TONY'S ANGELS: Chapter Two

"What are you looking at?" he growled down at his three-pack of identical five-year-olds on the floor, with Riley situated smack in the middle of their Barbie metropolis of dream houses, beachfront getaways, recording studios, clothing trunks, sportscars, and teeny plastic high-heeled shoes as far as the eye could see.

"You, pork chop head!" Nalda squealed, collapsing in a heap of laughter over her own uproarious humor, her sisters quick to join in the hilarity, one more incapacitated with sidesplitting laughter than the other in response to their father's sneering reaction.

"Don't make me shoot you," he facetiously gave them fair warning in a low, stern voice, fishing under Riley's bed pillow and coming up a with a frilly white nightgown adorned with graphics of the Eiffel Tower and grinning rabbits in Parisian berets.

"You're not allowed! Mommy said!" Georgia leapt to her knees and promptly made legal mincemeat of his threat.

"Yeah, well..." he allowed his voice to trail off, as if the legalities were still debatable until such time as Congress rendered a formal vote on the matter. "Which one of you is the three-year-old," he pretended to forget.

"Me, Daddy!" Riley shrieked the way three-year-olds always do, wholly incapable of containing their massive excitement upon realizing that they actually know the answer to something.

"Over here, woman," he muttered, catching her tiny body as she hurled it at him. "Did you and Mrs. Sanchez get everything on the list today?" he asked, standing her on the bed and fumbling to drag her dress over her head without taking her head along with it.

"Yeth," Riley said, quickly glancing at her sisters to see how many were seething with jealousy, since she was the only one Mrs. Sanchez ever took along to the supermarket. Little did she know it was only to give Michelle some uninterrupted time to catalogue the previous day's field status reports: an insignificant, unchallenging, unrewarding level-one task, but which she insisted upon doing anyway, just to keep a hand in things while out on leave.

"Umm… Daddy, can I be, umm… Daddy?… Umm, can I be a… umm…"

"Take your time, baby," he said in a soft voice, trying to figure out whether the three little buttons indicated the front or the back of the nightgown.

"She wants to be a hamburger maker when she grows up," Nalda, the pack leader, gazed up from the floor and translated.

"A what?" he asked over his shoulder, scrunching his face in confusion.

"At the drive-thru, Daddy. She likes the hat that the lady wears," Georgia, the pack's communications liaison, clarified.

He turned back to Riley, who stood anxiously awaiting his decision with bated breath.

"No," he said, immediately wincing from the subsequent stab of pain to his heart as her huge, expressive eyes instantly welled up with bitter disappointment, her lips falling into a pout that never failed to work him over, like Kryptonite on Superman. "I'll get ya a hat, but you're not working in some hamburger joint, y'hear? Your grandmother would have a stroke…"

"I'm gonna be an agent, like Mommy," Nalda proudly announced, her two identical sisters instantly agreeing to become agents, as well.

"No, you're not," he grumbled under his breath.

"But Mommy said we can be anything we want!" Nalda immediately flew into a high-pitched whine, chillingly similar in tone and tenor to his own.

"Yeah, well… your mother's been known to be wrong every decade or so," he replied, dragging Riley's arms through the billowy sleeves, then hunching in to glare at the tiny pink rabbit buttons on the nightgown's bib, wondering why the hell manufacturers made them so infinitesimally small when they knew that the parent would be doing the buttoning, not the kid.

"You never let us do anything," Nalda instantly broke into tears, leaping up from the floor and throwing herself facedown on the adjourning twin bed.

"I let ya go to the hardware store with me last Saturday, didn't I?" he casually challenged her veracity.

"You made us go!" Georgia leapt to her feet and argued in her sister's defense, sniffling back tears of solidarity as she threw herself onto the bed in equally high-drama mode.

He snickered to himself. He had taken them along, as he always did any chance he could get, to allow Michelle some much needed alone-time while Riley was down for her nap. But he'd also done it for himself, privately loving and seizing any opportunity to show them off to the world. They were small for their age, dainty and fragile, and utterly drop-dead beautiful, with soft little voices, soulful Bambi eyes, porcelain skin, and strawberry ringlets, just like the picture he kept in his wallet of Michelle when she was around their age.

