Technically, Janie explained, Dan was in charge of personal security for Quinn’s company. However, the man apparently enjoyed spending time in the field. Part of me wondered if he just liked spending time around us.
“Hello, Dan.”
“Hey, Dr. Fielding.” When Dan smiled his mouth barely moved, but his brown eyes danced like strippers. He was wearing the usual—a black suit, white shirt, black tie. The man also had scary-looking neck tattoos that swirled above the collar of his dress shirt. He was about six feet, but no taller, though he had the shoulders of a linebacker.
“Are you going to let me in?”
His pole-dancing eyes surveyed me as he stepped to the side. “Sure.”
I brushed passed him and unzipped my coat. “Has that guy been back? Has he tried to bother Marie?”
I noted that his eyes turned sober. “No. No sign of LP.” I liked his accent—thick South Bostonian.
“LP?”
“That’s what the team calls him.”
“What does LP stand for?” I pulled my knitting satchel from my bag.
“Little Prick.”
I smirked. “Nice. I approve.”
He winked at me. “I knew you would.”
“Do you need anything? Water? Coffee? Tea?”
He shook his head and pulled his phone from his pants pocket and waved me forward. “Nah. I’m good. Go have fun with the girls.”
His attention was now squarely focused on his phone.
I turned toward the living room—which was basically the only room—and left him to his messages.
Dan was, in a word, adorable. He reminded me of a burly, tattooed teddy bear.
Like Alex, he was not my typical type. Regardless, I almost asked him out while he was guarding Elizabeth. Before I could make up my mind to do so, I’d witnessed him watching Kat with all the intensity of a cat studying a mouse it’s about to eat. She was completely oblivious, because the poor girl—in addition to being quiet and shy and introverted—also had self-worth issues.
I strolled down the short hall and wrestled with my desire to interfere, wondered if I could finagle a situation where they were thrown together—preferably naked. Maybe I could trap them in a restaurant freezer where they had to hold each other for warmth.
The idea had merit, and I was sure Ashley would help if asked.
Everyone was snugly situated in Marie’s tiny studio apartment. She never had enough chairs, so a few ladies were happily situated on the ground and raised their wine glasses in greeting at my arrival.
Tonight the ‘everyone’ did not include Elizabeth’s husband, Nico. He’d started crocheting when they’d begun dancing around each other last spring and would—from time to time—join us on nights when we weren’t in public places.
In addition to being Italian man-candy, madly in love with Elizabeth, and adorable, Nico was an irreverent comedian with his own talk show on Comedy Central. He’d just finished moving the entire operation from New York to Chicago, and the paparazzi still liked to harass him in public.
“Oh, look! She finally made it.” Ashley stood to give me a hug, even though I’d seen her for coffee earlier that morning. “Where have you been?”
“Sorry I’m late. I got caught jaywalking and had to give the policeman a hand job or pay a seventy-five dollar fine.”
Kat snorted some of her wine back into her glass and coughed. I shook my head at her foolishness. “When will you ever learn not to drink when I’m talking?”
Marie also pulled me into a hug. “That sounds like fun. But what were you really doing, and what do you want to drink?”
“I was reviewing grant proposals; lost track of time. And I’ll take a hot toddy, thank you.”
That was only partially true. I had lost track of time, but it wasn’t because of the grant proposals. I’d been thinking about Alex, pondering Agent Bell’s visit, and resisting the urge to research bitcoins.
“Oh. Grant proposals. Sounds thrilling.” Ashley deadpanned, waving my words away, then she pinned me with a pointed glare. “Are you wearing one of your fancy T-shirts?”
I sighed. “Sadly, no. I didn’t get a chance to change.”
“I saw one that I want to get for your husband.” Ashley smiled, splitting her attention between her knitting and me.
I smirked and shook my head. My knitting group loved my occasion T-shirts so much they’d started buying similar shirts for my future, theoretical, yet-to-be-named husband.
“Oh, what does it say?” Elizabeth asked.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” Ashley said while administering an eyebrow wag in my general direction.
