by Ames, Alex
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2016
A Kindle Scout selection
Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
Books by Alex Ames
The Troubleshooter Series:
Troubleshooter (Book 1)
Accountant Paul Trouble needs his former soldier and spy skills to find a missing $100 million, flying bullets and all.
Troublemaker (Book 2)
Paul Trouble finds himself in the middle of the kidnapping of his boss, overachieving animal activists, and the pressure of the Strom Industries owner family.
Pieces of Trouble—Four Troubleshooter Novellas (Book 3)
Paul Trouble and his adventures in these four collected short stories.
The Calendar Moonstone Brilliant Series:
A Brilliant Plan (Book 1)
Calendar Moonstone, maker of fine jewelry and part-time diamond thief, expects an in-and-out safecracking job but stumbles onto a two hundred-year-old mystery. And a dead body.
Brilliant Actors (Book 2)
What could be more exciting than attending the Academy Awards, joining the hottest after-show party, and having an A-list movie star wearing your jewelry? All of the above, plus spending the rest of the night in jail! Calendar finds out firsthand what intrigues are playing out in Hollywood.
This one is especially for the Princess.
Contents
one The Morning
two The Job
three The Evening
four An Unexpected Trip
five Universes Collide, Not!
six The Wookiee Incident
seven Ship Positions
eight Serendipity
nine Never Asked Out
ten A Date with Ivana
eleven Fool’s Days
twelve The Ledge
thirteen The Communication
fourteen Meet the Flints
fifteen Clues
sixteen The Newsbreak
seventeen The Mall Incident
eighteen Under the Great Wide Open
nineteen The Wear and the Tear
twenty The Hitch
twenty-one Summer Ends
twenty-two Lost in the Supermarket
twenty-three Choices
twenty-four The House of Waiting
twenty-five The Breakup
twenty-six Parallel Lives
twenty-seven The Order of Affairs
twenty-eight We Were Here
twenty-nine Breaking Hearts, Heard on the Moon
thirty A Harebrained Scheme
thirty-one Beginnings
thirty-two New Gold Dreams
thirty-three Forever
Thank you
Acknowledgements
one
The Morning
Rick
The dream of Bella haunted him again. A slow-motion version of everyday tasks performed by her, watching her moving through the living room, making an Italian salad, driving the car, fastening distracted hair, feeding one of the babies . . . Then morphing into the Paris visit, usually the most antagonizing dream sequence, so real, so close, the sound, the smells, the light spring breeze, Bella’s laugh. Then the kiss, Rick holding her in her white summer dress, the world under them, high up on the Eiffel Tower. A lifetime together in front of them, a year before Agnes had been born . . .
The alarm killed his sleep and the dream. And like the dreams that would not stop invading his mind every other night, the alarm did not stop until Rick rolled out of bed and reached over to the nightstand to hit the off button. 5:30. The house was silent again; outside, the dark gave way to gray on this March morning. Rick both hated and longed for the dream. Bella was so real and lively in them, like she had been in life. But Rick’s heart tore in half each time he had it, reliving all those wonderful moments once more, or scenes, or single glimpses like rapid-fire sequences. All showing a past that no longer was and would never come again. Bella was dead, and that made him sad and angry at the same time, each time.
Rick had about half an hour to himself before all hell would break loose. While shaving he had the luxury of enjoying the task at hand, concentrating on routine gestures, avoiding killing himself accidentally. His angular, straight face with a sailor’s weathered skin reappeared from underneath the foam, his brown hair still unkempt, pointing in all directions. Time for a haircut, Mr. Flint! As he washed off the rest of the soap, his blue eyes stopped at his face’s reflection in the mirror. Forty-four years looked back at him. “Ready to go another day?” he asked loudly. As usual, the mirror image refused to answer.
At a quarter to six he entered the kitchen, heated water, defrosted bread, and set cereal, milk, jam, and cheese on the table. Retrieved the paper from the front porch—a relic, as the Flint household had three iPads and three laptops at its disposal. But Rick was old-school and enjoyed browsing the paper. It was made of wood after all, and wood was his profession. While he prepared the various lunches for the kids, he scanned the headlines and took sips from his black coffee.
Six o’clock came and went, and after a few minutes of grace, Rick made the rounds on the first floor, knocking on doors. “Agnes, time to get up. Charles, time. Britta, time.” Only little Dana had until six forty-five, but usually the noises of her siblings woke her up earlier, anyway.
Charles came down first. As the only boy, he had the privilege to start the day in his dad’s bathroom. The bath-cave, as he had named it.
“Dad, do you know we never landed on the moon?” Charles said, holding up his ubiquitous book as he sat down at the breakfast counter. He was a thin kid, ten years old, with a whitish complexion, as he preferred reading over physical activities, even though he had indicated interest in picking up fencing recently. Fencing? “It was all—”
“Staged in a film studio to impress the Russians,” Rick completed.
“Exactly! How did you know?”
