Dinner with Andrew

by Martha Williamson

  Kate closed her eyes and shook her head. “Andrew, please don’t try to make me feel better. I understand now. I see you as clearly as Norman Delmonico did. The Angel of Death . . .” She laughed her hollow, mirthless laugh. “The Angel of Death comes for one reason.”

  “Really?” Andrew replied, raising an eyebrow. “Norman Delmonico is still alive, isn’t he?”

  Kate thought for a moment. “Yes, but—”

  “No buts, Kate,” he said, interrupting. “He’s a little shaken up, maybe he’s learned something. Maybe he won’t be rude to waiters in the next restaurant he reviews. But he’s still alive. I was there to help him had it been his time. But it wasn’t. Death comes close, but sometimes it does not claim you.”

  “Oh, Andrew,” Kate said. She didn’t know whether or not to allow herself a moment of hope or to surrender completely to despair. There were tears in her eyes.

  Andrew did his best to explain. “It’s like this. A man who’s been in a bar drinking may or may not run a red light later on. A woman who stops to read a magazine in a supermarket misses driving through that very intersection by just a few seconds. Those are the ‘what-ifs’ and the ‘if onlys’ that we don’t see until the next morning.”

  “But you said I bid on you for a reason.”

  “And you did. So you could be guided to where you had to go. Tonight you were where you were supposed to be. You had to be there to save the life of Norman Delmonico. God sees the moments because, where He is, those moments have already happened. God knows what your tomorrow looks like, Kate, because He’s already there. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow—He holds them all in His hand, all at once. And He holds you there too.”

  A small smile flickered across Kate’s lips. “So, it comes down to what I said before . . . We wait.”

  Andrew smiled back. “We wait.”

  Wearily, Kate got to her feet, righted the fallen desk lamp, then walked across the room to a small refrigerator. She opened the door and pulled out a bottle of Perrier Jouet “Fleur de Champagne,” a twin of the bottle they had shared at dinner.

  “I’m surprised that wasn’t in the safe as well,” said Andrew.

  Kate laughed a little. “Couldn’t keep it nice and cold in the safe, Andrew. And I knew there was no point keeping it at home, because I knew there would be nothing to celebrate at home. Anything wonderful that was going to happen to me was going to happen here.”

  She unwrapped the thick gold foil, pulled off the wire cage, and popped the cork. “And now you know what I was saving it for,” she said. “But in my wildest dreams, I didn’t think I would be sharing it with you, Andrew.”

  “Who would you have shared it with?” Andrew asked. “I mean, you couldn’t stand in the middle of the lab and drink the whole bottle, could you?”

  Kate smiled. “No, I was going to share it with everybody. The day I cracked the code I was going to be nice to everybody. They wouldn’t have recognized me—Dr. Kate Calder, little Miss Sweetness and Light. Just for a day.”

  “Maybe you should have started sooner.”

  “Maybe I should have. But it’s too late now.”

  There were no elegant glass flutes for this bottle of champagne; instead Kate grabbed a couple of glass beakers from the counter, checked quickly to see that there were no noxious chemicals within, then slopped some of the champagne in. She handed one to Andrew.

  “You know,” said Andrew, “there are a lot of people who aren’t given an opportunity like this.”

  “What opportunity would that be?” Kate asked.

  “They never get a chance to say good-bye.”

  Kate half smiled. “I was an orphan,” she said.

  “I don’t have anybody to say good-bye to. I grew up with thirty-two other kids in a great big, red brick building maintained by the state. I’ll bet you can guess how much fun that was.”

  “Ah,” said Andrew, as if that explained everything. “It’s no wonder you don’t like to share.”

  She nodded and sipped her champagne. “Yeah . . . maybe. I never had anything that was new. Or anything that was really mine.” She could not help herself—she glanced over at the safe containing her precious breakthrough research. “At least,” she added, “not until now.”

  Andrew followed the line of her gaze. He looked at the safe for a moment. “Oh, Kate,” he said. “That’s not yours. It doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Not mine?” said Kate. She looked at him and blinked a couple of times. “What do you mean, not mine, Andrew? It’s mine. It’s mine because I found it.”

