In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance (17 page)

20

Out of the Ballpar
k

“
L
eroy, you hit
it out of the ballpark!” Will Duane sounded delighted. Leroy had called him to check on Cass. “I got calls from three CEOs and a duke telling me how much you impressed them. Everybody loves your barbecues. And Tina Turner’s agent called wanting to sign you as a model. Or an actor. He
wanted
you. Did you see the
Enquirer
and every other rag? You and Tina are front and center. You are on a roll.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve still got France, then Germany and Scandinavia to visit. How do you like being a world traveler?”

“After I stopped screaming when I got on a plane, it wasn’t so bad.” Will was silent, not appreciating Leroy’s joke. “No. I love it, Mr. Duane. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and all the money you’ve spent. And the stipend you been sendin’ …”

“Don’t worry about it, son. I consider it an investment. We have a future, you and I.”

“OK. Yeah. Mr. Duane, how is Cass?”

“Doing as well as you are. She’s gained twenty pounds and is adjusting to life at the hospital. No incidents of any kind.”

“That’s really good. Can I talk to her?”

“Not advised at this point, Leroy.”

“Does she know who I am?”

“No, Leroy. The doctors said it was best to keep things simple. She almost died. While you’re waiting, I have a job for you. It will be a departure from the trip we had planned, but it will be interesting for you. I’ll pay you a good salary.”

“You’ve been doing all this for me. I don’t need to get paid.”

Will chuckled. “Never say no to money, Leroy. That’s the first law of getting rich. You can never have too much money. How much are you worth?”

Affronted, Leroy barked, “More than you could ever count.”

Will laughed. “That’s what I like. Chutzpah.”

Leroy knew what chutzpah was from his rabbi friends, but he didn’t like the feel of the conversation. “What do you want, Mr. Duane?”

“I’m never going to get you to call me Will, am I?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “What we’ve seen from you so far is super-fast learning of everything we’ve put in front of you. You get an A+ in everything.”

The fact that all he did was being graded galled Leroy. As did the feeling he was an animal being tested. Was he good enough for Cass? Was he good enough for Numenon? Mostly, was he good enough for Will?

“What I’d like to do is enroll you in a language school in Switzerland. I’ll be in France for the Economic Summit meetings in a couple of months. It’s a conference for the top industrialists from all over the world. The Summit meetings are private, unlike the G8 Summit, which is for governments. Bill Clinton goes to those.

“At the Economic Summits, a few of the most influential guys in the world get together and kick the can about world economic problems. We talk about how we can iron out tensions between us. I don’t need an interpreter; I’ve got several. I want someone to tell me if what the interpreter tells me is what was actually said. Billions of dollars hang on those meetings, Leroy. I want someone to cover my back.”

Leroy frowned. This was big, not just learning about tableware and how to say hello properly. “What do you want me to learn?”

“All the Romance languages—French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese. And as many Eastern European languages as possible. German, the Slavic dialects. Russian. As many as you can. My next meeting is in mid-October, the eighteenth and nineteenth. You can study until then, and then sit with me at the meeting. It usually averages about twenty hours over two days.”

“I can’t do that. No one could do that. You should get different people who have studied all those languages.”

“That’s the beauty of it, Leroy. No one will suspect that you’re doing what you’re doing. They’ll see you as a stranger, a country boy. You can blindside them. And I think you
can
do what I ask, or give it a pretty good shot.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Your golf score. No one could score like you did the first time on the range. My informant was thrilled.”

“Are you having me followed?”

“Not exactly. I know the people who have entertained you. They’ve given me feedback on their experience of you.” His tone was cool and level. Something about it told Leroy that he was being followed everywhere he went
and
evaluated. This clenched what he’d felt every time he left a guide or instructor: Will would get a blow-by-blow account of his performance. He was a rat in a maze, being graded before being let loose.

“You know, I’m really homesick,” Leroy said. “I’d like to go home tomorrow.”

“What!? I’m giving you the chance of a lifetime.”

“No, you’re not. You’re seeing if you can turn me into a trick poodle you can control the rest of my life. You can’t. If I stay here, you won’t get another one of those ‘feedback’ reports. You will tell people
not
to tell you how I’m doing. If I feel any of that’s going on, I’ll take the next plane home.”

