“I’ll pay you…” Malcolm pants, “five… thousand… dollars.”
“What?” she says. A quick inhalation brings on momentary dizziness—or is it confusion? The money would blot out the red ink that’s drowning her business. Circling him, she raises, ever so slightly, the brow over one dark eye, assessing her student.
He recoils, shakes droplets of sweat from his chestnut hair. A trim mustache glistens. He rises into a half-sitting position and takes several more deep breaths. “Five thousand dollars,” he says, louder. “Plus expenses—to be my bodyguard on a one-week Caribbean cruise.”
She laughs—to make a show of disbelief—then, with her wristband, wipes perspiration from her forehead. “You’re crazy. What’s the catch?”
“No catch.”
“There’s always a catch.” She snaps her fingers twice. “Now quit stalling and take me down, tough guy.”
They bend forward, circling clockwise on wall-to-wall tumbling mats. He’s taller; she’s younger, more athletic; both are slim—physically, equal adversaries.
Malcolm shoots toward her thighs. She recedes like a matador’s cape. Off-balance, he stumbles forward. She shoves his shoulder as he sprawls face-down.
Flat on the mat, he lies motionless.
She snatches a towel from a wall hook, looks over her shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he coughs. “I think.”
“Serves you right for lunging. You know better.” She tosses the towel onto the back of his neck.
“Time’s up for tonight.”
Malcolm pushes himself onto his hands and knees with a grunt too deep for his wiry torso. He looks pathetic, just as he had when he begged her for self-defense lessons after claiming he’d been mugged.
“Quit faking,” she says.
“What about my offer?”
She shakes her head. Malcolm Golden continues to surprise her—one reason she teaches him hand-to-hand combat long after he could take care of himself. Another reason: he’s one of a handful of people who makes her smile. Looking a decade younger than his 45 years, he moves with a grace that convinces two out of three women that he’s gay. She’s undecided.
He may not be movie-star material, but neither does he have to pay for a date, whatever his sexual orientation. It’s Malcolm’s charisma that intrigues her. He has an easy-going charm that defies rules. Why else would she be working at 8:50 on a Sunday night?
“So what do you say, Cynthia?”
Her mind returns to the money. She’s two months behind on rent and is paying perpetual interest on her Mastercard. Then she remembers why this is a pipedream. “I can’t carry a gun,” she says. “I’m a convicted felon.” There. It’s out. She shrugs, figuring that her criminal record is a deal breaker.
Watching her eyes, Malcolm says, “The Incas ruled half a continent for centuries without guns.”
She shakes her head. “So?”
“Being of Peruvian descent, you must know all about the Incan civilization.”
She squints; her neck tenses. “How do you know than I’m part Peruvian?”
“Lucky guess. You have a bit of a South American thing going on in your eyes.”
“Only one-eighth…. And what do the Incas have to do with your offer?”
“Maybe nothing,” he says, as if he means something.
“Go on.”
“I want a non-threatening bodyguard, someone who doesn’t look like muscle. And by the way, you couldn’t smuggle a gun onto the Persian Prince, anyway. So, are you in?”
Her mind whirs through the math of desperation. If he’s serious enough to offer five, he might go higher. “I’d have conditions,” she says. “Lots of conditions.”
He rises and faces her. At 5-7, she’s two inches shorter; at 125, she gauges herself fifteen pounds lighter.
“What sort of conditions?” he says.
She presses her tongue into her cheek, conjuring advantageous terms. “I don’t have anything to wear,” she says, which is true; she hasn’t bought clothes other than underwear for over a year. “So you’d have to buy me a wardrobe appropriate for a fancy cruise. Adjoining rooms, with balconies. No fooling around… of course.”
“Of course,” he says. “But I don’t think people fool around anymore. Couples hook up.” He smiles. “What else?”
