But as I stare at it, heat floods me as I remember how he wielded it. Like a pro, if there is such a thing. But if he’s not going to be around to use it, then I’m definitely going to need batteries, although I doubt that a fully charged vibe is ever going to make me feel as good as Jake did.
“Hi, Jason. Did a package get delivered to me yesterday?”
“I’ll go check, Ms. Graham.”
I busy myself with breakfast while I wait.
“Yes, came late. Must be after I left or I would have brought it up for you.”
Doubtful, I think, and rude to blame our night doorman. More likely it came during the day and Jason was just too lazy to bring it up, or at least figured that the crazy lady in apartment 3-D wouldn’t notice. But who cares? Again, I’m not going to let these little pebbles in the bottom of my shoe ruin my day. There’s a pain in my chest and yes, some regret that I woke up alone this morning. I mean, doesn’t everyone like morning sex?
I slap the spoon on the counter and shake the granola into my bowl a little too frantically. Granola? This is a morning that calls for sugary cereal. I sweep the granola into the trash and pour a heaping serving of marshmallows and chocolate crunch cereal. Too bad I can’t sweep my memories of Jake, damn him and his talented dick, into the trash with the granola.
I slam the cabinet door shut and shove a handful of cereal into my mouth.
A hot chocolate and two pounds of sugar later, I’m ready to tackle my manuscript, so that I can stop avoiding Daphne’s increasingly frantic emails. I can see by a quick review of my inbox that she’s reaching alarming stress levels. Her subject lines are now all caps and are using more exclamation points than should be allowed in any correspondence that doesn’t have to do with the New York Times list or a movie option.
Jake’s good loving along with my mild irritation at his absence spurs some creative organ in my lizard brain, and the words fall out of me. I can barely type fast enough to capture them all. I don’t leave to eat, drink, or even pee. It’s not until my stomach growls some five hours later that I look up from the screen.
My back and neck and shoulders protest when I push away from the keyboard. Sitting in one position is turning me into a hunchback. I’m going to have to use the treadmill desk for the rest of the day. In the kitchen, I hear the rhythmic bleat of my phone. Picking it up I see I’ve missed several text messages, but none of them are from Jake. “What the hell” leaps to mind, but I stamp it back down because I don’t care. I. Don’t. Care.
God, if I cared more, I might crush the phone in my hand, if that were possible. Taking a deep breath, I respond to Daphne’s first, because I’m afraid if I don’t respond I’m going to give her a coronary.
Me: I was writing. Am writing. You’ll be happy.
Her response is immediate.
Her: I’m having a heart attack over here. The managing editor was in asking when I could expect the ms. I can’t keep lying to him and telling him it’s soon if it is not going to be soon. We can’t move the publication date of this book. All the co-op is paid for. The bookstores are expecting it. (1/2)
(2/2) You’ll be ruined if you miss the date.
Me: Thanks for the reminder. I know. I’m going to finish. I promise. I’ve never let you down and I won’t start now.
I know she wants to write something further, so I block her, temporarily, so I won’t have to see her constant admonishments. After I eat this sandwich I’m going to dive back into the cave and—
And there’s a knock on the door. The phone rings at the same time and the face that pops up is Oliver.
“It’s me, Oliver,” he says from behind the door. “I’m alone,” he adds.
I hesitate before walking to the door. Jake is absolutely right, I would feel more comfortable if there were cameras and I could see who is at the door without actually going up to it. As it is, because I can’t see, I’m still nervous. Because it’s Oliver I only have to give myself a five-minute pep talk to open the door as opposed to the usual ten- to fifteen-minute one that ends up with me walking into my bedroom and putting a pillow over my head.
“Sorry,” I apologize as I let him in. “I think I’m still on edge from the clown.”
“Don’t apologize. I wouldn’t want to open the door after that clown showed up in front of mine either.” He gives me a one-armed hug and raises a deli bag. “I brought lunch.”
“You are the best cousin ever.”
“I’m your only cousin, Natalie.” He places the bag on the counter while I get the plates. “I was coming home late last night and saw your lights on. I knocked and, well, I could tell you were busy.”
My cheeks turn rosy as I guess at how he could tell I was occupied. “Was I really loud?”
He looks away. “I could, ah, tell you were enjoying yourself.”
Now we’re both blushing. I busy myself with rearranging the plates and forks.
“How much do you know about this guy?”
“A lot.”
“Like what?”
How could I share with him the things that Jake had told me? They seemed too intimate and precious to be repeating. I might not know what his favorite food is or what he enjoys doing during his spare time, but I know that he knows what it’s like to be afraid, to be different in ways that Oliver will never understand.
“Important stuff,” I say to keep things vague. Oliver looks skeptical. “What does it matter?” I ask.
“He could be taking advantage of you. I’m happy that you’re not alone, but we don’t know this Jake guy.” Oliver takes a huge bite of his sandwich.
“He must be decent, or why would you have hired him?”
“Hiring someone to investigate a potential problem isn’t the same as knowing him enough to feel comfortable about him dating your cousin.” The side of his mouth quirks up and a long crease appears. His fatal dimples don’t have the same effect on me that they do on other females, though I’m not immune to the charm.
