“Oh, well,” I said. “That’s all right. I mean, it was a very good dinner.”
She smiled again, using both sides of her mouth this time, although she still didn’t look entirely happy. “Right,” she said. “Glad you liked it.” She got up and wandered over to the sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony, and for a moment she just stood there looking out. I was afraid we were going right back into moody silence again, and I began to wish I’d brought a good book. But apparently she saw something out on the Bay that snapped her out of it; she suddenly turned around and, with a cheerful energy that was clearly forced, she said, “Well, then! It’s too early for bed. So what should we do?”
It took me by surprise, and I blinked stupidly. “Um,” I said. “I don’t know.” I looked around the room for a clue that wasn’t there. “I don’t see any board games,” I said.
“Damn,” Jackie said. “I could really go for a good round of Monopoly.” She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to one side. “So, what would you do if you were at home? With your wife and kids?”
“Oh, probably watch TV,” I said.
Jackie made a face. “Yuck,” she said, and I must have looked surprised, because she laughed. “I know,” she said. “But just because I make TV shows doesn’t mean I have to like them.”
“It doesn’t?” I said, and it was really sort of hard to imagine. I mean, I enjoy my job—both of them, in fact. Why else would I do them?
“No,” Jackie said. “I mean, there’s some good stuff now and then. But mostly, I’d rather stare at the wall. In fact, I usually can’t tell the difference.” She shrugged. “It’s the business. You do an awful lot of crap, just to get into a position where you get a chance at something worth doing. But then you get a reputation as somebody who’s really good at doing crap, and the good stuff never comes along, and the money is too good to turn down.… Eh,” she said, spreading her hands in a what-the-hell gesture. “It’s a good life. No complaints.” She frowned and was silent for a moment, and then she shook herself and said, “Hey, look at me. Sliding back into the dumps again.” She clapped her hands together. “Fuck it. How about a nightcap?” And without waiting for an answer she disappeared into her bedroom.
I stood uncertainly for a moment, wondering whether I was supposed to follow her. Before I could decide, she came back out, holding a bottle in her hands. “Get a couple of glasses,” she said, nodding at the sideboard. “You know, tumblers.”
I followed her nod to the large silver tray that stood on the table beneath a mirror. It held a silver ice bucket with silver tongs, four wineglasses, and four tumblers. I took two tumblers and joined Jackie on the couch. She set the bottle reverently on the coffee table and I looked at it as I sat. It was a very nice bottle, with a large wooden stopper on top and a palm tree etched onto the front, and it was filled with a brown liquid.
“What is it?” I asked politely.
Jackie smiled. “Panamonte,” she said. “The best dark rum I ever tasted.”
“Oh,” I said. “Should I get some ice?”
Jackie gave me a look of mock horror. “Oh, my God, no,” she said. “Putting ice in this stuff is a capital crime.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know much about rum. Except the kind you mix with Coke.”
Jackie shook her head vigorously. “This ain’t it,” she said. “Mixing this with anything is like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.” She pulled the cork out of the bottle and poured a little rum into each tumbler. “Try it,” she said. She picked up both glasses, passing me one and raising the other in front of her face. “Sláinte,” she said.
“Salud,” I told her.
I sipped. It was not at all what I’d expected. I have never been a real Drinker, but there are times when Social Custom demands that you drink, and so I have from time to time, and I usually don’t like it. And I have found that most brown liquors that are served after dinner are smoky, with a sharp taste that I don’t like, no matter how much someone insists that it is very rare and the best ever, and I have never been a real fan of such things. But this was like nothing I’d ever tried before. It was sweet but not cloying, dark and rich and crisp, and probably the smoothest thing I’d ever tasted. “Wow,” I said. It seemed like the only appropriate thing to say.
Jackie sipped from her glass and nodded. “Yup,” she said, and for several minutes we just sat and sipped.
