The Book Critic's Bodyguard

by Michele Ciuzwo

  “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed. “Does any part of you think that going Krav Maga on the door is keeping a low profile? Stop. Doing. That.” He snatched the key out of her hand and forced the door open with one burly shoulder. Kate watched, trying her best not to look impressed.

  “I loosened it for you,” she informed him as she crossed the threshold. “Just so you know.”

  Chris rolled his eyes. “Just go.” Following behind Kate, he barely contained a smile. She was not making his job easy, by any means, and her need for control was almost palpable in its infuriatingly constant presence…but watching her attack her door with everything she had gave him a slightly different perspective on his ward. She was annoying and uptight, sure, but she was also persistent and stubborn, and he couldn’t help but admire the way Kate refused to be a passive participant in this excursion.

  As they rode the elevator to Kate’s floor, Chris let out a low whistle. They were going all the way up, and it was a nice building. He took another long, secret look at Kate. She was clearly doing well for herself, and he knew it must be hard for her to have her life suddenly yanked out from under her. Chris felt a sudden flash of anger at whoever was terrorizing Kate. She doesn’t deserve this, he thought. Just for giving her opinion? Come on.

  When they got to her door, Chris noticed the scorch marks on the corner of her doorframe. Kate saw him squat down out of the corner of her eye and bent down to look with him. “Weird to think that it just happened last night,” she said softly.

  “What did you do with the bag?” Chris asked, voice hard. Seeing the damage in person made Kate’s story more real, and he again wondered at the fact that someone could hate this woman so much over her review of a book.

  Chris had always been an avid reader, although he never followed Kate’s column. He preferred to find his own books, combing the library for hidden gems as a kid, and downloading books seemingly at random when he was on deployment. He’d read Proust, sure, and Clancy as Kate had suspected. He had also devoured Twilight and Harry Potter as eagerly as he had ravaged Beowulf and The Odyssey.

  Chris had been slow to read. Throughout first and second grade, he had managed to fool his teachers (or, more accurately, stay below their radars), but by third grade, his smart mouth was making him a target. His teacher watched him struggling to keep up with group assignments, and the way his face turned ash white when she was calling on children to read aloud. Holding him after class one day, Mrs. Allen, who Chris personally thought of as the meanest of teachers, said to him frankly, “You can’t read.”

  “Yuh-huh, I can,” Chris whispered. Normally Chris was the loudest student in Mrs. Allen’s class, the type of student to keep his classmates in stitches and his teachers in bottles of wine long after he’d been freed from detention. At that moment he was quiet, afraid of the ramifications if his secret was discovered.

  “Oh? Read this.” Mrs. Allen uncapped the pen on her desk and scrawled you can’t read, you little liar in her elegant but simple writing. Turning the paper so the letters faced her pupil, she waited. “Go on.”

  Chris stared hard at the printed message. He squinted, hoping against hope that some miracle would occur right at that moment and he would suddenly know how to read—or drop dead on the spot, thus taking his secret to the grave. “My real name isn’t Mrs. Allen?” He guessed hopefully. If she revealed herself to be a cyborg at that moment, it would really take the heat off of him.

  Mrs. Allen didn’t break eye contact with the child as she pulled the paper back to herself and folded it in half, carefully shredding it before depositing it in the wastebasket under her desk. “Not even close,” she said flatly.

  Chris looked sullenly at her desk. “What are you gonna do?” he asked in a low voice. He wasn’t worried about his current foster mother finding out; he was sure she couldn’t care less about his literacy. Chris’s big concern was the other kids finding out he was too stupid to read, and having yet another reason to exclude him. A scrawny foster kid with a big mouth was a target for bullies; a scrawny foster kid with a big mouth who couldn’t even read was a target for everyone.

  “Teach you, of course,” Mrs. Allen said in mild surprise. “I’m a teacher, after all.”

  For a short while, spending every day after school with Mrs. Allen had elevated Chris’s standing in the eyes of his peers, they having believed it was a punishment for some unspeakably bad behavior. Eventually, though, the private lessons labelled him a ‘Teacher’s Pet,’ and whatever teasing he had received before was ramped up considerably. It didn’t bother Chris, though, who was discovering a deep passion for the written word within himself.

