The Law of Attraction (23 page)

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, this is actually kind of exciting. Should we watch her again?”

“I guess so. Maybe we can figure out a way to leave a note for her to reply to at one of these hotels or something.”

“We’re on it,” she said, and hung up.

My mom and I sat down to talk for a little while and she made it clear in no uncertain terms that she and my dad approved of Braden. Dad and Braden got home about a half an hour later and they seemed to be happily bonding. All was well at the Ginsberg residence. Then my dad went to check the mail.

“Gabby! Come here, honey!” he called out in a weird tone of voice. Braden and I glanced at each other and went to meet him in the entranceway. I saw that my dad was holding a letter of some sort.

“What is it?” I asked warily.

“It’s a letter for you, but there’s no return address and no postage.”

“Can I see that?” Braden asked.

“Sure.” Dad held it out to Braden.

“You hold on to it and tear it open carefully. I’ll come over and look over your shoulder. If it’s something suspicious we don’t want too many sets of fingerprints on it,” said Braden, the prosecutor. My dad did exactly what Braden asked. My mind was racing. Maybe it was some kind of marketing gimmick. When I got closer my hopes were dashed as I saw that the handwriting was familiar. It said,
“You should stay away from him! Something very bad could happen if you don’t!”

“What the hell?!” my father exclaimed.

“What’s going on?” my mom asked, coming in from the kitchen.

“Gabby got a threatening letter!”

“From who?!”

“It’s not signed and there’s no return address.”

“Oh my God!”

“Mom! Don’t worry! It’s probably some kind of a stupid joke.”

“Threatening someone is funny?”

“It may not even be meant as a threat. It’s completely ambiguous. You can’t tell if they’re trying to warn me off because they like me, or trying to warn me off because they don’t.”

“The fact that there’s no stamp means it obviously didn’t come with the rest of the post. It must have been hand delivered,” Braden added, making even me a little weirded out. If this had been a movie, lightning would have streaked across the sky and thunder would have boomed just as he said that.

“Who even knew you were here?” my dad asked.

“Just our closest friends and Braden’s family. Nobody else and I’m sure that none of them would play this kind of joke.” I told myself firmly that it couldn’t be Cam.

“We need to report this to the police,” Braden said, sounding authoritative.

“Yes! Of course!” my father agreed. “Maybe the FBI too. If someone followed her here they crossed state lines.”

“Let’s not go crazy here, J. Edgar,” I said, rapidly feeling like this situation was getting out of control. After all, it wasn’t a death threat – at least not an explicit one. Maybe my job had made me a little numb to crime but this just didn’t feel all that serious to me.

“Gabby, this sounds threatening to me and I would rather be safe than sorry,” my mom, who had come over to read the letter, chimed in.

“I agree,” Braden added.

“That makes three of us,” my dad said. “You’re outvoted. We’re going to report it to the police and to the FBI. We’re also going to need to take precautions. We have an excellent, state of the art alarm system here. Gabby, you’re going to need something like that too.”

“I live in a secure building,” I reminded him.

“It couldn’t hurt. I’m buying you a dog too.”

“Dad, I don’t need a dog. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to have a dog in my building.”

“I’ll get her a dog,” Braden assured him.

“Thank you, Braden,” he said gratefully, patting him on the back affectionately.

“Oh my God.” I rolled my eyes.

“Of course you know that we want you two to stay together no matter what this crazy person says,” my mom said, looking almost imploringly at Braden.

“Mom, we’re not breaking up because of some stupid letter!”

“If anything, we feel like she’s safer with you, Braden. If you had been dating longer I would suggest you move in together,” my dad said with a sigh.

“You sure you didn’t send this?” I asked dryly.

“That’s not funny, Gabrielle,” my mom chastised. She was “Gabrielling” me. Ma was stressed.

“Maybe you should spend more time at my place,” Braden suggested.

“Should I bring my dog?” I asked with a smile.

“Alright, I’m going to go call Lou,” my father announced.

“Why are you calling your lawyer? Do you need investment advice?”

