The trip to Amber had been enlightening to say the least, but Marita was happy to be back home and eager to dive back into her businesses. Her Psychology office was still in the start up phase, so other than the occasional patient or couple, she spent most of her first few weeks back in town retaking the reins of Beautiful Vista as her mother headed out of town on a much needed vacation.
Vista kept the place running fairly smoothly, but as was her style, she tended to overbook clients and Marita had been forced to shuffle appointments and take on far more ‘personal’ duties than she desired. In truth, some of the play time she had spent with her cousin Xylon had spoiled her a bit. While her own satisfaction was not the point of her business, she hated when clients bored her, and lately that is all they seemed to do.
Canton burst into her office early on Friday morning as Marita tried peacefully sipping her first cup of coffee, so instead of a mouthful of java, she got an earful of irate griping about the evening’s schedule.
“Phoenix and I have very important ‘dates’ to escort some very important politicos to the Senate’s Annual Ball tonight,” she began, and as usual, everything was ‘very important’ when it involved Canton, or at least she thought so.
Holding up a hand to beg for a moment’s peace, Marita pulled the schedule up on the computer terminal on her desk, looked at it for a moment, and looked back at Canton with shrug of her shoulders,
“And your problem is what? Compared to most of the recent nights, neither you nor Phoenix is overbooked, in fact, for once no one is,” she replied calmly, quietly wondering if Canton was annoyed that Phoenix had a more ‘very important’ client than she did.
“Pardon me Rita, but you have been away a bit too long. Both of these gentlemen also have significant numbers of enemies and security risks, or doesn’t your little database still have that kind of information in it any more?” Canton demanded, rather snidely.
Marita looked at the appointments more closely, yes each of these clients was coded as needing extra security, but Marita’s eyes had indeed become a bit lazy and she had missed it. Glancing further at the schedule, she now saw the problem.
“My bad,” she apologized, “It looks like Bella and I are both booked as well, shit, I didn’t catch that.”
When extra security was needed, Marita never depended on the security team assigned to protect the clients of her girls. Their first instinct was to use the escorts as human shields for their bosses and for themselves. Bella or Marita usually rode shotgun on such excursions, and the clients paid double, no exceptions.
Quickly pulling up another database, Marita made several calls as Canton helped herself to a cup of coffee and camped out in her chair, obviously intending to stay there until her concerns were properly dealt with. Marita often wondered if Canton’s middle name was actually ‘High Maintenance’ rather than ‘Lee’ as she claimed. Well, if not, it would still have been more fitting.
A look of growing frustration on her face, Marita practically slammed down the received after the last call ended in failure.
“Damnit, he just got a gig ten minutes ago, if I had called first, oh screw me running,” she vented, “All of the free agent muscle is already booked because of this damn ball.”
When needed, Marita had a roster of reliable security men and women, essentially guns and swords for hire, that she could use in these situations. It was less profitable, the extra money paid by the client went straight to the mercenary, but her employees were kept safe and their regular fees still made a tidy profit.
Plus these kind of events were always full of something far more valuable than money - information. The bragging and pillow talk from these political types was invaluable, once Marita dug through the knee deep bullshit to get the trinkets of useful information.
Cancelling the dates for Phoenix and Canton was out of the question, and Bella and Marita had too full of a schedule that night for them to cancel either, but no way were they going out without protection.
“Well,” demanded Canton, the remainder of her sentence unspoken and unnecessary as her eyes, tone and body language clearly conveyed what her words did not.
Absent mindedly chewing on the top of her pen, Marita ignored Canton’s intransigence for a moment as she rattled her brain for a solution.