Knowing the pride and enjoyment he got from parading them around town, Michelle would always put them in one of the sets of identical sundresses that his Mom was forever purchasing by the boatload, replete with fully coordinated head-to-toe accoutrements, from matching sunhats with flowy streamers to anklets trimmed in tatted lace.

Women on the street never failed to stop and gush at the sight of them holding each other's hands as they trailed along behind him, in single file, like a row ducklings. Guys in the hardware store invariably stepped aside in awe, bowing to his omnipotent baby-producing powers. Little did they know — nor did he ever plan to reveal — that his triplets were actually the product of fertility drugs. Following the loss of their first baby, Michelle had turned to drug therapy, having successfully convinced herself that it wasn't in the cards for her to ever conceive again after they'd tried for months on end, to no avail.

Since both of them had been deemed physically healthy and perfectly able, Tony had been certain at the time that psychosomatics was at the heart of the problem: vestiges of the crippling guilt Michelle had suffered when an on-the-spot, snap decision she'd made had resulted in saving the lives of two field agents, but at the tragic expense of their unborn child.

Tony, though wary and reluctant, had ultimately agreed to go along with the fertility drug concept, but only after Dr. Diez had assured him, hand-to-God, that the chance of multiple births resulting from the particular drug Michelle would be taking was surprisingly lower than Tony had thought: only about twelve percent over and above the population's normal occurrence of multiples.

Nine months later he was the father of triplets, in stark contrast to Diez's professional crackerjack prediction and reassuring assertions; plus, not just any ol' run-of-the-mill triplets, but identical ones, which was such a rarity that a gaggle of local reporters had hounded him for a solid week before finally moving on to cover the training regimen of the 300something-pound guy who'd agreed to represent the community in Coney Island's historic hotdog-eating contest that year.

"You're not gonna be agents and that's final," he calmly, but sternly, informed them, the mere thought of their lives in danger enough to make him physically ill. "I already told ya, you're gonna be nuns…"

"But I don't wanna be a nun!" Nalda wailed into her flowery comforter.

"You're all gonna be nuns, so get used to it," he laid down the law in a slightly firmer voice, damned if some hormone-crazed Gerald-esque freak was ever going to lay paws on any one of them; at least not as long as he still had a breath of life in him, and a handgun permit.

"Does I have to be, umm… Daddy, does I have to be a… umm…?" Riley sputtered with a wide-eyed, worried expression, bearing such a striking resemblance to himself sometimes that he could see why Michelle had always referred to her as his female clone from the first second she'd laid eyes on her.

"'Do I,'" he gently mumbled a correction. "'Do I have to be'…"

"Do I?" she asked again with deepening concern, having no idea what nuns did for a living, but hoping they got to do it in a hat.

"You're gonna be a calculus theorist," he informed her, quickly adding "That's a nun who's good with numbers, like you," upon noticing a wave of confusion wash across her face.

Her lower lip began to quiver as she peered over at her three sniffling sisters, whose weeping suggested that nunhood might not be half the fun that her father was making it out to be.

"Did I mention that nuns can fly?" he quickly injected, hoping to inspire a little enthusiasm for their future vocation. "Didn't anybody watch that DVD I went to the trouble of ordering for ya?"

"Mommy said no, 'cause it's too sexy," Georgia, the pack's communications liaison, pouted.

"The Flying Nun?" he double-checked in disbelief, glancing over his shoulder and staring at her like she had two heads, trying to imagine what could possibly be considered sexy — much less too sexy — about a nun in a head-to-toe habit with only two hands and a face exposed. But he decided to ask Michelle about it later, figuring it safer than potentially becoming ensnared in a discussion about sex, of all things, with four sets of innocent, angelic eyes fixed upon him, awaiting answers to an inevitable nonstop barrage of harrowing follow-up questions. He could just see it.

