Man in the Middle

“Time to get some answers, Mr. Ayers,” he said, crossing his fingers and hoping this was a good move.

Tapping his foot, he counted to ten. “Don’t tell me nobody’s home. Come on, dammit, come on.”

A minute passed, and he rang the bell a second time. A few seconds later, he turned to retreat, disgusted with himself for having failed even this simple task. The wind picked up again. A few minutes earlier, his body had worked hard to produce enough perspiration to cool him down. Now, sweat turned cold, pasting his shirt to his skin. Involuntarily, he shook like a dog after a bath.

Peter, now tired of waiting, ducked back into the shadows. But the moment he did so, the door opened. Suddenly losing his nerve, he pressed his back against the wall, as if he hadn’t planned this meeting in the first place. From where he hid, deep in the brush, he couldn’t see the front door, nor could he be seen.

While he stood, as silently as a mute’s whisper, he came up with a hundred reasons to abandon his plan. Ayers wouldn’t help anyway, he speculated, or, worse, the attorney might turn on him. Or, maybe, he had overblown concerns and simply needed to go into therapy.

“Hello,” Kate said, wiping out Peter’s resolve to flee. “Is somebody there?”

Katie Ayers’ unexpected voice surprised him as much as snow in June. He froze. The door slammed shut before he could get any words through his lockjawed mouth. After a moment’s further hesitation, he stumbled forward, the branches splashing against his face, noisy and vicious. He tripped over a sprinkler head, just catching his balance after brushing against red bougainvillea twined up a dark column. He dragged forward and punched the doorbell hard enough to bow his pointer finger.

Please, please, don’t slam the door in my face. With the Ayers’ meeting a thousand miles removed from his consciousness, Peter watched the door open.

They stared. Kate, her hair damp from having just showered, looked as if she might flash a smile. The impulse must have soured in a split second because ice replaced fire in her eyes. Her lips turned down.

“I’m engaged,” were the first words either of them spoke.

Despite already knowing, the sentence pierced Peter like a poison dart, dispensing venom to his heart. “I know,” Peter said. “Your father told me. Congratulations.”

“You don’t sound like you mean it.”

“I don’t. I feel sick.”

“You have no right showing up like this.”

“I didn’t know you were . . .” Peter stood erect. He couldn’t steer his gaze from her face.

“Even if sleeping together didn’t mean anything to you, I thought we could at least be friends,” she said.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Leave.” She started to close the door.

Peter stuck a foot inside. “I need to talk to you.”

“How did you know I was here? Father hates you, so I know he didn’t tell you I was home.”

“Your father hates me?”

“He was right. Money did change you—or maybe you were always an ass.”

Peter recoiled. Hadn’t Jason Ayers gone to a great deal of bother to issue him a warning?

“Peter, what are you doing here?”

“I came to see your father.”

“Father? Why not just pick up the phone and call? Are you insane, or did something just pop into your head in the middle of a run?”

“I think I’m in trouble.”

“You think? How can you not know something as basic as that?”

“You tell me. Somebody, I think Morgan or one of her associates, bugged my clothing and wired my car and my condo. At least that’s what Agent Dawson says. My running shoe had a transmitter attached to it.”

“Okay, now that we’ve determined it’s insanity, keep talking. When you get to the part about aliens inhabiting bodies, I’ll call a good shrink I know.”

“Please, Kate. You don’t have to believe me—I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t—but don’t make fun of me. This is serious. I may not be a good boyfriend—or even a good run-of-the-mill friend—but this isn’t a joke.”

Kate pulled the door wide open. “Fine, Peter. I won’t make fun of you. And I’ll even listen for a while, at least until Father comes back. But when he does, I’ll let him take over. I’m sure he’ll be able to set the record straight and sort out whatever mess you think you’ve gotten yourself into.”

Peter mumbled a thank-you and stumbled in. Later that day, trying to visualize the home’s palatial interior, he would draw a blank. He didn’t notice the marble floor, the spiral staircase, the million-foot ceiling hovering over the entrance hallway, or the chandelier dripping crystal daggers and refracting light. A French provincial sofa and an inlaid mahogany sideboard could have been vegetable crates for all the notice he paid them. A mantel clock echoed off Spanish tile, but Peter’s thoughts drowned out the sound. He saw and heard nothing, or whatever he saw and heard never passed into long-term memory. Passionate Kate blanketed his senses, even overshadowing some of his fears.

“I did intend to call,” he said as he trailed her into the main part of the house. “I wanted to see you. I don’t have a good reason for not phoning. I don’t even have a made-up bad reason.” He restrained a desire to reach out and touch her. “I missed you.”

“You’ve missed me?” Kate violently spun around, driving an exclamation point to her incredulity. “We sleep together, though I engineered that. But then you say nice, sweet things, like all that blather about us seeing where our relationship goes. We exchange a couple of emails, then you stop writing. I call, invite you to some parties. You’re too busy with work. Okay, I think to myself, that happens. You still sound interested. But that’s only because you’re too much of a coward to tell me to butt-out—”

“No. That’s—”

“Then, I call. The phone might just as well have been a gun, put to my head. Bang. Then bang, bang, bang. I keep firing, only I’m not a good enough marksman to hit my teeny-tiny brain. I leave messages. You know how many messages?”

Peter didn’t make a move.

“No, of course you don’t. Ten. I left ten messages. At first I worried you’d been hurt. Then, foolishly, I asked myself: why would a nice guy, with manners and charm, who seemed to like me, not return a simple phone call? I didn’t have an answer then, and I don’t have an answer now. Maybe it’s because I was wrong, and you aren’t a nice guy. There. That’s my summation, Peter.”

“I’m a fool.”

“Guilty as charged,” she said, heading towards her father’s library. Peter followed.

Speaking to her back, he said, “When I heard you’d gotten engaged, it hit me. I didn’t realize how dumb I was.”

“Why are you trying to hurt me?”

“I’m not. And maybe you should marry this professor-book person. I’m in no position to offer an opinion. But I’ve learned one thing from all this.”

“And what’s that?” she asked.

“That sometimes the heart is the last to learn. I realize I’ve done something really, really stupid.”

Kate turned and her face softened, but for only a fraction of a fraction of a second. “Stop it, Peter. I don’t want to hear any of this. I’m going to marry a kind man.”

“I understand. I just wanted you to know I’m sorry.”

“Let’s skip my problems. Do you need an attorney?”

“You volunteering?”

“Maybe. Let’s hear.”

Peter hoped the reference to her “problems” meant she had second thoughts about marriage, and he filed the thought away. “I realize this sounds idiotic,” said Peter, “but your dad knows things that might help me understand how deep I’m in.”

For the next hour, Peter replayed events. He mentioned photos from the sports bar, the intimation that his mother’s death may not have been an accident, her letter to him, and the registered envelopes.

Kate fit her attorney cap over her emotions and pretended to be detached, interested in the plight of a potential client-in-need. She listened and then explained that “registered mail is the poor man’s copyright. The date of delivery and the seal prove that a document is original. If someone, after that date, claims a document as their