The rum seemed to take the dark edge off things for Jackie. She visibly relaxed as the level in her glass went down. To my surprise, I did, too. I suppose it was only natural; as I said, I am not a drinker, and I’d already had a mojito and several glasses of wine this evening. I probably should have been worried that all the alcohol would make me too dopey to be really effective as a bodyguard. But I didn’t feel drunk, and it would have been a shame to spoil the experience of sitting on a couch and drinking rare dark rum with a celebrity. So I didn’t: I sat; I enjoyed; I drank the rum slowly, savoring each sip.
Jackie finished hers first and reached for the bottle. “More?” she said, holding it toward me.
“I probably shouldn’t,” I said. She shrugged and poured a splash into her glass. “But it’s very good,” I said. “I’ll have to get a bottle.”
She laughed. “Good luck,” she said. “You won’t find it at the corner store.”
“Oh,” I said. “Where do you get it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “This was a gift.” She lifted her glass in a half toast and sipped. She rolled it around in her mouth for a moment and then put the glass back down. “Those letters,” she blurted. “They scare the shit out of me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I mean, why?” she said, hunched over and staring down into the glass. “What did I do to make him hate me?”
“He doesn’t hate you,” I said.
Jackie looked up. “He’s trying to kill me,” she said.
“That’s not hate,” I said. “In his own way, he actually loves you.”
“Jesus fuck,” she said. She looked back down at the glass. “I think I’d rather have hate next time.” She picked up the glass and sipped, and then swung her eyes to me. “How come you understand this rotten psycho bastard so good?” she said.
I suppose it was a fair question, but it was an awkward one, too. If I told her the truth—I understood him because I was a rotten psycho bastard, too—it would seriously undermine our relationship, which would have been a shame. So I shrugged and said, “Oh, you know.” I took a small sip from my glass. “It’s like you were saying before. It’s kind of like acting.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. She didn’t sound convinced, and she didn’t look away from me. “Thing is, in acting, you find a piece of the character inside your own self. You expand it, you shape it a little, but it has to be in there or you don’t get the job done.” She took a small sip, still looking at me over the rim of the tumbler. “So what you’re really saying is, there’s something inside you”—she tipped the glass at me—“that is like this crazy asshole.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “So? Is there?” She sipped. “You got a killer in there, Dexter?”
I looked at her with astonishment, and deep in Dexter’s Dungeon I could feel the Passenger squirming with discomfort. I have lived my life among cops, people who spend every waking hour hunting down predators like me. I have worked among them for years, for my entire professional life, and not a single one of them had ever had the faintest misgiving about Dexter’s snow-white character. Only one of them, in fact—Dear Sergeant Doakes—had ever suspected that I am what I am. And yet, here was Jackie—a TV actress, of all things!—asking me point-blank if there was a Wicked Other inside me, behind Dexter’s carefully crafted smile.
I was too amazed to speak, and no amount of sipping could cover the growing, horribly awkward silence as I groped for something to say. Short of admitting she was right, or denying everything and calling for a lawyer, nothing occurred to me.
“Cat got y
our tongue?” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “Just … just … more like rum got my tongue.” I lifted the glass. “I’m not used to this stuff,” I said, sounding rather lame even to myself.
“Uh-huh,” Jackie said. “But you’re not answering my question, either.”
She was very insistent for someone who should have been a mental lightweight, and I began to wonder whether I had been too quick to decide I liked her. She was clearly not going to accept any cautiously phrased evasions, and that left Dexter somewhat on the ropes. But I am renowned for my conversational quick feet, and seldom at a loss. In this case, I decided that the best defense really was an all-out cavalry charge, so I put down my glass and turned fully toward her.
“Close your eyes,” I ordered.
Jackie blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Acting exercise. Close your eyes.”
“Uh—okay …” She put her glass down, settled back into the couch, and closed her eyes. “All right.”
“Now,” I said. “It’s night. You’re all alone, in a dark alley.”
She took a deep, controlled breath. “Okay …”
“There’s someone behind you,” I said. “He’s getting closer, closer.…”
“Oh,” she said softly, and several emotions flicked rapidly across her face.
“You turn around,” I said. “And it’s him.”
