Page 90 of The Bodyguard

There was a horse pen off the side of the barn with a bench where we could sit. We climbed the fence and sat side by side near the water trough as I filled Jack in on the details, out of earshot from the house.

There’s an art to telling clients about threats. A delicate balance that informs them without alarming them. Or, more accurately—alarms them just enough to get their attention, and their cooperation, and their compliance, without freaking them out.

But Jack wasn’t alarmed at all.

In fact, I had barely said the word “nudes” before he started laughing.

“Hey,” I said. “This isn’t funny.”

But Jack just leaned back and tilted his face to the stars, his shoulders shaking.

And then he leaned forward and put his face in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said, after a little while, wiping at his eyes. “It’s the nudes. And the notes. And the phrase…”

But he was overtaken by laughter and couldn’t finish.

“And the phrase…” he tried again.

But nope. More laughing.

“And the phrase,” he said again, louder now, as if commanding himself to get it out. “The phrase, ‘if it’s convenient for your schedule.’”

Now he collapsed forward, his whole torso shaking.

It’s surprisingly hard not to laugh when someone’s cracking up right in front of you. This is serious, I reminded myself. Stay focused. Then I said, all business, “You should probably take a look at everything.”

“Not the nudes,” he said, laughing harder. “Don’t make me look at the nudes.”

“You need to take this seriously,” I said, trying to settle him with my tone of voice.

“I’ll take the sweater,” he said, wiping his eyes. “My mom loves them.”

I shook my head. “It’s all being impounded as evidence.”

That set him off again. He doubled over, gasping for breath.

“I’ve never met anybody who laughs as much as you do,” I said after a while.

He was still laughing. “I never laugh. I haven’t laughed in years.”

“You’re laughing right now.”

Jack sat up at that, as if he hadn’t noticed.

The irony. Telling him he was laughing finally got him to stop laughing.

“I guess I am,” he said, seeming to marvel at the idea. “Huh.”

“You laugh constantly,” I said, amazed that he didn’t know this about himself. “You laugh at everything.”

“Mostly at you, though,” he said.

I gave him a look, like Thanks.

He studied me, like he was just realizing what he’d said was true.

“You can’t ignore these threats,” I said, fully ready to launch into a fiery lecture about how small threats could snowball into big ones.