25. A Secure Place

A SECURE PLACE

ANDREW

It's a bit of a slap in the face when Paul says, "I don't need tucked in." But I'd probably been intrusive by asking. I knew that his mother spent time with him at the end of the day when we moved into the bungalow. Since then, we've not had much time as a family.

In fact, our family time could be counted in hours rather than days.

Maddy seems to understand what I am feeling. "Give him time," she says. "He's not known you as his father for more than three days. In every sense of the word, you are a stranger to him."

My father had been a stranger to me, even though I'd known who he was. He breezed in for a few minutes a time or two per week. I didn't want to be that kind of father to Paul. But I know she is right. You can't force these things.

I open my arms to her, and she comes to me willingly enough. Her head fits right under my chin, and her hair tickles my throat. She shivers in my arms.

"Are you cold?" I ask.

"Tired," she replies, "and scared."

"So am I," I say. "But I'm not going anywhere. I am here. If you are willing, we will see this through together."

"Do we have a choice?" she asks.

I think about that for a minute or two, holding her warm, lithe body against me. I rest my cheek on top of her hair. It has an herbal scent, something spicy but not edible. She's changed shampoo. I think I like this one. But I liked the other one, too.

"There are always choices," I say slowly. "But I think our best one is to present a united front. Grandfather is like a force of nature, difficult to stop, nearly impossible to avoid. But a skilled surfer can ride the wave, a sailing ship can turn into the storm and survive. Prepared communities can even divert some of the flow of a volcano."

"But an earthquake?" she asks, tipping her face to mine. "A forest fire?"

"Even those you can plan for," I reply. "Although it is a challenge. And you need to know exactly what it is you are preparing for. The two don't necessarily require the same kinds of preparation. Set up for the wrong one, and you just might have a disaster."

"So what is your Grandfather?" she asks.

I know she is asking about more than natural disasters. "He's his own kind of force," I say. "I'm not sure what to call him. A tyrant? A petty despot? A drug lord?"

"Godfather?" she supplies.

I shake my head in silent mirth. "Oh, that movie! Vito Corleone is gentle and innocuous compared to Grandfather Aims. He does not idealize the world. He uses it."

"I don't understand," she says. "Is he really that selfish?"

"He could have written ‘The Virtues of Selfishness' if Ayn Rand hadn't beaten him to it," I say. "He doesn't usually work with assassins or blood in the street. He does worse things — character assassinations, perpetual unemployment, blackmail, threats against loved ones. By the time he is finished, your dearest friend will be your worst enemy."

"Paul," she says.

"Paul," I answer. "But we aren't going to let that happen."

"You aren't going to kill him, are you?" she asks, her eyes wide.

"If I thought it would help, I would," I say, inwardly flinching away from the shock on her face. "But it won't. He is dying. And he has signed the business over to me. Remember, it was not the heads of family who killed the brother or the young bridegroom. It was the cousins, the uncles, the associates."

"What are you saying?" Maddy looks at me as if I've suddenly grown two heads. "Andrew, you're scaring me."

I hold her close. Not too hard, to cherish, not to hurt. "Sometimes, I scare myself," I say. "That's why I became a doctor, to set my hand to saving lives, not destroying them."

She leans her head into my chest. "That doesn't answer my question," she says.

I sigh. "I know. And I won't really know the answer until I meet with Grandfather, my brothers, Tulok Ildogis, and Charles Emory. For tonight, I trust Austin Moor to keep us safe."

"What's so special about this place?" she asks. "To me, it just looks like a big hotel."

"Did you expect it to look like something out of a movie?" I ask, smoothing her soft, dark hair.

"With a name like ‘the bunker', I kind of did," she says.

"Then think about this," I say. "I'm pretty sure that big front glass is the so-called bulletproof stuff, and that the decorative trim at the top is a blast shield. You probably didn't notice because it is night outside, but there are no windows in here. And there are security guards just about everywhere, wearing either Moor security or Spindizzy uniforms."

"I did notice that," she says. "And I understand that it might be easier to fortify one place rather than five or six. But eventually, we will all need to go to jobs or offices. Wealth doesn't create itself."

"At some levels, that could be debated," I say. "But you are correct in saying that work such as ours is best done on site. Hopefully, by the time it becomes an issue, we'll have this problem resolved. Meanwhile, Paul had pizza and juice. Have you eaten anything?"

She shakes her head.

"Come on," I say, gently turning us around toward the table. "Food has a way of anchoring the stomach. An empty belly is an anxious belly."

That must have struck Maddy as funny because she giggles, then says, "I've not heard that one before."

I put a smile on my face and say, "Now you have. Come sit with me. Let's just talk a while. What kind of pizza would you like? Should I warm it up for you?"

