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“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.”
“I’ll try to remember,” I said.
I had just barely finished my omelet when I heard a knock on the door. “That’s probably her,” Jackie said, and started to stand up.
“Let me get it,” I said, and Jackie paused halfway to her feet. She held the awkward position for a moment, blinking, and then said, “Oh, right,” and settled back down into her chair and slouched over her grapefruit juice.
I opened the door with the chain still on and looked out. Kathy stood in the hall with an armful of papers, her smartphone, and another Starbucks cup. She gave me a poisonous glare. “Let. Me. In,” she said through her teeth, and I could tell that my legendary charm had not yet melted through the awkwardness of our first encounter. But that would almost certainly come with time. So I closed the door and undid the chain anyway, and Kathy huffed past me and into Jackie’s bedroom before I could direct her to the balcony. A moment later she huffed back out, gave me an even more venomous look, and went out onto the balcony.
By the time I got back outside to where the remains of my breakfast were waiting, Kathy had taken my chair, pushed my plate onto the floor, and spread several sheaves of paper across the tabletop, and she was busily pointing to the different documents with a pen and babbling on at a rapid rate.
“… except the ancillary rights, which Myron says is the best we can do right now, so go ahead and sign it, here, here, and here— Oh. And then the Morocco thing? Which Valerie says is actually a very good deal, and publicity we couldn’t buy, so here’s the packet for that. And Reel Magic magazine wants a photo shoot; they’re on your call list for this morning.…”
It went on like that for several minutes, with Kathy shoving papers around, Jackie occasionally signing something as she chewed toast and sipped her juice and tried to look like she was paying attention. Once or twice she looked up at me and made a wry face, which Kathy didn’t see. I contented myself with lurking in the background and trying to seem vigilant, and eventually Kathy ran out of breath, gathered up the papers, and huffed out, favoring me with one last angry snarl as she went by.
I came back from letting her out and rechaining the door to find Jackie sipping another cup of coffee. She had eaten one of the toast halves and one bite of another, and about two-thirds of the small serving of yogurt. It didn’t seem like quite enough to sustain human life, and certainly not nearly enough for nonhuman life like me, but she seemed content. I sat in my chair and poured myself another cup of the coffee.
“I don’t think she likes you,” Jackie said, in a throaty voice filled with coffee and dark amusement.
“Inconceivable,” I said.
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” she said.
I sipped my coffee. “It may take a little time,” I said. “But someday she will come to appreciate my many virtues.”
“It may take a little longer than usual,” Jackie said. “She really doesn’t like you.”
I was sure she was right, but it didn’t seem terribly important—especially since there were three chunks of perfectly ripe cantaloupe left in my fruit bowl, and a full cup of coffee to go with it, so I shrugged it off and finished my breakfast.
The room’s phone rang a few minutes later to tell us that a Town Car was waiting for us downstairs. We went down in the elevator together, and I went out front first to look around, which was standard bodyguard protocol. I left Jackie in the lobby with a doorman who was all too eager to watch her for as long as possible. I walked out and across the cobblestoned driveway, and looked into the Town Car; it was the same driver we’d had the night before, and he nodded at me. I nodded back and turned to look at the rest of the area around the entrance.
It took only a few moments to search around the hotel’s front door. There were a few people standing around near the door, presumably waiting for their cars. I looked them over carefully, but they seemed to be no more than my fellow hotel guests: wealthy, well-fed people, looking rather pleased with themselves, and I passed them by and stepped out into the courtyard.
The sun was already shining brightly, and I had to blink for a moment, and then squint around me. Down at the far end of the drive, where the island’s only real road led away to the bridge, there were two cars pulled over and parked rather informally. But they were too far away to do any real harm; I was not expecting a sniper attack. So I took a quick circuit around the circular driveway. There were a couple of cars parked ostentatiously along the edge of the pavement: a Ferrari, a Bentley, and a Corniche. I didn’t think our killer would be driving anything that cost more than a new house on the water, but I looked inside anyway. They were empty.
The valet parking attendant watched me skeptically as I came back from looking into the Corniche. “You like it?” he asked me.
“Very nice,” I said. “Is it yours?”
He snorted. “We just park it there. For looks,” he said.
I nodded as if that made sense. “Right,” I said. “A design moment.” He shrugged. I went back inside.