“Do you have the money for an international flight?” Will’s voice sounded innocent.

“Mr. Duane, if I want to get home, I’ll do it if I have to sit on a stewardess’s lap. Don’t you worry.” Leroy could not remember being so angry. This man would destroy him if he allowed him. What was it like for Cass, growing up with Will as a father?

“We need to get straight on some things. I appreciate what you’ve done for me—every minute of it and every penny you’ve spent. But I am not a monkey, or a parrot, or a trained dog. I will never be any of those for you. If you’d like me to pay you back everything you’ve put into me, I’ll do it.”

Will sighed. “Leroy, it would take you a lifetime to pay me back.”

“If that’s what it takes, then that’s what I’ll do.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Will sounded chastened when he spoke. “Leroy, I don’t know how this conversation got so sidetracked. I didn’t mean for us to fight. I need your help. How do I get it?”

Another long silence. “Well, Mr. Duane, you could call me back tomorrow and ask me what you want in a nice way. And tell me what I have to do to get it done.”

21

Foreign Language

T
urned out, it
wasn’t so hard. He’d never tried to learn a language, but he did know Spanish fluently from the hired hands on the ranch. Nobody taught him; he just spoke the language. When he started studying, turned out that Italian and Portuguese were very similar and just as easy to learn. And so was French. He left his teachers applauding.

“Oh, my goodness, Mr. Watches, you are a prodigy.”

He was not so much a prodigy as a shaman who had the power of bending language so he could understand and be understood. Didn’t seem to matter what language was involved. That probably came from all the languages his People spoke at the Meeting and whenever he was with Grandfather. He knew them all, but he couldn’t remember learning them.

The language school did something else. He could understand, remember, and speak languages very easily. He could never read or write very well. His handwriting embarrassed him. All through school on the reservation, his teachers had chided him, given him terrible grades, and never helped him one single bit.

“Oh, Monsieur, you are dyslexic.” The instructor was kind. “Do you know what that means?”

He knew that letters and numbers seemed to arrange themselves differently on the page for him. He knew that what he saw must be different than what others saw.

His teacher said, “We cannot believe that no one diagnosed you. We will help you.”

They fitted him with a special computer. He spoke into it, and
it
spelled for him. They gave him a recorder that he could talk to and then play into the computer. It wrote up whatever he said. He could read and write without having to figure out which way the letters went.

“Almost makes me cry. School was so hard. I
tried
,” he said to his instructor, moved by the help the school had given him. His teacher was a late-middle-aged, large-breasted Swiss woman who wore grey suits almost to the floor. She reminded him of the English dowagers.

“It almost makes
me
cry that you were not diagnosed all your life,” she replied. “So much needless suffering.”

“Please, let me pay for the computer and recorder myself.” He didn’t want Will to add “handicapped” to his score.

“These things are part of your program, Mr. Watches. Now, you must practice what we teach.”

And he did, moving from language to language. German and the Eastern European languages were harder. Russian almost killed him.

So did his ass. He hadn’t
ever
sat that long. He finally got the lessons on CDs and walked around town listening to them and talking into his recorder, then studying what the computer did with his words. His chest swelled. Finally, what was on the page made sense. After that, Leroy spent as little time as possible in the classroom. He was learning faster than he imagined he could.

He sat at a few favorite cafés, listening to people talk and sipping a latté, a habit he’d never cultivated before. He’d never before been anywhere that had pastries and strudels and all manners of irresistible sweets. Leroy kept walking so he didn’t end up a caffeine addict and a lard-butt.

“Oh, monsieur, all of the tables are taken. Do you mind if I sit with you?” A pretty face and big eyes, eyelashes flapping like fly swatters. That happened all over. All kinds of girls approached him, blond, brunette and everything in between. He could have gotten laid ten times a day. But he didn’t. He kept his eye on the scenery, the kind with mountains and buildings.

Switzerland was as tidy and crisp as Venice had been romantic and lush. He liked them both. Switzerland reminded him of Yosemite. They thought their mountains were grand, but he thought Yosemite’s grander.

