After a few steps, I heard him say, “Hey. A person just showed up here claiming to be personal security.”
Wait. Was he suspicious of me?
I couldn’t hear the response.
But I could hear Jack Stapleton loud and clear. “We decided against that already. Twice.”
He was kicking the crushed gravel on the driveway.
“But that was years ago.”
A pause.
“It won’t work. It’ll be a disaster. There has to be another way.”
Another pause.
Jack Stapleton and whoever he was talking to—His manager? His agent? His guru?—went round and round. I don’t know if he didn’t realize that I could hear him, or if he didn’t care … but he vociferously protested my presence in his life, right within earshot.
It stung a little. To be honest.
He argued for so long that I finally sat down on the little bench near the potted fiddle-leaf fig, noting that it could be used to smash the window behind it and should be moved, or sold, or thrown away. With nothing else to do, I half-heartedly assessed the property—distance from the street: adequate; lack of driveway gate: suboptimal; potential skull damage from one of those landscaping rocks: lethal—more out of habit than anything else.
Had I ever shown up for an intake meeting with a client who didn’t even know he’d hired me?
No. This was a first.
It was unsettling to think that he didn’t even want me there.
Most people were at least somewhat grateful for your help.
By the time he was finished arguing, fifteen minutes had gone by. He walked back, looking angry—a facial expression that, weirdly, I already recognized. I’d seen that face in Something for Nothing, right after the drug dealers confronted him. I’d also seen it in The Optimist, after he got cheated out of winning the cooking contest. I’d just met this man, but I already knew the funny little dimple that inevitably appeared on his chin when he was really pissed off.
And there it was.
As I stood up, I was not un–pissed off myself. We could’ve been done by now. I could’ve been home and already punched out for the day.
“Did you not know they were hiring us?” I asked, as he got close.
“I just thought we’d decided against it,” he said.
“Guess not,” I said.
“I mean,” Jack said, “I did decide against it. But the studio decided for it.”
“I thought you wanted out of that contract.”
“I do,” he said. “But what you want and what you get aren’t really the same thing.”
Not untrue.
“Anyway, their lawyers want them to protect their assets.”
“Is that what you are?”
Jack nodded. “Absolutely. They don’t want trouble. And they do want me to stay alive.”
“I’m sure everybody wants that,” I said.
“Not everybody,” he said. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
True enough.
As I nodded, Jack Stapleton really looked at me for the first time since I’d arrived: his new housekeeper-slash-bodyguard. I felt his gaze like a physical sensation—like sun rays on my skin. I’d looked at him so many times. It was unbelievably weird for him to actually look back.
He let out a long, defeated sigh. “Let’s talk inside.”
* * *
INSIDE, AS HIS anger-dimple will testify, he stayed pissed for a while.
Though I hoped it was more at the studio than at me.
We sat at his dining table, and I unclutched the accordion folder I’d been holding to my chest since I got there. It felt strangely naked to release it.
Jack Stapleton was now slumped in defeat on a dining chair. “Just do what you normally do,” he said.
I took a breath. “Okay.”
What I normally do. This was better. We were back in my wheelhouse.
“I’m Hannah Brooks,” I began. “I’ve protected dozens of people in every type of situation imaginable.”
This was an introductory paragraph I’d memorized. I used it the same way, every time, when I met new clients. It was comforting to recite it, like singing an old favorite song.
“Executive protection is a partnership,” I went on. “We’re here to help you, and you’re here to help us. What you need from us is competence and experienced guidance, and what we need from you is honesty and compliance.”
Jack Stapleton wasn’t looking at me. He was checking his texts.
“Are you texting right now?” I paused to ask.
“I can do both,” he said, not looking up.