“Well, if there’s doughnuts,” I said.
Deborah shook her head. “And that’s all it takes to make you happy?”
“That—and the party going on down in the lab. It’s really very festive.”
“A festive forensics lab?” Jackie said, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. “That’s quite a trick.”
“One of the other actors arrived,” I said. “Renny Boudreaux?”
“Oh, God, he’s a scream,” Jackie said, shaking her head. She looked at Debs, who raised one eyebrow. “A terrific comedian. I mean, he’s a total dick, but a really funny one.”
Deborah snorted. “A funny dick,” she said. “Great concept,” and the two of them snickered like sorority sisters.
The Town Car was waiting for us at the front door. It was the same driver again, and I waved Jackie into the backseat, sliding in next to her on the other side. We rode in silence most of the way. Jackie looked out the window at the traffic, every now and then glancing at me. I glanced back, wondering what she was thinking, but she gave me no clue, except for an occasional small and weary smile. She was clearly far too busy thinking deep thoughts to make light conversation, so I let her think, and I drifted away into a mellow reverie of my own.
Just before we went up the on-ramp onto the expressway, a loud bang! sounded behind our car, and we both jumped several inches off the seat. I looked out the back window; a motorcycle had backfired as it wove its way along the white line between the far more ponderous cars. I gave Jackie a reassuring smile, and she sank back into her thoughtful silence.
At the intersection with the Dolphin Expressway traffic slowed to a crawl as everyone paused to look at an ivory-colored Jaguar pulled halfway onto the shoulder. A thick stream of smoke came out one window, and a very large man stood beside it, yelling at a thin, elegantly dressed woman. She puffed on a huge cigar and looked bored as the man shouted at her, the veins in his neck visibly bulging.
“I think I’m starting to like Miami,” Jackie said as we crept past the Jaguar and its little piece of theater.
“More than L.A.?” I said.
She made a face. “Nobody really likes L.A.,” she said. “We just have to live there. Part of our deal with the devil.” And then she went quiet again, just looking out the window of the Town Car and thinking her thoughts, until we pulled up in front of the hotel at last.
The doorman with the talented nephew held the front door for us, and Jackie rewarded him with a smile. “Thank you, Benny,” she said. “Are you working late tonight?”
Benny beamed at her. “I took a double shift, Miss Forrest,” he said. “I can use the dough, and anyway, I gotta be honest, while you’re here? I don’t wanna go home.”
Jackie widened her smile and patted him on the arm. “Well, I wouldn’t want anybody else on the door, either,” she said, and Benny smiled so widely that I thought his face might split. But there were no screams of pain from bursting cheeks behind us as I escorted Jackie to the elevator, and when the doors slid shut Jackie closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Jesus,” she said. “Did that sound really stupid?”
“Him or you?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.
She leaned back against the wall of the elevator car, eyes still closed. “It’s a kind of—what do they call it? Noblesse oblige.” She opened one eye and pointed it at me. “Which sounds pretty pompous, I know.”
“Only a little,” I said encouragingly.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said. She closed the eye again. “What the hell. You have to say something, and it doesn’t have to be Shakespeare to make somebody’s day.” She sighed heavily. “It goes with the job. And Benny seems like a nice guy. So … normal …”
I said nothing. After all, you really should understand a remark before you respond to it, and I didn’t. Clearly Jackie was in a philosophical mood—but whether the evening would turn toward Aristotle or existentialism, I couldn’t tell from her comment on Benny’s Normalness. And as the best philosophers will tell you, the rest is silence anyway, so I kept quiet.
I got Jackie into the suite without any outbursts of Kantian Dialectic, and as we settled into our chairs on the balcony and waited for mojitos, Kathy knocked on the door, bustling past me with a haughty glare when I let her in, and heading straight out to Jackie, her hands full of papers and her eternal phone and Starbucks cup.
