Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel

by S. A. Lelchuk

  That dot meant Karen Li could no longer drive anywhere without me knowing exactly where she was.

  I waited for almost three hours. We hit lunchtime and groups of people began filling the plaza. Almost all of them men between their twenties and fifties. Almost all of them white, Chinese, or Indian, in jeans and polo shirts with little laminated badges clipped to a belt or lanyard. Tens of thousands like them. Building whatever new world lay around the corner.

  The lunch rush ended. The plaza quieted again. I was on my third coffee.

  The iPad emitted a beep. The dot was moving.

  I got up fast.

  By the time the Boxster passed the plaza I was on my motorcycle, watching the road.

  I pulled out behind the little red car.

  She drove fast, headed north on the 101. We passed NASA’s vast Ames Research Center, the enormous airplane hangars looming with otherworldly dimension like something out of an H. G. Wells novel. Reaching Palo Alto I saw signs for Stanford University, and soon after for the SFO airport as we neared San Francisco. A billboard stated WRITE CODE. SAVE LIVES in happy, bright colors. Another, marked with a cute little sky-blue logo, advertised a cloud storage service that presumably was better than other cloud storage services. I stayed a couple of cars back and one lane over from the Boxster. It was midday and even though the freeway was, as always, packed with cars they moved quickly. That made it easier. When people drove, they focused on the road. When they sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic they fidgeted, craned their necks, looked around trying to figure out the holdup. Bored people became unintentionally observant.

  As we reached San Francisco, the Boxster exited by AT&T Park. We passed huge Giants pennants and then the bulk of the stadium itself. The day was loud with construction from a hundred different building sites. In the sky, more cranes than clouds. On King Street the Boxster slowed abruptly. Looking for parking. Too close to brake, I accelerated past it. There was an empty metered spot on the right. She’d take it. I continued a block up and wedged my bike between two delivery vans, then unhurriedly walked back down.

  I got my first look at Karen Li as she got out of her car. She looked about my age, a pretty Chinese woman in her early thirties with glossy black hair and large sunglasses. She was dressed stylishly, tight jeans and a leather jacket, a black leather handbag slung over her shoulder. She walked purposefully into a coffee shop.

  I crossed the street and waited a full five minutes, eying the sidewalk to make sure she didn’t leave. If this woman was stealing company secrets she’d be highly alert. When I finally entered the coffee shop I went straight to the register. I ordered coffee and a bagel and bought a copy of the same newspaper I’d read that morning.

  Karen Li was at a back table, alone, facing the door.

  I sat as far away as I could, in the front corner.

  There were about a dozen people around me. A middle-aged guy reading the paper, a college-age girl with an open textbook, a few couples, an old man filling out a crossword puzzle. Karen Li should have fit right in, but something about her was different. She wasn’t reading or doing crosswords or eating. A coffee and blueberry muffin stood in front of her, untouched. She was noticeably tense, fingers tapping against the table. One hand rested lightly on her handbag. She checked her watch and drummed her fingers restlessly.

  Twenty minutes passed and then two men walked in. One wore a leather jacket and blue jeans, the other a beige sports coat over a red polo. Both were over six feet but the guy in the leather jacket was clean-shaven, with deep set, muddy eyes and the bulk to match his height, while Polo was thin, with a bristly Vandyke beard and a sharp triangle of nose like the prow of an icebreaker. They looked around while they ordered coffee. They looked like men who would notice things. I felt their gaze pass over me and kept my head buried in the newspaper.

  They paid for their coffee and sat across from Karen Li.

  She was nervous. But she knew them. That was clear.

  The three of them fell at once into an intent, urgent conversation. I didn’t even consider pictures. The two men were very different than Karen Li. Definitely not the tech crowd. Something else. Something about them felt vaguely dangerous. Like feeling a nascent sunburn long before the skin reddened. I was thinking that whoever Karen Li was, and whatever she was trying to do, she had bitten off way too much. If offering advice I would have told her to forget all about corporate theft and find somewhere else to live. A different city. Maybe a different country.