“I just feel like he should be in on this. Maybe he knows some cops.”

“Dad, he’s a corporate lawyer. Braden here is a prosecutor. Don’t you think he might get a little further?”

“Good point. Braden, let’s go into the study and make some calls.”

“Okay, Ben. I’m going to call some people in Philly too and have them coordinate with New York.”

“Good idea.”

Ben and Braden were on it. I went off to find the crossword puzzle. I’ll be honest, I did find it very annoying and maybe a little unnerving that someone had gone through the trouble to schlep an hour and a half from Philly to New York, but I still thought it was probably one of those three losers and I couldn’t see any of them being all that dangerous.

An hour later an NYPD detective and an FBI special agent were sitting in my parents’ parlor. I couldn’t believe that the FBI actually sent somebody. I suspected it had more to do with the fact that Braden was the son of a senator than the possibility that some schmuck had crossed state lines to harass a public defender.

I answered all of their questions but I was careful about what I said. I stressed the fact that it was very ambiguous and said that for that reason I really didn’t know who it could be. I simply wasn’t ready to start accusing people just based on guesswork and without any evidence. Maybe I had been a defense lawyer for too long. Mostly, I just didn’t want Braden or I getting in hot water if it turned out I accused an innocent person. After a couple hours of my life that I’ll never get back, the law enforcement type people left.

“So, where are we going for dinner?” I asked.

“We’ll eat in,” my mom announced, heading toward the drawer with the take-out menus.

“Why?”

“I just think it’s best if we stay in, sweetheart.” She took out a stack the size of War and Peace.

“All night? No Shakespeare in the park?” I knew that I was whining, but come on!

“Honey,” my dad chimed in. “Let’s just stay home and relax. Come on, we’ll watch a movie. We still have to show Braden your baby pictures anyway.”

“You’re going let some cowardly letter writer make you lock yourself in the house?”

“Gabrielle, I came to spend time with your parents anyway. We can have a nice time just staying in,” Braden said. They were all against me. I knew there was no winning this. I went over and sat down rather ungracefully on the sofa.

“Okay, fine, but order really good food and let’s watch Manhattan or something. I want Braden to have some kind of New York experience beyond bagels and Bubbe.”

We ended up having Indian delivered and watching Sex and the City: The Movie, which I had obviously already seen, but as far as I was concerned, one could never get enough Sex and the City. After the movie, my mom and dad flanked Braden on either side and showed him every embarrassing picture of me they could find. If I was doing something incredibly awkward, had a really bad haircut or was wearing amazingly ugly clothes (or no clothes) it had been captured and preserved. The best ones were where all of the above applied, like at that damned birthday party.

Eventually Braden and I turned in and I had come up with something else that I had never offered but that I suspected would be a big hit. I locked my bedroom door again.

“Come over here and get naked with me in bed,” I said without preamble.

“I love it when you say things like that,” he said, yanking off his shirt and tossing it onto the chair. His jeans joined it seconds later. He wasn’t one to waste time. I pulled off my own clothing and went to sit back against the pillows. He crawled onto the bed with me and the Harvard endowment was already looking very interested in finding out what I had in mind.

“You know I thought of something else I could do for you.”

“Oh?” His voice was already starting to sound thick.

“You may have noticed that my body has changed a bit since my naked birthday party days.” His eyes flew to my chest and I saw him start breathing faster. Slowly he looked back up into my eyes, a silent question hanging in the air. “Come over here, Harvard,” I said throatily.

He looked so incredibly happy as he knelt over me and as I rubbed some of his favorite parts of my body against one of my favorite parts of his. His eyes were looking dazed, he was breathing hard and it was easy to see that he had fantasized about this one a few times already. Finally I pushed my breasts together tightly and he began thrusting, groaning continuously, his eyes fixed on the sight of his cock sliding between them. Here’s a hint for you; for a boob man, this one is a real winner.

“Oh baby, so hot.” His voice was strained and I knew he was close. “These are mine. Nobody else gets to play with them.” He panted.

“That’s right, baby. Nobody else gets to play with my toys either.”

