The Up and Comer (14 page)

"Do you know when it is?" he asked.

"No, not yet."

"Let me know when you do, okay?"

"Sure, no problem."

Jack reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out an envelope. He tossed it onto my desk.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Open it," he said.

I picked it up and slid my finger underneath the flap. I looked inside. It was filled with hundred-dollar bills.

"I guess I still have the same question," I said, somewhat taken aback. "What is this?"

"My poker game... I think you've heard about it. So happens we have an opening next time out. Consider the envelope your invitation, not to mention a little ante money. We play the last Wednesday of every month, Keens Steak-house. T-bones at seven, dealer's choice at eight. Tell anyone around these hallways that you're going and I'll shove a deck of cards down your throat. That is, of course, if you're interested in playing. It's kind of high stakes."

I pretended to mull it over for a second. "You won't get pissed when I take all your money, will you?" I asked.

"Nothing would make me angrier."

"Then by all means, I'll be there."

Jack got up and opened the door to my office, turning back to me before leaving. "Sucker!" he declared.

I laughed. Then I counted. Thirty in all, for a total of three thousand. How he had arrived at that dollar amount, I didn't know. It seemed kind of random. Not that I was complaining. But as good as the money was, it wasn't the best part. For I had been invited to go where no man — and certainly no woman — at Campbell & Devine had ever gone. The much-rumored, ultra-sacred, and storied poker game hosted by none other than Jack Devine. The value of that? Let's just say it was enough to make Tracy's father come to mind. If you thought I was a player before, Lawrence Metcalf, get a load of me now.

With a broad smile I sealed the envelope and opened my briefcase to put it away. The smile was short-lived. My poker invitation euphoria was about to be seriously tempered. There, sitting in my briefcase, was one of the photos that Tyler had shown me at the Oyster Bar. One thing was for sure, it hadn't crawled in there by itself. I picked it up. Right there in black-and-white were Jessica and I leaving the hotel together.

"Philip?"

I nearly jumped out of my chair. Gwen had stepped into my doorway.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," she said.

"That's all right," I told her, trying to be discreet about putting the picture back and closing my briefcase.

"I wanted to let you know that I'm going to lunch now."

"Oh, yeah… um… sure."

She remained in my doorway. "Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine," I assured her. She was about to walk away. "Actually, do you remember anyone coming by my office recently when I wasn't here?"

She thought for a second. "No, I don't — wait, there was some guy from the building who came by yesterday morning while you were out. He said he needed to check on the air-conditioning."

"Was he skinny, about my height?"

"I think so. Wait, should I not have let him in?" she said.

"No, it's okay. If he comes by again, though, it might be a good idea to ask to see his ID."

"You don't think he was really with the building?"

"Probably not."

Gwen did a minor panic. "You're kidding me; is anything missing? Did he take anything?"

Added was more like it.

"No, nothing's missing, Gwen. It's okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"If he comes by a second time and doesn't have any ID, can I kick him in the balls?" she asked.

"Be my guest."

Gwen left, and I opened up my briefcase again and took out the picture. I held it in my hands, staring at it. So this was how it was going to be. Tyler Mills was not about to disappear from my life so easily. Don't overreact, I told myself, he's merely screwing with you, the same way he screwed with all those people and their cell phones. What did he tell you eventually happened? That's right, the novelty wore off. He got bored and moved on to his next little caper. The next scheme.

I had gotten myself into another type of staring contest. Feeling the strain as I may have been, I still wasn't about to blink.

FOURTEEN

Let the games begin.

That Monday at the office saw a barrage of none-too-subtle missives via e-mail and fax. Josephine, sitting at her post in the reception area, had been gracious enough to supply Tyler with all the contact information he needed. As far as she knew, the polite guy claiming to be updating his files on the other end of the line was a representative from the very official sounding MFA. Otherwise known as "the Manhattan Following of Attorneys," she was told.

Clever, Tyler. Very clever.

The faxes came every hour on the hour. Never from the same location. The Wall Street Officenter. The Kinko's by Astor Place and later the one up on West Fifty-fourth. The Copy Quest on First Avenue. After Gwen handed me the first one with a curious look, I made sure to get all the rest on my own. It was sort of Pavlovian. I'd hear the distant ring of the office's main fax machine and off I would go — doing my nonchalant best to get to the machine before anyone else.

Sometimes the faxes were as simple as a single page with a huge dollar sign on it. Other times they were more involved, like the one with the complete lyrics to the song "Every Breath You Take" by the Police written out in longhand, with the line "….I'll be watching you" in all caps. And still other times they were copies of the actual photographs of me and Jessica, too blurry and distorted by the fax machine to be comprehended by anyone else around the office besides myself. Precisely what Tyler wanted, I was convinced. This was about giving me the proper scare, you see, not giving me up.

Yet.