On weekends, he traveled, taking his language lessons, laptop, CD player and recorder, being a tourist and doing his own research projects. Special maps of monasteries existed; he hadn’t known that. Tourists liked to make pilgrimages to them. He did a lot of walking those weekends, passing by untold numbers of stone monasteries and nunneries. None of them had the distinctive tiles or the funny gargoyle. Lots of walking and looking. He didn’t get fat.

Austria, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark. He saw many of the places Will had originally scheduled him to see, just faster. Turned out that many of the monasteries were renting out rooms, or acting almost like hotels, to make ends meet. He stayed at the convent of St. Birgitta in Denmark, in Abbaye Notre-Dam des Niges in France. So many monasteries, none of them right.

By that time, Leroy felt like he was running, not walking. He was making himself obvious by touring monasteries. He knew he should stop his “casual” search, but kept on. Kathryn’s soul had warned him off. Why didn’t he heed it?

And then it was time for that economic meeting. He shared a three-bedroom penthouse in Paris with Will Duane. Will called for him and Leroy climbed on a plane as ordered. A car met him at the airport and took him to the apartment building, if you could call it that. Set on a street slightly better-groomed than the English royals he’d met, the edifice had carved stone pillars, a canopy and two doormen in front. He entered the building, flanked by Will’s guards. The floor was inset with pieces of different colored marble. One of Will’s black-clad strong men carried his bags to the apartment. When the door opened, the entrance hall and living room beyond were as extraordinary as the palaces he’d visited. Home, sweet home, Numenon style.

Will was there, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He swung his fists in arcs; he pulled them in front of him and then swung them out to the sides. He was scared, Leroy knew it the instant he saw him.

“Ah, Leroy. I’m glad you’re here.” He took Leroy’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. “I took that room,” he pointed in the direction of what was undoubtedly the largest bedroom. “You can pick which you want of the other two.” He kept talking rapidly, acting wired.

“How’s Cass?” Leroy was determined not to let Will dodge his questions.
This
time, Will would put out, or Leroy … Well, he’d make him spill the beans.

“I’ll tell you when we get where we’re going. Have you eaten yet? Good. I’d like to show you the place we’re having the meeting before the action starts. Le Hotel Meurice is a real grande dame, built in the nineteenth century. It’s luxurious. Be prepared for your mind to be blown. We’ll walk; it’s only a block.”

They were strolling down a posh Parisian street as the evening dimmed to night. “The Tuileries Gardens are across the street. Catherine de Medici put the garden in during the 1500s. They’ve held up pretty well, don’t you think? The Arc de triomphe du Carrousel is over there.” Will jerked his head in its direction.

Leroy noted that Will had a tolerable French accent, but not as good as his. Turning to follow Will’s gesture, he noticed two black clad men following them.

“A couple of guys are following us,” he whispered.

“Six actually. I rented the apartments above, below, and all around us. Hannah’s European staff is on duty. She’ll be here in a few hours.”

“Is this conference dangerous?”

“To my pride, mostly. But I’m exposed. The guys at this meeting aren’t friends. If someone wants to kill me, now’s the time.”

“Should you be walking on the street like this?”

“No. But I like Paris. I’ve got to do stupid things once in a while. Most of the time, I feel like a fucking French poodle, locked up in a cage.”

They had reached an elaborate building, not too tall with kind of a loaf shape on top. The roof “loaf” looked like it was glass. A colonnade of arcs ran along the street for a whole block.

Leroy sucked in a deep breath as they walked through the very large revolving door, thankful for every English country house, palace and museum he’d visited. This hotel would be intolerable if he had hadn’t gone to all those places.

“It’s a world-class hotel, Leroy. Royalty stays here, and heads of state. Everyone from the composer Tchaikovsky to Queen Elizabeth has camped out at Le Meurice.

“We’re holding the meeting here so we can demonstrate
we’re
world-class. We have our annual meetings all over the globe, but it’s hard to top this.”

They walked down a wide gallery that ran the length of the hotel. The check-in desks were to his left, as elegant as the rest of the vast space. The arched windows to the outside were to his right. The hotel was gorgeous. High, high ceilings, big stripes of marble running up the walls. Everything that could be gold-trimmed was. The designs on some of the rugs were pretty weird, like drunken amoebas. Some light fixtures were like that too.

