Mia said. “First, let’s talk business.” Turning to her computer setup, she brought up a video recording. “See this?” she asked as she played a clip from one of the exterior security cameras. It was taken at night, and it showed two guys walking down the street towards the house.
“See these guys? This was taken at around three-thirty in the morning. Now, no normal person walks down this particular street at that time of night. Check this out,” she said, and turned up the volume. “We have street-level microphones. These guys? Didn’t say a single word.”
The two men in the video clip glanced around as they approached the townhouse, looking to make sure there was nobody around. One of the guys stayed out on the sidewalk, continuing as lookout, while the other casually walked up to the front door and checked to see if it was locked. Of course it was, this being New York City, but I guess they had to do their due diligence and make sure. Looking over at his companion, who gave him a nod, the second guy then went down the steps to the laundry room entrance. Mia switched feeds to show the guy checking that door, too, and peeking through the small, barred window next to the door, then checking to see if it was unlocked. Silently, he rejoined his companion and the two left the way they had come, never a word spoken between the two.
“So, this was about a month ago,” Mia said. “Pretty weird, for a couple of reasons.”
“Well, they obviously targeted this house in particular,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s one thing, all right,” Mia agreed. “And they had a plan. This wasn’t just some random dudes thinking they might be able to break into an empty house or something.”
“You can tell by the way they didn’t need to communicate,” I agreed.
“Oh, they communicated,” Mia said. “They just didn’t talk. Here, watch this part again,” she said, as she replayed the part where the one guy checked the front door. Through the speakers, I could hear the noises of the late-night city, but nothing from the two men. “Look,” Mia said, pointing at the hands of the sidewalk guy as he made some complex hand gestures, clearly giving the other guy instructions.
“Well, O.K.,” I said, leaning back. “That’s interesting.”
“Dad tells me the Night Children have a fairly elaborate hand sign language,” Mia said. “Does this look like what they do?”
“Yeah, it does,” I said. “It sure isn’t ASL.”
“O.K.,” Mia said, turning back to her computer. “This is two and a half weeks ago.” She hit the button and another late-night security camera video played. Again, two men checked the front of the house. “Notice this? That guy is the same, but the other guy, no. Same drill, though. They check the security status of the house, then leave when it looks like they can’t get in. Now, here’s last week,” she said, playing yet another reenactment of the same scene. “Same two guys as the first time.”
“All right. So, let’s itemize what we know for sure,” I said. “First off, they're targeting this house in particular. Those guys come from down the street and don’t even glance at any other house on their way here, or after leaving. That’s one thing we know. We also know they aren’t trying very hard. They check, find the place is locked up, and leave. Will they always be this easy to, um, thwart? We don’t know that, but for now, they seem to be scouting more than anything.”
“That’s my take on it,” Mia agreed.
“The third thing we know is that they aren’t aware of our surveillance. They made no attempt to hide from our cameras, because they don’t know they exist,” I said.
“Why the hush-hush if they don’t know we have a microphone?” Mia asked.
“Well, if they are Night Children, and it sure looks like they might be, that’s just the way they are. Like your dad said, they communicate a lot silently.”
“Alright. So, what can we extrapolate?” Mia asked. “First off, they’re probably Night Children,” she said, answering her own question. “And they probably know Emmy owns this house.”
“It would make sense,” I agreed. “I can’t imagine why they’d target just this one house on the block otherwise.”
“Assuming they are Night Children,” Mia cautioned.
“Right,” I agreed. “Assuming they are Night Children. Emmy will be able to tell us if those are common Night Children hand signs. That’d confirm it for sure.”
“So what do we do about it?” Mia asked.
“Nothing, for now. Just keep watching, and making sure the doors and windows they can access are locked. Look for any escalation or new behavior, too. Also, I want a print-out of the best shot we have of each of their faces. I want to be able to recognize 'em if I see them on the street,” I said.
“Makes sense,” Mia agreed.
“We don’t want ‘em to know we’re onto them, so no obvious changes in behavior,” I cautioned.
“What do you think about adding some wireless cameras back along their route? Maybe we can figure out where they’re coming from,” Mia suggested.
“If you can set something like that up without anybody noticing, I say go for it. The more intel we have, the better.”
“All right. I’ll have something set up within the week,” Mia said.
“So, you had some other things you wanted to talk about?” I asked, leaning back now there was no need to look at the monitor.
