The Mediator

by Erica Pensini

  I listen to the tirade without speaking.

  “So you want to steal corporate secrets and then what?”

  “You know wiki-leaks? Yeah, I want to make it all public”, says Carlie, a bitter bend twisting her mouth

  Hunched over an empty glass and a newspaper, the man wrapped in his black trench coat adsorbs flecks of our conversation with discreet glances.

  “This would give you the thrill, but what about the money?”, I say

  Carlie’s thoughts swirl for a moment.

  “I’d sell the secrets and then make them public. I’ll get the thrill, the money and the fun for playing the best prank ever on everyone”, she says angrily

  But then Carlie’s horizon closes, her revengeful dreams deflate.

  “I must be crazy to discuss this nonsense with someone I just met”, she says

  Lying back on my seat, cheeks touching the headrest, I see Carlie beside Rob Neilson as I look at an imaginary TV screen.

  “Most certainly Carlie, and I have a crazy idea for you”, I smile

  Chapter 8

  John is tensed towards the crazy idea I carry within me. The darkness should conceal him, and yet his tension vibrates in the air with almost physical intensity.

  I know he’s waiting, and let us savour the peculiar taste of expectation. When the moment comes, I speak again.

  “I intended the crazy idea as nothing more than a fantasy. Planting its seed out there meant that the realization of the idea could not be absolutely discounted, but it was nonetheless unlikely”, I continue

  “So the Leslie Carson in the short fiction you published on the New Yorker is Carlie”, John says and I nod

  “Tell me more about the idea”, he says, no longer able to brace his curiosity

  In the obscure silence of the room my voice traces the promise of a trail.

  “I signed the piece, but as I wrote I made believe that Carlie was the author. Truth be told, she and Rob were. I’ve been nothing but the medium through which Carlie and Neil manifested themselves. You’ve read the plot. Carlie, alias Leslie, is a law abiding woman. Most and foremost though, she is a brilliant scientist looking for new turns in life, and in a crazy discussion with a stranger she figures she wants to be a scientific hacker. Somewhere out there there’s someone looking for her, let’s say someone like Rob Neilson. Rob Neilson is a law abiding man. Most and foremost though, he is a businessman aiming at profit and in a surreal night spent in a hotel room with a perfect stranger he sees some cynical frames on a TV screen, and those frames click with him. He is mesmerized by the actress playing a sexy MIT girl, paid by someone to manipulate a rational man, win his trust and have him reveal all his secrets about a drug not yet released and on which he has worked for years. Carlie Lester wants to meet Rob Neilson. She writes about herself in the short fiction section and includes her contact information in the story. And then I, a perfect stranger, cut off the story from the New York Times, place it in an envelope and send it to Rob Neilson’s company. The name of the company is easy enough to find, the likelihood of my letter being actually handed to Rob, let alone read, is close to zero. Sitting at her desk, swamped by admin tasks she hates, Carlie Lester smiles at the possibilities implied by the infinitesimal gap between zero and close to zero”

  My narration subsides, and I let the realm of possibilities shimmer beyond my words.

  “Did Carlie Lester and Rob Neilson really meet?”, John wants to know

  For a moment I wish John could feed my imagination as I’m feeding his.

  “What is your gut feeling?”, I ask

  “I don’t know. Perhaps they did”, John says undecidedly

  “I didn’t know either for the longest time the same way I knew nothing about the inventor of the chemical of the century, that esthanol substance Rob had told me about. Was the inventor a rational but naïve man? Would Carlie be able to win his trust and secrets if given the chance?”, I tell him

  John still needs my words, but I have faith in his potential.

  “How do you picture the inventor of esthanol?”, I ask

  “As a man at least in part naïve”, John replies, emerging from his hidden cocoon

  “Why?”, I want to know

  “Because only dreamers can invent what is not yet a reality”, John beautifully says

  There’s a lamp on the side table, and I light it. Its dim reflections are soft around John’s features and mine.

  The change is unexpected. John’s fingers contract in his shoes for the briefest instant. Then I lock my eyes onto John’s, and his fingers relax as I smile.

  “Let me show you something”, I tell him

  I take the metal box beside the sofa on my lap and find a story I cut out the short fiction section published on the New Yorker on December 10, 1999.

  “Here, John. Meet Steven Meyers, alias Meyer Stevenson. He’s your dreamer”, I say, handing him the story

  Chapter 9

  Bondage Breaker – December 10, 1999, The New Yorker

  The rush hour wave had almost subsided, and yet the subway train felt packed when I stepped in. I negotiated my way through the crowd, trying to dig out a square of empty space. There were free seats here and there, but I couldn’t get myself to pick one. I had set my mind on standing when a woman looked up from her book and brushed her eyes on me for a split moment.

  I sat in front of her.

  For a while she ignored my presence, the subway, anything beyond the black and white world of words elating from her book. But when the train came to a halt at the next station, brakes squeaking loudly, she noticed me again.