  After a half hour the two men stood. She stayed where she was. The one in the jacket leaned down, whispered a parting word, and the two of them walked past me to the door. A completely normal sight. A coffee, three friends, casual good-byes.

  Except for one strange detail.

  When they walked away, the man in the leather jacket was holding her handbag.

  Karen Li sat for a few more minutes, then pushed her coffee away and gave the muffin a puzzled look as though wondering how it had gotten there. I got a good look at her face as she walked out. She was very pretty. Almond brown eyes, a delicate jaw, pronounced cheekbones, a small nose. She was thin but had a physical vitality as though she spent weekends paddleboarding and skiing. I waited another few minutes and then left as well. It didn’t really matter where Karen Li was going. I’d know where she was. I was thinking about something else. Human faces and expressions. In my line of work, I saw more than my fair share of intense emotion. Grief, confusion, anger, shock, lust. Usually the expression matched the situation. Catch someone cheating and you got shame. Track down a thief and you got fear. Faces mirrored feelings.

  So Karen Li’s nervousness hadn’t surprised me. That was normal for someone in her situation. Someone involved in high-stakes corporate espionage. Someone doing something wrong. She was bound to be nervous.

  Her face had been different, though. Karen Li hadn’t looked like someone stealing. She had looked like she was being marched to the firing squad. On her face had been nothing but naked terror.

  12

  I’d taught myself basic cooking in junior high, out of necessity, and got better in college while sharing an off-campus apartment with other undergrads. I had bounced around in my early twenties, lived in Marin for a while with an older guy who taught poetry at Sonoma State and couldn’t grease a pan to save his life. My favorite thing about that place had been a family of peacocks who’d wandered onto his property and seen no reason to leave. I hand-fed them blueberries every morning. After we split I missed the ex-peacocks more than the ex-boyfriend.

  I hadn’t grown to really enjoy cooking until I had my own place and my own kitchen. My apartment was a one-bedroom in West Berkeley, close to the water and a few miles from the center of campus. The industrial part of the city, auto repair shops and warehouses and quirky artist spaces with glassblowing studios and sculpting. Close enough to the train tracks that I could hear the blasts from the Amtrak and cargo trains that rattled through. From the roof of my building it was possible to glimpse the lights and towers of San Francisco. I had lived there close to ten years and the area was changing noticeably, sleek new developments springing up at a breakneck pace, but the neighborhood still retained much of its former identity.

  I had gone by the bookstore after following Karen Li to the coffee shop, and by the time I got home it was past six. I had to hurry. I jumped in the shower, took a few extra minutes to wash my hair and shave my legs. I threw together an antipasto plate in between blow-drying my hair into an auburn sheen. Artichoke hearts, olives, salami, cheeses. I left my hair down. Put on my favorite jeans and a thin cashmere sweater that hung loosely off one shoulder, a pair of simple silver pendants in my ears. I added a little blush to offset the naturally pale skin that had always driven me crazy as a kid, when a good beach tan was the only thing I wanted. The phone rang and I felt a moment of disappointment that it would be Ethan, calling to cancel.

  I picked up, blow-dryer still running in one hand. “Yeah?”

  “Is this Nikki
Griffin?”

  I flicked the blow-dryer off. “Who is this?” Definitely not Ethan. A slurred, unfamiliar voice. Some drunk guy, maybe, accidentally hitting the wrong number.

  Except he was looking for me. By name.

  “You met with a man named Greggory Gunn recently.”

  I set the dryer down. “Who is this?”

  “He talked to you about an employee. You should know there is more to the situation.”

  “There usually is.” I was focused on the voice as much as the words. Not quite a slur. A strange, unnatural bass. A voice that didn’t sound quite human. I looked at the caller ID. Nothing except the word PRIVATE. “If you have something to say, then say it,” I prompted.