Reaching over, I squeeze his forearm. I’ve learned that his biceps have no squeezability. “You’re the best and I’d say that if I had a dozen cousins.” I take a bite of the ham sandwich he brought me. “But I think Jake is a good guy.”
“If he is so decent, where is he now? Shouldn’t he be here eating with you instead of me?”
It takes effort not to look toward the bedroom. “I don’t ask a lot of questions about your personal life because it’s none of my business, but also because you don’t have the best relationship track record. And while you aren’t as bad as the tabloids make you out to be, you are hardly an angel.”
He scowls. “I don’t have time for a real relationship right now. You know my focus is on winning. So I look for women who want the same thing. To sleep with a winner.”
“God, Oliver, you are more than a football player.”
He shrugs me off as if it is unimportant. “Look, I’m not going to be an asshole about it. Just know I’m concerned. Plus, if I need to beat his ass up, I will.”
“Noted. Get out of here because I need to write. Daphne is telling me I’m going to put her in the hospital if I don’t finish this book on time.”
Oliver laughs and ruffles my hair as he leaves.
I check my phone one last time to see if Jake has left me any messages, but the only other ones there are unread texts from Oliver, which I mark as read since he’s discharged his brotherly warning in person. After those are discarded, I’m left with an empty screen. Again I remind myself of my victories—allowing someone into my apartment who is not Oliver, Daphne, and Dr. Terrance, and having sex with a real live person for the first time in three years. And that the sex was amazing. Fantastic. Superb. Stuff worth writing about.
If he doesn’t call again, then it’s fine. I’ll be fine. Sure, it will sting. All rejections sting, but the world won’t end.
It’s not a very convincing argument, but as it’s the only one I have, I return to my office. At the very least, I can finish my book.
&
nbsp; I close the door, place my headphones on once again, and shut out the rest of the world. The only thing that can exist for me for the rest of the day is this book.
CHAPTER TWENTY
JAKE
When Mike and Rondell, two of my employees who do surveillance work, arrive at three p.m. to start the evening monitoring shift, I give in to the impulse to call Natalie. I’d told myself that if she wanted to see me again, she’d call or text.
That she hadn’t all day suggests that she is really pissed off. Generally, pissed-off women are not appeased over the telephone. But whenever I try to grab a moment for myself, work interrupts. We get a call from a West Coast security firm that we often partner with. One of their celebrity clients had decided to make a surprise trip across the country and needed immediate protection services.
Celebrity clients are my least favorite. They require the most work and generally have unreasonable expectations. Primarily because they want to be seen at all times, only they want to control who can see them and where. Whenever I receive a hassled call from LA, it renews my appreciation for my current circumstances. I prefer to make my living off of dull investigative work rather than fending off the paparazzi.
After I convinced one of my new recruits that celebrity work was the best kind of work available and that the hot young actress he’d be guarding would get him a lot of play with the ladies, I was summoned to an investment bank that believed one of their senior employees was embezzling money. Likely he was snorting it up his nose. There is a not-so-shockingly large number of drug-addicted investment bankers and hedge fund managers who have no problem dipping into client funds to support their habits. None of these guys will ever see a day in prison because their firms don’t want to reveal anything is wrong in the company. Any dirt that gets stirred up behind the scenes needs to be swept away.
There was one particular hedge fund manager who even threatened to sue his employer for defamation if he wasn’t given a good—no, strike that—great recommendation, even after he admitted to losing several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of client funds.
I followed the senior partner around that afternoon to see if I could catch him scoring a hit or doing something that would at least give them grounds for termination, but when I hadn’t come up with anything other than that he had bad taste in booze, I passed him off to Vic and her partner.
I was able to photograph the soon-to-be ex of one of my clients kissing his secretary outside of David Burke’s restaurant on 67th Street. I hope that he enjoyed that kiss, because it was going to cost him about $5 million.
Smart prenuptials have infidelity clauses, and this one gave the wife money for any intimate physical contact including, but not limited to, hand-holding and kissing, as well as emotional infidelity. So naughty texts and pictures were out of the question. She had a good lawyer, but the husband had a lot of money and could afford to be kissing his secretary, I guess.
Sabrina once mentioned she thought that perhaps I have stayed single because I took too many pictures of adulterous couples. That’s not accurate. I just figured these people had chosen wrong. If your home life is stale, seeking to spice it up with a third party would only be a temporary fix. At some point that third party would be just as uninteresting, and you would have to move on again. And at that point, you might as well just be single. Which is why I was single. I hadn’t met a woman I could envision going home to every night.
Except that’s kind of what I want to do right now. Go home to Natalie for a second night. Upstairs is my empty bed and my sister, who is interested in asking me more questions about Natalie or more questions about Kaga. I’m not interested in providing answers on either of those topics.
So it’s either go upstairs and let Natalie’s resentment, if there is any, fester overnight or call her and make my explanations and hope she accepts them.
“Any activity over in Tribeca?” I ask. If she had a problem, that will give me a legitimate excuse to go over there tonight.
“Nothing,” Rondell answers. “It’s been quiet all around.”
