Man in the Middle (17 page)

“Katie. We’re friends. More than friends. Tell me.”

“Are we, Peter? Are we
more than friends
?” she asked with more than just hope in her voice.

Peter understood she had meant the expression differently than he had. “Yes, we are,” he said, praying he would not regret the white lie.

“I had a meeting with Father this evening.”

“I saw you leave his office. He told you something?” Peter dreaded what she would say next.

“Yes. A few things . . .” She stopped. Her chest heaved.

“You know about the affair between my mother and your father.”

“Yes.” She nodded.

Peter turned off the engine. The vapid air had cooled and now bordered on cold. The light from a street lamp cast Kate’s silhouette against a row of trees sashaying in the moonlight. The couple remained parked at the curb, along a cul-de-sac.

“Are you hurt by knowing? Are you upset I didn’t tell you?” he asked.

“A little hurt, but not upset about you keeping it from me.” For a moment, the car held a pre-storm calm. Kate broke the silence: “Peter?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Do you feel betrayed by your mother?”

“I’m not proud of what she did,” he said, carefully considering his words. “Mom was in deep grief when my father died. He had suffered for two years with stomach cancer. In his prime, Dad was over six feet tall, weighed one hundred ninety-five pounds, and was the strongest man I ever knew. I mean, he was a man’s man. All-American wide receiver in college, a sprinter, and personally courageous. For me, Paul Bunyan and George Washington all rolled into one. Then, just before he died, he became so weak I had to carry him to the bathroom to use the toilet. He weighed nothing.”

“I shouldn’t have asked,” she said.

“My father dreamed big dreams. He moved from business to business and failure to failure. Despite that, Mom wanted him to live forever, even if he’d been only a shell of the man she married. She reached out to your father, and I don’t blame anyone for their weaknesses—I’ve got enough failings of my own... So no, I don’t feel betrayed.”

“I don’t blame your mother,” Kate said. “But I do blame Father—he took advantage of a woman in need. I know what it’s like to be taken advantage of. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and my feelings for people never go away.”

Peter said nothing and listened to Kate’s deep breaths. A few moments later, she began again: “There’s something else. My father’s confession had nothing to do with feelings of shame.”

Peter gave a puzzled look.

“Father told me these things because . . .”

The bucket seats restricted him some, but Peter turned as much in her direction as he could. His right arm draped across the divide created by the stick shift. His hand rested on her left shoulder. He squeezed.

“I need you to explain something to me,” she said.

“I’ll try.”

“Why did you rent your mother’s house to someone you didn’t know, for essentially nothing?”

“That’s a strange question.”

“Please. I need to know.”

Peter paused in thought. “I had to—that’s the simple answer.”

“Why?” she asked.

“A compulsion brought on by the spirit of my mother. She was compassionate and would have wanted her belongings to benefit someone in need.”

“Is that how you feel?”

Peter sighed and looked out the front window towards the lights of a nearby high-rise hotel. “I’ll try to explain, even if I don’t know why you’re asking.”

“Thank you.”

“I guess at first I felt sorry for the man—who wouldn’t? He’s an African-American father, with four kids, little formal education, and less than no money. He answered my rental ad. He expected a job to come through and planned to use his salary to move into a better neighborhood. He’d have paid his entire income to move his family out of Southeast San Diego. The drugs, the gangs, the violence. Clairemont isn’t exactly La Jolla or Del Mar, but as middle class neighborhoods go these days, it’s a hell of a lot better than where he was.”

“He didn’t get the job?” Kate leaned into Peter.

Peter shook his head. “It devastated him . . . No, I take that back. I think it humiliated him. And I had other reasons. I thought about Drew and his family. His father took off before Drew turned six. His mom went on welfare and hated it. If not for a football scholarship, he’d have been another victim of ‘no-thank-you.’ A black man with no hope of escaping the neighborhood. Now he’s in medical school. He’ll save lives and make a difference.” On a nearby street, a siren wailed. Peter waited until the sounds faded before continuing. “Then, when I couldn’t get a job, I would have been in deep trouble without your father’s help. I told Mr. Jefferson—that’s my tenant—he and his family could live there for free, but he’s a proud man. Said he’d pay me a hundred a month and work on improving the property. In the first two weeks, he’s already made good on his promise. In between looking for jobs, he spends his time fixing and sprucing . . .” Peter felt he had failed to explain himself. “This is a long-winded way of saying Mr. Jefferson is a good man and deserved a break.”

“You are special, Peter.”

“Not really, but thanks for the kind words. Mind if I ask
you
something?”

The way she said “No, I don’t” came across as
maybe, maybe not
.

“Why did you need to know these things?”

“Something Father said. It doesn’t matter any more.”

“What?”

“He said you’d change. Turn into . . . never mind, Peter. Take me home.”

Peter could see her head moving in the fractured light. He understood she was still upset. “Of course. We can be at your apartment in ten minutes.”

“No. To your apartment.”

“I . . . I don’t think we’re ready—”

“I don’t care if you don’t love me,” she said. “And I won’t tell you I love
you
. Hold me. If you don’t feel like making love, don’t. Just hold me.”

“I—”

“Please.”

Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at Peter’s apartment. When they entered, they had to weave their way around packed boxes.

“I’m moving tomorrow—I already told you that, didn’t I?”

She nodded.

