Page 55 of Liar & Champion
I cleared my expression and tried for a lazy smile. “No, it’s all set. Everything’s going perfectly.” As far as work was concerned, but it wasn’t satisfying. It should be. Having a wife who could spend six months with me and not get in the way of my business was the dream. Except that the wife was Kitten, and not seeing her was doing things to me, body and soul, that I’d never experienced before. I was fixating on her. I checked my phone constantly, and I worried about more than her safety. Was she was eating enough? Did she feel used for her part in the play with my mother, was she lonely, or not have enough dresser space, or…
She occupied my mind like Germany occupied France. Not that I was France. Now I was thinking about Dupre who had to die.
“Dirk,” I said as he turned away.
“Yeah?” He was the best videographer in the circuit as well as a business mogul and a tech genius. What was he doing in this circus?
“Do you skateboard?”
He blinked at me. “I went through a phase.”
“Maybe we should shoot a little scene at the skate park this morning.”
“A little scene the week before the season opens?”
I cleared my throat and went for a smile. “My wife will be there.” My wife. Just rolled off the tongue.
“She’s a skate boarder? She seemed too delicate for that. I thought you weren’t telling her exactly what kind of game you’re running.”
“I’m just working up to it. This will be a nice segue.” I needed to see her without making it weird. Was that possible? If I saw her, I’d forget everything and pull her in for the longest hug, and then maybe a kiss, and then maybe a hotel room with a kitchen and only one bed so she couldn’t sleep in the wrong one.
He studied me thoughtfully before he slowly nodded. “Okay. What’s the angle? Trying to bring in a new demographic? We’re too old to be cool to these young’uns.”
“Maybe we’re putting the spotlight on the up and coming, doing a competition, big prize, open the race up to a new mini-segment.”
“Different kind of wheels than we’re used to, but sure. You’re always pushing the boundaries, so what if it’s old school?”
“Why did I choose a career where thirty was old?”
“Because you didn’t expect to live that long,” he answered with an easy smile. “No, wait, that was me. You just thought you’d be young forever.”
“Thanks, Dirk. I definitely wasn’t speaking rhetorically.”
I didn’t have time to do a stunt at a skate park, particularly when my boarding days were long past, but Kitten would be there, and I couldn’t function unless I talked to her face to face, to make sure she was okay and not avoiding me, and if she was, figure out how to fix it. I was an excellent fixer if I knew what the problem was.
We took Dirk’s pink Tesla, a few generic boards in the trunk along with his drones and stuff. I carried equipment while he put on his glasses and got to work, setting up while I edged towards the ramps.
There was a big group of kids on the far side, yelling at someone who was apparently really big. Maybe they already had an event going.
Dirk got his drones up and then he whistled. “Nix, you’re going to want this kid on the team.”
I was looking at the crowd, trying to find Kitten. There was Tom, a head taller than anyone else, his bald head a beacon, but I didn’t see her next to him.
“Yeah? That’s good.”
“You should check it out.”
I walked over to look at the screen he had with four different cameras all circling the skateboarder who was wearing a smiley face t-shirt, and at that moment was upside down doing a spread back-flip free-fall before landing on the board as light as a feather, like the laws of gravity didn’t apply to her, my wife, my sweet kitten who was going to get herself killed.
“She’s not good,” Dirk said while I stood there, frozen. I couldn’t just bowl through the crowd, pick her up and carry her away. She was in the middle of very difficult stunts. I couldn’tdistract her in any way, or she might come down on her head and die. These were death stunts. Every single one.
“She’s incredible,” he finished, getting a close-up of her mischievous smile as she lazily spun in the air at the top of her arc.
“Yeah. You got anything for heartburn?” I was going to drop dead of a heart attack right there.
“Not on me. Hm. Nix, you might want to go wait in the car,” he said, tilting the tablet away from me.
I grabbed it and frowned because yeah, Sunshine’s stunts were way too dangerous, but I didn’t see what was particularly bad until Jezebel’s sequin bra caught the sunshine, and then I noted the three women from my team in the audience, watching my Kitten with looks of various diabolical interest on each face.
