Dexter's Final Cut

ELEVEN

I fell asleep quickly and completely, and when I opened my eyes it seemed like no time had passed, but the first orange gleam of light was hammering its way in through the balcony door, so either it was morning or a UFO was landing on the chaise longue.

I blinked and decided it was probably morning. UFOs wouldn’t dare land in Miami-somebody would chop them up and haul them off to sell for scrap metal. I started to stretch and sit up, but froze midway as I realized there was a strange whirring sound coming from Jackie’s bedroom. It did not seem particularly sinister, but I had no idea what it was. As the bodyguard, it seemed incumbent upon me to investigate, so I stood up quietly, took the Glock from the coffee table beside me, and tiptoed to Jackie’s door. I turned the handle silently, pushed the door open, and peeked in.

Jackie sat on a stationary bicycle, pedaling vigorously, and already a light sheen of sweat covered her face. That is, on a lesser human being it would have been sweat; on her it was glow. She wore a skintight leotard that did nothing to make her ugly, and there were earbuds plugged into the sides of her head, and as she looked up and saw me she pried one of them out. “Good morning,” she called out, a little too loudly. “I’ll just be about half an hour-you want to order some breakfast?”

Of course I did; the finely tuned machine that is Dexter requires frequent fuel. But I managed to conceal my unseemly eagerness, and simply gave her a nod and a cheery, “Okay!”

“Great!” she called back. “Wheat toast, grapefruit juice, and some Greek yogurt, please.” And she put her head back down, plugged the earbud back into her ear, and pedaled faster.

I left her on her bicycle trip to nowhere and went to call room service. I tried very hard to admire Jackie for her spartan breakfast order, but it didn’t work. To me, the whole point of eating is lost if you don’t actually eat something, and it seemed to me that toast and grapefruit juice didn’t quite qualify. It was really no more than an upscale version of bread and water, and was not nearly enough to sustain life as I had come to know it.

But at least I felt no compulsion to follow her lead, and I did not. I ordered a ham-and-cheese omelet, rye toast with jam, orange juice, and a fruit bowl. And, of course, the largest pot of dark Miami coffee they could muster in their high-priced kitchen.

Breakfast arrived a mere ten minutes later, and I had the garçon set it up on the balcony. I let him out, put the chain back on the door, and went back outside. The sun had clawed its way aggressively up the horizon, but its heat was not yet as brutal as it would soon be, and there was a light breeze coming off the Bay, so the balcony seemed like an ideal setting. I sat and sipped coffee while I waited for Jackie, looking out over the water and thinking that there was a great deal to be said for my new career as a bodyguard. True, it was potentially dangerous, and the hours were rather long. But on the plus side, I was living like a millionaire without paying higher taxes, and I got to hang out with a Real Live Hollywood Star and eat haute cuisine. Of course, Rita’s food was far from being swill, but it had to be said that she was not truly a five-star gourmet chef, and not a famous and beautiful celebrity, either, and comparing her to Jackie was really no contest. It was an unkind thought, but since no one else could hear it, I didn’t bother to pretend I hadn’t thought it.

Instead, I thought about it some more. It was really nothing but a pleasant mental game, a goofy and nearly human fantasy, but it passed the time. I tried to imagine swapping my drab little existence for the life of a Celebrity Bodyguard. I pictured Me as part of an Entourage, the hawk-eyed presence at Jackie’s shoulder, ever vigilant on the Red Carpets of the world. Dexter the Human Shield, Living It Large in Hollywood, Cannes, and all the great cities of the world. Breakfast on the balcony in Maui and Singapore and Bali. It would not be hard to get used to living like that, and if I had to give up scrabbling for a mortgage on a new house, and do without all the shrieks and squeals and door-slamming that went with family life, what had I really lost except shattered eardrums and frequent headaches? Of course, there was Lily Anne, the living extension of all that is Me, my DNA shipment into the future. And I had, after all, promised to lead Cody and Astor into a safe, well-planned Dark Future. My path was already laid out, and I was completely satisfied with it. Really I was. I did not need to enhance it with private jets and crème brûlée every night and a golden-haired goddess leading me through an existence of pure, diamond-studded pleasure. No matter how much I liked it.

