The New Guy

Lola Reyes did not want a bodyguard. She said this to her manager. She said it loudly, in the dressing room, with her arms crossed. "I have been doing this for six years," she said. "I know how to handle a crowd. I do not need a babysitter following me around the whole tour." "It's not a babysitter," her manager said. He was tired. He was always tired. "It's a security professional. The label already hired him. He starts today." "The label can un-hire him." "The label saw the letters, Lola." Her manager's voice got quiet, and that was worse than when he was loud. "The ones we didn't show you. There were three of them. They knew which hotel you were in. So no. He starts today, and you are going to be nice, because this is not a fun decision, this is a safety decision, and I would like you to still be alive at the end of the tour." Lola didn't say anything to that. There wasn't really anything to say. The door opened and the bodyguard walked in. Okay so Lola had pictured someone. She had pictured kind of an older guy, maybe a belly, sunglasses indoors, the type. That was not who walked in. The man who walked in had to actually duck a little under the doorframe, which she had never seen a real person do before. He was huge. Not gym huge, just — built like he could pick up the couch she was sitting on and not change his expression. He had short hair and a jaw like a shelf and he was wearing a plain black shirt and he looked at the dressing room the way Lola looked at a setlist. Like he was checking every part of it. "Marcus King," he said. He had a low voice. "I'm your protection detail for the tour." "I'm Lola. But you know that." She uncrossed her arms and then crossed them again. "Look, I'll just be honest with you, Marcus. I didn't ask for this and I don't really want it. No offense." "None taken." He didn't smile. He walked over to the window — the dressing room was on the fourth floor — and he looked down at the street, and then he closed the curtain. "But that window faces the loading bay and anyone in the building across the street has a clear line into this room, so I'd ask you not to sit in front of it again." Lola blinked. "It's a dressing room." "It's a room with you in it." He turned around. "That's all a room is, on this job. Somewhere you are. My whole job is the space between you and a problem. You don't have to like me, Miss Reyes. You just have to let me do the space." And the thing was, Lola had a comeback ready. She always had a comeback ready, it was kind of her brand. But she looked at this enormous serious man who had closed her curtain like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and the comeback just sort of went away. "Lola," she said instead. "Not Miss Reyes. If you're going to be in every room I'm in, you can use my name." "Lola," Marcus said. He still didn't smile. But she got the feeling, weirdly, that somewhere very far back behind that jaw, something had filed her name away carefully, like it mattered. And Lola, who really truly had not wanted a bodyguard twenty minutes ago, found that she was already a little curious what it would take to make this man laugh. It was going to be a long tour. She just didn't know yet how long, or in which direction.