Earlier this year I read an interview with JE, where she seemed pretty happy to get rid of the number centered book naming thing. It made me wonder about coming up with 27 number themed titles, and then pairing up story ideas with them. In the end, I came up with 31 story ideas (more, if you count the multiple ideas for several of the numbers), and The Number Series was born. Some stories are longer one-shots, some are short, and some developed into multi-chapter offerings. All have the title somewhere in the story. I have no set posting schedule for them.
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All recognizable characters belong to Janet Evanovich, I'm just playing.
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Fall Nine Times, Get Up Ten
SPOV
Slamming the door behind me, I let out a frustrated yell, knowing no one in my building will hear it, or care. It's been a day filled with one failure after another. Spilled coffee, a parking ticket, and more skips than I felt I could handle were the highlights of the day. It didn't help that most of those skips were small ones and, when added up, would pay the bills but not offer any sort of cushion. And that's if I got all of them. I went after three of them today, and right now I'm sitting at 0/3.
I'm growing weary of the day-to-day life of a struggling bounty hunter. Some days, like today, it just feels pointless. It's a monotonous loop of get a folder for someone, usually a Burger, and try and locate them. Then, when I find them, get told that I should be ashamed of myself for bothering good people and I need to find another job. That's finished up with trying and snag the offender, rolling in something smelly, and walking away empty handed and frustrated. Later, rinse, repeat. Every. Freaking. Day.
For example, catching Francie Pulaski should have been easy. The charges were shoplifting, not even anything major so it shouldn't have been a big deal to come in and get rebonded. Two hours of her day. But no. That would have been too easy. I found her at the Clip and Curl getting her hair set and catching up on the gossip. I waited for her to be done (which I thought was rather nice of me) before approaching and asking her to allow me to escort her down to reschedule her court appearance. Instead, she hit me with her purse, posited that my mother must be horrified with my improper job, threw a glob of styling cream in my face, and took off.
The chemicals in the cream caused enough burning in my eyes that I had to let her go while I appropriated one of the sprayers at a hair washing station to rinse them out. No Francie, no money, and I got the joy of walking around looking like sad little red raccoon.
I'm winding up for another yell of frustration when I realize I'm not alone and the yell turns into a strangled scream. Ranger steps out of my kitchen, taking in my torn jeans and mud-splattered shirt. His mouth ticks up at the corner until he sees the redness around my eyes that has nothing to do with crying. He's in front of me in seconds, angling my face up so he can get a better look.
"Hair cream. Not a good idea for eyeballs."
"Babe."
"It's fine. I rinsed them with water until they were floating. What brings you by?"
He gives my eyes another look before letting go of my chin and stepping back. "Stop by and see Bobby if they're still bothering you tomorrow."
My half-ass salute gets me a half-smile before he crosses his arms over his impressive chest. "What's got you looking like you're standing on the ledge again?"
Sometimes having a friend that sees more than you want them to is more of a curse than a blessing. I intended to come home and have a pity party, not give chapter and verse on my disaster of a life. There's a rather short stand-off before I cave.
"Same shit, different day. Captures just didn't go how I wanted them to and I'm wondering why I do a job that leaves me scrambling at the end of the month. I'd consider a job somewhere else, but I'm pretty sure word got out after Mama Marconi and Cluck in a Bucket that I'm hell on insurance rates."
"You know I always have work for you at Rangeman."
I snort at that. "We both know that I'd never pass the physical requirements to work for you and you hiring me would just look like the pity job it is."
His jaw clenches and his eyes narrow at that. "Stephanie."
Uh-oh. Full name.
"I don't do pity jobs. In the past I've tossed odd jobs your way when you've needed work, but you earned those paychecks. You've proven that you have first-rate problem-solving skills and pick up on little things in the searches that the rest of us miss. I have a need for that. You might not meet, or even want to meet, the requirements to be a full-time employee, but there is no reason you can't ask for more work as a contractor. I've given you as much work as you've been willing to take, but at some point, you're going to have to be the one that decides you want more than an odd job here and there. You have skills to offer, to Rangeman and other businesses."
I mull what he says, turning it over in my mind. Contractor. It's what I'm classified as now when I do the odd distraction and search desk shift here and there. Could I do more of the work? I don't necessarily want to commit myself to a forty-hour work week with an alarm clock, pantyhose, and restrictions, but the potential for more money and less mess is enticing.
As I think the words, I remember all the times I've messed up even easy jobs and regretfully shake my head. "I'm not sure you want me messing with your Rangeman mojo. In case you didn't notice, things tend to get crazy around me. That's not really the vibe you want around her business."