The mojitos came. Kathy waved papers and yammered for another ten minutes, while Jackie nodded, interrupting a few times with blunt questions, signing a couple of papers and nodding wearily at the nearly endless flow of details. When Kathy finally gathered up the papers, and her coffee cup, Jackie looked tired and a little bit bleak. I wondered why. She had endured Kathy’s fusillade, which had been an exhausting tirade from a rather unpleasant person, but even so, I was surprised at how mortal Jackie looked all of a sudden. She picked up her mojito and sipped as I led Kathy out and chained the door behind her, pondering the heavy price of fame. It had all seemed so attractive, but now I found myself wondering.
Jackie had said she gave up everything for this; was it worth it? I mean, not just having to endure an annoying lump like Kathy a few times a day, although that certainly looked like a very great burden. But to trade away all the other stuff that normal people lived for, the things they claimed made them happy: home, marriage, kids—all the stuff I had gathered as props for my disguise. They didn’t make me happy, of course, but I am probably not actually capable of happiness. Moments of very rewarding satisfaction, yes—but were they the result of my Happy Normal Life? I could not offhand think of any such moments. I had never glanced at a pile of dirty laundry and felt ecstasy, never smiled blissfully as Astor bellowed at her mother and threw shoes across the room. To be honest, I had never even held my own child, Lily Anne, and thought, This is Paradise.…
I had my moments, of course. But most of them seemed to come while I stood above a securely taped, carefully chosen playmate as he squirmed away from the silver music of the knife—not quite the same thing as enjoying a quiet night at home with the wife and kids. Maybe not even happiness at all, but it worked for me.
On the more legal side of things, I had certainly been enjoying my time as Jackie’s entourage. Living in the lap of luxury, admired everywhere I went—it was living high on the hog, life without a care. Except, of course, for the very small care of knowing that a wild psychotic killer might be knocking on the door momentarily. Other than that, I couldn’t think of anything else I could reasonably want in a lifestyle.
But was this real Happiness? Probably not, or I wouldn’t be feeling it.
Did Jackie feel it? Was she happy with her life of limitless luxury, admired and even feted everywhere she went? Was it really as wonderful as it looked? Did it fulfill her? None of my business, of course—but it suddenly seemed like a question I wanted to hear her answer.
I came back out onto the balcony to find Jackie staring out over the water, still looking moody.
“Everything okay?” I said.
She nodded. “Never better,” she said, and I had to hope that she would be more convincing when the cameras began to roll.
I sat down in my chair and took a sip of my mojito. Perhaps the rum loosened my tongue, but as my drink shrank, the silence grew, and I finally just blurted it out.
“Are you happy?” I said.
“Me?” Jackie said, looking at me as if I had suggested something improper. She shook her head and looked out over the water of Biscayne Bay, and then picked up her mojito and gulped down the rest of it, and, still looking out at the Bay, she said, “Of course I’m happy. I have everything that anybody could ever want.” She looked down at her empty glass. “Except more mojitos. Call down for a pitcher, okay?” She put her glass on the table and stood up. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said, and in a faint swirl of perfume she was gone.
I sniffed at her vapor trail and settled back into my chair, feeling like a total ninny. Why was I thinking such things, asking suc
h stupid questions? I tried to remember the warning signs of the apocalypse; I was pretty sure they didn’t include talking philosophy with a TV star, but maybe the Council of Nicea had cut that one from the list.
I called room service for more mojitos. They arrived just as Jackie returned, and the waiter nearly fell over the railing as he tried to hold the tray and pull out the chair for Jackie at the same time. Jackie settled into her chair and gave him a tired smile, and he bounced back out the door, beaming as if he had just been elected fifth-grade class president.
I put the chain on the door behind him and came back out onto the balcony. Jackie was slumped down in her chair, looking out over the water with the rim of her glass resting on her lower lip. I sat down, wondering what had turned her mood so sour. I supposed it was just the strain of being stalked. But what if it was me? What if something I had said or done—or not said or done—was making her upset? That would be disastrous; it would totally demolish my new fantasy life as Captain Entourage. I tried to think of how I might have offended, and came up empty. My behavior had been exemplary.