"But nuns can't go ondates!" Nalda continued to sob, presently only midway through her Ken: What a Doll! book, but with her heart already set on finding her ultimate dream date, hopefully in kindergarten where she and her sisters were headed in only a matter of weeks.

"There's not gonna be any dating," he grumbled, giving up on the buttons and fishing through the top drawer of Riley's nightstand in search of a duck-like diaper pin he'd stabbed himself with about a week ago.

"Mommy said we can go on dates when we get as old as Barbie," Georgia was quick to mention, which was fine as far as he was concerned, considering Barbie was in her late-40somethings, unbeknownst to the brooding brood.

"There'll be no dating while I'm still alive. Subject closed," he formally ended the conversation, a disturbing vision suddenly crossing his mind of the three of them in their teens, murdering him in his sleep some night.

"I'm telling Mommy!" Georgia, who also moonlighted as the pack's informant, declared on her way to the door.

"No, you're getting changed… all of ya," he ordered over his shoulder, laying Riley down on the bed to remove her shoes and socks, pausing to frown at the half-dozen partially melted chocolate chips that fell from the cuffs of her socks, which he promptly disposed of by shoving into his mouth. "Hurry it up, too. I'm hungry…" he added, knowing there wasn't a chance in hell he was going to be fed until the entire tribe was seated at the table, despite the girls having already had dinner two hours ago. But Michelle always gave them some sort of dessert-type thing while the two of them had dinner together, a nightly ritual that she was adamant about adhering to after having read about the healthy psychological affects of a daily sit-down gathering and discussion, with all family members in attendance. It was also an excellent way of ensuring that he got himself home no later than 7:00, knowing from firsthand experience, herself, how easy it was to slip into a pattern of continuously staying late at the office, catching up on work that would always somehow multiply itself by the following morning.

"But it's still early!" Nalda complained, rising to her feet anyway, knowing the limits to which she could push him before finding herself in actual trouble.

Although pouting, sniffling, and threatening to run away and live in Malibu with Barbie and Ken, the gruesome threesome nevertheless obediently dragged themselves across the room and into their bathroom, one of them — Nalda, no doubt — shutting the door with a little too much force for the old man's liking.

"Hey!" he turned his head and sternly called out.

"Sorry, Daddy," Laura, the pack's public relations spokesperson, creaked the door open and apologized in that same soft, delicate voice they all shared.

"That's better," he firmly stated, chuckling to himself as a hushed hale of squealy giggles immediately emanated from behind the door the second Laura carefully re-closed it.

"Don't take forever in there," he called out a warning.

"Don't take forever," Riley promptly backed him up, just as loudly and dictatorially.

He grinned at her, approvingly. She grinned back, leaning in to rub noses with him, the way the Eskimos did in the library book they had read the other night.

"Were you good for your mother today?" he asked her again, forgetting he had already covered that ground.

"Yeth," she nodded, vigorously rotating her legs, as if running a hundred miles per hour, as he lifted her up from the bed, then sat himself down with her on his lap.

"Where are those rabbit things your grandmother sent ya," he muttered, twisting his body into an uncomfortable sideways lean to fish around beneath the dust ruffle for the nightgown's matching slippers. Coming up empty, he placed Riley on her feet and told her to look under the bed, grinning as three-quarters of her tiny body disappeared beneath the dust ruffle, reemerging a moment later with two slippers in hand and waves of static-electrified hair hovering above her dark curls.

"I don't know what I'd do without you, woman," he said, replacing her on his lap and proceeding to the final slippers-putting-on stage of production.

"Who's the handsomest man on the block?" he quizzed her, cradling her in the crook of his arm, like a bag of groceries, as he crossed over to the girls' bathroom door.

"Yooooouuuu are, Daddy," Riley cooed out a soft, musical giggle, patting his chest as if to ease him of an obvious insecurity he had about his looks.

"You're so smart," he grinned like a schoolboy in love, rapping a knuckle against the bathroom door. "Open up," he called through the thick wood.

"We can't… We're naked," Nalda announced, followed by another triplicate gale of hand-muffled giggles and squeals.

