“I’d be cool with doing this again sometime,” Katrina said before giving me one last kiss at the departure terminal. “This really has been, like, the best week I’ve ever had.”
“It was a lot of fun,” I agreed. “But next time- Montreal.”
Katrina laughed, but didn’t say anything other than goodbye as she picked up her carryon bag to enter the TSA line.
Feeling no need to prolong anything, I just left. I had a six hour drive home, after all.
“I am very sorry it did not work out for you two,” Emmy said as we relaxed after dinner.
I took a moment to marshal my thoughts, then said, “I guess I’m not. I’m not going to say that I don’t like Kat and didn’t have a good time with her, but… it just isn’t the direction I see either of our lives going. As she said, she has her life in Miami, and I have mine here, with you.”
“Hopefully, soon with our daughter as well. I have been thinking about it a lot, and I want to start the next round of hormones as soon as we come back from New York.”
“We could find a fertility clinic in Manhattan,” I suggested. “I’m sure they have them there.”
Emmy laughed, a lovely happy laugh. “Yes, I think they probably do,” she agreed. “But I wish to wait until we have settled back into a routine and do not have any distractions.”
“Unfortunately, I’ll still have a certain distraction to deal with sometime this fall,” I cautioned.
“I know, and I am… concerned about that. Perhaps we wait until you have resolved that issue?”
“That could work,” I agreed.
“I could start the hormone regimen before, but I fear that it would make my emotions too… mercurial during the time you need to prepare,” Emmy said.
“Yeah, maybe,” I replied, remembering how it had been last time.
“I have given another thing a lot of consideration,” Emmy said, sitting up and turning around so she could look me in the eyes. “I want to be involved in the move against Marfan. He ordered my wife and our two babies murdered. I want to see him pay. I want to know that he died knowing that it was his own action that brought an end to his line.”
I took her hands in mine and kept eye contact. “If you are sure of this, I mean really, really sure, we can do that. The thing is, baby, I’ve tried to do my best to keep you insulated from the ugly side of all this.” Putting a finger on her lips to forestall her objections, I continued. “Em, right now, as things are at this moment, our people are in love with you. You and me, we represent a duality in our nation’s leadership. You’re the beloved, saintly aspiration, the one everyone admires and wishes they could be, or at least, the one everyone wishes they could make happy. Me, I’m respected and feared, but not loved. Our people know that I’m fair and will do what I can for them, but they don’t love me- well, not outside a few of the hitters, anyway. So, if you get involved in the dirty side of things, your halo will get a little bit tarnished. Night Children are flocking to join us because of your image, Em. Not because of mine.” With that, I dropped my finger from her lips to let her know I’d said all I was going to say.
Sighing, Emmy said, “I know this is true. I know that you have raised me up on a pedestal among our people, and I have tried to conform to that image. I am not saying that I want to train our paramilitary with you, or carry a knife into another dark warehouse- I have come to accept that I am not that person. I thought I should be, and I tried to be, but I am not. What I want is to be involved in the planning, to know what it is you are doing and how you are preparing. Not knowing any of this only feeds my… my insecurities and worries.”
“That’s fair,” I admitted. “When we’re in New York I’ll introduce you to all our players and explain what they’re doing to get us ready.”
“That is all I ask,” Emmy said. “Almost all,” she corrected. “How long will we be in New York?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have to see how things are going before making that determination.”
“It does not matter, as far as I am concerned,” Emmy said. “I am done with the recording, and I have nothing more to do with Jackson’s album until he and Lee are done with the production.”
“You aren’t going to be involved in that?” I asked.
“No. I do not have the temperament for that work. Lee loves it and Jackson has a great ear for what works and what doesn’t, but to me it is horribly boring and tedious. I am perfectly happy to leave it in their capable hands.”
“So, um, speaking of capable hands, how about we take a bath and get capably handsy with each other?” I suggested.
“You!” Emmy exclaimed. “You told me you had sex with Katrina four, five, even six times a day, but now you want to ravish me as well?”
“You know what I learned from all that sex with Katrina?” I asked, pulling Emmy close and nuzzling her hair.
“I thought you had said that she had never had lesbian sex before this week. How could she have taught you anything?” Emmy asked.
“No, it wasn’t something that she taught me,” I said. “I realized that, as nice as it was with her, it doesn’t compare to sex with you, the one I really love. It’s just better, making love to you.”
Emmy turned around to give me a kiss. “Although I truly do wish that it had worked out with the two of you, I am very pleased to hear you say that.”
“So, bath? And then maybe some good old-fashioned face-sitting?” I asked, just shy of begging.
“I could use a bath, and it has been too long since I have taken a seat on any faces,” Emmy said, thinking about it.
“What are we waiting for?” I said, sitting up, giving Emmy a little push to get moving.