Just then, Henry came sauntering in. When he looked up and saw a stranger, he stopped and cocked his head.

“That’s the infamous old man Henry,” Peter announced.

“He doesn’t look so old. Come here, you handsome devil.”

Kate bent down on one knee and put her hand out. Without hesitation, Henry strolled forward. Kate greeted him with a palm down his back. She then took a finger and began to scratch behind Henry’s ear. He purred and plopped on his side.

“You’ve made a friend for life,” Peter said.

“Are you talking about you or the cat?” she asked, half-seriously.

“I meant the cat. Us? We’re already buddies.”

“I’m glad I got to see your apartment before your move. I like it.”

Peter took her hand. “You won’t once I give you the tour. Excuse us, Henry.”

“I may have been born an L. L. Beanite,” she said, “but I like modest digs. And this qualifies as modest.” In a surprise, she laughed.

Peter felt relief. Messy apartments and lazy cats were good medicine, he decided.

“Here,” he said, taking her hand. “Let me show you the most disgusting bathroom in the history of bathroomdom.” In a successful attempt to create an abstract nightmare, Peter’s landlord had selected orange floor tiles, a blue toilet seat, and bright yellow walls. In addition, all the fixtures were a third too-small, making them look as if they belonged in a nursery school. “This”—he opened the door to his rainbow-outrageous bathroom “—is a bad dream, disguised as a bathroom. It’s suitable only for color-blind midgets.”

He flipped on the lights, illuminating the room and Kate’s face. “Oh my, God,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m having a hard time coming up with a word for this.”

“Dreadful,” Peter deadpanned.

“No. Wonderful. At least in a bizarre kind of way. Can two fit in that tiny bathtub?”

“I don’t know.”

Kate immediately stepped out of her shoes, dropped her shoulders, and gave a left-right shrug. Her jacket rolled off her back, piling at her heels. Before Peter could react, she unzipped her skirt and stepped out, displaying pantyhose and white cotton panties. She reached into the tub and turned on hot. Stretching her hose at the waist, she pulled them off in a smooth left leg, right leg march. Peter stared. She didn’t have former paramour Ellen Goodman’s perfectly sculpted legs, but they were smooth, white, and lovely. Kate also had narrower hips, with a less round backside. Maybe she wasn’t as beautiful as Ellen, but he found her infinitely more attractive. Without a word, Kate unbuttoned her white blouse. She clutched the garment in her hand and dropped it on top of her skirt. All that remained were her panties and plain white bra.

“We have two options, Mr. Neil,” she said, sounding professorial. “Either you get out of here in the next five seconds, before I strip and step into this tub, or you stay, take off your clothes, and we see whether or not this sucker will actually hold two adult bodies.”

Peter stayed.

From a sedan that had tailed them from the moment they left Leeman, Johnston, and Ayers, a stranger took telephotos of the couple. He had pulled to the curb across the street from Peter’s apartment and parked.
Good, but not great stuff
, he thought as his defrost fought to keep his windows clear enough to take unencumbered close-ups.

“Need to do better than this, George,” he had said to himself over the click-click of his camera. At under six feet, dressed in jeans, Adidas running shoes, and wood-cutter plaid shirt, he appeared intentionally unremarkable.

Ten minutes after Peter closed and locked the front door of his apartment, George slithered from his car, careful to keep away from the orange glow spraying from a solitary street light. The private detective approached the second-story apartment from an alley in the rear of the building, carrying a high-tech recording device—slung across a shoulder—as if it were an unused walking stick.

Where he stood, looking up at Peter’s lit window, he appreciated the indigo nothingness. His current location had no overhead lighting, no moonlight, and a six-foot fence dividing this property from the next. “Very good logistics,” he said in a low voice.

George twisted the five-foot pole, taking care not to bump the mounted microphone. He slid a link, extending the stick like a television antennae. He made this move one more time, producing a twelve-foot pole. He put a set of headphones over his ears, then positioned the mike at the window with billowing steam, escaping from a hot tub of water. He began to listen and tape-record just as the female voice said: “take off your clothes . . .”

For the next hour, George enjoyed the voyeuristic aspects of his job. When the couple moved to the bedroom, he repositioned himself and, though he hadn’t thought it possible, the show got even better. He guessed he’d get a bonus for this work. Too bad Peter Neil didn’t have a first floor apartment. He’d have loved to have a set of
those
pictures.

When the couple fell asleep around three, the private investigator left. On the way home, he replayed his audio tapes, fast-forwarding to the good parts.

For three weeks, Oliver Dawson and Angela Newman worked separately, and left the office separately, then met for dinner. If happiness were an earthquake, Dawson measured a ten on the Richter scale.

Intimacy, once it came, nearly overwhelmed him. In orchestrating that bold next step, he had trembled, afraid that Angela’s love wouldn’t manifest itself in the same achy physical way his did. When they entered his apartment that night, it was different from the handful of earlier visits. Relaxing classical music hung in the background, while muted light veiled the living room. He had spread a thick blanket across the floor and piled pillows against his sofa.

“I feel like an adolescent,” he had said. “I love you, Angela. How could we have been so afraid to tell each other for over a year?”

“People like us lose their courage. If others could see through our eyes, Oliver, they would understand beauty more fully.”

Every time she spoke, Dawson felt as if he were a student, learning lessons about life.