  Andrew nodded. “That’s right, you found it. That discovery isn’t yours any more than the North Pole belonged to Admiral Peary or the ocean belonged to Jacques Cousteau. The wonders of the universe, the physics and the thermodynamics, the medicines that are being found in the rain forest, the gene sequence in your precious chromosome—those belong to God, not you. The miracle is not that you found some scientific breakthrough, Kate. The miracle is that God put it there to be found and that the person who found it happened to be you. And there is a reason it was you, Kate.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” said Kate as she poured herself some more of the champagne. “It sort of takes the wind out of my sails, though. Thanks a lot, Andrew.”

  Andrew shook his head quickly. The miracle is that God chose to reveal it through you. He trusted you with it. And you’ve locked it up. The way you’ve locked up your heart: so safe, so secure, so guarded that now even you can’t get into it.”

  Kate felt something deep within her move, and tears came to her eyes, but they weren’t tears of anger or self-pity. “I . . . was starting to believe during these last few years.”

  “Believe?” Andrew asked.

  Kate nodded. “That’s right, I started to accept the possibility of the existence of God . . . The more work I did in science, the more I became awed by the staggering complexity of this world—and I started to think that the odds of it all coming together so perfectly simply by accident—” Kate shrugged and took another gulp of her champagne “—that the idea of perfect randomness seemed harder to accept than the possibility that it had all been designed that way. Designed by . . . a really Great Designer. And if that was true, then I felt very, very small. And meaningless. And to get the attention of somebody like that, well . . . I figured I had to do something that mattered.”

  “And you did, Kate,” said Andrew. “You started to believe. Belief is the foundation of faith. And once you’ve got that, you have started on your way to knowing God.”

  Kate raised her beaker of champagne in a mocking little toast. “Yeah. But too late.”

  “No,” said Andrew. “It is never too late. God loves you, Kate, and He trusted you with something special. Now, will you trust Him?”

  Instantly, Kate knew what Andrew was talking about. “That’s it, isn’t it? He wants me to do the one thing I can’t do.” She tried to keep the tears from her voice. “I can’t do it, Andrew. It’s too hard. I’ve worked too long at this to give it away. Maybe it’s not mine—but it certainly doesn’t belong to anybody else.”

  “You have to be willing to share the glory, Kate,” Andrew countered. “Maybe even risk that Beth and all the others working here take it, take it all. It doesn’t matter, because the information inside that safe is more important than who found it first; it’s more important than any fame or glory.”

  Kate spoke deliberately and slowly. “If I hand over the combination of that safe to Beth, and she gets hold of my research, I might as well die anyway, because I won’t have anything left to live for.”

  “But think of all the people who will live instead,” said Andrew. “You will have given them life—they might not know it. But you’ll know and God will know.”

  The impact of Andrew’s words was profound, and for a moment her head reeled with the thought. She had spent so much time trying to protect her precious work that the idea of giving it away—at the behest of God, no less—was mind-bo
ggling. But after all she had seen, heard, experienced that night, it made sense. She was silent for a long time as she thought it over.

  Then she whispered, “Okay . . . okay . . . I will share my research with Beth.” She was silent for a moment. “But will I live until she comes in for work tomorrow morning?”

  Andrew shrugged. “I cannot say . . . I just don’t know.”

  “Then it has to be tonight,” said Kate firmly. “There’s no time left, is there?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chez Tess had ceased to exist.

  Only moments after Kate left the restaurant, Monica, Tess, and Adam had gotten busy striking the set. It did not take long to reduce the elegant restaurant to the rubbish-strewn mess it had been earlier that afternoon. Cardboard boxes and other debris now stood where there had been a kitchen, a dining room, a bar, and a dance floor. The baby grand piano was long gone, as was the beautiful commercial range and all the other kitchen equipment.

  Adam rolled a big, wooden cable spool into the middle of the room. “Where does this go?” he asked.

