Stalker Problems - Chapter 49 - DODO
“He’ll be here,” she said.
“But what if dodo got him!”
“Ash. We were the ones who bugged his phone. Not dodo. He’s not in any danger.”
Right. I kept forgetting about that. Or maybe it was just easier to be worried about him disappearing than to focus on the fact that he couldn’t be with me because of some other girl he’d been with.
I hated her and her stupid dad. If that was even what was happening.
It was just a theory - albeit a more realistic theory than Tanner being a vampire.
And then there was still the mystery of how he made my secret closet.
Chastity and I had inspected it more thoroughly last night.
Or at least we’d tried to. It had quickly devolved into Chastity wanting to try on more of the clothes.
She’d somehow convinced me that I should wear lingerie under my clothes at all times in case I needed to perform an impromptu seduction.
Luckily Odegaard lingerie was super comfortable.
Despite all the lace and straps, it was basically like walking around in athleisurewear. And it made me feel sexy as hell.
Except when my man was missing! Gah! Where is he?!
“Take a deep breath,” said Chastity. “And maybe try texting him?”
“And say what? ‘Did dodo murder you?’ ” I never should have hacked his phone. I was no good at keeping secrets. I was seconds away from confessing everything.
“Uh, no. Just ask him something about work. Literally anything except for what you just said.”
“Oh, right.” Duh. I got out my phone and typed out a text:
Me: Should I bring anything special to our meeting at the Manhattan Menagerie?
It was kind of a dumb question, but it wasn’t the worst. I hit send.
No reply. No reply. No reply. “Oh my God he’s definitely dead,” I said.
“You sent the text four seconds ago. Take a deep breath.”
For some reason I did the opposite and started holding my breath. At least ten more excruciating seconds passed. And then my phone dinged. Ahhhh!
Tanner: Nope.
Nope? That’s ALL he has to say?
Me : Nope?! That’s all you can say? I’ve thought you were dead all morning!
I was about to hit send when another message came.
Tanner : Actually, on second thought…maybe bring an umbrella. I’ve heard you can have a pretty shitty time in the aviary if you forget one.
Tanner : To clarify, I meant that the birds are gonna shit on us.
Me: Wow, nice dad joke.
Me: Speaking of dads…I bet dads hate you.
I immediately regretted hitting send on that last one. In my head it felt like the perfect opportunity to try to find out if he’d pissed off some girl’s dad. But in reality it was an absolutely terrible segue. And honestly, I bet most dads loved him. He was a very charming guy.
Tanner : They do hate me. But only because I steal their jokes.
Me: And their daughters?
Tanner : What? Is your dad mad that you work for me? I know he would have preferred you go into accounting, but that wouldn’t have been a good fit. You were born for marketing. Anyway, gotta go. I’ll have a car pick you up at 5 for our meeting at the menagerie.
He was definitely pretending to be innocent with the whole daughter’s thing.
But there was no time to dwell on that. I’d been neglecting my work all morning, and there was SO MUCH to do.
Once Spaceboy signed on, we’d been getting a ton of invitation requests from influencers.
Which was exactly what we wanted. But it was too many.
So I had to go through and vet each one.
Less than 100K followers? Better luck next time.
Stupid name? No invite for you . Ugly pictures? Byyyye .
More importantly, though...we still didn’t have a caterer. Well…kind of. Tanner had found a replacement caterer for hors d'oeuvres, but apparently their desserts tasted like sand. So we were still in need of a good pastry chef.
No pastry chef worth our time would deign to return one of my calls, but they would likely reply to Tanner. So my job was to make a list of my top 3, and then he’d make the calls.
It took me all of ten seconds to make my list. At the very top was Chef Santiago.
He had a restaurant in the city, but he also ran one of the most successful YouTube cooking channels.
Without Chef Santiago’s videos, I never would have been able to help Joe save his family’s sugarcakes business. He was my cooking idol.
“Do you really think I should put Santiago’s on the list?” I asked Chastity. “I feel like Tanner wanted a list of bakeries rather than restaurants with 3 freaking Michelin stars. What are the odds that he’d be able to fit us in so late? Even just for dessert?”
“Almost zero,” replied Chastity. “But those were also our odds of getting Spaceboy to play at the party, and Tanner made that happen. So I say go for it. You need to get used to Tanner making all of your wildest dreams come true.”
“Yeah. When he’s not too busy banging people’s daughters.”
“Would you prefer he bang people’s sons?”
“No!” Gross!
“Then he doesn’t really have many options…”
“Sure he does. He could bang me.”
