“So,” Michael says, “instead of asking her on a date, you hire her as your accountant. I’m not sure if that’s smoother than it is dumb, or dumber than it is smooth, or not smooth at all.”
Shelby has an unconscious habit of rolling his eyes as an acknowledgment of his mistakes and shortcomings. “Yeah, well, I’ve never handled rejection well. I curl up and suck my thumb.”
“You’re tall, dark, handsome, successful, amusing, and reputed to be smart. No woman is going to reject you.”
“I had plenty of rejections before I met and married Tanya.”
“Back then you were just tall, dark, handsome, amusing, and reputed to be smart. You weren’t successful yet.”
“I was too tall, broad as a truck, big hands like a strangler for hire, with a tendency to glower. I’m still all those things.”
“Just smile, and your face lights up, cute as a kitten.”
Shelby’s eyes roll in their sockets as if he’s one of those novelty dolls with counterweighted eyeballs. “That’s just it. When I’m around Nina, I’m so worried about making a good impression that I forget to smile. I’m so nervous and earnest, I look scary.”
Pushing aside his plate of half-finished creamed beef on whole-wheat toast with carrots and red-beet slaw, Michael shakes his head. “It’s a mystery how you produced two children with Tanya.”
“Tanya wasn’t just beautiful. She was uncannily insightful. Ten minutes after we met, she knew me better than I knew myself.”
“Maybe this Nina also knows you better than you think she does, knows just what a prince among men you are.”
Shelby swallows a forkful of beet slaw, and his face puckers. He washes the slaw down with iced tea, and his face puckers again. “Don’t you think that’s more luck than any man should expect—to meet two women who totally get who he is in his heart?”
After pretending to think about that, Michael says, “Are there really stranglers for hire?”
“Given our ever-darkening world, why wouldn’t there be?”
“Do they use their bare hands or a wire garrote?”
“Hands, wire, rope, scarves, rubber tubing—they have to switch it up, otherwise the job would get boring. Another thing is the age difference. I’m forty-four, and Nina is thirty.”
“Humbert Humbert salivates over Lolita. I’m making a civilian arrest, you pervert.”
“Maybe it’s funny to you, but it’s a serious consideration. When Nina’s sixty-five, I’ll be seventy-nine.”
“Yeah, you’re right. And when she’s a hundred and ten, you’ll be a hundred and twenty-four. Be careful, or your eyes will roll right out of your head.”
Shelby sips more iced tea. “I think the people who make this stuff also make the brew you drink before a colonoscopy.”
“You know what I think? Although it’s been eight years since cancer took Tanya, you feel that getting serious about Nina is like cheating on Tanya.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that.”
“Betraying her.”
“You can’t betray someone who has passed away.”
“Dishonoring her memory.”
Shelby sighs. “You’re relentless. You’d have made a great prosecutor during the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Your kids are grown, and you miss having them in the house.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You live alone. You’re not the kind of guy who can live alone. Right now, you’re a lonely, forlorn, miserable stylite who could be happy if you’d allow yourself to reach out to Nina.”
“‘Stylite.’ Been reading more than your usual comic books?”
“You said her son is special.”
Shelby’s scowl softens into a sweet expression. “John. He’s a good kid. He’s the kind of kid who’s the hope of the world.”
“So if Nina will date you, and if she’s sufficiently lacking in judgment to fall in love with you, and if then she’s foolish enough to marry you, you’ll have not only a wife but a little family, a new adopted son to mentor and inspire and make as neurotic as you are.”
Shelby sighs. “That’s a dream worth having, isn’t it?”
“So turn it from a dream into a reality.”
“I think maybe I will.”
“Don’t think. Just do it. None of us knows how long we’ve got, pal. Next week we could be gone. Fate favors no one, especially not a too-tall, truck-wide, glowering, potential strangler like you.”
Looking past Michael, toward the entrance to the cafeteria, Shelby mutters, “What’s our S-O-B doing here?”
That would be Dr. Simon O. Bistoury, the co-director of the project, technology expert and primary pain in the ass. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he has his lunch sent up to his office. On the rare occasion when he shows up here, it’s not for food but for the chance to kvetch to someone, anyone, about whatever has his shorts in a knot at the moment. Simon Bistoury is not a happy man.
Michael taps Shelby’s lunch tray. “Hurry up and finish.”
“I want dessert. I won’t forgo dessert even if it means having to listen to Simon. Dessert is the only thing worth eating here.”
“He’s probably pissed off because he’s heard about some major success with the killer robot dogs.”
Although Bistoury believes in the work they’re doing, he thinks they’ll need five more years to have success. The position he really wants is that of the project director at a facility north of San Diego, where many billions are being spent to create a four-legged AI robot soldier with significant firepower, based on the skeletal structure and highly flexible spine of a dog. They don’t look like dogs. They look like something from Hell; no one will want to pet them. However, Bistoury is convinced they can be designed, produced, and battle ready a lot sooner than any breakthrough is likely to occur here at Beautification Research. Dr. Bistoury is a scientist, but he’s more about success than science. Success and glory.
“Damn,” Shelby says, “he got coffee, and he’s coming this way.”
Michael sighs. “Didn’t I just tell you that none of us knows how long we’ve got?”
Simon Bistoury arrives and stands glowering down at them. “The bastards down at Encinitas have knocked it out of the park.”
“I don’t follow baseball,” says Shelby.
“They got their dog-form bots. Limited AI autonomy or remote-controlled, capable of integrated action in the autonomous mode.”
Michael says, “I have a friend whose dog can hold three tennis balls in his mouth at the same time.”
“Their budget’s twice as large as ours. What’re we supposed to do with a lousy two billion a year?”
THE BLUE HOUSE
Even at this hour, when real-world devils have just recently gone to sleep and only honest working folks are preparing for the blessing of labor, Michael can’t curb Carter Woodbine’s Bentley in front of Nina Dozier’s house. To do so will make her a subject of even greater interest to the gangbangers who currently harass her.
He parks the sedan in the lot of a dentist’s office where the greater disorder of her neighborhood meets the lesser disorder of another community. En route, he’d stopped to take a hundred thousand dollars from the half million and had secreted those ten packets in the spare-tire well of the car’s trunk. Now he slips the straps of the duffel over his right shoulder, his hand within the open top of the bag, holding Santana’s pistol in a relaxed grip, and he sets out to walk eight blocks.