Jackie breathed out sharply.
“He’s holding a knife and smiling at you. It’s a terrible smile. And he speaks.” I leaned close and whispered, “ ‘Hello, bitch.’ ”
Jackie flinched.
“But you have a gun,” I said.
Her hand went up and she pulled an imaginary trigger. “Pow,” she said, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Just like that?” I said.
“Damn straight.”
“Did you kill him?” I said.
“Shit, yeah. I hope so.”
“How do you feel?”
She took another deep breath and then let it out. “Relieved,” she said.
I nodded. “QED,” I said. She blinked at me. “I think it’s Latin,” I explained. “It means, ‘I have proved it.’ ”
“Proved what?”
“There’s a killer in everybody,” I said.
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she picked up her glass and took a sip. “Maybe,” she said. “But you seem pretty comfy with the one in you.”
And I was, of course. But I was not at all comfy with having her guess it, so I was relieved that the subject seemed to be closed for now when Jackie put her empty glass on the table and stood up.
“Bedtime,” she said. She stretched and yawned, looking like some kind of golden cat. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Where do guard dogs sleep?” she said. “At the foot of the bed?”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said. “That way I can watch the door and the balcony.”
She blinked. “The balcony?”
“Anyone can get in from the roof,” I said. “All you need is twenty feet of nylon rope and a screwdriver.”
Jackie looked a little bit stunned. “You mean he might— What’s the screwdriver for?”
“I don’t know if he might,” I said. “I know he could. Anybody could: just drop down from the roof, with the rope. The screwdriver is to jimmy open the sliding glass door. A ten-year-old could do it.”
“Jesus,” she said. She stared at me, but she wasn’t actually seeing me. “I really fucking hate this,” she said. And then she shook herself slightly, focused on me for a moment, and said again, “Hate it …” She stood very still, looking at me, breathing in, then out, watching me for some sign that I didn’t know how to give her, and then she shook her head, turned away, and went slowly off to bed.
ELEVEN
I FELL ASLEEP QUICKLY AND COMPLETELY, AND WHEN I OPENED my eyes it seemed like no time had passed, but the first orange gleam of light was hammering its way in through the balcony door, so either it was morning or a UFO was landing on the chaise longue.
I blinked and decided it was probably morning. UFOs wouldn’t dare land in Miami—somebody would chop them up and haul them off to sell for scrap metal. I started to stretch and sit up, but froze midway as I realized there was a strange whirring sound coming from Jackie’s bedroom. It did not seem particularly sinister, but I had no idea what it was. As the bodyguard, it seemed incumbent upon me to investigate, so I stood up quietly, took the Glock from the coffee table beside me, and tiptoed to Jackie’s door. I turned the handle silently, pushed the door open, and peeked in.
Jackie sat on a stationary bicycle, pedaling vigorously, and already a light sheen of sweat covered her face. That is, on a lesser human being it would have been sweat; on her it was glow. She wore a skintight leotard that did nothing to make her ugly, and there were earbuds plugged into the sides of her head, and as she looked up and saw me she pried one of them out. “Good morning,” she called out, a little too loudly. “I’ll just be about half an hour—you want to order some breakfast?”
Of course I did; the finely tuned machine that is Dexter requires frequent fuel. But I managed to conceal my unseemly eagerness, and simply gave her a nod and a cheery, “Okay!”
“Great!” she called back. “Wheat toast, grapefruit juice, and some Greek yogurt, please.” And she put her head back down, plugged the earbud back into her ear, and pedaled faster.
I left her on her bicycle trip to nowhere and went to call room service. I tried very hard to admire Jackie for her spartan breakfast order, but it didn’t work. To me, the whole point of eating is lost if you don’t actually eat something, and it seemed to me that toast and grapefruit juice didn’t quite qualify. It was really no more than an upscale version of bread and water, and was not nearly enough to sustain life as I had come to know it.
But at least I felt no compulsion to follow her lead, and I did not. I ordered a ham-and-cheese omelet, rye toast with jam, orange juice, and a fruit bowl. And, of course, the largest pot of dark Miami coffee they could muster in their high-priced kitchen.