“I am your father, and I have more than thirty years on you.”
“Think it’s true?”
“See this smooth pan that holds your breakfast pancake? Teflon is NASA technology, a side product of the space program. If this is real and tangible, the rest must be, too, don’t you think?”
Charles’s brows furrowed, and he massaged his nose, thinking. “That does not prove anything, Dad. The astronauts did not eat pancakes. They only had spinach paste from a toothpaste tube. So there is no causal relationship between a new pan and the fake moon landing.”
“What I mean is, when they were able to invent such a great thing as Teflon, why do you think they stopped trying for the moon and filmed the landing in a studio? Satellites are circling the earth; if you need proof, look at Google Earth.”
That shut up Charles as he processed the new information.
Britta slouched into the kitchen, mumbling, “Cereal, lactose-free milk, banana.” Her wild black, curly hair was a mess, not yet tamed; that would come after the first calories of the day. “And don’t magic-word me, Dad.” Britta had recently turned thirteen and was . . . well, thirteen!
“I didn’t say anything. I gave up on that, remember?” Rick said as he pushed over the requested ingredients. “As long as you eat healthy stuff, I am okay with a little less magic.”
> “Dad, your compulsive behavior is written all over your face,” Charles said over his book.
“Nothing wrong with being civil and nice, even if we see each other every day,” Rick tried to argue, but he knew he was on losing ground with both of his kids.
“Britta is in a phase called puberty,” Charles said with a serious face, not looking over at his older sister. “That is accompanied with erratic behavior, often aggressive, usually passive aggressive, mostly directed against the parents. Apart from many physical changes that may include . . .”
“No details necessary. Been there, done that,” Rick assured his wise-ass son and tried to shut him up with another pancake. He turned to Britta. “Afternoon soccer practice. Don’t forget your shoes and protectors like last week. I have clients coming in the afternoon, so I can’t do emergency services.” He placed the ordered cereal in front of Britta and finished the lunches.
“La-di-da, Dad,” Britta mumbled and almost put her chin into the bowl.
“Bri, are you not at your best today?” a new voice asked. Agnes, who would turn eighteen later in the summer, entered the kitchen, and as usual, Rick’s heart skipped a beat. Agnes was a dead ringer for her late mother, and the same age Bella had been when Rick first met her. She wore her straight, black hair bound in a ponytail and wore jeans and a fashionable shirt. Fourteen when her mother died, she had grown up fast and to everyone’s amazement had become the ultimate authority figure for her siblings. With their father, there was always bickering or words against whatever proposal was under discussion. But when Agnes cut the issue short, that was that.
And as usual, Rick thought, I am so sorry that you didn’t finish your childhood. May you look kindly on me when you find out what you missed. But you are the strongest of us all.
He was brought back to reality when Charles spilled his milk because he preferred reading over table navigation. Everyone instinctively glanced at the twenty-four-hour countdown clock on the kitchen wall that showed the remaining time until the school bus was scheduled to appear at 7:25. Spilled milk meant cleanup, which meant lost time, because all three kids were aware that their dad was not the best organizer of a daily morning routine. Agnes saved the schedule. “I’ll get it, Dad. Go grab Dieter.” Dieter had been Charles’s nickname for his little sister since she was born. Because he wanted to have a little brother so badly, he thought that renaming her might alter reality. Reality stuck around, but the name did, too.
Rick gave her a thankful look and went upstairs.
Five minutes later, the Flint family was at full force at breakfast. Dana, just three years old, sat on her chair on her knees to boost herself up to her siblings’ height. She came after Charles and had a wise, serious-looking round face with long blonde curls hanging left and right, genes somehow coming through from Rick’s mother.
“Aga, tell a joke!” Dana demanded while she shoveled cereal with banana pieces into her little mouth.
“You must be joking, Dana,” was Agnes’s standard reply.
“The joke is on you, Aga!” came the equally expected return.
“No doubt,” mumbled Britta, and Charles crossed his arms in front of him. He was unable to tell jokes, as he always dissected them in his mind to the point where there was no fun left.
“Knock, knock,” Agnes said with a serious face. Her little sister understood the concept of knock-knock jokes.
Dana already giggled, mouth full. “Who’s there?”
“Europe.”
“Europe who?” Dana asked dutifully.
“No, you’re a poo!”
Hilarious laughter from Dana, who repeated over and over, “You’re a poo! A poo!” A snort from Britta, infectious laughter from Agnes, and a groan from Rick ensued.
That’s collateral damage to be mitigated later.
Charles frowned. “But Europe is a continent. Why is it poo? Don’t you like Europe?”
Which caused another round of chiming laughter from Dana.
“Charles, don’t worry. You will get it later when you grow a little older.” Agnes smiled and tussled his hair.
The countdown clock hit T-minus fifteen, and Rick clapped his hands. “Move, move, move, aliens, bears, chickens, and dogs. Brush your teeth!”