“Yeah, about my dad,” Mia said. “He’s in Chicago, right? Running some kinda of operation?”
“What has he told you?” I asked.
“Precious fucking little,” Mia said with an annoyed look on her face. “He’s being really cagey.”
“Look, I’m going to tell you some things. This is… Well, this is, um, ‘extralegal’ shit, all right? If your dad hasn’t told you, it’s because he thinks you don’t need to know. I would have agreed with that assessment before you showed me that footage, but maybe now, well, maybe you do need to know.”
“You do know that I signed up knowing that there might be some of that extralegal shit you’re talking about, right?” Mia said.
“Yeah, I do. That said, the more informational security the better, right?” I replied. “So here’s the deal. We’ve run into resistance in Chicago, and there was some blood shed. A lot, actually, and there will probably be more.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘resistance’,” Mia asked, making finger quotes.
“I have no idea if your dad told you this about the Night Children, but we, Emmy and me, we’re taking over the Night Children here in the New World. We started in California, and we’ve been working our way east as well as north and south.”
“What do you mean by ‘taking over’?” Mia asked, leaning back and crossing her arms.
“So here’s the deal. Night Children never arrived here in any numbers, right? So all of them that are here are basically refugees,” I explained. “And as such, there’s no overall community, or nation, supporting them here, the way there is in Europe, the Near East or North Africa. We're forming that nation. As we find pockets of Night Children hiding here or there, we invite them to join our nation and reap the benefits.”
“Invite?” Mia asked, again making finger quotes.
“Yeah, invite. We don’t force anyone,” I replied, a bit annoyed.
“Then why is there resistance?” Mia asked, and I had to admit it was a good question. I spent the next hour explaining about how we’d found little pockets where some local boss had set himself up and was ruling over his tiny fiefdom with force, like in Vancouver and now in Chicago. If the locals wanted to join us but the area’s chief said no, we took exception.
“Your dad thinks we’re doing the right thing,” I said. “That’s why he’s willing to go all in on this.”
“That’s a lot to take in, you know?” Mia said. “And I guess I can see why you think I might need to know. If there is some sort of local boss here in New York, one who might be, um, recalcitrant, I might need to be prepared.”
“Yeah, exactly. We don’t know what these people are doing here. Heck, for all we know they’re just checking to make sure we’re safe and locked up properly. But odds are, that’s not the case,” I said. “As we’ve been moving east, the communities we’re finding are getting bigger, and in better communication. Honestly, I expect we’ll find some sort of head honcho here in New York City, or maybe Boston or Philly, who’ll have a lot of clout and we’ll have to negotiate at a higher level.”
“What you’ve said about migration, that makes sense,” Mia agreed. “So is this house gonna be some sort of forward base?”
“Oh, Hell no, no way. We’ve been working up plans, and they don’t involve using this house in any way but as a house,” I replied.
“I guess I’m in, whatever it works out to be. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?” Mia asked, grinning.
“Honestly, I’m glad we had this conversation. Now you know the security situation a bit better,” I said.
“Um, there’s one more conversation I want to have, and you can totally tell me it’s none of my business,” Mia said, looking uncomfortable.
“Yeah?”
“I’d kinda been assuming that you, um, had designs on Luisa,” Mia said, looking any way but at my face. “But now it looks like you and Emmy have this new girl, Angela…”
“O.K.,” I said with a little laugh. “As far as Luisa goes, yeah, she’s smoking hot, but I’ve never had any ‘designs’ on her at all. And this thing with Angela, it’s all really new and I’m not sure how it’s going to shake out in the long term. So if you were keeping your distance, don’t worry. Luisa is fair game.”
“I appreciate that, but as hot as Luisa is, and don’t get me wrong, I’d rock her world if she said yes, she really isn’t my type,” Mia said with a grin.
“What is your type?”
“I like bois with skinny little butts and chips on their shoulders,” Mia said, smirking. “They wanna pound me all freaking night long just to prove they can.”
“You’re welcome to that,” I said, sharing a laugh. “I’ve come to recognize it’s the femmes for me. The more girly the better.”
Mia raised her hand for a high-five, saying, “Different strokes!” I slapped her hand and then gave her a fist bump.
“It makes the world go ‘round,” I agreed.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the eye candy, though,” Mia said as we left the little security office and made our way to the kitchen.
“Hey, do you have any lunch plans?” Mia asked. “I make a mean grilled cheese sandwich.”