Breakfast arrived a mere ten minutes later, and I had the garçon set it up on the balcony. I let him out, put the chain back on the door, and went back outside. The sun had clawed its way aggressively up the horizon, but its heat was not yet as brutal as it would soon be, and there was a light breeze coming off the Bay, so the balcony seemed like an ideal setting. I sat and sipped coffee while I waited for Jackie, looking out over the water and thinking that there was a great deal to be said for my new career as a bodyguard. True, it was potentially dangerous, and the hours were rather long. But on the plus side, I was living like a millionaire without paying higher taxes, and I got to hang out with a Real Live Hollywood Star and eat haute cuisine. Of course, Rita’s food was far from being swill, but it had to be said that she was not truly a five-star gourmet chef, and not a famous and beautiful celebrity, either, and comparing her to Jackie was really no contest. It was an unkind thought, but since no one else could hear it, I didn’t bother to pretend I hadn’t thought it.
Instead, I thought about it some more. It was really nothing but a pleasant mental game, a goofy and nearly human fantasy, but it passed the time. I tried to imagine swapping my drab little existence for the life of a Celebrity Bodyguard. I pictured Me as part of an Entourage, the hawk-eyed presence at Jackie’s shoulder, ever vigilant on the Red Carpets of the world. Dexter the Human Shield, Living It Large in Hollywood, Cannes, and all the great cities of the world. Breakfast on the balcony in Maui and Singapore and Bali. It would not be hard to get used to living like that, and if I had to give up scrabbling for a mortgage on a new house, and do without all the shrieks and squeals and door-slamming that went with family life, what had I really lost except shattered eardrums and frequent headaches? Of course, there was Lily Anne, the living extension of all that is Me, my DNA shipment into the future. And I had, after all, promised to lead Cody and Astor into a safe, well-planned Dark Future. My path was already laid out, and I
was completely satisfied with it. Really I was. I did not need to enhance it with private jets and crème brûlée every night and a golden-haired goddess leading me through an existence of pure, diamond-studded pleasure. No matter how much I liked it.
The glass door slid open, interrupting my pleasant daydream, and Jackie stepped out into the sunlight. “Good morning,” she said, and sat beside me. Her hair was damp, and she smelled of shampoo and the same very faint perfume I had noticed yesterday.
“Good morning,” I said. “Coffee?”
“Oh, God, yes,” she said, and she pushed a cup toward me. I poured it full, and watched as she stirred in artificial sweetener. She slurped it and said, “Aahhh,” just like a normal person, and set the cup down, glancing up at me and smiling. “I hope I didn’t wake you up?” she said.
“Oh, well,” I said uncertainly, since she had, after all, but it didn’t really seem politic to say so. “I mean, I have to be awake.…”
“Sorry,” she said, reaching for the coffee cup and slurping again. “I have to work out every morning, no matter where I am, or I get fat.”
“That’s hard to believe,” I said.
She reached over and patted my hand. “Bless you,” she said. “But it’s true. I miss one morning, and then missing two seems like no big deal, and then why not three, and before you know it I weigh a hundred fifty pounds and I’m out of work.” She shrugged. “Part of the job. I don’t mind.” She took another noisy sip of coffee and raised an eyebrow at me. “What about you?”
“Me?” I said, a little surprised. “What do you mean?”
Jackie gestured with the cup. “You obviously work out. I mean,” she said with a wicked smile, “I can see you have a pretty good appetite, but you look pretty fit.” She actually winked at me. “Just like a real bodyguard should.”
“Oh, well,” I said, still a bit uncomfortable. “I like to run. And, um, some tai chi …?”
She nodded. “Thought so,” she said. “The way you moved, when you made Kathy pee on the floor.” She smiled again and finished her coffee. “Which reminds me,” she said, setting down the empty cup and reaching for a piece of toast. “Kathy will be here in a few minutes, so you might want to take the chain off the door, and remember not to shoot her this time.”