“You are so good at that,” Emmy said as she lay flat on her back in our big bed. “I had expected that a week of non-stop sex with Katrina would wear you out, but no…”
“Like I said, maybe the most important thing I learned is that it’s best with someone you really love,” I said, enjoying the cool air from the ceiling fan blowing across my rapidly drying skin. “And there’s nobody I love more than you.”
Emmy rolled onto her side to face me. She laid her hand flat on my belly, a simple gesture of connection.
“I love you more than that,” she said.
“Nuh uh,” I countered. “I love you more.”
Emmy laughed. “No, I am convinced that I love you even more than that.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“C’mere, you,” I said, reaching over and tugging her on top of me. She didn’t resist- not that it would have done her any good, anyway. “I think we’ll have to declare it a tie. We love each other, and that is that.”
“That is that,” Emmy agreed, resting her head on my chest.
I felt listless at Clancy’s gym the next morning. It was good to get the blood flowing after such a long time off, but honestly I was just going through the motions. I wasn’t motivated at all.
Work at the office felt the same way. Yes, I had meetings, I answered emails, I approved projects, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I couldn’t even really pinpoint why, either. I wasn’t lost in memories of the week with Katrina, or thinking about Emmy getting pregnant again, or even our upcoming action against our enemies.
No, I was just unfocused, and I didn’t know what was up with me. It wasn’t a familiar sensation at all.
Jeremy broiled steaks for dinner that night, and once again I congratulated myself silently for urging him to take up cooking as a hobby.
“Jeremy, in New York- do you and Luisa take turns cooking, or what?” I asked.
“Usually we plan and cook dinner together,” he said. “Since she teaches during the days, I do the shopping and most of the prep, but when it comes time to do the actual cooking, we work together.”
“I imagine that you’ve learned a lot from her, and probably taught her a few things as well,” I said.
“She is far better at it than I am,” he admitted. “I have to use recipes, but she just knows what to do and how much of every ingredient to use just by instinct.”
“You will get there,” Emmy told him. “You have only been cooking regularly for a little over half a year now. It is simply a matter of experience, and that comes with time.”
“I know,” he agreed, cutting his steak with surprising daintiness. “This brings up a subject I’ve been wanting to ask you two. Would it be O.K. if I sign up for cooking classes while we’re in Manhattan?”
Emmy seemed about to agree with no further qualifications, but I said, “You’ll need to continue to fulfill your existing duties while we’re there. I can pull some of the guys to work as Emmy’s bodyguard, but not full-time.”
“I can take morning classes,” Jeremy said, nodding. “They’re usually around three hours a day, three days a week. If I’m back to the townhouse by noon, that should be early enough for Emmy. She doesn’t usually go out in the mornings, anyhow.”
“No, she isn’t a morning person, is she?” I agreed with a little laugh.
“I confess that I have gotten out of the habit of waking early,” Emmy admitted.
“And that’s fine,” I said, resting my hand on hers. “There’s no need for you to get up early just because the rest of the world does.”
“Did I detect teasing? I think I have been teased for my lifestyle choices!” Emmy said, smiling.
“Maybe a little, you debauched rock star, you,” I replied.
The next day I felt a little bit better both at the gym and at my office. Whatever had been so off the day before seemed to have been a temporary aberration, to my relief. Not that it had really mattered, since most of what I was doing was really just keeping an eye on whatever it was that my Heads were doing. It had been a while since I’d had to countermand anything any of them had done, and I really didn’t expect that anything would be coming up soon.
I’m not going to say that I was superfluous, but all I really found myself doing was signing off on the biggest deals anymore. Handing the day-to-day operations over had freed me up far more than I’d expected.
Taking off work early on Wednesday, I went out driving with Jimmy, Stein and Teddy Bear. It was good to get out and stretch the legs of the Porsche Safari, and shake out my own cobwebs as well. The Porsche was the right car for the way I was feeling, too. Rough, rowdy, loud and more than just a bit out of control. It was a lot of work to keep up with the Aston and Ferrari, never mind Stein’s McLaren, but that only made it more fun. The car had such soft, long travel that the squat under acceleration out of turns lifted the front inside tire off the ground on many occasions. It over-rotated a handful of times, too, making it plenty entertaining.
The Safari wasn’t built for high-speed road work like that, but flogging it on Angeles Crest’s sweepers kept my focus on the car, the road, and the other traffic. In fact, I felt more awake than I had in quite a while. Sharper, too. Putting everything else aside somehow helped clear away the malaise I’d been feeling.
“Hey, you guys are coming to dinner tonight, right?” I asked when we stopped at the Chevron station at the bottom of San Gabriel Canyon.
“I’m already on my way to your house right now!” Jimmy said.
“I’m supposed to sing for tonight’s Downfall karaoke,” Teddy Bear said with a shrug.
“Yeah, not me,” Stein said. “Other obligations.”