  “Oh, just set it down right there,” Tess ordered. Adam did as he was told, then sat down on the spool and fished a drumstick out of his suit pocket and began eating, gnawing with obvious relish.

  Tess looked at him as he ate. “What are you doing?” she asked. “What is that you’ve got there, Adam?”

  “It’s some of your leftover pheasant,” he replied. “It’s really great stuff, Tess. Excellent.”

  “Yeah, well,” Tess replied, sounding a little disappointed. “There’s plenty of pheasant left over. Kate had veal, if you recall—and Andrew went right along with it. He had veal too.”

  Adam stopped eating abruptly. “You mean Beth,” he said. “Beth, right?”

  Monica and Tess stared at him for a moment.

  “Who’s Beth?” Monica asked.

  “Yes,” said Tess. “Who on earth is Beth? Kate was Andrew’s assignment.”

  “Who’s Beth?” Adam jumped to his feet. “Beth was the doctor, the one at the auction. Beth is the woman you just did all this for.”

  Monica looked genuinely alarmed. “Adam! Andrew had dinner with a woman named Kate. Her name is Kate. Kate Calder.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Adam. “Who is this Kate Calder? Where did she come from all of a sudden?”

  “She’s the doctor from the auction.” Then it dawned on Monica. There had been a horrible mix-up. “She’s the doctor who won the auction.”

  Monica looked at Tess. Tess shook her head. “Uh-oh . . .” She turned to Adam. “You better get going. Find Andrew and figure this whole thing out.” Tess nodded to herself. This was exactly the kind of thing she had been concerned about— right at the very beginning she had felt uncertain about this assignment.

  “I’m on my way,” said Adam. After he left, Tess said a prayer and asked God to turn around the situation if needed.

  It was just after three in the morning when Kate’s car rolled to a stop in front of Beth’s house. There were lights burning, and there was the intermittent light of a television, flashing shadows on the ceiling and walls. It surprised Kate that Beth would be such a night owl, but it would make her task a little easier. Kate took a deep breath.

  “Well, so far, so good,” she said.

  “You okay?” Andrew asked.

  Kate nodded. “Let’s just hope I don’t trip on the way to the door and fracture my skull,” she said with a little smile. The two of them got out of the car, but Andrew hung back, letting Kate go up to the house by herself. As she went, Andrew looked down the street and saw Adam walking purposefully toward him. Andrew had no doubt that Adam’s sudden appearance did not bode well for someone. Concerned, he looked back to Kate.

  Kate managed to get to the front door of Beth’s small house without serious injury. She rang the doorbell and waited . . . and waited. Impatient, she rang again and heard nothing from inside the house, no sound of footsteps, nothing—except the murmur of the television. She walked to a window and peered inside.

  Beth was lying on the couch, dressed in her nightgown and bathrobe. She appeared to be sound asleep. Kate rapped on the window with her knuckles. “Beth! Beth!” she called. “Wake up!”

  But Beth did not stir. Kate suddenly felt alarmed. She pounded on the window a little harder. “Beth!” Kate was yelling now. “Wake up!”

  Then Kate looked down and saw something that frightened her terribly. Lying on the living room rug was a large, furry dog—and dogs did not sleep through the kind of racket she had been making. In an instant, she knew what was going on, and she did not hesitate. She grabbed a flowerpot full of geraniums and hurled it through the window, shattering it. Then she turned. “Andrew! I need help!”

  But both Andrew and Adam had vanished. It was up to Kate Calder to save Beth’s life all on her own.

  An hour later, Beth was in the hospital, and Kate was talking to the attending physician. It was the dead of night, and the hospital was quiet—Beth had been taken into the emergency room.

  “People get poisoned from those old heaters all the time, and nobody seems to catch it before it’s too late,” the doctor told Kate. “How did you know it was carbon monoxide?”

  “I saw the dog through the window,” Kate replied. “And they don’t sleep through doorbells.”

  “Well, it’s a miracle you were there,” the doctor said. “If you hadn’t been, she would have died tonight.”