“No,” he groaned. “Don’t want anyone else. Only you.”

“Come on baby. Come for me,” I urged and it put him over the edge. For a boob man, the finale of this particular event is apparently almost enough to bring tears to the eyes. He collapsed onto his back groaning and panting ecstatically.

Since we seemed to have established a theme, when he had caught his breath and some blood had returned to his brain, he decided to devote concerted efforts to seeing if he could give me a happy ending just by paying my breasts a great deal of oral and manual attention. The answer, incidentally, was that he could. He found the effort so much fun that he was ready to go for round two afterward, and we explored a couple of different positions that allowed him easy access to his toys. This little Sex
in
the City party went on for a couple of hours, until we had tired each other out to the point of exhaustion. Have I mentioned that Braden and I had a very good sex life?

It kept getting better and better too. We had learned a lot more about how and where each other liked to be touched which was one of the big perks to familiarity. I found that getting him all worked up was about the most empowering, flat-out most arousing thing I had ever experienced. I loved how his eyes got darker when he wanted me. I loved the look on his face when he slid inside me. I loved the hot sexy things he said to me when our bodies were moving together, and I loved the way that he groaned and said my name when he came. I also loved how afterward, we always laid in bed snuggled up and talking.

“I’m sorry that we didn’t get to do all that fun stuff we had planned,” I said.

“I had a great time. Given, I would have preferred that you hadn’t gotten a harassing letter, and we didn’t have to speak to the police and the FBI for a couple of hours, but the rest of the time was fun.”

“I’m just not all that worried, Braden. I do think it is just somebody harassing me. I know it’s weird that I got this letter in New York, but we’re only an hour and a half from Philly. It’s not like an arduous journey to get here, you know? And maybe they were just afraid somebody in Philly would recognize them or that it would be traced back to them somehow.”

“Yeah, I thought of that too. Hopefully, it’s just an isolated incident, but I would feel better if you would spend a couple nights during the week at my place and let come home with you some nights too.”

“I’m fine with getting to sleep with you more often.”

“Maybe I should cancel the Pittsburgh trip.” I immediately got nervous, but I forced myself to relax. I needed him out of town.

“You have to go, Braden. It’s important. Jess will be with me and Cam is around too.”

“Then I’m going to ask Mark to hang out with you too. There’s safety in numbers.” Great. I knew that when Braden made up his mind, he made up his mind. I had a feeling that we might be gaining a new team member and that I might have to steal Mark’s cell phone so that he wouldn’t be on it calling Braden within seconds of hearing my plan.

“You should come to game night tomorrow and stay over at my place.”

“Okay. You know, I think that I’m really starting to understand the complexities of baseball. There’s more to it than one would think. Are you laughing?”

The next morning I was able to convince my parents that it was probably safe to leave the house. We went out for breakfast and a walk in the park, although they made a big deal about staying “on the paths” (like I was planning to go for a jaunt through the woods.) I was very happy that at least we got to do something nice. At noon Braden and I got ready to leave. We hugged my parents and they promised to visit Philly soon. Then my dad reminded Braden of his promise to buy me a dog. Inner-Gabrielle beat her head against the wall a few times.

We were back in Philly by three and he said he would come over at six-thirty to get me because, God forbid I walk two blocks in daylight by myself. I walked into my apartment to find both Jess and Cameron waiting for me.

“So, you’re not going to believe this,” I said.

“You have a “you’re not going to believe this” too?” she asked.

“Yeah. I got another note when I was in New York, with the same handwriting. It pretty much said the same thing as the first one.”

“In New York?” Cam asked, sounding surprised. “How did anybody know you were even there?”

“Either they followed us or they heard it somewhere.”

“Did your parents and Braden find out this time?” Cam asked.

“Yes, and it has been duly reported to the NYPD and the FBI.”

“The FBI?” Jess asked, sounding understandably surprised.

“Crossing state lines.”

“Okay.” She didn’t look convinced. I didn’t blame her.

“And a senator’s son called them.”

“So they know about the first one now too?” Cam asked.