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I hesitated, and Jackie didn’t have anything to say, either. Deborah raised one eyebrow and shrugged, which was not terribly helpful. Apparently it was all on me, so I tried tiptoeing up to it. “It’s kind of secret,” I said.
“Affairs are always secret,” Astor said. I wondered if anyone would notice if I flung her out a window.
“Astor, it’s not an affair,” I said, and then, taking a deep breath, I plunged in headfirst. “Jackie got some scary letters,” I said. “I’m just … making sure nothing bad happens to her—”
Astor’s face lit up and she beamed at Jackie. “You got a psycho stalker? Wow! You really are famous!” she said.
Jackie turned an appalled expression on me, and I said, “Astor, please, it’s a secret.”
“Why is it secret?” Astor said. “If I had a stalker, I’d want everybody to know.”
“Jackie could lose her job,” Deborah said.
Astor frowned and shook her head. “Why?” she said. “It’s not her fault.”
“It’s complicated,” I said. “Just please don’t tell anybody.” Astor looked at me like she was calculating what she might wangle out of me in exchange for her silence, and I was ready to promise her a new pony, when fate smiled on me for once. From the far end of the room, near a short hallway, there was a loud outburst of angry yelling and everyone turned to look.
Renny was holding on to Kathy, Jackie’s assistant, by her wrists; she was struggling to get away and shouting at him furiously to let go or she would tell everybody. Renny said something soft and urgent, and Kathy yanked her arms away and slapped him. “I told you last time!” she said. “I swear to God, Renny, you just—” And then one of Sylvia’s thin young men was there, stepping bravely between them and speaking soothing words. And Kathy backed off, gave Renny one last glare, and said, “I mean it, asshole!” She whirled away and steamed straight over to Jackie. For the first time, her arms were not filled with papers, and she didn’t even have her trademark phone in one hand and Starbucks cup in the other. She pushed past me with a glare and stood in front of Jackie. “Sylvia said she couldn’t wait for you any longer and she was going to do Robert first—”
“All right, Kathy, it’s all right,” Jackie said soothingly. “Are you okay?”
Kathy pushed her glasses up with one stubby finger. “I am fine,” she said. “But that piece of shit Renny—”
“Okay, it’s over,” Jackie said, taking Kathy by the arm and leading her over toward the couch, on the opposite side of the room from Renny. He stood watching her, a look on his face that was a strange combination of anger and amusement. Then he turned and saw me looking, and as our eyes met I heard a soft hiss from a coiled Something inside and the distant rattle of leathery wings as it stretched and twitched uneasily in half readiness to rise and meet the thing that stared back at us from Renny’s hissing Something—
And then Renny turned away and the Passenger yawned and turned over and went back to its lazy nap and I was left wondering once again if I had really seen that threat in Renny’s eyes. What, if anything, would it steer him toward? And what had he done to Kathy? She seemed as angry at him as she had been at me—had Renny made her pee on the floor, too?
But before I could do any more than frame the questions, Astor spoke up again.
“Oh, oh,” Astor said, and her voice was reverent and hushed. “That’s the guy from the show Mom used to like. It’s on reruns all the time. What’s his name …?”
I turned around to see what she was talking about. Unfortunately, she was staring directly at Robert.
“You mean Robert?” I said. “Mom watches Robert’s old show?”
“Robert Chase,” Astor said with excitement. She stared at Robert with a hungry look and licked her lips. “I’ve seen him on TV, like, a hundred times.” There was a tone of yearning in her voice I had never heard from her before, and I realized that, as ridiculous as it might seem to me, Astor was starstruck—and with Robert, for God’s sake.
Still, I had obligations as her stepfather, as she had already reminded me, and I was willing to do almost anything to take her mind off Jackie’s little secret, so I pushed away the weary sigh that was trying to come out and replaced it with cheerful parental words. “Would you like me to introduce you?” I said. And Astor shot me a glance that made me think there might be some small hope of someday working my way back into her good graces.
“Hell, yes,” she said.
“Astor,” Debs said warningly.
“I mean, yes, please, Dexter,” she amended, with a completely artificial look of angelic innocence on her face. “I really want to meet him.”
“Me, too,” Cody said, stubbornly refusing to be left out.
“Well,” I said, thinking of the Robert I had come to know far too well, “I hope you aren’t disappointed.”
Astor snorted and shook her head. “Dexter, he’s a star,” she said, her voice laced with pity for my stupidity. “How can we be disappointed?”
I could think of a dozen ways off the top of my head, all based on my knowledge of Robert, but it would probably be better to let him crush her dreams all by himself, so I just said, “Okay. Come on.”
“You know him?” Astor said. “You really know him?”
“Oh, yes, I know him,” I said. “Come on.”
I walked over to where Robert was struggling with his repugnant Hawaiian shirt; it seemed to be a few sizes too small, and he couldn’t quite get all the buttons done. “I haven’t gained an ounce,” he was saying to the scary woman. “Not one ounce in fifteen years—the size is wrong. Or it shrank when you cleaned it.”