The glass door slid open, interrupting my pleasant daydream, and Jackie stepped out into the sunlight. “Good morning,” she said, and sat beside me. Her hair was damp, and she smelled of shampoo and the same very faint perfume I had noticed yesterday.

“Good morning,” I said. “Coffee?”

“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.

The doorman was enthusiastically telling Jackie about his nephew, a really good-looking kid who could really act and sang like an angel, not like these hip-hop guys nowadays but really sing, and Jackie was smiling and nodding and trying to keep her eyes from crossing with the strain of enduring the doorman’s blather without slapping him.

I took pity on her and interrupted without waiting for the end of the story. “We’re running late, Miss Forrest,” I said, sounding as Official as I could.

Jackie gave me a grateful smile and then nodded at the doorman. “Tell him not to give up,” she told the man. “Always follow the dream.”

He beamed at her like she had knighted him. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll tell him; thank you, Miss Forrest.” And he leaped ahead of us and held the door as I led Jackie out to the waiting car.

As we came out into the sunlight I heard a sort of murmur of excitement from the handful of people waiting there, and I turned to see that they were all looking at me with bright and mindless smiles on their faces. Not actually Me, of course, which became crystal clear when someone called out, “Yo, Jackie!” She smiled and waved and I led her on past the minicrowd to the waiting Town Car. I felt the eyes following us, and I wondered why that didn’t make me nervous. I checked the Dark Passenger; far from being anxious, he actually seemed to be purring. Someone in the throng yelled, “Whoo!” and I felt myself smiling with pleasure. I knew it was for Jackie-but I was with her, part of her entourage, and in a moment of truly bizarre insight, I realized I liked it. I enjoyed having idiot smiles following in my wake. It was totally unthinkable, of course; Dexter must maintain a low profile or cease to be Dexter. Still, I found that I felt larger, more handsome, certain that great wit fell from my lips every time I parted them to speak. It was invigorating, intoxicating, and I enjoyed it so much that I did not hear the rising rattle of warning from the watch-tower of Castle Dexter until I opened the car’s door.

But then I did hear it, loud and insistent, and I put two protective arms around Jackie and turned to survey the area.

“What?” she said, and she pushed up close against me, suddenly as edgy as I felt.

“I don’t know,” I said. I scanned; the people at the hotel’s entrance were doing no more than beaming at us. No danger there. But I felt a sharp tickle of something, a kind of intense focus on Us, over to the right somewhere. I turned to look.

Down at the end of the drive, a man stood beside one of the two cars pulled over and parked at the mouth of the hotel’s driveway. The man raised something up, pointed it at us-and just before I could fling Jackie to the hard uneven bricks of the driveway, I recognized it: a camera, with a large telephoto lens.

Click. Click. Click.

“Paparazzi,” Jackie said. “They’re everywhere.” She looked at me with a strange expression of puzzled concern. “How did you know he was there?”

“Um, I didn’t really,” I said. The thought of describing my Passenger’s Distant Early Warning System was unthinkable. “I just, um, I saw him move out of the corner of my eye.”

She kept looking. “Uh-huh,” she said, sounding very much unconvinced.

I held the back door of the car open for her. “Shall we go?” I said.

She finally nodded, turned away, and climbed into the car, and I turned to look at our audience one last time. The photographer clicked a few more shots, and as I turned away, I heard the sound of a motorcycle starting up.

Around the hotel’s front door, the people were still smiling. Even the doorman was still watching and waving as I put Jackie into the backseat, but to be fair, everybody else in the area was watching her, too, watching with a kind of lustful adoration, as if Jackie was a cross between a pinup and the pope. They did not actually applaud as she slid onto the seat and I closed the door, but I got the idea that they would have if this wasn’t such a classy hotel.

I got in on the other side, feeling another surge of that strange satisfaction at being the center of attention. I pushed it away halfheartedly, but it didn’t want to go, and I was still feeling beautiful and important as the car started down the drive, across the bridge, and into the happy mayhem of morning traffic in Miami.

