I’ve spent some time in the bedroom with Ranger, but not lately. We have incompatible goals in life. It’s hard for me to have goals beyond the end of the week right now. Things like marriage and children dangle in front of me but I see them in the distance, as if I’m looking through Bernie’s cataract. Ranger has big long-term goals. Life everlasting and saving the world from evil. His short-term goal is to get me into his bed. I’m sure he has other short-term goals but this is the goal of the moment. It’s a decent goal but it puts me between a rock and a hard spot.
The Tinkerbell part of me was in a mental shouting match with the Wendy part of me. Tinkerbell was dying to sleep with Ranger and she was telling me to go for it. Wendy was saying it wouldn’t be the responsible, adult thing to do. And it certainly wouldn’t be a nice thing to do to Morelli.
Ranger was watching me from across the room. “Is there a problem?”
“It’s our goals. They’re different.”
“Not at the moment.”
“Long term. I’m drifting through life without direction. The only thing I see in my future is a hazy picture of marriage. You have a clear direction and marriage isn’t a part of it.”
“This is true.”
“So I need a man who shares my goal of getting married and starting a family.”
“Do you have someone in mind?”
“Morelli.”
Ranger smiled at that.
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“Babe, he’s been stringing you along since you were five years old. You’re no closer to marriage with him than you were in kindergarten.”
“We might be engaged to be engaged.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” Sort of. “We just don’t talk about it a lot.”
In fact, we didn’t talk about it ever. He avoided dinner with my parents so he didn’t have to talk about it. The subject never came up between us. Not even during intimate moments. Plus, there was the billiard table. Initially I thought he was saving his money to buy me a ring, but he bought the table with the money. Face facts, Stephanie, when a man is thinking about marriage and starting a family he doesn’t replace his dining-room table with a billiard table. Besides, I don’t even like billiards.
“Sonovabitch!” I said.
Ranger gave me a slightly raised eyebrow. “You’ve had an epiphany?”
Ordinarily an unpleasant piece of news would send me to 7-Eleven to load up on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and pints of H?agen-Dazs. 7-Eleven wasn’t immediately available to me but I had Ranger. And Ranger was the mother of all delicious, self-indulgent treats. A peanut butter cup was chump change compared to the possibility of sinking my teeth into Ranger. Not that I would do any real damage, but the temptation was getting stronger by the minute. I mean, what the hell, I was at Disney. I was one step away from the magic kingdom. This wasn’t the time to hold back on what might turn out to be the happiest experience of the day. In the interest of mental health, I needed to do this.
“Babe,” Ranger said. “Your eyes are dilated. Are you all right?”
I was better than all right. I was Tinkerbell, and I was about to uncork the bottle and release the Ranger genie. Ranger is an alpha male. Leader of the pack. Always. In the bedroom he sets the pace. There’s never an awkward moment because he’s focused on the prize, the pleasure, the human experience. He knows where to touch. He knows when to ask the question. He’s strong and hard where it counts. He’s smart. He’s patient. He’s magic. In short, he assumes the decision burden that I was currently very relieved to give up. Again, in the interest of mental health.
“Bring it on,” I said to him. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
I showered and got dressed in my new Tinker Bell T-shirt and panties. They were fun but anticlimactic after the night with Ranger.
“Are you coming to breakfast with me?” I asked him. “Goofy might be there.”
“Going to pass. I’ll have something sent up.”
“You’ll be sorry. You’re going to miss the Mickey Mouse waffles.”
He stopped scrolling through emails on his phone and looked over at me. “I like the shirt.”
“That’s nothing,” I said. “Look at this.”
I unzipped my jeans and flashed him a look at the panties.
He stood and slipped his phone into his pocket. “The car is picking us up at eight o’clock.”
I looked at him in his black fatigues. “Are you really commando?”
“Only one way to find out, babe. How bad do you want those waffles?”
It was early afternoon when I rolled into the bonds office.
“Good shirt,” Connie said, looking up from her computer. “I’ve always admired Tinker Bell.”
“I like the way she leaves a trail of fairy dust when she flits around,” Lula said, “but I think she’s self-absorbed. And she needs to control that jealous streak.”
“Vinnie is making noise about Kwan,” Connie said. “He’s a high bond, and Vinnie is worried he’s going to jump.”
I didn’t want to ask Ranger to help again. He had his own business to run, and he was busy with Bogart. The only way I could capture Kwan before he was ready to get caught was to get him alone, without his posse. That meant surveillance.
“No problem,” I said. “Easy-peasy.” Tinker Bell was in the hood.
Lula was on her feet. “I’ll go with you. We might run into the banana man again. I’ve been thinking about him.”
Running into the banana man wasn’t in my plan, but I’d be happy to have Lula riding shotgun. Surveillance was boring at best. It was deadly when you did it alone. As soon as you went to find a ladies’ room the mark took off and you didn’t even know it.
“Where are we going?” Lula asked, settling into my car. “Are we going to sit and watch his travel office?”
“It’s a place to start.”
I drove to Stark Street and parked half a block away and across the street from Kwan’s office. Four windows ran across the front of the building on the second floor. Occasionally a shadowy figure would cross behind a window. Occasionally someone would look out. Not Kwan.
At five-thirty a black Mercedes sedan drove up to the travel office and parked. Kwan and three minions came out of the building and got into the car. The car drove them to Sadie’s Steak House on Liberty Street. Everyone went in and the car drove away.
“They’re having dinner and we’re sitting out here like hungry idiots,” Lula said.
“We’re less than a mile from my parents’ house,” I said. “We can hop over and get something to eat and be back here before they leave the restaurant.”
I called ahead to warn my mother that Lula and I were coming to dinner.
“I have a ham,” she said. “And macaroni and cheese. There’s plenty to go around. We’re already at the table, but I’ll put out two more settings.”
Grandma was at the door when we stepped onto the porch. “Your mother’s heating things up,” she said. “Good thing you came, or we would have been eating ham for a week.”
“Whoa, Granny,” Lula said. “Badass hair!”
“I did it for my honey,” Grandma said, “but I’m thinking of kicking him to the curb. I might not want to be tied down to just one man at my age.”
“I hear you,” Lula said.
“I don’t know if I want any man,” Grandma said.
“I’d rather have a dog,” Lula said, “but my landlady said it wasn’t allowed.”
We took our seats at the table, and my mother brought in reheated macaroni and cheese and green beans.
“This is a feast,” Lula said, forking into the ham. “This is all my favorite food. I’m all about macaroni and cheese.”
“How did the Zigler viewing and the funeral go?” I asked Grandma. “Did anything interesting happen?”
“First off, it was closed casket. A lot of people were real disappointed at that. You get dressed up and you make an effort to pay your respects, you should at least get something to look at.”
“I hear there was an overflow crowd,” Lula said. “Marjorie Bend said they were handing out numbered wristbands just to get in.”
“I was lucky. I went early. Even going early I didn’t get the best seat, but I still did pretty good. From what I saw there weren’t any Bogarts there. I think there might have been a couple people the Bogart Bar man worked with, but I didn’t know any of them. I heard the clown was there, but I didn’t see him personally.”
“Was he dressed in his clown suit?” Lula asked.