"No, you're not. Open up," he repeated, hard-pressed to suppress a grin, thinking of all the countless times they'd pulled that excuse on him since reaching the age of modesty. It was the only form of true, raw power they held over him — the ability to decide whether they wished to allow him entry into a room — never once disheartened or deterred that their relentless attempts to abuse their power consistently blew up in their faces, just as this one was about to do.

"Y'want that lock permanently removed?" he bit his lip to keep from chuckling, having to wait no more than a beat before the door came flying open. "Get her washed up for dinner," he said, depositing Riley onto her feet and pushing her sleeves up to her elbows. "Laura?" he said, careful not to make eye contact with any of them, since he couldn't tell one triplet from another just by looking at them, and never wanted them to know it.

"Yes, Daddy?" Laura answered, taking the bait and stepping forward.

"I don't want her showing up at the table wringing wet again, y'hear? You're in charge," he stated, immediately identifying which of the two remaining triplets was Nalda from the deep frown that set into her brow, watching her sister excitedly assume the lead position, taking Riley by the hand and dutifully guiding her into the fold.

"I only have one kiss left, so who wants it," he inquired. "You…" he said, pointing to Nalda, who slowly and reluctantly dragged herself over to him, radiating all the enthusiasm of Marie Antoinette on her way to the gallows.

"C'mere," he said, lifting her effortlessly up from the floor and laying a lingering kiss against her milky, Michelle-like cheek.

"I want to be in charge," Nalda sulked, speaking in a low, wounded voice so nobody else but he could hear.

"I know, but it's Laura's turn. Everybody gets a turn to be the leader, remember?" he replied in an equally low, one-on-one tone while the others busied themselves with positioning Riley atop the step-stool in front of the sink. "No 'followers' in this family… remember?"

Nalda nodded halfheartedly, her head slowly sinking and coming to rest against his shoulder.

The rocking sensation of her father's body shifting slowly back and forth provided the comfort she needed in her moment of dejection. Fingertips rubbing gently and rhythmically against her spine soothed her to her soul. Through the ear pressed against his shoulder, she listened to the hollow, muffled sound of his words echoing inside his body, instructing her sisters to finish up and get themselves to the table in no more than ten minutes. From the way his body then shifted slightly forward, coupled with the sudden absence of his fingertips, she could tell he was holding his wrist out to Georgia now, about to assign her the awesome responsibility and esteemed privilege of keeping track of the time with his watch.

Nalda exhaled a deep sigh of resignation, patiently waiting for her soothing backrub to resume. She had wanted to be the one assigned to hold and safeguard the sacred timepiece.

"Daddy?" she whined softly, lifting her head and moving in close to his ear. "What am I in charge of?" she pouted low and one-on-one.

"You're in charge of your mother's secret," he said, just loudly enough to ensure that her sisters overheard.

Nalda's eyes instantly flashed with intense curiosity, like the switch of a certain inherited inner snoop mechanism had just been thrown.

"This is classified intel, lady. Your ears only, understood?" he double-checked before returning his voice to a lower, subject-appropriate clandestine level.

Her curls bounced around her head as she nodded with a newfound surge of excitement and enthusiasm, tightening her embrace around his neck and offering her ear to him, feeling about ready to faint from the sheer suspense of it all.

A loud gasp escaped her lungs and her eyes illuminated as he whispered the reason their mother wanted them in their nightgowns earlier than usual this evening.

"Not a word, y'hear?" he concluded with a full-voiced reminder, sealing the pact with a signatory peck against her cheek before lowering her featherweight body to the floor.

He grinned at the sight of the tiny nightgown billowing around her petite frame as she gracefully strutted up to the pack, her spirit rejuvenated, leadership position reinstated, and powerbase fully recharged and humming, like a four-turbo Bugatti Veyron at a leisurely cruise speed of 235.

"Ten minutes," he firmly reminded them on his way out the door, chuckling under his breath as her sisters clamored around her now, negotiating anything they had of value, including his wristwatch and Riley, in exchange for just one tiny little hint.