Britta, Charles, and Agnes got up, put their bowls and dishes into the dishwasher, and distributed evenly to the available bathrooms.
“Hurry up, honey.” Rick coached Dana to eat faster, “I’ll pack my stuff and be back in a minute.”
The clock was down to two minutes. Agnes, Britta, and Charles were downstairs again, checking their school bags.
“Launch checklist: Money?”
“Yes, Dad! We are good.”
“Cell phone?”
“Dad, we are not kids anymore!” Britta complained.
Charles corrected his sister. “Actually, I still qualify as a full kid in all criteria. I am ten years old, junior high . . .”
“Britta, phone charged up?”
That shut his daughter up, because it wasn’t.
Rick hurried back into the kitchen. “Take the battery bank, should give you at least 40 percent charging . . .”
“Have you given me the signature for the field trip?” Charles inquired.
“You dare to ask me this with forty-five seconds left on the clock?”
“I asked you yesterday, Dad! And it is less than ten seconds to sign.”
“Without reading?”
“Dad, don’t be difficult. I am the genius of the family. I don’t need to cheat you,” Charles said with confidence. “And if I did, I’d put all of my 145 IQ points behind it, so that you wouldn’t even notice.”
“Where?”
“On your desk.”
Rick ran across the hall through the kitchen into the den where his home office was located and almost fell over Dana, who came around the corner with some of her puppets in hand.
“Daddy, don’t run!” she admonished her dad.
“This is an emergency, and there is no one to punish me,” Rick replied. “Found it!” He scribbled his signature on the form and ran back into the hall. Charles had opened his bag for the last-second transfer; Britta and Agnes were already out of the door, flagging down the school bus.
“Run, Forrest, run!” Rick yelled and pushed Charles out the door.
“Love you, Dad,” Charles said.
“Same here, don’t forget to tell your sisters, too,” Rick shouted after him. A clear way to embarrass them in front of their friends. Little victories!
7:25. The countdown clock hit 00:00:00, gave a buzzer sound that was imitated flawlessly by Dana, and restarted at 23:59:59.
Rick looked at Dana, and they did a routine high-five because they had time for themselves now. They left the house shortly afterward. Rick’s old family van gave its low soothing rumble, and they rolled out the driveway toward the day care, Dana securely strapped in the backseat.
Louise
The 5:30 alarm killed Louise’s sleep and the dream of a hot and smelly bed in a doublewide trailer. Her first thought was, Waking up from a dream can indeed be a mercy! You should never go back. Here she was, the highest-paid movie star of her time, and she still felt inadequate and insecure about her roots and her upbringing in poverty. The security monitor beside the bed lit up with a quiet ping, showing her the video feed of her personal assistant Emile entering the house through the front door, the perfunctory Starbucks container in one hand and his leather briefcase in the other, closing the door with his foot.
She gave her body a stretch and got out of bed. She took off the T-shirt she had slept in, stepped naked in front of a full-length mirror, and gave her body a once-over. Not out of vanity, but out of necessity. Independent of her acting skills and her voice, it was her face and her body that determined the monetary value of her next role and the screen impact. Thirty-six years and slowly showing, Lou-baby, she criticized her mirror-self, and as always, the mirror did not correct her impression. Her blonde hair hung straight
and framed a face that an early critic had labeled “an instant classic, to be put beside Marilyn, Audrey, and Julia.” Her brown eyes held a mysterious sparkle that had evoked spontaneous reactions from passersby and school friends since she was a child. The merest hint of wrinkles beside her eyes. The shape of things to come, she thought. I should laugh less. The rest of her body could pass as ten years younger; that’s what a big investment into fitness and nutrition regiments could buy. A quick turn to inspect ass, legs, and back—all good. One step closer to the mirror, checking the facial skin for anything developing overnight. Any deviation from the norm meant more time in hair and makeup; time and continuity during shots were of essence, and a big pimple on her nose was not a showstopper but rather a costly session for the digital folks to make her nose appear as advertised.
She put on a robe and went downstairs.
A quick wave to Floris, her Dutch bodyguard, who had already finished breakfast, out of the way, in the formal dining room. He was a huge man and looked like the Dutch actor Rutger Hauer at his prime with an additional hundred-pound muscle mass and thin blond hair and rosy skin that did not do well under the LA sun. An early riser, Floris had already had completed his fitness regime and had made a house and garden round to check for signs of intrusion or attempts thereof. He didn’t talk much and tried to stay out of the way whenever possible. He insisted on calling Louise “Madam”; she had given up trying to change him. The big kitchen, originally equipped for big-event catering, held both a breakfast counter and a large, white family dining table. Emile and Louise exchanged air kisses, and Louise helped herself to her Starbucks morning shot. She had stopped eating meat a while ago, abstained from any alcohol, which was necessary after her midtwenties wild-superstardom years, and managed to hold off coffee over the day. The only exception was the early morning latte with fat-free milk and a second shot. She couldn’t even remember when the last time was she had not one.
