I handed cutlery to Connie and put the lunch out on the table. Unlike the day before, Ranger wasn't intending on stopping in to eat with us. He said that he was sure that he would be an impediment to the conversation. I personally thought that he was just avoiding the potential of Lula asking him for a tour of the office spaces.

"So who is Ranger protecting now?" asked Lula. "You've had me curious since you talked to us on Monday."

I smiled. "Dickie."

"Dickie, your ex-husband?" said Connie. "And you're smiling about it?"

I laughed. Dickie's and my animosity was well known. In one of my last confrontations with him, Connie and Lula had to pull me off him when I had been choking him. While I had been exceedingly angry at him and I might have lost control a little bit, I was in fact planting a bug on him at the time, and choking him seemed like the most expedient way of doing so. Being able to threaten him with death was a nice side benefit.

"I am, actually." I told them about Dickie's forty million, which caused Connie to bare her teeth and Lula to give a hiss of anger. I told them about him not paying tax on the money, which made them both hiss in anger. And then I told them about Ranger finding out about the tax evasion and him telling the FBI.

"Yeah, baby. That's why I like him", said Lula.

I smiled again. Then I told them about Dickie owing money to his bookie and him knowing that someone was looking for him, and Dickie's assumption that it was the bookie looking for him. I told them about Dickie coming to Ranger to arrange protection. "I don't know how much he owes his bookie, but based on how much he is paying Rangeman for protection services, it must be considerable."

"Especially if he is willing to pay twice Ranger's regular protection rate", said Connie. "Ranger is known as having the best protection service around, but his services don't come cheap."

"True", I said. I then told him where Dickie was staying, who was looking after him, and the torment they were planning on putting Dickie through. "So that's why I'm smiling as I say his name."

"Hell, yeah", said Lula as she helped herself to another scoop of potato salad. "I'd be smiling too", she said.

I laughed.

"So besides your grandmother shooting Rex, how was your visit with your family?" asked Connie.

"It was good", I said. "My grandmother is on a new kick that she'd like to get a job. At first she wanted to get a new job at the new business that opened up beside Giovichinni's, Tips and Clips."

"They are opening a sex shop next to Giovichinni's?" said Lula. "Cool. People will be able to buy their porn and their pork, all in the same trip."

"In each case you'd be buying meat", said Connie.

I laughed. "No. That's what I thought as well, but apparently Tips and Clips is the name for a new beauty salon and refers to manicures and haircuts."

"That makes more sense", said Lula. "Although it would make a good name for a porn shop."

"I know. Anyway, Grandma thought that she could get a job there. After a few minutes, she decided it would be too hard to answer the phone and not say "Tits and Clits", so she decided that it would be a lot more fun to work in a porn shop. She's been annoying my mother and horrifying my father by watching porn on the computer for research purposes. She thought that she had many more years of experience and could help guide people, but when I pointed out to her that she'd have to stand for long periods of time and that might be difficult, she decided she'd rather work here at Rangeman and be able to wear a gun. I reminded her that the holster wouldn't look good with her slacks and it would throw off the line of her dresses, but she said working at reception would be the perfect job for her. She could wear a gun and she could sit down for her shift, and since there wasn't a lot happening there she could always have a nap whenever she wanted. She explained the benefits to Ranger and he explained that he didn't hire anyone who didn't have a military background. She explained why she should be considered since I didn't have a military background and she was family. He put his foot down and Grandma pouted, so I sent her off to get another glass of water for me, which was when she shot Rex."

"Unfortunate timing for her."

"Yes, although Ranger wouldn't have hired her anyway. However, Grandma is on a kick where she wants to get a job. I can't wait until she decides next where she wants to work."

"Your mother must be beside herself", said Lula.

"I think my mother has about had enough. She was really upset when my grandmother shot Rex. She said that she hoped that it wouldn't stop me from having them for lunch another time, and that she was relieved to see that I had moved into such a nice place."

"I can see that. It must be hard for your grandmother to keep Ranger's place a secret."