I was still hovering at the small entrance to the space, trying to find an open spot.
“Come sit next to me.” Elizabeth patted the spot next to her on the small love seat and scootched over. “Without Nico here, I’m missing my furnace.”
I liked knit nights at Marie’s place, especially during the winter, because we were forced to cuddle.
I didn’t want to freak out my friends, but I was a cuddling sort of person. I loved petting and hugging and kissing. If I felt affection for a person, I wanted to always be close—always touching. I was aware that this tendency of mine could feel suffocating to others—in fact, boyfriend number two called my constant desire for physical contact needy and smothering and he’d listed it as one of the top three reasons for our incompatibility.
Thus, I welcomed the warm fuzzies that came from being forced by circumstance to squeeze next to Elizabeth on the loveseat, and I was happily engulfed in her softness.
The conversation picked up where it obviously had left off, interrupted by my arrival. Janie was discussing quantitative easing.
“Wait, explain what it is again? All I know is that it’s not putting positive ease into a knit sweater.”
“No. Quantitative easing is a monetary policy that central banks use to help grow the economy, but it’s much disputed, and universally recognized to be quite unconventional. Instead of buying and selling government bonds to maintain interbank interest rates at a specific value, the central banks….”
Honestly, by this point, I had already tuned her out. But the conversation topic—money—was timely. Maybe it’s fate, I admitted inwardly.
I waited until Janie paused to take deep breath, and then I blithely asked. “Janie, what are bitcoins?”
She blinked at me, as though startled by the question. “Bitcoins? Oh, bitcoins are….”
“Why do you ask?” Fiona interrupted I faced her and found her frowning. Her usually merry eyes were cautious.
I shrugged. “No reason. I overheard someone today say it.”
“In reference to what?” Fiona set her knitting on her lap.
I studied her. “What’s wrong? Are bitcoins bad?”
Janie interceded. “No. They’re not bad. They’re actually quite good.”
“Depends on who you ask,” Fiona muttered, and gave me one last searching stare before she returned her attention to her knitting.
“Well, I like them because they’re finite,” Janie said with her usual logic. “Meaning, there can be only so many of them. Unlike a government controlled currency, you can’t just print more or make more. And, I also like them because they’re based on mathematics.”
Of course Janie would like anything based on mathematics.
I shook my head. “But, what are they? Start from the beginning.”
“Can I have one? I mean, can I buy one?” Marie asked, her face clearly confused.
Janie nodded. “Yes. Anyone can buy a bitcoin. In fact, everyone can see who owns which bitcoin or what percentage of a bitcoin. You don’t have to buy an entire bitcoin; you can buy part of one if you want.”
“Who owns these things?” Elizabeth glanced up from her work in progress.
“All sorts of people.” Janie shrugged. “I actually own a few. I loved the idea when I learned about it, when they first came out. So I bought some in order to support the idea.”
“Wait, let’s go back to what you said before. What do you mean, everyone can see who owns which bitcoin? How can they see it?” Marie was flexing her inner journalist muscle.
“In the simplest terms, a log of all bitcoins and their owners is maintained on a public website—of sorts—called the blockchain.”
“So people see that Janie Morris owns bitcoins?” Marie pressed.
Janie shook her head. “No. My name isn’t there, my unique bitcoin account number is. I have a log-in to the blockchain; think of it like my bitcoin bank account number. It’s public, but there is also a certain anonymity.”
“How do you spend them?” Ashley asked.
“Lots of businesses take them, especially online, and even certain Vegas Hotels. In fact, PayPal is looking at adding the ability to trade in bitcoins. Of course, a lot of people use them as an investment. They’ve increased in value so much.”
“Who owns the website? Who controls the blockchain?” Kat asked.
“No one owns it. It’s hard to explain.” Janie appeared to be frustrated with herself. It was clear she wanted to give us good answers in terms we would understand. I had to give her credit because, typically, she spoke in technical terms, and we were all left in the dust. “You, or anyone, can help support the running of the blockchain with your own computing power.”