I tried to lean back and enjoy the ride, but I found it a very odd experience to creep through the havoc in the backseat of the Town Car. For the first time I was a spectator instead of a participant, and although the horns blared and the middle fingers went up just as much as ever, it was almost like it was happening in another time and place as I watched it all go by in a movie.

Jackie looked out the window and, when she felt me looking at her, turned and smiled.

“The traffic is pretty bad this morning,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. “This?” she said. “You call this traffic?” She shook her head. “Don’t ever drive in Los Angeles. It makes this look like a sunny day in the park.”

“Really,” I said.

“Really,” she told me. And she gave me a condescending smile and said, “You get used to it.”

I’ve noticed before that people from New York and L.A. tend to have an attitude about their cities, a kind of survivor’s confidence that says, I’m from Real Life, and if you live in this hick town, you’re not even in the game. Always before I’d found this kind of amusing; Miami natives, after all, are just as rude and aggressive as New Yorkers, and just as sun-drenched and vacuous as Angelenos, and the combination is a unique and lethal challenge every time you drive. But something about the way Jackie said it made me feel a little bit provincial, and I wanted to say something to defend the ferocity of Miami traffic.

Happily for my city’s reputation, I didn’t need to say a thing. As we finally made it up onto the Dolphin Expressway and came to a stop in the bumper-to-bumper snarl, a large and shiny Cadillac Escalade went rocketing by us on the shoulder. It was going at least fifty miles per hour, and there was no more than two inches of room between it and the line of cars it hurtled past. Jackie flinched away from it and watched it go by with her mouth slightly open in surprise, and I felt a small warm glow of pride.

This was my city; these were my people.

“Oh,” she said. “Does that sort of thing happen a lot?”

“Almost constantly,” I said. And because I can be just as condescending as any Angeleno, I added, “You get used to it.”

Jackie stared at me, and then smiled, shaking her head. “Point for the home team,” she said. But before I could do a victory dance, her cell phone began to chirp. “Shit,” she said. “My first interview, and I can’t remember who it is.” She fumbled out her phone and tossed it to me. “Please?” she said. “Just find out who it is so I don’t look like a dope?”

It seemed like a reasonable request. I took the phone and answered. “Hello?”

“Hi, Sarah Tessorro, Reel Magic magazine; can I speak to Jacqueline Forrest, please?”

I covered the mouthpiece. “Sarah Tessorro, Reel Magic,” I said to Jackie, and she nodded. I handed her the phone.

“Sarah!” Jackie said enthusiastically. “How are you?” And then the two of them were off into a five-minute chat in which Jackie talked about the new show, her character, how wonderful the script was, and how great it was to work with a wonderful pro like Robert. I listened to that part with real surprise, and not merely because she overused the word “wonderful,” which was not her style at all. But I had watched Jackie with Robert for a week now, and I didn’t need to read the script to know they detested each other. Still, Jackie said it very convincingly, and my estimation of her acting talent went up several notches.

By the time the Town Car pulled up in front of the headquarters building, she’d said it with equal conviction in two more interviews. It must have been hard work, and I decided that being a star was a little more difficult than I’d thought. Clearly, it wasn’t all mojitos and sunsets; sometimes you had to repeat terrible lies in a very convincing way. Of course, that seemed like something I could be very good at-I’d had so much practice, after all-and I began to wonder again whether I was too old to switch careers.

We got out right at the front door and I took Jackie upstairs and delivered her to Deborah, who was already hard at work at her desk. She looked up at us as we came in with an expression I could not read; it was partly her Standard Cop Face, but with one eyebrow raised in cynical disbelief.

“How’d it go?” she asked us.

“No problem,” I said.

“Except when he tried to shoot my assistant,” Jackie said sweetly. But before I could add even a syllable in defense of my honor, she pulled the stack of psychotic fan letters from her bag and dumped them on Deborah’s desk. “She brought these,” she said. “The letters.”

Deborah snatched them up eagerly. “Great,” she said, and began to read them with ferocious concentration. Jackie watched her, then looked up at me. “Um,” she said.

“You’ll be fine with Debs,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

“All right,” she said, and I turned away and headed out the door. I would much rather have stayed with Jackie and my sister, especially since I was joining Robert instead. But my duty was clear, so I left them and trudged away down the hall to my cubicle.