  Years later, during his first deployment, Chris had sent a letter of thanks to the then-retired Mrs. Allen, who had responded in her typically detached way that while she appreciated Chris’s letter, she had no recollection of having him as a student so many years ago.

  “I threw it down the trash chute,” Kate answered offhandedly, yanking Chris from the memory. “Not like I really wanted to keep it around, you know?”

  Chris sighed. “Too bad. Cops probably would have been interested in it, and it might have been handy to start a paper trail if this guy does intend to escalate things…which he might not do,” he added hastily when he saw the expression on Kate’s face. “What’s done is done, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Kate agreed unhappily. She opened her door and they stepped inside.

  Chris was immediately struck by how sterile Kate’s apartment was. No pictures hung on the walls, and no notes stuck to the fridge. Even the calendar on the wall had no markings at all. Chris gave Kate a strange look.

  “What?”

  “This could be a safe house,” he said appreciatively. “Or a serial killer’s lair. Cold and bare. Closets empty, too?” He smiled crookedly and before Kate could stop him, he opened the hallway closet. Kate stood, stricken, as the white garment bag containing her wedding dress glared at her from inside.

  “What’s this?” Chris asked, reaching for it. “The world’s weirdest jacket?”

  Kate lurched forward and shoved his hand aside. Slamming the door, she pushed her back against it and struggled to remain calm. She gulped, trying to keep her composure but breathing heavily.

  “Hey,” Chris said, alarmed. “Kate. You okay?”

  “I…yes. It’s fine, I just—it’s not-” Stammering, Kate pasted on an insincere smile and waved Chris away. “This is so stupid,” she swiped at her eyes, although no tears swam in them. “A few days ago I was ready to give it away and now I’m crying over it? What the hell is wrong with me?”

  A look of dawning comprehension washed over Chris’s face. “That’s your wedding dress,” he realized.

  “It was supposed to be,” Kate coughed and wiped her face. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s come over me.”

  Chris hurried to the kitchen and got a glass of water for Kate. Handing it to her, he ushered her to the couch. “Hey,” he put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “You’re going through a lot of intense stuff right now, okay? The death threat, the rat bag, the hotel room…the devastatingly handsome bodyguard,” he added, eliciting a brief chuckle from Kate. “It’s understandable to lose your mind a little bit. You’re under a lot of stress.”

  Kate shook her head. “I don’t think it’s that,” she admitted quietly. “I just-” she took a deep breath. “I think you’re right about this place. And me. This place is just…cold. I don’t know how to make it a home without Aiden, so I don’t even try to make it warm. I don’t try to be warm. I feel like I’ve just been on pause since he died, and this whole situation is forcing me to face the fact that I can’t continue with that.”

  “How so?” Chris asked softly.

  “If Aiden were here, he and I would figure this out together. We wouldn’t run to a hotel room, and I wouldn’t need a bodyguard. But he’s not here, and this place isn’t home. That wedding dress is the last thing I have that’s a part of m
y life with Aiden, and I can’t get rid of it. I can’t keep it, so I hide it. And I’m stuck in this horrible Limbo because I don’t know how to move on.” She buried her face in her hands. “I think I’m just really tired of not having a life to be afraid for, with all this going on.”

  Chris took Kate’s face gently in his hands. He turned her to face him. “Well,” he said after a pause. “That is a really freaking weird revelation to have about a dress.”

  Kate stared at him for a moment, then burst into gales of laughter. She laughed until her sides hurt, and tears began streaming down her cheeks. “It is!” she choked out. “Oh my God, I must be more tired than I thought!”

  Chris threw back his head and laughed with her. They sat on the couch together, until their laughter subsided into occasional giggles. Kate felt better; she felt cleaned out. Even though there was someone out there wishing death upon her and leaving demented presents at her doorstep, Kate felt better than she had in over a year. She exhaled deeply, and looked at Chris. “Now what? I guess I should get my clothes?” She grimaced, swallowing hard. “And we can get back to the hotel.”

  Chris thought about it, considering her question while he emptied the contents of a Sugar Babies box into his palm, then shook his head. “Nah.”