"I'm sure she is bursting with the knowledge, but that is her problem. My mother is just glad that I was able to divert her from applying to the porn shop. She had been intending upon applying yesterday until she had found out about my lunch invitation."

"Don't send her to the bonds office", said Connie.

"I won't purposely send her to the bonds office", I said, "but I wouldn't be surprised if you find her application in the mail. Grandma loves the excitement of my life and is attracted to the shooting and explosions. She is bored at home. I guess there haven't been any good viewings at the funeral home recently." My grandmother was more of a professional mourner. She attended viewings two or three times per week, whether she knew the deceased or not. She went for the cookies, she went for the gossip, and she went for the potential of seeing the deceased in an open casket. Since she didn't believe it was fair for her to get all dressed up to see a closed casket, she would often try to pry the lid open to take a little peek. This caused all sorts of upset at the funeral home, and she had been evicted from the funeral home many times. I think the funeral home directors would like to ban her from the home entirely, but because she was elderly they were afraid to take the chance that she would die during her period of suspension. The last thing that the funeral home directors would want to do was to upset potential customers. But while they couldn't ban her presence, they could deny her cookies. I personally thought banning her ability to eat the cookies would make more of an impact. If my grandmother had been banned in person, she would just dress in a disguise and go anyway.

"It has to be hard to be elderly and bored", said Lula. "I would hate being bored. I'm not a professional mourner like your grandmother, but I am interested in what is happening in other people's lives, and if I had to go to a funeral to find that out, I would likely do so. It has to suck getting old."

"I know", I said. "I have a lot of sympathy for my grandmother. I know she finds it hard. Her psyche is young but her body is old. She'll never be the sort of person who is content sitting at home and knitting clothing for the grandkids."

"I never had a grandmother that knew how to knit either", said Lula. "My grandmother could make a mean batch of pot brownies though."

"Your grandmother made pot brownies?"

"Yeah. It was the best afterschool snack ever. She didn't live much past when I was five though."

"You were eating pot brownies at five?"

"I always ate pot brownies. Apparently I was happier when I was eating them and easier to manage. That was the beginning of me becoming a big, beautiful woman. I ate a lot around my grandmother, and my grandmother practically raised me until she died. Then I went back to living with my mother."

"Did you miss your grandmother?" said Connie.

Lula smiled sadly. "Hell, yeah. She was the best thing that happened to me. She cared about me, unlike my mother, and she always gave me a place to go. She listened to me and gave me hugs when I was upset. I still miss her, and she's been gone for twenty-five years."

"You would have been a cute kid."

"I practically lived with my grandma from the age of two to the age of five. My grandmother didn't even know about me until I was two. My mother brought me home to see my grandmother, and apparently my grandmother was shocked. She took over my care, and my mother would come home periodically to see me whenever she remembered that she had a child. She was home with me when my grandmother died, and that's why I was never taken in by the authorities."

"Do you wish you were? After all, it might have been better if you had been in foster care", I said.

"It probably would have been better. However, my mother always made sure I had a roof over my head. There often wasn't money for food, but there was always a roof over our heads. My mother needed to have a place where she could bring men back to raise money. I became adept at working the food bank lines, and knowing what restaurants threw out the best food. I bought clothes at thrift shops. It was a difficult childhood, I think, but I survived." She shrugged. "It was a natural shift for me to become a 'ho. It was the fastest way that I could earn money so that I could pay for things like food. I'd had my share of dumpster diving to support myself, and I didn't want to do that no more. But now I have a real job and although paying taxes isn't fun, I'm still proud to have a job where I pay taxes. I have a Social Security number. I have an apartment in a good area of town. I have my Firebird. My grandmother would be proud of me."

"I'm sure your mother would be proud of you as well", said Connie.

"It would be lucky if my mother even remembered that she had a daughter", said Lula. "There were times when I was living with her that she would come out of her room with her john and ask me who I was."

Suddenly, having a grandmother who shot my hamster didn't seem so bad. At least my grandmother knew who I was.