Yet something was clearly bothering her. Perhaps it was her blood sugar—she didn’t eat enough to keep a hamster alive, and the unerring bioclock inside Dexter was saying it was definitely time for dinner.
But before I could frame a polite suggestion that food might be just the thing to restore her physical and mental health, my cell phone began to chirp. I took it out and looked at the screen; it was Rita. “Oh,” I said to Jackie. “Excuse me.” She just nodded without looking up, and I answered the phone.
“Hi,” I said, with as much good cheer as I could manufacture.
“You said you would call,” Rita said. “And that was Monday—and Deborah says it’s something risky? But I can’t really tell what she means, and— Do you have clean socks?”
“Yes, I have socks,” I said, glancing at Jackie and hoping she was too busy musing to hear me.
“You always lose your socks,” Rita said. “And you hate when they’re dirty—remember that time in Key West? And they cost twice as much down there.”
“Well, I’m not in Key West,” I said. “And I have some clean socks.”
The corner of Jackie’s mouth began to twitch, and although I hoped she was only remembering a really good knock-knock joke, I had the distinct and unpleasant feeling that she was trying very hard not to laugh at me.
“Do you have any idea how long?” Rita said. “And there are some heavy boxes here, stuff from the garage; I can’t carry them. But they have to go to— Oh. The power is on now? And the insurance company said the new house has a market value much higher than— Astor, I’m talking on the phone. Astor, please! Are you still there, Dexter?”
“I’m here,” I said. “How are the kids?”
“Lily Anne has a tooth coming in,” she said. “She’s very cranky, and I can’t even— What? No, you have to do your homework first. No. Because you have to,” she said. To Astor again? Or was it Cody this time? There was really no way to know, and I discovered that I didn’t care. I was beginning to find the whole conversation annoying, and the way Jackie was so clearly fighting off an attack of derisive laughter didn’t help at all. I turned away from her and lowered my voice.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” I said, trying to inject a note of finality into my voice. “But I’ll try to call again tomorrow, okay?”
“Tomorrow is the conference with Cody’s teacher,” she said. “At three o’clock, and you said— Damn it, Astor, just let me talk for a minute!”
I was fairly sure I’d said nothing of the kind, but I did remember saying I would be at Cody’s parent-teacher conference. “I’ll try to be there,” I said. “But I am pretty busy.”
“Well, you did promise,” Rita said. “And it’s important to him, so— Oh lord, the baby. I have to go.”
“All right,” I said. “Good-bye.”
I put my phone down and turned back toward Jackie. She was watching me with a very strange expression on her face, part amusement and part—what? Something else I couldn’t quite define. “What?” I asked her, but she just shook her head and took another sip of her drink.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just … nothing.” She looked at me over the rim of her glass, her eyes filled with liquid amusement, among other things. “Your wife seems like a very nice person.”
“Yes, she is,” I said.
“And a good cook, too …”
I just nodded.
She cocked her head to one side and stared at me very seriously. “So it’s worth it. The whole”—she waved a hand to indicate almost everything—“this marriage thing? It works for you?” she said.
It seemed like a strange question, which made it just right for the way this evening was going. “I guess so,” I said.
“You guess so,” she said, still staring, and I shrugged and nodded. “That’s not really an overwhelming endorsement.”
“Well, I mean,” I said, trying to think of an appropriate response, “it has its ups and downs.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “What are the ups?”
“Oh, the, um … We’re moving into a new house,” I said. “It, ah … There’s a pool?” It sounded pretty lame, even to me, and Jackie let it hang there for a few seconds, the silence making it sound even lamer.
“Uh-huh,” she said at last. “The pool that needs a new cage.”
