December Wells, Family Fuckin’ Attorney drives all the way up to the attached garage, which opens for her, and disappears. There’s no second car in the driveway, or in the garage. Her husband must not be home yet, I guess.
I pull over to the other side of the street and shut off my engine. Officially, I’m not starting this protection gig until tomorrow, but I want to get the lay of the land now. I lift a leg over the bike and stand. The lot directly across the street from the lawyer’s house ain’t developed, for some reason. It’s just weeds and trees, a little square wooded tucked into an otherwise developed neighborhood. This is good for me, because it means surveillance will be easier, not to mention staying out of sight of the neighbors. I step off the curb and go back into the tree cover a few feet. Sure enough, I can see the house just fine, but except for my bike, I’m probably invisible from the street.
I lean against a tree about six feet back from the road, and shake out a cigarette from my pack. I wonder how long it’ll be until the lawyer chick’s husband comes home, and what he does for a living. Judging from how rough her car started back at her office, he’s not big on car maintenance. I’m surprised she’s not driving something more expensive, a status car to match the house. Her husband’s probably one of those soft-handed types who hires out all the manual labor jobs around the house. He probably wouldn’t know how to do an oil change if you held a gun to his head. I imagine him as some asshole in a pink Izod shirt, who golfs on the weekends and sips gin and tonics on the veranda or some shit. Whatever a veranda fuckin’ is.
I light my cigarette and take a long drag, thinking about how bare December’s garage was when she pulled into it. I didn’t notice any kids’ toys or anything like that. Her place is the kind of house a well-off family with kids would live in. I wonder whether they’re planning to have any. Hell, sure they are. That’s what people do in neighborhoods like this. Two-point-five kids, two-point-five dogs, a couple of cars that each cost more than most people make in a year, and a summer home for when the burdens of their perfect fucking life get too heavy to bear.
Perfect. Boring. Mind-numbing.
I wonder if that’s the life she wants. It sure as hell looks like the life she’s chosen.
But for some reason, it doesn’t seem like it fits.
5
Ember
As soon as I step inside the house from the garage, Bert is right there, waiting at the doorway as usual. Seeing his placid German shepherd face is always a comfort to me. I’m grateful for his steady, unconditional love and companionship. More than once, I’ve joked to myself that he’s everything I want in a man — strong, silent, and just happy to be near me.
“Come here, buddy,” I croon. “Oh, my gosh, I’ve missed my pupper today, yes I have…” I kneel down and set my briefcase on the floor. With both hands, I give his face and head a smoosh as I let him lick my cheek and face in greeting. Now that I’m down at his level, Bert gets more excited and wound up, and soon I’m working not to let him tip me over.
“Okay, B, you gotta let me up!” I laugh. “Let me change out of these clothes, and then you can have a proper snuggle with me on the couch.”
Feeling just the tiniest bit lighter, I make my way up the stairs to the master bedroom and into the walk-in closet. I hang up my skirt and jacket, then hold my silk blouse out in front of me to assess whether I can wear it one more time before taking it to the dry cleaners.
Inconclusive.
Frowning, I hang the blouse up too, and tell myself I’ll decide later. Dry cleaning is an expensive consequence of my profession — and the bane of my current penny-pinching ways.
I pull my hair out of its bun and run my hands through it, then put it back up in a loose, messy ponytail. Then I drag on a favorite pair of comfy yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt that says, “Hedgehogs: Why don’t they just share the hedge?” (a present from Margot and Benji) and let out a deep sigh.
Even though I have to work tonight, it’s still a wonderful relief to be home.
I decide to pour myself a glass of white wine and give myself half an hour to wind down before starting on my files. Hopefully that will help me put that irritating biker bodyguard out of my mind for a while.
And hopefully he’ll take the hint and leave, I think to myself, though I’m not optimistic.
Instinctively, I avoid the street-facing window when I go back into my bedroom. I know there’s no way he can see me in here right now without the light on. But still, the mere idea of him watching the house makes me feel completely exposed. As I walk back down the stairs into the kitchen, I force myself not to look out of any other windows to check whether I can see Striker is out there.
Dammit, I feel like a prisoner in my own home.
Bert, of course, has been following behind me faithfully this whole time. I opt not to take him out for a walk, but promise myself I’ll take him out later, before bed. There’s a doggy door installed in the back door off the kitchen, so I know he can always go out and do his business in the fenced-in backyard if he needs to.
Hopefully by then, Striker will have gone home for the night and I won’t have to deal with him.
The glass of wine doesn’t relax me as much as I hope it will. Neither does turning on the TV and mindlessly flipping through channels for a while. When my allotted half-hour is up, I go out to the car to grab my files, and bring them up to my office to work, along with my briefcase.
The silver lining of settling down to concentrate on client cases is that I manage to stop thinking about Striker for a while. I work through dinner, stopping only to eat some cold leftovers when my stomach starts to growl. Finally, I come back up to the surface around ten o’clock, when Bert’s whine and his cold nose nuzzling my hand tell me he wants to go out.
I huff out a breath. “Okay, buddy,” I say, gritting my teeth. “You’re right. Time to face the inevitable.”
Bert’s harness and leash combo are on a hook by the front door. I snap it on him, careful as always not to catch his fur. I pull on the light jacket I keep there as well, and open the door to the night.
Bert lunges outside, excited as always to go prowl the neighborhood. As we descend my front walk, I look around, but there’s no sign of Striker’s motorcycle or the man himself. I heave a sigh of relief. I guess he must have gone home for the night. Or maybe he has gone back to Tank and told him I’ve refused his services. I hope it’s the latter.
But the feeling of calm that washes over me is tinged with something else — something I can’t quite describe. It almost feels a tiny bit like disappointment. Which is ridiculous, because I do not want him here, and never did.
I shake my head to clear it, then chuckle, because that’s something that Bert does. “You shake your head to get rid of all those big, complicated puppy thoughts, don’t you, B?” I ask him as he trots alongside me. Bert’s ears pivot back at the sound of my voice, and my heart melts, as it always does. This dog is the best.
My nightly ritual of taking Bert out for his walk before bed is one of my favorite parts of being a dog owner. I don’t always love it — not when it’s raining out, for example, or snowing. But usually, it’s a quiet, peaceful time that helps me wind down for the night. It’s almost like meditating, even though I’ve never really done that. The two of us instinctively fall into the rhythm we both know so well, and his nails clack softly on the sidewalk, tapping out the pace.