Greg Rucka: Critical Space

"So I'd gathered. When I told her I hadn't been able to reach you, she called me several four-letter words, in a variety of combinations, then hung up. Then her manager called back and said you were fired. So, essentially, as a result of whatever happened in El Paso, I was verbally abused by the Skye Van Brandt organization this afternoon. Would you like to tell me what happened in El Paso, Atticus? Because I'm really curious."

"You know I wouldn't just walk out for no reason," I said.

"I do," Natalie said. "I also know that Skye Van Brandt's a spoiled brat, and that you should have been done with the job two days ago. Did she do that?" She indicated my forehead with a manicured nail.

"With an ashtray."

"Why?" Bridgett asked.

"I wouldn't carry her luggage."

They looked at each other. Bridgett began to giggle.

"That's nice," I said. "I'm glad you're amused, because I sure as hell wasn't. Aside from the pain that comes from being beaned with a glass ashtray, I nearly lost consciousness, I had blood in my eyes, and I couldn't see."

"You poor thing," Bridgett said.

I ignored her, speaking to Natalie. "She made it impossible for me to protect her."

"By walking out on her you left her exposed," Natalie said.

"To what? Back strain? Skye Van Brandt didn't need a PSA, Nat, she needed a babysitter. I was for show, that's all. And, for the record, I wasn't fired – I quit."

"It could make it hard for us to get more work."

"You mean more of that kind of work, and no it won't. We bill them as normal, and if they make a stink, we'll let them know our attorney will be in touch."

"You'd sue over this?" Bridgett asked.

"Of course not," I said. "But they won't dare trash our reputation, and if they get even the least bit snarky I've got no qualms about threatening them with a civil suit for assault."

"Ooh, he is pissed off," Bridgett told Natalie.

"Damn right I am."

"You might want to get that under control," Natalie said. "We've got clients coming into the office tomorrow at one, they're going to want to meet with you."

"Is it a real job?" I asked.

Natalie looked at me skeptically.

"One where we actually do what we're trained to do," I explained. "Not another dog-and-jackass show."

"Is that what you think we've been doing?"

"Don't you?"

"No, but this clearly isn't the time to discuss it. I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'll walk you out," Bridgett told her.

They left me alone in the kitchen, and I could hear them talking softly at the front door. Natalie and Bridgett have a friendship that predates my knowing either of them, and while it'd been stormy in the past, they seemed to have worked most of their difficulties through. I finished the beer and heard the door close, and Bridgett came back as I was rinsing the bottle out in the sink.

"Okay, sport," she said. "What are we going to do about your mood?"

"My mood's fine."

"True, you do sullen so well."

"Don't start."

"And feeling sorry for yourself even better."

"I asked you not to start."

"You did not, you told me not to start, and you know how I respond to that." She leaned back against the wall, arms folded across her chest. "I'm going to ask again, what do you want to do?"

"I want to shower. I want to have something to eat. I want to go to bed."

"That it?"

"Well, I'd prefer not to do these things alone."

"Then we have a problem, because I already ate."

"I can go without dinner."

"Problem solved."

A little after midnight I discovered that going without dinner had been a bad idea, and we got out of bed and pulled some clothes on, then went back into the kitchen. I boiled some water for Bridgett's herbal tea, fixed a glass of juice for myself, and we sat at the table and munched on sliced apple and cheese and bread. Bridgett had pulled on her tank top and a pair of my shorts, and I could see the track marks on her arms, puffy scars that were hard to the touch. She caught me looking at them.

"I'm fine," she said.

"I know," I said. "They just make me sad."

"Scars can do that. You've got a couple that make me feel the same way."

"And now a new one."

"Skye Van Brandt hasn't earned the right to scar you. It'll heal clean." She put some cheddar on an apple slice, munched, and chased it with a sip of tea. "She's not what's bugging you, though."

"How about the ennui of the working class?"

"Try again."

I swirled the cranberry juice around in my glass. "I shouldn't have walked out on Skye. That bugs me, but I'm not sure if it bugs me more than the fact that I took the job in the first place. I knew it was bogus going into it, but I did it anyway."

"The money was good," Bridgett said.

"I didn't do it for the money."

"Star-fucking, then?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Not literally, you dope. Just wanting to be close to the glitterati. There's a glamour in it, admit it."

"The glamour has long since worn thin. I've seen how the other half lives, Bridgett, and I'm not interested. It's not that."

"Why then?"

I finished my juice, looked at the empty glass in my hand. "Something to do, I suppose."

"There are better ways to combat boredom."

"Don't I know it."

She finished her tea and we cleared the table, then shut off the lights and got back into bed. Bridgett curls up when she sleeps, and she pressed her back into me, settling, and was asleep in minutes. It took me much longer to relax, and nearly another hour before I managed to doze.

Then Bridgett was nudging me awake, and I was wincing in the sunlight, listening to her tell me that I was wanted by the FBI.

"How many times are we going to do this?" I asked Special Agent Scott Fowler.

"Hell if I know," he answered. "Until they don't have any more questions, I expect. Get in."

I took the passenger seat and Scott waited until I had buckled up before starting the engine and pulling out into the traffic on Lexington Avenue. It was an unseasonably cool summer morning, and pedestrians who had opted for shorts and tank tops were walking with the brisk purpose of people desperate to get warm again.

Scott himself seemed comfortable, though I knew to him anything below sixty-five degrees was, by his own definition, "freezing." We were both Californians by birth, but Scott was from SoCal, and grew up spending his after-school hours and weekends catching waves along the lower Pacific Coast. He's got four years on me, wears glasses, has two earrings, and looks perpetually ready to hit the beach at the drop of a hat. But for his suits, which are uniformly blue or gray, you'd be hard-pressed to tell just by looking at him that he works for the FBI.

"You were out of town," Scott said. "The lovely Skye. Nicely done."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's in the paper. 'Seen canoodling at The Grey Moss Inn outside El Paso, Texas, smoldering starlet Skye Van Brandt and celebrity protection specialist Atticus Kodiak.' "

"Whoa," I said. "Backup. What?"

"Page Six. The Post. There's a copy on the backseat." Scott was grinning like he'd snuck a mouthful of some very tasty and forbidden treat. "Bridgett know?"

I was twisting around for the paper, finding it already folded open to the celebrity gossip pages. There was a small file photograph of Skye, and the copy was pretty much as Scott had quoted with the addition that, "Van Brandt's publicist denies any involvement between the two."

"This is utter crap," I said.

Fowler laughed, negotiating the merge onto the FDR. "They make all that shit up anyway. You'd never be caught dead canoodling anyone at The Grey Moss Inn."

"Wait until tomorrow," I said. "They'll run a story saying that she and I had a fight and that we're 'headed for Splitsville.' "