“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.”