Lula looked down at her plate. "Did you say there was chocolate cake for dessert?"

"Homemade. It's not even from a box", I said. "Ella made it this morning for us."

"In that case", said Lula with a smile, "I don't think I'll have sixths of anything. I may be a big, beautiful woman but I don't want to get fat."

"I brought a couple of files for people who skipped court yesterday", said Connie. "Vinnie had been so happy that everyone was showing up to court, and then we had a couple bounce yesterday."

"Is Vinnie having a coronary again?"

Connie laughed. "Yeah, he is. He gets so excited over outstanding bonds. The people that have skipped don't seem like very bright lights. One was a person who literally stole a house. The house was being moved from one location to another, and when the truck pulling the house was left unattended a kid got in the truck and took it for a joyride. It was easy for the police to find him. When they set up a chase, the kid drove through an underpass and the house got stuck. The police caught the kid shortly afterwards. It's a low bond."

"Why's that a low bond?" said Lula. "A house is valuable. I would think that stealing a whole house should be worth a high bond."

"Yeah, but the chances of it happening again are slight", said Connie.

I took the empty plates and dirty cutlery off the table and put away the leftover food. Then I carried over some bread and butter plates, a knife, a lifter, a spoon, and the black forest cake that Ella had made for us. I sighed in happiness. I loved chocolate cake and I loved cherries, and together they were awesome. Even better, it had whipped cream on it. It was healthy. Cherries were, after all, a fruit, and the whipped cream was a dairy product. I would argue, actually, that black forest cake was a health food.

"Oh, yeah, baby", said Lula. "That looks like pure happy food."

"Better than the Tasty Pastry", I said. I cut into the cake into quarters and distributed pieces onto three plates. It was lucky that the cake was small. Knowing Ella, she had made two cakes – one for us and one for her and her husband. Luis liked cake just as much as I did, and Ella frequently made a cake and split it in two so that I had some. Of course, even if the cake had been large I might have cut it into quarters as well. Ella's cake would be worth the resulting stomach ache.

"Do you eat like this normally?" asked Lula as I handed her a piece of cake.

"Ranger stocks a break room 24/7 for his staff that people are allowed to go and get food from. Meals are stocked for two-hour windows at meal times, and snacks are available at all other times. Ella makes us breakfast and brings it up to us. We eat lunch in the break room, and we usually eat dinner in the apartment. Often our dinner is the same thing that the Rangeman staff is eating, but at times Ella has been known to cook special things just for us as well. Like our lunch today, Ella's food is awesome."

"So is Ella like a chef then?" said Connie.

"She's like a mother. She cleans Ranger's apartment and does our laundry, and she cooks for the entire staff. She's a really nice person, and she works hard for a living. She only had one child, and he was in the army. He died overseas, and Ella has adopted the Rangeman staff as her substitute children. She has a lot of love to give. She calls the staff her 'boys'. I will periodically join her for a cup of tea and a chat while she is cooking dinner for everybody."

"How does she get all the food cooked at the same time?" asked Lula.

"She has two ovens, and she's very coordinated as to what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. She has two refrigerators and two freezers, and she has groceries delivered every day. She also buys some things already prepared. For example, she buys broccoli florets rather than straight broccoli, baby tomatoes rather than full tomatoes, and baby carrots rather than full carrots, and she tries to buy things that are already washed. She takes as many shortcuts as she can while still maintaining food quality."

"She must have a large kitchen."

"Yes, she does. Her apartment is under Ranger's, and her kitchen is where Ranger's kitchen and dining room are. Her dining room and living room are where Ranger's living room is, and her master suite is actually a master suite and a guest bedroom. The footprint is the same but the configuration is slightly different."

"What are the efficiency apartments like?"

"There are ten to a floor. They are small, and are one-room studios with private bathrooms and queen-sized beds. They are nice. The first time I stayed here Ranger tried to evict me into one of his efficiency apartments."

"What happened?"

"I liked Ranger's apartment better."