  “Nah?” Kate looked confused. “What do you mean, ‘nah’? I didn’t wear that giant jacket all the way over here just to leave empty handed. And I want my toothpaste. Oh, and my sleep mask.”

  Chris waved her off. “Okay, well I’m not schlepping half of your bathroom across the city with us,” he replied, then grew serious. “Listen. I was hired to be keep you safe, right? You’re still in charge of your own life, and if you don’t want to live in fear, I respect that. So what do you say we tell O’Bannon to nix the room, and I’ll keep an eye on you from here?” Kate looked at him gratefully, and he added, “Besides, if you start making this place a home while I’m here, I can keep you from making some terrible decorating mistakes. Like a futon. I know it might be hard to resist the impulse, but you don’t want to get a futon. You’re an adult, for God’s sake. Keep the couch.”

  Kate laughed and swatted him with a throw pillow. “That sounds great,” she smiled. It sounded like exactly what she needed.

  9

  Jack was thrilled to hear about Kate’s decision to stay in her own home rather than a hotel room paid for by the paper.

  “Hey, as long as you understand that I’m not telling you to do this, I’m totally on board,” he told her. “No liability here, no problems.”

  Chris alerted the local police precinct about the disturbing surprise Kate had found on her doorstep, and they took a statement from her.

  “Without any evidence, there’s not much we can do,” Officer Podeco explained to Chris and Kate. She was a polite and frank woman in her thirties, and she looked at Chris with express interest in her eyes. “It’s good that you’ll be around to keep an eye on your client, and you can let us know if there’s any more suspicious activity around here. It’ll be…convenient to have a professional liaison like you to work with our department.” She gave him her card before she left, letting her hand linger when she handed it to him.

  Kate had watched, amused. Objectively, she understood Chris was an attractive man. He was funny, sure, and charming. He was capable, and he smelled great, but he had his downsides too. Doesn’t he? She wondered. Wait…what were they, again?

  ***

  The days rolled by, and Chris staying in her apartment turned out to be much easier than Kate had anticipated. He wasn’t company who constantly needed to be hosted, and he was surprisingly professional most of the time. He researched her past columns, made lists and contacted publishing houses and literary agents. He did random security checks around the apartment and the building. At night before falling asleep on the couch, he read to entertain himself, and Kate had even loaned him a new release from her work stack.

  When Kate’s next book club meeting came around, Chris offered to wait outside the apartment door to afford the group some privacy. “No, don’t be silly,” Kate teased. “We could use someone to serve us drinks.”

  Chris clapped his hands. “Yes! I can do that! I make a mean dirty martini.”

  Kate laughed and began to say something when Chris’s phone rang. “O’Bannon,” he informed her. “Hello?” He listened for a while. “About time! Yeah, well I don’t want you forgetting that I cost your paper good money, so if the safety of your employee doesn’t light a fire under you, maybe that will,” he snapped. “Good. Good! All right.” Chris grabbed a pen and scribbled something down. “Okay, got it. Yeah, you take care, Jack. We are.” Chris hung up and turned to see Kate looking at him expectantly. “What?” he asked innocently.

  “Well?” Kate prodded him.

  “Jack finally got the address for Wash from Penton House. You were right about them, by the way. Completely incompetent assholes. The good news is: Wash is all the way over in Arkansas. The better news? I served with a buddy who’s Arkansas State Police these days. I’m gonna give him a call and have someone pay a visit to Mr. Rodney Wash, see how he’s doing.”

  While Chris spoke to his military friend, Kate thought about the tone his voice had taken when he rebuked Jack for not getting the information quickly enough. The annoyance in his voice made her core feel fluttery, and gave her a warm, all-over tingle. He could have been thrilled that Jack was dragging out his time on the clock, but he sounded genuinely upset that Jack wasn’t taking Kate’s safety seriously. She knew there was a good possibility that Chris was just taking his job as her bodyguard solemnly, but a part of her thought--hoped, really--that maybe Chris cared for her on a personal level.

  She shook her head, clearing the thought from her mind. Kate was sure that Chris’s buddy would find nothing amiss in the Wash home, and they would both go their separate ways soon. The thought brought a sharp pang to her stomach, but she shrugged. She had a life to get on with, right? Maybe I just enjoy the company, she reasoned.