  There was a dial tone. I put the phone down slowly. Wondering why a strange man using a voice changer was calling me about a tech company, and what it meant.

  Through the kitchen window, I saw Ethan bicycle up to my building. He wore a helmet and backpack and that same corduroy jacket from the diner. A bouquet of flowers sprouted out of his backpack. When he leaned to lock his bike to the gate, the flowers fell onto the ground. I had to smile as his lips moved in a silent flurry of curses through the glass. He buzzed and I rang him in, hearing footsteps on the stairs as I opened the door. “Look who showed up.”

  “Hello! These are for you.” He thrust the rumpled bouquet toward me. Irises, courtesy of Trader Joe’s. He leaned in and I thought he was going to try to kiss me, but instead he gave me an awkward half hug and stepped back quickly as though worried I’d take offense. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had brought me flowers. I couldn’t find a vase. I put the flowers in a decanter instead. Close enough. “What would you like to drink?” I asked.

  “What are you having?”

  “Martini.”

  “You know something weird? I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a martini before. I thought people only drank them in John Cheever stories.”

  “Well,” I said, “we can’t fix all the world’s problems. But we can fix this one.”

  I mixed us a couple of martinis. “I thought they were supposed to have vodka,” he commented.

  I skewered olives on a toothpick. Three, because one wasn’t enough and two were bad luck. “If you want this to work, don’t ever say that again.” I handed him his drink. “Gin. Cheers.”

  He sipped cautiously, then smiled. “That’s kind of awesome.” He took another sip. “Usually my friends tell me to find a six-pack and a bottle opener.”

  “Maybe you need new friends.”

  He was walking around, curious. “Record player … no television … you weren’t kidding about the technology thing.” He stopped by a bookshelf. “Who’s this guy? In the picture?”

  I glanced over. “That’s my brother. Brandon.”

  The two of us. Years ago. We stood together on Mount Tam, the California landscape spread out gloriously below. The blue of the Bay, the green of thousands of acres of trees. The two of us in sweat-stained tank tops, grinning like we’d just summited Everest. My brother’s eyes clear and bright.

  “And this one—your parents? It’s a nice picture.”

  I bit my lip. Took a big swallow of my drink. “Thanks.” I didn’t need to turn around to see the picture he meant. The four of us. Standing on the beach in Bolinas. The ocean behind us. My brother five or six, me nine or ten. My mother blond, willowy, tall, tanned, wearing a bikini top and cut-off jean shorts. My dad’s long black hair touched with gray, bearded, bare-chested, wearing a ridiculous polka-dot bathing suit. The four of us. Together.

  “You look really close. You’re lucky.”

  I joined him at the small table. “Have some food.”

  He placed a piece of cheese carefully on a cracker. “So you work in a bookstore?”

  “Technically, I own a bookstore.”

  He was impressed. “You’re full of surprises. Which one?”

  “The Brimstone Magpie, over on Telegraph.”

  He nodded. “I’ve been there. Where’s the name from?”

  “The first book I ever sold, Bleak House. One of the characters, Grandfather Smallweed, used the phrase as a curse word. I always liked it. Where are you from?” I shifted.

  “A small town near Bozeman. I went to U of M on scholarship even though my parents weren’t into higher ed. They thought it would turn me gay, Commie or, worst of all, liberal. I met a few professors who gave me a lot of encouragement, got lucky, and ended up at Cal. They give me a stipend that still seems too good to be true. Over twenty thousand a year to read and teach.”

  I thought about the envelope holding $20,000. A year’s salary, for him. But I didn’t want to think about Gregg Gunn. Didn’t want to think about the strange telephone call or the job I had taken on, motives as murky as one of those cold-pressed juices. Not now. Not tonight. There was a blasting horn and the apartment shook slightly with a passing train. I could tell by the volume that it was a cargo train, not Amtrak. I was used to the trains and didn’t mind.

  I stood as the noise faded. “I’ll start dinner.”