  Those words hit Kate hard. She stood still in the middle of the hospital corridor and let the words sink in. Twice in one night she had prevented a death. Andrew’s words were coming true.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked.

  Kate smiled—she almost laughed out loud. “Yes, I am,” she said. “I think I’m fine! Can I see her?”

  “If she’s awake—why don’t you go and find out? She’s in 403—right down the hall.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said. It was a short walk down the bare hospital corridor, but in those few yards, Kate’s life underwent a profound change. She had made up her mind what to do.

  Beth was still a little groggy from the hours she had spent in the room filled with carbon monoxide, but the oxygen tube inserted in her nose was uncomfortable, and would not allow her to sleep. She was pale and weak, but she smiled when Kate entered her room.

  “Still here?” she asked.

  Kate nodded. “I was just talking to your doctor. You’re only going to be here overnight.”

  “What about Bruno?” Beth asked.

  “He’ll be fine.”

  Beth stirred a little under the covers. “It’s very scary,” she said. “All I remember is getting really, really sleepy.”

  “That’s how it happens,” Kate replied. “You don’t see it or smell it. You just go to sleep and you never wake up.” It sounded to Kate like an ideal way to die.

  “If you hadn’t been there . . .” Beth shook her head slowly. “And what were you doing at my house at three o’clock in the morning?”

  “I . . . uh . . .” Kate shrugged and laughed. “I don’t know. I have no idea. Look, Beth, get some sleep.” She stood to go, then stopped. The reluctance to share her discovery and the credit for finding it—once upon a time a reflex almost built into her genetic makeup—had suddenly vanished. It was foolish for her to have come so far, to have learned so much, without going through with the plan; the plan that Andrew had taught her had come from God. Kate sat down again.

  “I do know why I was there, Beth. I came to your house . . .” This was it. She took a deep breath. “I came to tell you that I had found a gene sequence, Beth. I’m almost there.”

  Beth, her head on the pillow, nodded slightly. “I see,” she said. “Well, congratulations.”

  “I was thinking, maybe if we worked . . . together . . . we’d get there sooner. That is if . . . you want to work with me.”

  Kate Calder had been so myopic, so wrapped up in her own cares and obsessions, that it had never occurred
to her that Beth might not want to have anything to do with her. Of course, Kate could hardly have blamed her if that was the way she felt. Not a day had passed in the last year or two that Kate hadn’t made some nasty crack or cutting remark to Beth. Kate could only look back at her own bad behavior with horror. She had been so insensitive and uncaring . . . She was going to try to change. And she hoped that there was really such a thing as forgiveness.

  Beth smiled at her. “This isn’t like you at all, Kate. What’s happened to you all of a sudden?”

  Kate smiled brightly. “I discovered something else,” she said. “You can do wonderful things, if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

  “That’s quite a change of heart,” Beth said. Then she noticed that Kate was still dressed in the red velvet evening gown that she had worn to the restaurant. “How was your date, by the way?”

  “Fascinating,” Kate replied.

  Kate walked out of the hospital and into the sights and soft sounds of the dawn of a new day. There was a light, fresh-smelling breeze blowing and the sky was clear except for some thin, pinkish clouds. There was birdsong in the air. All in all it promised to be a fine day. Kate filled her lungs with the sweet air as if breathing in hope. Andrew was waiting for her in the parking lot of the hospital, and she crossed the street, walking toward him. He could tell by the way she walked that there was something different about this Kate Calder, that she had become a new person. There was a serenity about her and a confidence in her step that had not been there before.

  She walked up to him and looked him in the eye for a moment before speaking. “I understand it now,” she said, nodding to herself. “It was Beth who would have died last night and not me, after all.”

  Andrew smiled softly and nodded. He shrugged as if apologizing for something. “Yes, she was supposed to win the auction, not you. I was supposed to take her to dinner, but I never knew her name, so when you ended up winning . . .” He shrugged again. “You can imagine what I thought . . . particularly when you told me about your illness, back there at the restaurant.”