“You’re a daughter.”
“Yeah, but as long he doesn’t break my heart or hump and dump, I’m sure my dad wouldn’t mind.” Ew. I hated everything about that. Why had I said that?
“I don’t know. I could see your dad getting jealous when you start calling Tanner Daddy.”
“Oh God. I’m gonna be sick.” I pretended to throw up in a trashcan.
Then I spent the rest of my day vetting influencers.
I kept hoping that Sierra would be one of the applicants.
It would have been so satisfying to send her an invitation to get her all excited and then tell her we sent it to her by mistake.
Or maybe I could invite her and then push her overboard…
Or better yet, we could rent a lion from the menagerie and then accidentally let it free on board.
The real trick of it would be convincing her to wear a necklace made of meat.
Alas, she hadn’t applied yet. So there would be no rejection and no maritime murder. But I could still try to rent a lion. Just in case. Will the menagerie even have a lion? I wasn’t sure. But it was time to find out.
The car picked me up at 5 o’clock sharp and took me a few short blocks to an old abandoned-looking warehouse. I was worried it wasn’t the right place until Tanner walked out the front door accompanied by a man in a ridiculous circus outfit and the twirliest mustache east of the Mississippi.
“Ash, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Claude. He’s been my animal guy for years.”
Claude bowed deeply as if he’d just made an elephant jump through a flaming hoop or something.
“Animal guy? How often do you need animals?”
“You’d be surprised. Like I always say - it’s not a party unless something ends up on a leash.”
“A truer saying has never been said,” agreed Claude. “If you two will just follow me, we can get started. What kind of animals are you looking for?”
“The bigger the better,” I said as we walked inside. Or…outside? Yup. We were definitely outside. It wasn’t a warehouse at all. It was like we’d gone into a little zoo. There were a few fences to separate the different enclosures, but no cages.
“Bigger the better, eh?” asked Claude. “Well, I’m afraid that Little Lucy here is already reserved for this Saturday.”
“Little Lucy?” I asked.
Claude whistled and an absolutely massive bear lumbered towards us.
I let out a little scream and Tanner stepped in front of me. Was he planning on fighting the bear for me? It sure seemed like it. My heart did a little flip.
“Aw, don’t be scared,” said Claude. “Little Lucy won’t hurt ‘ya. He’s a good boy. Aren’t you, Lucy?”
“Good… boy ?”
“Yup. Little Lucy here is six hundred pounds of pure Grizzly bear muscle. One of our most popular attractions.” Claude pulled a fish out of his pocket and tossed it to Little Lucy.
“How about something less likely to tear the face off of one of our guests?” suggested Tanner. “I was thinking we could get a few zebras and paint their white stripes to be fluorescent. Like DJ Spaceboy’s visor.”
“Heavens, boy,” said Claude. “You can’t paint a zebra! PETA would string me up by my nuts and get my merchandise sent to the zoo faster than you can say flaming lion manes.”
So maybe it is TheDodo.com that hates Tanner. They certainly wouldn’t appreciate him painting zebras. But again…that wasn’t an unforgivable act. Just an easily fixable faux pas. It had to be the daughter thing. And anyway…I was more fixated on the fact that Claude had just mentioned lions.
“Let’s pass on the zebras then,” I said. “They’re basically just striped horses anyway. #HorseFacts.” I lifted my hand for Claude to high-five me.
He did not.
I cleared my throat as Tanner tried to stifle a laugh. I didn’t know why I kept thinking everyone would understand my hashtags. Only Tanner did. “Do you have lions?” I asked.
“We do indeed.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how likely are they to maul someone wearing a meat necklace?”
“Eleven.” Claude’s eyes went to my chest.
“Hey. Eyes up here, buddy.”
“I wasn’t looking at your udders. I was checking to make sure you weren’t wearing a meat necklace. I’m one mauling away from getting shut down for good.”
Did he just refer to my breasts as udders?
“On that note,” said Tanner. “Let’s go ahead and rule out anything that’s likely to maul someone. Putting a lion on a yacht surrounded by plates of New York’s finest wagyu sliders is not a good idea.”
“What about a giraffe?” I suggested.
“On a yacht?” asked Tanner. “Please tell me you’ve seen The Hangover Part III .”
“Ah, right. Maybe a giraffe is a bad idea. I’m not sure Wineflix and Chill would be very happy if they were forever remembered as the idiots who decapitated a giraffe with the Brooklyn Bridge.”
I thought Tanner would laugh, but he was just staring off into the distance.
“Tanner?” I asked.
No response.