“Sucks to be you,” Jimmy said, sipping from what must have been his third Red Bull of the afternoon. “While you’re doing whatever it is, I’ll be eating and drinking delicious food and tasty adult beverages, hanging with the homies and watching homeboy here get even more famous than he already is.”
“It’s all about the clicks,” Teddy Bear said sardonically.
“Welcome to the Twenty-First Century, my man!” Jimmy said, raising his blue and silver can in salute.
Thanks to rush hour traffic, it took our little caravan over an hour to drive the thirty-five miles or so to the house, which meant that there were already quite a few people gathered for dinner by the time we got there.
“Hey, Andy,” I said, giving the big guy a quick hug in greeting. “It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, with you jet-setting here and there all the time,” he teased.
“Gonna be some more of that,” I told him. “We’re off to Montreal for the weekend, then New York after that.”
“Some day I’m gonna see this Manhattan mansion of yours,” Jenna said as she uncorked a bottle of white wine.
“Come out and visit,” I said. “Heck- bring Andy, too.”
“Love you too, Lee,” Andy said, bumping my shoulder with his.
“I’m serious,” I said. “We’ll be there for a month or so- come out and stay for a few days.”
“Can’t anytime soon,” Andy replied. “We’ve got training camps and preseason starts the second weekend in August. We don’t get our bye week until the start of November.”
“Do you guys have any games in New York?” I asked, accepting a glass of wine from Jenna.
“No, not this season. The closest we get is Pittsburgh or Baltimore.”
“That sucks,” I said.
“What sucks?” Teddy Bear asked as he joined us there in the kitchen.
“Not being able to get to the Big Apple to check out their place,” Jenna told him, offering him a glass, too.
“Did I tell you guys my next film is going to shoot in New York? Filming is scheduled for late fall.”
“I think you said you’re gonna play the bad guy?” Andy asked, interested.
“I’m looking forward to it. I have some ideas on how I’m going to inhabit the role that I think should be really effective,” Teddy Bear replied. “I’m going to be working with a special action coach.”
“That’s really cool,” Andy said. “Hey, if you can get me and Jenna tickets to the premiere…”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Teddy Bear replied good-naturedly.
After dinner, Teddy Bear found me waiting for my drink at the outside bar.
“Hey, Rodney, could you make me that drink you made last time? The one with rye?” he asked as he pulled up.
“Sure thing, my man,” the hipster bartender agreed, handing me my Paper Plane.
“So, Leah, we’re still on for the coaching, right?”
“We’ll be in New York all of next month, maybe longer,” I said. “I’ll have work to deal with, and, um, other issues, but we can put in a couple of hours a day maybe.”
“Those other issues- do they have anything to do with our Japanese friends?”
“They’re involved, yeah,” I agreed, leading him away to a quiet spot to talk once he had his Brooklyn. “Night Children business.”
“Am I correct in reading between the lines that New York is where your, um, you called them ‘heavies,’ are based?” he asked.
“Yeah, we moved our operations there a little while back,” I confirmed.
“So, do you have some sort of James Bond villain lair?”
“No, it’s an office building and an old furniture factory next door. No island, no volcanoes, no sharks with lasers on their heads. Sorry to disappoint,” I said, rubbing his shoulder in sympathy at having his hopes dashed.
“Yo, Action Man, Too Tall- what’re you guys lookin’ so serious about?” Darius said, joining us at the balcony rail.
“Leah just told me she doesn’t actually have a villain lair with sharks and lasers,” Teddy Bear said, emoting the Hell out of his disappointment.
“She lyin’ to you. Everybody knows she got one somewhere. Probably in Colombia.”
“No, that one is still under construction,” I said. “And really, it’s more of an operations base than a lair, per se.”
“Does it have sharks?” Teddy Bear asked, looking hopeful.
“Nope. Well, maybe, but they’d be free-range, not kept in a tank or anything like that.”
“Volcanoes?”
“Definitely not. It does have a soccer field and a basketball court, though,” I told him.
“A landing strip?” Teddy Bear persisted.
“A dock for boats, but no landing strip,” I said, amused.
“When are you going back down there? You said I could come along one of these times.”
“Probably late in the year, maybe December?” I said with a shrug. “I don’t actually have any plans at the moment.”
“Man, if it’s after the post-season, I could be down with comin’ down to Colombia and hangin’ for a while,” Darius said. “Celebratin’ my retirement.”
Looking back towards the living room where most of the party was gathered, Teddy Bear said, “You know, Leah, most of your friends have enough money to make a little trip like that. It’d be a lot of fun to have a get-together like this down there. Or maybe at your place in London or New York?”
“London would be cool,” Darius agreed. “We had a preseason exhibition game there a few years ago. It made me wanna go back when I had more time.”
“I know Emmy loves these dinner parties. She’d probably have a great time hosting one or two in one of those other places,” I agreed, thinking about it.