She catches herself smiling back, which irks her. She should maintain a professional façade, but even as she thinks this, her smile spreads from her jaw to her neck to her shoulders. “Well,” she says, “a gift allowance. You’d pay for all expenses—including electronics. And I wouldn’t consider doing it for less than a thousand a day.”
“What else?” he says without blinking.
Her face flushes. “This sounds so bogus. Why does an art professor need a bodyguard?”
“I’m also a serious collector, and… well, I received an anonymous warning—you might call it a death threat.”
This bombshell gets her attention. Should I demand more money? She narrows her eyes, draping a towel around her shoulders and stretching her neck like a waking cat. “Keep talking.”
“The voyage in question is a connoisseurs’ art auction cruise. A newly discovered Picasso will be up for sale. I have to have it! But someone is trying to intimidate me.”
“A Picasso? You?” She squints. “That’s got to be the major leagues. Millions, right?”
“You can think of me as nouveau riche.”
This statement makes her say “Hmmm.” While sometimes she sees Malcolm as a member of the upper crust—where everyone in his family has a Roman numeral tacked on after the Golden—he’s just as often unpredictable, a playful Malc.
“So, will you do it?”
“When did you say the cruise was?”
Malcolm grimaces, clutches his foot. “Damn! Another cramp.” He hops on one foot, massaging the other. “It’s okay. Lucky I got this one in time.”
She watches him fight off the cramp, his second in three weeks.
He flexes his ankle before putting weight on his foot. “I’m fine…. The cruise is mid-February.”
She pivots toward the office.
“So you’ll think about it?” he says to her back.
“Maybe,” she answers without turning around. Various angles come to mind. Written threats usually amount to nothing—when people want to hurt you, they don’t give warnings. Winter business is awful. She’s fed up with the cold, and it’s only the first week of January. Maria, her business partner, wants to visit relatives in Puerto Rico, so they could close the studio, save on heat.
The next question: should she spend seven days at sea with a charming client? Malcolm is good company and apparently filthy rich, but if he’s not gay, things might get complicated, separate cabins or not. Something about the whole scenario is odd, yet she can smell the money. Her attitude is all posturing now—she’s a hooked fish swimming for a safe eddy.
Two strides from her office door, she halts and turns around.
“Don’t stop,” he says. “You have a beautiful walk—feminine without being decorative.”
She purses her lips, feigning displeasure. “Flattery won’t help. This is business.”
“Don’t worry. You’re not… my type. I’m just being honest.”
“Honest?”
“I’m always honest in my appraisals.” He frames her, his arms straight out, thumbs at right angles to his fingers. “Hooked nose,” he says sternly. “Latin eyes. Sweaty, honey-brown bob on the last years of sheen. A figure that belongs in a leotard…. Way too many frowns.”
Against her will, she cracks another smile.
“Aesthetically pleasing enough,” he adds, lowering his picture frame. “But that’s not why I want you.”
“Want me?”
“As a bodyguard. The packaging is a bonus; I want the expertise wrapped inside.”
“Why me? I’m just a self-defense teacher.”
He shakes his head. “We both know that’s not true.”
Again, she stretches her neck. “What makes you say that?”
“I heard it was you who saved a certain politician’s bacon.”
My secrets aren’t so secret, she thinks. A hundred questions pop to mind. She asks the first: “Are you really serious—a grand a day, plus expenses?”
“Seven day cruise, plus a travel day and clothes. Let’s make it an even ten thousand. Three in advance, seven more when I come home with the painting, in one piece.”
“Are you kidding me?” slips out before she can suppress her surprise. She was about to settle for eight.
“I’m a man of my word.” He flexes his cramping foot. “And of course, I’ll pay for the cruise and air fare.”
She’s tired of being a self-righteous hypocrite. In a heartbeat, her imagination pays off all her debts. She anticipates the warmth of Caribbean sun.
“Try a heating pad on the foot,” she says. “I’ll have that list of conditions next week. And bring the death threat.”