“That’s right—and it has a much bigger kitchen,” I just blurted out; I don’t know why, except I felt I had to say something.
“Right,” Jackie said. “So Rita can cook even more.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. I grabbed for my mojito, mostly because I was floundering through very boggy ground and really needed the security of having something to do with my hands.
“Uh-huh,” she said. She sipped her drink and studied me with one eyebrow raised. “So does marriage make you happy?”
“It’s … it’s, um,” I said with my usual eloquence. “I mean, you know.”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “Never had it.” She tilted her head and shrugged. “But it doesn’t sound like it’s exactly thrilling you.” And although I have to admit that I was starting to think so, too, it didn’t seem like something I should say out loud.
“You still haven’t said what Rita looks like,” Jackie said with a frown.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, um—I mean, she was very good-looking, when—”
“Was good-looking?” Jackie interrupted. She took a big slug from her glass. I watched her throat muscles glide as she swallowed. “Jesus, I’d cut your heart out if you said that about me.”
“Oh, but that’s …” I said, wondering how this had all gotten so far out of hand. “I mean, I would never say that about you.…”
She eyed me for a moment. “You’d better not,” she said.
She drained the last two inches of mojito from her glass and set it on the table with a loud takk. “What about dinner?”
After wrestling with philosophy, the phone call from Rita, and Jackie’s merciless grilling, it was nice that there was finally something real and rewarding to latch onto. “Absolutely,” I said, with the very best hearty good cheer I could simulate under the circumstances. Jackie gave me a somewhat cynical smile, and nodded toward the house phone.
I called in our order.
FIFTEEN
I WAS SITTING ON THE BALCONY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, nursing my second cup of coffee, when Jackie came out and sat across from me. “Good morning,” she said brightly, brushing back a strand of still-wet hair that flopped over her forehead. She reached for the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Um,” she said. “I’m sorry if last night was a little …” She fluttered one hand. “I don’t know. I just got thinking that, you know.” She shrugged. “I really don’t know what to do with you.”
I must have given her a look that showed how strange her statement sounded, because she blushed, looked away, and waved a hand in the air.
“I mean,?
?? she said, “I’ve never had a bodyguard before.”
“To be honest, I’ve never been one before, either,” I said.
“Right,” she said. She sipped the coffee. “But seeing you there all the time I forget why you’re here and I kind of … you know. There aren’t that many people I can just sort of hang with.” She made a wry face. “Especially men.” She gave me a half smile. “But I feel very … comfortable with you.”
I might have told her that this was not really a strong endorsement of her good sense, but she sipped her coffee and went on.
“You treat me like a human being,” she said. “Not like I’m a rare piece of china, or the Second Coming or something, and that’s … Do you know how unusual that is, for me? To be treated like … normal?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I think I’m starting to get an idea.”
“It’s very unusual,” she said. “I mean, I know it goes with the territory, and there are even some people who like it.”
“Yes,” I said, thinking of Robert. “I have noticed that.”
Jackie looked at me, and then smirked. “Yeah, he really does, doesn’t he?” she said, to show she knew what I was thinking.
“He certainly seems to.”
She shrugged and sipped a little more coffee. “Well, I don’t. I mean, it’s nice to have everyone think you’re wonderful, but sometimes I just want to feel like … you know.” She threw both hands up, almost as if she was indicating half a touchdown, and then quickly dropped them again. “Stupid, huh?”
“Not at all,” I said politely, only a little bit baffled.
“So to have you around, talking to me like we’re just a couple of ordinary people, it makes me … I start to relax, and really feel normal, and it’s really nice.”
She sipped again, looking down at the table. “And then I remember why you’re here, and … Oh, I don’t know.” She sipped again and then put the cup down. “I guess, you know. How things might have been different. If …” She stuck out her lower lip and blew out a breath. “Forget it,” she said, and she picked up the coffee cup again. “It’s stupid.”