Wag the Dog by Larry Beinhart Page A

person. That’s alright with me. I mostly know who I am. I don’t want you to forget.”
    â€œThere are . . .” she giggles. It’s a girlish, fetching giggle. It’s entirely possible that everything about her is perfect. It is more likely that I am in that hormone-haze state of mind that puts the golden glow on my perceptions. Let me possess this woman for twenty years and I’m sure I’ll start to see her flaws and her warm and gushing laughter will begin to grate on my nerves. Bound to happen.
    â€œThere are . . .?”
    â€œThere are movies about exactly this situation. The rich woman and her chauffeur. If you want the movies to be your guide.”
    I am not on solid land here. Not by any means. I want to be. “Is that what you want? To play out a scene?”
    â€œYou’re a serious guy, Joe. A real guy. That’s why I wanted you here. I better not forget it,” she says.
    â€œOK,” I say. Whatever all that meant.
    â€œI have to make these calls,” she says apologetically.
    â€œJust keep me informed of your schedule. I’ll work around you. That’s what I’m supposed to do. That’s what you hired me for.” And she had hired me. She’d signed a contract with the company for my services and received a set of price guidelines. That’s an implied contract in which the client is meant to understand that anything additional that we supply in equipment and manpower will be charged for and it is legal prior notification of the rates thereof. “Today I want to check the premises, work out whatever recommendations I’m going to make. This evening I’ll drive you to your dinner and home again. Unless you have requirements to the contrary. In the meantime, there’s a couple of hours in there where I’d like to grab some personal time. I run and do a couple of things to keep in shape. Though I know I don’t personally look it.”
    â€œYou’re going to sit outside of Morton’s for two hours while we eat? Of course you are. Somehow . . . I didn’t . . . I’ve never had a personal chauffeur before. I’ve been chauffeured lots, of course. The studios are always sending limos. But the drivers, even when I’m polite and talk to them and find out their names and the names of their children and all those things I do to be charming and human, aren’t really . . . Of course, they’re people. But to me, they’re chauffeurs first, people second. This is confusing. To me you’re a person first.”
    â€œThanks for saying that,” I say. I wonder at it—that’s the truth. I’ve worked with stars before. Stars are people that have their best-ever friends driving them around and polishing their automobiles and don’t think anything of having their best-ever friends sitting outside a restaurant for two or four or six hours doing nothing but vegetating. They figure their childhoodbest-ever friends ought to be grateful for any kind of job at all, let alone one that lets them hang out with the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, getting to gather the crumbs off the party cake. Don’t forget, the sun is a star, and the sun figures the planets exist for one purpose only, to move in circles around it.
    Mrs. Mulligan knows little more about the grounds than I do. She’s only been there a few days. There’s a wall all the way around the house, including the beach side. The living room and the deck are both high enough that when you look out you look over the wall without even being aware of it.
    The front gate is an iron grille. The door to the beach is a reasonably solid wooden door. They are both hooked into the alarm system and the CCTV. They were, I automatically note, purchased from and are maintained by a different company from ours. There is no system that protects the wall itself. I could get over it in seconds. So could any other serious intruder. We have