As for the e-mails, he sent them in bunches, one right after the other. The messages themselves were blank. Instead, he used the subject heading of each message to string together little warnings for me in my inbox. For example:

Granted, as intimidating messages go, what Tyler had to say lacked a certain originality. The Hemingway of harassment he was not. However, the way in which he delivered them had enough of a Big-Brother-cum-modern-day spin element to render me more than a little uncomfortable. Especially after I would block his address from Yahoo and a short time later there would be more e-mails from him through a different Web browser. If it wasn't Excite, it was Lycos. If it wasn't HotBot, it was AltaVista. And so on.

The whole thing was silly. The whole thing was surreal. The whole thing was also something else entirely… getting to me. Tyler was proving himself to be quite relentless.

Then, come midweek, he branched out from my office.

"Someone's been calling and hanging up all day" was Tracy's greeting for me when I walked through the door at home that Wednesday night.

Splendid.

"Do they say anything?" I asked, trying to quell my sudden surge of anxiety.

"No, they just hang up after I say hello."

"You should've taken the phone off the hook."

"I would have except I was supposed to hear back on a freelance job today," she said. "Thankfully, the calls stopped a while back, though it was pretty annoying at the time."

"I'll bet."

She walked over and gave me a quick kiss. "How was your day?"

"Uneventful," I told her. Unless, that is, you would consider
eventful
my being held hostage by a fax machine while at the same time scrambling to delete hordes and hordes of e-mail messages off the system as fast as possible. "How was your day?"

"Fine," said Tracy. "I thought we'd order in tonight."

"Okay by me."

Half sausage and pepperoni, the other half broccoli and capers. The usual. You get one guess as to which half was mine and which half was hers. I was deciding whether or not to have one more slice when the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," said Tracy.

I jumped up. "No, I'll get it."

He had slipped in behind another tenant, I told myself. Probably Mr. Hullen from the third floor. As we had no doorman, most everyone in the building was conscious about letting strangers in. Mr. Hullen, on the other hand, was barely conscious. He was a sixties holdover with the tie-dyed shirts to prove it. I was pretty sure he once had an acid flashback while riding with me in the elevator. Not only would he let Tyler in, he'd probably hold the door for him.

I looked through the peephole.

The distorted face I saw was not Tyler's. It belonged to our neighbor Sarah Prescott, queen of affectation. Her loft occupied the other half of the floor. The year before,
Architectural Digest
had done a spread on her minimalist approach to interior design and how it had become all the rage among New York-based Hollywood. She had been pretty much unbearable ever since.

"Hello, Sarah," I said, opening the door.

"Philip, Philip, Philip," she began, "I am
soooooo,
so sorry to intrude upon you like this; I trust you and your lovely wife have been well. I'm doing wonderfully, thank you."

"Would you like to come in?" I asked her.

"Oh, no,
noooooo,
that won't be necessary. You see, I simply came by to drop this off for you."

I looked down to see what "this" was. In Sarah's hand was a plastic bag, and I watched as she pulled out its rectangular contents.

"I hope you don't mind terribly that I took a look-see," she said, "but when the delivery boy said you weren't home and tried to leave it with me, I had to make sure what on earth it was."

What it was was a videotape. She handed it to me.

"I don't know about you," Sarah blabbed on, "but I just think Cary Grant was the epitome of style. Did you ever see that delicious home he lived in?"

I didn't hear her. I was too busy flipping over what I realized to be a movie cassette rental. The movie?
An Affair to Remember.

Clever, Tyler. Very clever.

"What is it, honey?" I heard from the kitchen.

"A mix-up, I'm afraid," I said.

"Oh, hello, Sarah," said Tracy, appearing from around the corner.

"Why, don't you look smashing as ever, darling," said Sarah.

"And you as well," lied Tracy.

Tracy grabbed the tape out of my hand. "Oh, I love this movie!" she announced.

"I know, isn't it the best?" said Sarah.

"Let's watch it tonight, Philip," Tracy said.

"We're not even supposed to have it," I said. I looked on the box to see where it came from. "A-1 Movie on the Run," I read, "has made some kind of mistake."

"In our favor," said Tracy. "Would you like to stay and watch it with us, Sarah?"

"That is so,
soooooo
generous of you, but I can't, I truly can't." She lowered her voice and glanced to either side. "I'm supposed to meet with Bobby De Niro in the morning to discuss his new apartment, and there remains a great deal of work to be done by me in preparation."

The scary thing was, she was probably telling the truth.

And that's how it came to be. My spending the next two hours of my life, a life that I was slowly losing control over, watching
An Affair to Remember
with Tracy. Talk about a night to forget.

After the credits rolled, Tracy got ready for bed while I read
Robb Report
in the living room. The phone rang. Telling Tracy I would get it, I walked over to the portable sitting on an end table.

"Hello?"

"Did you enjoy the movie?" came his voice.

I hit the off button on the phone so hard and fast I nearly broke my thumb.

"Was it another hang-up?" Tracy called out from the bedroom.

"Yep," I called back. I was about to turn the phone back on to leave it off the hook when it rang again.

"Listen to me, you
motherfucker,"
I said into the receiver. There was more where that intro came from, and I was about to deliver it all when a voice interrupted me. It was a guy's and it was familiar. The problem being that it wasn't Tyler's.

"Fucking hello to you too, Philip!" said Menzi.