  “What are you making?”

  “Trout grenobloise.”

  “Trout what?”

  “You’ll see.” I unwrapped a pair of gleaming, silvery brook trout. Added a sizeable piece of butter to a hot pan and got some sliced lemons and capers ready while waiting for the butter to brown. I had a mushroom risotto that I had been stirring for the last hour.

  Trout were quick. Ten minutes later we were eating. I opened a bottle of white wine and poured.

  “This is delicious,” he said. “And this wine is amazing. Even though I don’t know anything about wine.”

  “Good wine is just wine that you like.” I also liked Ethan. His enthusiasm, his obvious love of books. And his smile. I caught myself wondering what his chest was like under the corduroy jacket and shirt.

  He looked up from his plate. His eyes were blue and pleasing. “Question.”

  “Sure.”

  “If we were skipping all of the, like, first date awkwardness. The BS where we try to pretend there’s nothing wrong with us. What if this was, like, date number ten?”

  “Ten. Wow. You’re an optimist.”

  “I’m serious. What would it be like?”

  I thought about it. “Probably,” I said, “we’d be arguing about books. Then maybe you’d ask me some questions about my job that I wouldn’t want to answer, so I’d change the subject. After dinner, we’d take a bottle of wine and some blankets, go sit up on the roof. That’s what number ten might look like.”

  He took this in. “Why wouldn’t you want to talk about your job? I love bookstores.”

  “Ask me something else.”

  “Mysterious.”

  “No. That’s the thing.” I wanted him to understand. “People think mystery is good, exciting. Except usually it just means that something bad is around the corner.”

  “Are you saying you’re bad?” He wasn’t being lascivious.

  “I don’t think I am. I hope I’m not. But the parts of me you don’t know might not be the parts you’d like. They might not even be the parts I like. But they’re there, just the same.” I was quiet. Feeling what I wanted to say fighting through my natural reserve like someone underwater swimming up toward that spot of brightness that means light and air. I couldn’t stay under forever, playing Miss Havisham. No matter how peaceful that sounded.

  He was clearing the table. He’d been a waiter. I could tell. The way he cradled the wineglasses between his fingers and lined the plates along his forearm. No one who’d ever worked as a waiter stacked plates when they cleared. I pictured him in college, in Montana. Friday night, maybe working a late shift. Ignoring the frat parties and kegs. Coming home alone, exhausted. Roommates probably out having fun, hooking up, getting drunk. Doing carefree college things. And him alone, worn out, tired. But planning. Planning how to move forward. Past the bad things and toward the good ones.

  I wondered which one of us I was even thinki
ng about.

  “Look,” I finally said. “Don’t worry about the plates. Grab those blankets from the couch. It’s nice out. We can go sit on the roof for a bit.”

  WEEK TWO

  13

  “Nikki, how have you been?”

  “You’re gonna laugh.”

  “I won’t laugh.”

  “Okay. I met this guy.”

  “You met a guy.”

  “That sounds totally high school. I know.”

  “And you like him?”

  “Yeah. I had him over to dinner. We kinda hit it off.”

  “That sounds very nice.”

  “I—am I allowed to tell you, like, personal stuff? Or is that weird?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “I … um, slept with him.”

  “You slept with him.”

  “Yeah. Which was ironic because we had joked about not doing that. On the first date, anyway.”

  “And you enjoyed it?”

  “Uh … yeah. Actually, I did. Kind of a lot. It was a nice evening.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Nikki. And you’re going to see him again?”

  “We’re going to a concert in Oakland this weekend with another couple, friends of his. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been on a double date. What do people even do? Maybe we’ll get gelato afterwards. Or play Scrabble.”

  “Does this man you met know that you see me? Why you see me?”

  “Why I see you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean what happened.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? I just met him. It’s not like I have to tell him everything at once.”

  “I know it’s only our second meeting, but we haven’t addressed this yet. You aren’t here voluntarily.”