Mike knocks his fist against the wood.
“That’s good. That means we’re doing our jobs,” I say to the two annoyed-looking men. It’s a hell of a lot more fun chasing bad guys than sifting through papers, spying on people, and watching security cameras.
“Since we’re getting nowhere on the note and the clown, we probably need some eyes on her apartment,” suggests Rondell.
“I’ll get those set up. I installed the sensors last night, but I think we should do cameras over the doors of the elevator, her apartment, and the balcony. I asked the property management company for permission to install those, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet. I think I’ll go ahead and install the camera above her door. They can bitch me out later.”
“You installed the sensors and you’re going to install the camera?” Mike asks. His fist full of nuts stops halfway between the bag and his mouth. He and Rondell exchange looks.
“I can take care of that for you, man. No need for you to be doing stuff like that,” he chirps.
From their shit-eating grins, I can tell that they’ve heard something about Natalie.
“Was it Sabrina?” Someone ratted me out.
Rondell shakes his head. “Nah. Vic put it together. She heard that you were going over to some client’s house to do install work. Since when do you do install work? Plus she said that you went out with her man and had no interest in the floor shows. Want us to run a background check on your woman?”
“Rondell, I hope you’re not telling your girls that you run background checks on them before you go out with them. That doesn’t go over well with people.”
“Oh,” he says, nodding his head, “so you already ran the background report. Good on you. That’s why you’re the boss and we’re the peons.”
“Right, peons I pay a fortune to.”
They both laugh at me as I leave. Her phone rings a half a dozen times and I get the voice-mail message each time. Worried that she hasn’t answered my phone calls or responded to my text, I call Oliver.
“I’d like to come over and install cameras over her balcony doors and front door,” I explain. “Building management hasn’t given me the go-ahead to do it, but I figure it’s better to have her safe, and we can always pay damages later. I have a tiny camera I can insert on the trim of the front door. It’s not my preferred method. As I told Natalie, I prefer the visible cameras. That can provide just as much deterrence as anything. People tend not to do shit if they know they’re being watched.”
“You’re coming back?” he asks, and his surprise irritates me.
It’s a good thing we’re not face-to-face, I decide. “Yes, I’ve always been planning on coming back.”
“Don’t hurt her again,” he warns. “I can easily get someone else in here to do your job.”
Again? Shit. I swallow my annoyance. “Look, Natalie’s not answering her phone, and the sooner I get into her place, the safer she’ll be.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t run off, you could’ve talked to her this morning about when the best time to install this stuff would have been.”
I run my tongue over my bottom lip, tasting resentment and exasperation at this questioning, but he isn’t wrong. I did bring this on myself, so I don’t jump down his throat. “Last night was a mistake. I won’t make it again.” It’s as much of an apology as he’s going to get.
“She’s been writing. When she’s in the groove like that with a deadline, she doesn’t answer phone calls, texts, or anything. Just puts her headphones on. You could probably meet me over here now and make the install. She wouldn’t even notice. I’d feel better, and I think she would too, if she had the cameras up. She mentioned it today.”
“I’ll be over in fifty then.”
I gather up the necessary equipment and drive over to Natalie’s condo. There’s parking right across the street from her place. I text Oliver before entering the building. He sends me
a text back letting me know that I should head right up to Natalie’s.
Jason, the day doorman, is bent over a magazine. He gives me a nod and doesn’t ask for me to sign in. Either he remembers who I am, or he doesn’t care. I suppose that he could know who I was based upon Oliver’s instruction, but he doesn’t give me even a cursory perusal. I’m going to need to move Natalie out of here soon. All a few cameras are going to do is tell me if she’s being harassed, not prevent it from happening in the first place.
Graham meets me on the third floor. “How’d you get in here?”
“Your doorman waved me through.”
“He what!” Oliver bellows in outrage. It isn’t a question. “That fucking prick is done.”
I don’t know if he’s referring to the building manager or the doorman. “You got a key or do you want me to pick the lock?”
The reference to the poor security on the doors garners another glower. He produces a key and pushes the door open. The condo looks empty, but after a moment I hear a faint clack clack clack coming from the bedroom that serves as Natalie’s office.
“Just do your shit. She won’t notice, and she doesn’t want to be bothered,” Oliver instructs. He stomps over to the living room and takes a seat on the sofa. The remote in hand, he starts flipping through the channels. It’s early afternoon and the only thing on is talk shows and ESPN. While I drill holes into the door casing, he watches . . . Ellen.
“Didn’t take you for an Ellen fan,” I comment as I fish the wiring through the wall.
“You can only watch so much ESPN before it repeats itself, and I’d rather watch a couple of people be surprised with a free house than hear those asshole reporters who haven’t ever played the game talk about how they would do it better.” He gets up and strides to the refrigerator. “Want a drink?”
“Too early for me.”
“Eh, Natalie doesn’t have liquor in here. Only root beer. Pop is my weakness, so I keep it in Natalie’s refrigerator. Once I retire, I’m going to be as big as a house. No more watching my weight, working out five hours a day. I’m going to plant my ass on the sofa and never get up.”
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