“Salvador Dali used to hang out here for a month every summer. A lot of the hotel’s design relates to his work. Do you know Dali?”

“Yeah. Melting clocks.” Leroy felt like he was being quizzed, but not so that it bothered him.

“I expect my people have drilled you up the wazoo.” They made their way across the marble-floored expanse. The window arches that ran down the hall looked out on the Tuileries garden. You couldn’t see much now, but it must be beautiful in the daytime.

“This is Le Dali, one of the hotel’s restaurants,” Will walked to a wide opening. Beyond it was a big open space adjoining the promenade. The restaurant was furnished with sculptured metal chairs and tables with dazzling white tablecloths.

“This is their informal restaurant. I’d take you here, but I can’t.” Will looked a little wistful, gazing at the open room. They walked on. “I can’t take you here, either.” Will stuck his head into a room as fancy as any Leroy had seen. More marble and paintings of pastel-clothed people in a garden, swinging and playing like adults never would. The white linen tablecloths fell to the floor. The tables were set farther apart than a regular restaurant; the place would never be crowded.

“This is their formal restaurant. All the art work is original to the building, which was built in the late 1800s, I think.” Will patted Leroy’s shoulder. “We’re going this way.”

A tuxedo-clad man, too grand and formal to be a waiter, led them through a passage and into an elegant room at the end. A single dining table was set for them. “I trust this will do, Mr. Duane.”

“Certainly,” Will tried to speak French, but his accent was lousy.

A waiter in black livery seated them. Will spread his napkin on his lap and Leroy followed suit.

“I can’t tell you how much I’d like to go to MacDonald’s,” Will confided. “I can’t. Some jerk with the only Numo Ranger in the world that doesn’t work would corral me. Or someone who thinks I should have solved the problems of the world instead of living like I do will start screaming. Or worse …”

Leroy listened to Will. He hadn’t thought of any of this. “You’ve been attacked?”

“Oh, yeah. Hassled, shoved around. They almost got me a couple of times.” He pointed at his ribs. “Hannah makes me wear Kevlar when I’m in public. She’s right. I’ve gotten a couple of bullet holes from not following her advice.”

Will’s eyes made a fast circuit around the room, obviously a habit, before boring into Leroy’s. “They tried to kidnap Kathryn and Cass. My security men were following them, thank God. But they weren’t good enough. The bad guys already had Cass into the van. She was a little kid. They lured her with a box of kittens. The other one was manhandling Kathryn. She was drunk, as usual. A perfect patsy.

“That’s when I hired Hannah and gave her free rein. She runs her missions her way. Easier for me, I don’t know anything I shouldn’t.” He indicated the sumptuous room. “We get to eat in a private dining room instead of with everyone else. Hannah will have a fit when she finds out. But she’s not here yet.”

The food was delicious, perhaps the best he’d had on his trip. Will tried to order in French, but Leroy spoke the language better than his boss. He ordered for them. They ate their way forward, course after course.

Finally, a full belly slowed Will down enough so that Leroy could get him to talk about what he wanted. “How’s Cass?” Every time he’d spoken to Will, he’d asked about Cass, but Leroy never got the full picture. Just, “She’s doing fine. No problems.” Now, he wanted to know everything.

Will sat back, heaved a huge sigh and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “We’ve hit a snafu. Her bulimia kicked in.” Leroy didn’t know what that was.

“It’s an eating disorder. The person with the disorder feels ugly and fat, so she—it’s almost always a she—throws up after she gets a decent meal. Or maybe, any kind of a meal. The minute she started looking like a semi-normal woman, Cass made herself throw up. The hospital won’t let her go until she’s got her eating under control. She thinks she looks like a pig.

“Cass is 5’ 9”. She could weigh 160 pounds and not be overweight. Do you know how much she weighed when she got to the hospital?” Leroy shook his head.

“Eighty-seven pounds. She was barely alive. They got her up to 120 and all hell broke loose. They want to keep her until she stops throwing up and weighs 130. So—we’ve got a couple of months to wait. She was doing so well until all this came up, I don’t think she’ll be in the mental hospital for more than a month or two.”