Once we were checked into a big chain motel, Grant didn’t show much motivation to do anything except sit on his double bed and flip channels.
I settled on the other one and tried not to look at the television. I’d lived so long without one that I found the experience of channel flipping dizzying, even nauseating.
“You got any meetings today? Walk-throughs? Story development?”
“Eh, maybe.” He flipped from one sports-related talking-head show to another. It didn’t look like an improvement.
“What do you mean, maybe? Do they give you schedules? Agendas?”
“Probably in my email.”
“Forward it to me, then, would you?”
Reluctantly, Grant tore his eyes from the screen and dug out his phone. After a few seconds of flipping, my own buzzed.
I got out my tablet and popped open his agenda. According to it, he had a call at the arena at 3 p.m., just about ninety minutes from now.
“How early do you need to be at the arena for a 3 p.m. call?”
“They’ll call me here and someone’ll drive me over.”
“Where’s everybody else?”
“Probably either in their rooms, in the hotel gym, or at the arena.”
I decided it probably wasn’t my place to offer any career advice but I imagined that being in the gym or at the arena was the way to get ahead.
“Well, we’re going over there early.”
“How?”
“Walking. How far can it be, a few blocks?”
“Is that safe?”
“You’re supposedly under threat in Virginia, not Maryland. And I want to get the lay of the land if we’re gonna be here for two nights. Come on; get dressed however you need for whatever you’ve got to do there.”
Grant shut off the TV, rolled off the bed, and began rooting around in his suitcase.
“You ever think about getting in the ring?”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
“You were good, Jack.”
“Yeah, at…” I struggled for words that weren’t ‘real wrestling.’ “At the collegiate, freestyle stuff. Not what you’re doing.”
“It translates, though. Lot of the same movements, same muscle use.”
“I’m not in that kind of shape anymore.”
“Oh, please,” Grant said, as he took off his jeans and replaced them with sweats. “Couple of months in the gym, find the right supps, eat chicken and beans every meal, you’d be ready to go.”
I didn’t ask exactly what the right ‘supps’ were because I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like the answer.
“C’mon,” I said, gesturing towards the door after he’d pulled a t-shirt on and grabbed his jacket. “Let’s go.”
Down in the lobby we ran into one of the staff security guys and Daphne. The latter waved Grant over to her, which I quickly realized was a tactic meant to give the security guy some time to talk to me. It was the same guy who’d let me back the night of the show.
He barred my way with a hand planted on my chest. I didn’t much like that, but I also didn’t see any reason to start much of a tussle over it.
“Don’t think I like some rent-a-cop walking around my sets with a gun,” he said.
“Good thing I’m a rent-a-detective, then.”
He sneered at me. “What’s the difference?”
“I’m more expensive.”
“Hah. Hah. You ain’t wearing a piece on my sets.”
I sighed. “What’s your name?”
“Shawn, but you can call me sir.”
“Shawn,” I said, “let me be real clear. I don’t like carrying a gun. But what I like even less is the idea of handing over a gun that’s known to the authorities to be in my possession over to someone I don’t know from Adam. And I’m not about to leave it sitting in a motel room. Safest place for it to be is on my belt, so that’s where it’s gonna stay.”
“We’ll see about that.” I saw that Grant had picked up on whatever kind of pecking order bullshit that was being thrown at me and he quickly stepped over and put a hand between me and Shawn.
“C’mon, boss, leave my man alone,” he said to the security chief. “He’s gotta stay with me.”
Shawn gave Grant a considering eye but then nodded. I brushed past him—gently. I wasn’t particularly interested in starting a fight with anyone, much less someone I would’ve preferred to work with.
On our way out the door, I shot a look at Daphne. “You ever try and separate me from Grant again—even for thirty seconds—and the first goddamn thing I’m doing is calling your boss and becoming the biggest pain in the ass he’s ever had. And believe me, I can be a world class pain in the ass.”
The smirk she’d been wearing turned into a kind of shock. I think that people in the orbit of the DWF did not usually speak harshly to Daphne Stein.
With that, I grabbed Grant and marched him out the front door.