Wag the Dog by Larry Beinhart

simpler,” I say.
    â€œExcept Mrs. Mulligan,” she says. Of course, she’s right not to have included her when she first answered the question, because that’s not the question I was asking and she knows it.
    â€œAnd now we better find a place for you,” she says.
    â€œThe traditional place for a chauffeur-bodyguard is an apartment over the garage. I bet this house has one.”
    â€œIt does,” she says.
    â€œIt looked like it.”
    â€œBut I think you should stay in the house. There’s a bedroom upstairs.”
    â€œWhere’s your room?”
    â€œUpstairs. Two doors down. Are you comfortable with that?”
    Two doors and a couple of yards between us. Was I comfortable with that? I was comfortable when she was out here on the beach with the rest of the rich people and I was in the Valley with the smog. Now that I know that there is a spare bedroom two doors down from hers where I’m welcome to park my bags and lay my head, there probably isn’t any place in the world far enough away for me to forget about it and sleep in peace. There’s only one place in the world that I’m going to be comfortable. “That’s fine,” I say.
    â€œJoe.” She comes close and puts a hand on my arm. “Whatever is going to be will be.”
    â€œEasy for you to say,” I say.
    â€œIs it?”
    â€œI got you both orange juice,” Mrs. Mulligan calls out. She sounds like something you would hear off a rocky coast on a foggy night.
    â€œThank you, Mary,” Maggie says.
    The juice is a little cooler than room temperature. Sweet and full of flavors. It cuts through the dryness in my throat.
    â€œThank you, Mary,” I say.
    â€œHave you decided yet where it is you’ll be sleeping?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, I’ll unpack your bags for you, but all things considered, I think you should carry them in from the car. You look like a strapping lad, although not so very tall.”
    I bring my suitcases into the house. Then the fiber cases. They’re locked and I tell Mary Mulligan to leave them alone. She’s unpacking my clothes, doing a very quick and neat job of it. “Will you look at these,” she says when she comes to theguns. “Are we on the beach in California or some back street in Belfast?”
    â€œIs that where you’re from?”
    â€œNo,” she says, “from Roscommon in the middle of the country. It’s not as mean, but it’s often just as poor.”
    When we get downstairs, Maggie is on the telephone. She’s got her feet curled up beneath her on the sofa. I wait. When she’s done, I say, “I want to examine the perimeter.” I smile. She smiles back. Our first private joke.
    â€œI have to work,” she says. “That is to say I have to make phone calls and appear to be making idle chitchat while I desperately connive to keep up on who’s doing what film and who’s screwing whom out of what deal. Do you want me to share all the hot Hollywood gossip with you?”
    â€œThat’s alright,” I say.
    â€œMary can walk you around, or just make yourself free.”
    â€œDo you have anything scheduled today? Besides the phone calls.”
    â€œDinner at Morton’s—Jesus, don’t you wish ‘in’ spots somehow equated with the quality of the food?”
    â€œI’ve never eaten at Morton’s,” I said. “Just so we both know who you’re talking to here, my idea of eating out is eating Mexican at a joint so cheap that even Mexicans can afford it.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Joe,” she says. “I didn’t mean to—”
    â€œâ€”to remind me that you’re rich and I’m not. That you’re”—I look around at the twenty-two-foot-high living room with it’s unobstructed view of the ocean and its own indoor waterfall—“a movie star and I’m just a real