Eden's Bodyguard: A short story by David Bareford

It's not like I have to explain who Eden is. After four gold records, one double-platinum, a Grammy, and that movie with Tom Cruise, she's so well known she stopped using her last name five years back. Every blink of her baby blues is tracked by tabloids, biz mags, E-channels, and hundreds of web sites. Any American not living under a rock can recognize her face on sight…try saying that about the Vice-President or the Secretary of State. 

She's loaded, too. Private chauffeur, mansion in Beverly Hills, the works. Money attracts people the way a stink does flies, although most of them just buzz around begging for autographs or gushing about how her music changed their lives. Every so often, there's a wasp among those dungflies, though, and I step in like a two-legged can of Raid. I'm Eden's bodyguard. 

So why I am parked in a broken-down beater across the street from her mansion at five-thirty in the morning? Shouldn't I stand outside her bedroom door with sunglasses and a Glock, maybe wearing one of those earpieces that spiral into my gray tailored suit? Grow up, for Chrissake. This isn't a James Bond movie. I'm a professional. I stay close but apart, like her guardian angel. When I'm out here, those paparazzi pukes don't notice me and splash my picture across the supermarket rags. When I'm out here, the wackos think Eden's unguarded and they get careless, which makes them easy to spot. And to deal with. 

Case in point: that bum over there. 

He dumpster-dives down the alley behind her compound, pushing a shopping cart loaded four feet high with bulging garbage sacks and topped with an American flag tacked on a yardstick. Her trash bin should be locked, but he's lifting the lid. Her dumbass Cuban maid must've left the chain off again. As he peeks inside, the bum goes up on tiptoe to get a better look, and I notice his shoes: black leather Versace.