  “I’m going to take a shower before the book club,” she told Chris. “I need to freshen up, I stink like a recluse.”

  Chris shook his head. “That’s the great part of being a recluse. That natural odor.” He breathed in deeply. “Ah, yeah. Smell that farm fresh B.O.!”

  “I’m all set with that, thanks. It’s a shower for me.” Kate left the room, and Chris began setting up the ingredients to make martinis. He figured Kate’s book club would be full of women like Kate: busy professionals with this one outlet in their lives to cut loose, and he intended to make it as enjoyable an evening as possible. Not just for the ladies, but for Chris, too. It would be hilarious to see Kate get crazy. He snickered to himself imagining put-together, polished Kate acting silly. She had been laughing more lately, but there was still a reserved aspect to her.

  Chris grabbed his bag from the living room floor and after a moment’s consideration, decided to hide it away for the evening in the hallway closet. He was delighted to see, upon opening the door, that Kate had gotten rid of her wedding dress. Someone from that charity must have picked it up while he was in the shower, or something, he thought. That was pretty significant progress. Kate seemed to be really moving on from the tragedy in her past. Chris smiled to himself, thinking of her.

  When Kate emerged from her bedroom half an hour later, she was dressed in much more casual clothes than Chris expected. Even working from home, Kate maintained her dark, drab wardrobe that she insisted on calling “professional”, but tonight she was wearing a long, loose cotton shift over paisley leggings. Chris did a double take, and Kate froze.

  “Do you think this is too, I don’t know, flowy?” she asked nervously. “I haven’t worn it in a while, it just kind of jumped out at me.”

  “No, it—it looks good,” Chris stammered, looking away and busying himself with the glasses. Kate visibly relaxed.

  “They’ll be here any minute. Are you sure it’s a good idea to have them come here-” she began, then stopped
short when she saw the tray of drinks Chris had set on the counter. “What are those?” she asked incredulously.

  “My famous dirty martini,” Chris answered proudly. “I told you, I make an awesome martini. Did you think I was just talking out of my ass? You should know by now, when I brag, I can back it up.” Chris turned around and began taking small hops backwards, shaking his butt. “Back, back, back it up,” he sang, bumping into Kate and pushing her with his backside.

  “Oh my God, you didn’t,” Kate covered a smile with her hand. “No, really, you’ve gotta get rid of those, they-” A knocking at her door interrupted her again. “They’re here.”

  Chris narrowed his eyes and held Kate back. “No one buzzed to come up,” he muttered. “Everyone is supposed to buzz, we told your neighbors not to let anyone in without knowing who’s at the door.” Holding Kate back, he approached the door and looked through the peephole. “What the…” He opened it, and a gaggle of girls pushed past him, flooding into Kate’s apartment.

  Chris watched, confused, as Kate was swarmed by the girls, all vying for her attention. She smiled widely as each girl babbled happily about a random topic, commenting on every story and joining in their happy chatter. When the girls began seating themselves in the living room, Chris grabbed Kate’s arm.

  “Um…those are kids,” he whispered.

  “Yeah…?” Kate looked confused.

  “I made martinis! I was expecting grown-ups! Real people!” Chris looked nervously over Kate’s shoulder into the living room where the girls congregated. “I don’t know how to deal with kids. Maybe I should just wait in the hallway until this is over.”

  Kate grinned. “Don’t tell me the big, bad bodyguard is afraid of a few pre-teen girls,” she teased. “Chris, come on! They’re harmless. And they’re really great kids, honestly. Come talk to us about The Handmaid’s Tale. You’ve read it, I’m sure?”

  “Yeah, obviously,” Chris whispered absently. He looked over her shoulder again. So far the girls weren’t doing anything weird, but the night was still young. “Margaret Atwood’s dystopian tale of religious fanaticism and an unchecked patriarchy run amok, duh. It’s a classic. I haven’t seen the show, though, so don’t ask me about that.” He looked at Kate with zero humor in his eyes. “Seriously, don’t. I don’t want to look stupid in front of the girls, they’ll eat me alive.”