“Sounds great,” I replied, meaning it.
Mia was right- her grilled cheese was far better than most, and I told her so.
“I can’t cook very many things, but grilled cheese sammiches with tomato soup is the one dish I can do better than most,” Mia half bragged, half confessed.
We ate in companionable silence, but after a while Mia asked something that had obviously been on her mind.
“Dad hinted there was violence in Chicago. How bad was it?” she asked.
“We had one wounded, not too bad.”
“Out of how many?”
Mentally counting off the names on my fingers, I said, “Seven.”
“And their losses?”
“Total loss in that engagement. Eight.”
“Holy shit,” Mia breathed. “If I understand the rules of engagement right, this was all close-quarters, right? Knives out?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” I agreed.
“What was your count?”
“I’ll let your dad tell you how it all went, alright? Thanks for lunch, but I’ve got to get some work done,” I said as I stood and put my dishes by the sink.
“Roger that,” Mia replied. “You’re the boss.”
Grateful we’d kept the ridiculous old leather office chair and giant mahogany desk in my office, I set up my laptop and started plugging away at my work emails. There wasn’t anything particularly memorable, just the day to day, but it needed to get done.
Luisa checked in sometime in mid-afternoon when she got home from teaching.
“It doesn’t smell bad in here at all with the windows open like that,” she said.
“No, the smell isn’t too bad anymore,” I agreed. “It just needs a little ventilation, that’s all.”
“Um, Leah, Emmy said you’d pose for me this trip, but you guys are leaving tomorrow morning, right? Is there any chance it could still happen?”
“I guess so, sure,” I replied. “How long do you think the sitting will take?”
“A couple of hours, if that’s O.K. with you?”
“Alright,” I said. “Let me wrap this up. Back on the deck?”
“That’d be best, yeah, and the light should be good for a few more hours,” Luisa confirmed.
“How about we meet up there in twenty?”
“I can be ready,” Luisa agreed, and rushed out to get her things together. I finished the email I was working on, shut down my computer and closed the windows, being sure to lock them. Yeah, I know, fifth floor, but still…
Down in the master bedroom, I changed into comfy sweatpants and a hoodie and slipped a pair of zoris on my feet. Heck, I was going to be back out of that stuff in a few minutes, so no point in getting all dressed up like I was going to Walmart or something.
Luisa had set the chair I’d originally posed with in the same exact spot, and her easel was where it had been the first round. She had her paints arranged and had changed her own clothes, now wearing an old pair of jeans and long-sleeved T shirt with a smock on top. This was obviously an outfit she wore often while painting, judging by the many colors festooning both the shirt and pants, never mind the apron.
“It’s not too cold, is it?” Luisa asked, worried.
“No, it’s fine. It’s a nice afternoon.”
Luisa got some jazz going on her bluetooth speaker while I ditched my clothes and got back into the same uncomfortable and awkward pose as before. I was reminded of Angela’s instructions on unnatural poses that look completely normal, amused that things haven’t changed since posing began.
Luisa and I chatted about inconsequential things while she worked. I think she was too focused on the brushwork to actually put any real effort into the conversation, and that was fine with me.
We’d been up on that deck for a little over an hour when Emmy and Angela found us.
“You are posing!” Emmy said, delighted.
“Wow!” Angela exclaimed, looking over Luisa’s shoulder at the canvas. “That’s incredible!”
Emmy leaned in and gave me a kiss, giving my butt a quick squeeze to go along with it. “We spent a lot of money today,” she announced. “I cannot wait to show you the things we bought.”
“What kind of things?”
“We bought a lot of lingerie,” Angela volunteered.
“And musical equipment, too,” Emmy said. “For the studio.”
“We bought you some things, too,” Angela said, a bit shyly. Finally done staring at the painting, Angela came over and gave me a kiss, too, and I caught the look of surprise on Luisa’s face. It was brief, but it was there.
“We will see you downstairs when you are done posing,” Emmy announced, and the two left, giggling conspiratorially.
“Uh, it’s not my place to ask…” Luisa began.
“Yeah, it’s what it looks like,” I admitted. “Somehow, Angela has become our girlfriend. Not my girlfriend, or Emmy’s, but both of ours. Emmy calls it a ‘household of three’- a ménage à trois.”
“I wish you guys well,” Luisa said, doubtfully.
“Yeah, me too,” I agreed.