"Pepperoni," she says. "And I like it cold."

"Beer, wine or juice?" I ask. Because goodness knows, pizza just does not go with milk.

"Juice," she says. "Maybe I should have grabbed some soda."

"We still can," I say. "There's room service."

She shakes her head. "Doesn't seem fair to Paul. After all, I made him stick to fruit juice."

I had the same. I would have liked a beer, but it was, after all, our wedding night. The ceremony might not have been grand, but I hoped to at least make the after party memorable for us both.

After the first bite or two, she ate the cold pizza with relish. "I guess I was hungry," she admits, after the third slice.

I warm mine. I've eaten my share of cold pizza. It's almost an obligatory food group for students in the USA. But that doesn't mean I enjoy it, and the suite had a perfectly good microwave.

When it looked like she was slowing down, I cued up some soft music on my phone. It was an orchestral rendition of "Dance with Me," the song we danced to that last night before I went to Africa.

She looked up at me, eyes as dreamy as if she'd drunk wine instead of fruit juice. I hold out my hand; she places her hand in it.

I pull her into a traditional waltz stance, and begin a soft sway with her. She moves closer, puts both arms around my neck, and we move gently to the music. Neither of us are in the mood for the acrobatics she exhibited nearly ten years ago, but I feel her relax.

I sing softly to her, " . . . night is calling, and I'm falling . . ."

She sings back to me, just as she had back then, "Come fuck with me, let us live this fantasy. Let us be together, if only for tonight."

It should have sounded crude, but it didn't. On her lips, the words were the finest poetry. Wrapped in the music, it drew me like iron filings to a magnet. It feels like my pants shrank by at least two sizes, and my heart starts going like a trip hammer.

I was responding to her like a teenage boy crazed by hormones, or a tom cat to a lady cat in heat. Grandfather, marriages, responsibility . . . they all fall away from me, and I am entirely focused on her. I try to remember that I am a married man, I am taking over my grandfather's misbegotten crime kingdom, but she is my entire world. Nothing else seems important.

I dance us in circles, spinning toward the bedroom door. I bend my head to kiss her, and find her mouth upturned to mine. She tastes of strawberries. Her hair smells like rosemary and honeysuckle. My skin is on fire with the feel of her. This is everything I remembered, and more besides.

"You are so, so bad for me," she murmurs. "How did I ever fall down this rabbit hole?"

"I don't know, Alice," I say, playing into her current whimsy. "If I grin wide enough, will you shake me into a kitten?"

"That was the baby," she says, giving me a tickly poke in the ribs. "And as I recall, it turned into a pig and ran off into the woods."

I concede the point. She has ten years of reading on me, probably a lot of it in children's books. "I bow to your expertise," I say. "I've not had a lot of time for literature."

"Let's just make our own story," she says. "I didn't have you long enough to say that I missed you, but I did look for you."

"You did?" I ask in surprise. "Not just because you were pregnant?"

"Before then," she says. "I wanted to see if another week would match the first, and I wanted to get to know you."

"What do you think now?" I ask.

"I'm still thinking about it," she says. "I'll let you know what I decide."

"Should we look in on him before we . . .?" I let the sentence drift, afraid to complete it.

She nods, then turns and taps lightly on our son's door.

"Mom?" Paul's sleepy voice answers.

"You decent?" she asks.

"Yeah," he says, "But I can't move, so if you want to say goodnight again, you'll have to come in."

The sight that meets our eyes when Maddy opens the door is heart-warming and sweet in the way that only children and pets can be. Angel lays across the head of the bed and Paul leans against her. His tousled blond hair was almost as light as her fur. Carousel is curled on his chest, purring loud enough we can hear him across the room.

The curtains to the "window" are pulled open, displaying a wide screen television with a trio of animals, a yellow lab, a siamese cat, and an English bull terrier romping across the screen. Paul is watching "The Incredible Journey", the story of how three animals make their way across the country to their former home.

"I'm fine," our perceptive, precocious offspring says with a trace of irritation. "Go to bed, Mom, Dad, let me watch my movie."

I feel as if my heart will spill over with emotion. I don't know what to call it, but the son I didn't know about until three days ago just called me "Dad."

I hug Maddy close, and she hugs me back. She knows. She understands.

"Just checking on you," she says. "Love you, Paul."

" Usiku mwema, lala salama ," I say, using the Swahili words I'd heard the nurses say to the little ones placed in our care. I didn't quite dare add, ‘love you, son', but I hoped the way I said it would carry the message.

"What does that mean?" he asks.

"Just ‘good night, sleep well'," I say.

"You too," he says. "Now go away, they are about to have dinner at the crazy man's house."

Laughing, we withdraw. Our boy is fine.