I pulled on his jacket. “Hey, Tanner. You okay?”
He jumped a little. “What? Oh. Yeah. I’m fine. I just thought I saw a uh…ostrich.”
“Where?” I looked where he was looking. There was definitely no ostrich.
“It must have flown away.”
“Mhm. Right. Except that’s not how ostriches work. Wanna tell me what’s really on your mind?”
“Just business stuff. I’ll handle it.”
“Anything I can help with?” asked Claude. “I know you’re here about your yacht party, but I can help with all your exotic animal needs. Nothing helps seal a big deal quite like the sight of a panda sitting in the corner of your conference room chewing on bamboo.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Tanner. “But let’s get back to the yacht party. We need something exotic but not too dangerous… And bonus points if there’s a clever tie-in to Spaceboy’s performance.”
“How about a dodo?” I suggested.
Tanner flinched at the word dodo. But he recovered quickly. “That would be quite the spectacle. But I haven’t seen one of those in like 200 years.”
“ You haven’t seen one in 200 years? Ah yes, I forgot about your time spent sailing the east African coast back in the 17 th century.”
Tanner laughed. “You know what I meant. They’ve been extinct for years. Now, how about Komodo dragons? Those are exotic.”
“I really like the idea of dodos ,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t know where to find any dodos? ” I kept putting more and more emphasis on the word each time I said it.
“Nope. If Claude here doesn’t have them, then no one does.”
“What about some other type of dodo? Like a dad who only has daughters?”
“What are you talking about?”
I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I know about the daughters, you pervert!”
Tanner looked at me like I was crazy. “What daughters? I’m so confused right now.”
“The ones you slept with.”
“Is she accusing you of sleeping with young girls?” asked Claude. “If so, then I’m afraid I won’t be able to lend you any animals this weekend.”
“Will you give us a moment please?” Tanner grabbed my arm and pulled me away from Claude. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I know all about DODO. An acronym for Dad of Daughters Only. So tell me what daughters you banged to get into so much trouble.”
“Wow. WOW.” Tanner took a deep breath. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Maybe start by telling me how many it was. It was three daughters, wasn’t it? Triplets, maybe? God, why are guys so obsessed with banging triplets?”
Tanner leaned in and lowered his voice. “Ash… I don’t know where you heard that word, but DODO doesn’t have anything to do with dads or daughters.”
“Then what is it?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, okay. But you have to lower your voice.”
“Why? Worried Little Lucy is going to hear about your perverted ways?”
“No. I’m worried that Claude is a DODO agent. Jesus, I’m worried everyone is a DODO agent. I even thought you were for a while there. Back when you were stalking me. And maybe a little after we first actually met.”
“You were stalking me!”
“Hmm…no. You were definitely stalking me. Anyway, back to DODO. Everything I’m about to say never leaves this menagerie, okay?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, so DODO…” started Tanner.
“Actually, I can’t quite promise that. I’d like to think I can keep it a secret, but I’m 100% going to tell Chastity everything. She’s already in too deep. It’s better to read her in than to have her keep investigating.”
“Okay, fine. But no one else. Not even your parents. Deal?”
I nodded.
Tanner pulled me farther away from Claude, deep into some sort of tunnel. “DODO is an ancient organization with the power to make me disappear in the blink of an eye. I’ve been running from them for years, but they’re always out there. Watching. Waiting for me to slip up.”
“So…DODO is the cartel that’s after you? Were cartels ancient organizations?”
“Not exactly, no. It’s not a cartel per se. It’s worse.”
Worse than a cartel? How many daughters had he banged? I shook away the thought. He’d told me that wasn’t what was happening right now. Hadn’t he? I needed to clarify this. “Wait, so you didn’t bang any daughters? Not even those hot triplets?”
“Really? That’s what you’re going to focus on? And what hot triplets are you talking about?”
“I don’t know! The ones you banged.”
“I didn’t bang any triplets.” He paused. “Well, actually, I kind of have. It really depends on your definition of bang.”
I stared at him.
“But that has nothing to do with DODO,” he added.
“So banging someone’s daughter isn’t what upset DODO?”
“No!” He paused again. Just like he had with the triplet question. “Well, actually…in a funny way, it kind of is. But not at all in the way you think.”
“Aha! So you did bang a daughter.” Gotcha, bitch!
“Literally every female is a daughter. Can we please stop wording it that way?”
“Maybe.” I stared at him some more, hoping he’d spill the rest of his secrets. I was so close to learning everything.
“Wait…” he frowned as he stared at me. “How do you know about DODO?”
Oh shit.