Ranger is assessing me, trying to figure out where my head is at. Good luck to him; I don't even know where my head is at.
"Babe, we've all had bad days. Don't make big decisions when you're not in the right frame of mind. Don't forget, you always get your man. Most bond enforcement agents don't have your success rate."
"Yeah, that's me. Successful Stephanie."
My sarcasm is heavy, and I get an eyebrow raise in return. "Success is falling down nine times and getting up ten."
I don't know why, but his seriousness makes me laugh. "You sound like a fortune cookie."
That earns me a smile. "You just don't want to admit that it's good advice."
"Confucius?"
"Bon Jovi."
"You're making that up!"
That frustrating smirk is back. "I guess you'll have to look it up."
Pulling my phone out, I start typing in the web browser and as soon as I get 'fall nine times' in, dozens of hits come back...and they all say the same thing. Jon Bon Jovi. Damn.
"Well, as a girl from Jersey, I can't go against the advice of the great Bon Jovi. Guess I'll have to give it another go."
"Babe."
With that he pulls me into a hug. "You're successful because you don't give up. Stubbornness can be an enviable trait to have. Don't discount the skills you do have. Work on the ones you need."
"You make it sound easy."
"Sometimes, it can be. I lost skips early on, but I learned to not make the same mistake twice. The best advice I ever got was to think of each success as a building block, and to keep building rather than starting over again and again."
He makes no effort to move out of the hug, so I don't either. It feels like I've fallen down a lot more than nine times, but he's right. I always get back up and today shouldn't be any different. It's just another bump in the road. Embrace the skills I have, work on the ones I lack.
After a bit, his watch beeps and I know he's going to tell me he has to go. Stepping back, I realize I still have no idea why he was in my kitchen. "You weren't in there eating my leftovers, were you?"
With a bark of laughter, he maneuvers me against the wall and fogs up my brain with a panty-melting kiss. When he steps back, I resist the urge to check if my clothes are still on. "Just wanted to see you, Babe. But if you do want more work, we just got a corporate security contract and have more than enough work running background searches to keep you busy full-time for a while. Think about it."
He's gone with the door locked behind him before I can even respond.
I'm still thinking about his advice and sort-of job offer the next day as I rounded up two of my skips in the morning. I had a little trouble with Marty D'Amiano when he threw his to-go order of spaghetti at me when he saw me standing at his car outside of La Bella Cucina, but I caught him before he got too far.
Fall nine times, get up ten. It's a mantra I repeated to myself many times over the next week as I slowly cleared my backlog, including Francie Pulaski. This time I caught her at her car after a viewing at Stiva's. She tried to put up a fuss, but I had her in cuffs and marching toward my car parked to block hers. She threatened to tell my mother on me, but I just let her bitch until she wound down. She had nothing to say when I pointed out that she's the one that broke the law and then didn't show up for her court date. That was on her. As I collected my check for her, a whopping $50, I realized that if I added up the time I spent searching for, snagging, and returning some of the smaller bonds, I was barely making money on them.
As I divided my bills into piles and paid them, I thought more about Ranger's words. Don't discount the skills you have, work on the ones you need. I'm good at looking and finding people and things, not so good at wrestling people back to the police station. I could definitely do with acquiring some self-defense skills. With that in mind, I pulled out my laptop and searched for the free self-defense course taught at the community center in the Burg. It was better than nothing, and right now, free fits my budget.
That done, I started making a list of places that might need help with finding people or need things researched. It wasn't a long list to start with. Rangeman and bond's offices, mostly. Maybe lawyers. Pulling the laptop closer, I start searching random word combinations until my eyes were crossed. It was probably stupid, the idea brewing in my head. What if I gave up the catching, and just concentrated on the searching? The catching was an adrenaline rush, but it's the part that gave me problems. The searching and solving the puzzle was satisfying and more sustainable. Could I turn it into a business? Ranger said he had enough work to keep me busy for "a while," but then what? I could still contract to Rangeman, but also put out feelers to Vinnie, Les Sebring and other bonding agents to find their skips for them to retrieve. People had to hire out background checks; my research had turned up ads for such companies...but none in Trenton.
I would have to do this in stages and come up with the money to buy the programs, but the idea is a good one, and the first thing I've been excited about in a long time. Before I can start second guessing myself, I grab my phone and press speed dial one.
"Hey, do you have some time today? There's an idea I wanted to run past you."