  “I should get myself a novel like yours”, I said

  What did I expect? Only deranged people interact on subway trains. And yet something in her ways had created a shift in the set of rules. I sensed she would not pull back.

  She wanted to know what brought me to New York, and I wondered what made my lack of belonging to the city so blatantly clear.

  I told her I was taking a break, she smiled at my generic answer and said, “Seems like you are seeking some answers around here”

  She knew so much already, so why not tell her everything?

  “I’ve created lethanol”, I said

  She couldn’t know about lethanol, but I thought I’d lost my mind to talk about this. When she nodded as if I were telling her I was a math teacher in junior high I relaxed.

  Of course the name hadn’t rang a bell. Or had it?

  “The economic value of this molecule is huge, there has been a time when I was proud of my creation. But not anymore”, I continued, unable to stop

  How so, she asked, and I explained what I figured lethanol could do to ecosystems and people. Anxiousness was starting to foam within me when she shrugged and told me, mistakes happen.

  “But I can’t let myself be responsible for a massive disaster”, I fought back, my tone pitching, as if winning this argument could change the facts

  Then don’t, was her calm reply.

  “I communicated the risks. My company knows, but profit rules. They want lethanol. I thought about ingesting the bloody stuff to reach the public. If I die somebody will have to ask questions”, I replied, the high pitch escalating in my tone

  Few people turned my way before for the briefest instant, their irritated indifference echoing my feeling of impotence.

  Is dying the only solution?, she wanted to know, the calmness in her tone unaltered. This woman had faith, or maybe what I saw was my own faith, reflected in her empathetic eyes.

  I shook my head no. No, dying is not the only solution. Not for now, at least.

  A man with a black trench coat hunched on his newspaper glanced my way. The glance was brief, but he was not irritated and he was not indifferent.

  The woman looked at him strangely, and was silent for a moment.

  I looked at him too. He was now engrossed in the black symbols populating his newspaper, and all of a sudden it dawned on me. How simple.

 
“Of course”, I said

  “Of course”, the woman repeated, “I know about lethanol and that man over there might have overheard our conversation about it too, who knows. There are people who might want to listen, all you have to do is reach out and find them”

  I grinned. She smiled, and asked my name.

  I am Meyer Stevenson, and now you know about my story too. From now on I’ll keep telling it to whoever cares to hear it. You can broadcast it or forget it.

  What you do with it is up to you, but bear this in mind.

  They can only have you if you let them, and I won’t.

  Iris Dawson

  Chapter 10

  John is looking at me with a peculiar expression painted on his face and an undefined question finding its way through him.

  “Is this really how the Steven Meyers case started?”, he asks at last

  “Yes”, I say

  John ponders my answer, plays with combinations and possibilities.

  “What do you think happened next?”, I ask him

  “Carlie Lester finds the story. She remembers you, but she’s not sure at all that you’re making this up. She probably thinks that following the trail you gave her is nothing but a game. She can’t really believe it will go anywhere, and yet she needs out of her present life and she catches the hook”, John says

  I smile.

  Needing more than his own imagination, John waits for my words. But I too want his story.

  “What do you think happened next?”, I ask again

  John seems lost for a moment, and yet I know it is worth waiting.

  “Carlie doesn’t have an exact plan, but she knows that if she can hook up Steven she’ll be a step closer to putting her hands on esthanol”, he says after a pause

  I nod

  “When she compares your short stories she notices how you change names…how lethanol is esthanol, how her own name – Carlie Lester – has been translated into Leslie Carson. She envisions that Meyer Stevenson is probably the alias for Steven Meyers”, John hypothesizes

  “You sure know how to follow your trails, Mr. Journalist”, I smile

  “And so Carlie finds Steven”, John continues

  “She does”, I say

  “And perhaps she even lands a job in his company”, John speculates

  “How does she land this job?”, I want to know

  “You’re such a tease”, John replies, laughing for the first time

  I pretend to frown, before my smile melts into John’s laugher.

  “You want to know? I feel we can find some answers here”, John says, opening my book on a page marked by a small fold on the top right corner

  I cock my head sideways, now frowning in genuine surprise.

  “Let me read you a chapter you might have forgotten about”, John smiles

  I sit back, the expectation flowing within me in rivulets of warmth, as I wait for my own words to reshape themselves through John.

  Chapter 11

  “Carlie, how did you meet Steven?”, John asks, reading from the book, and Carlie gives her account, speaking sentences as gaunt as her features.

  I looked him up on a social network, she remembers, and he accepted my invite to connect. I wasn’t sure about how to strike a conversation after contact was established, but Steven reached out after about a week we had connected. He told me he read some of my publications and enjoyed them. I replied on a similar professional and neutral tone, and few similar messages were bounced back and forth without much more happening. He never mentioned esthanol, and neither did I, but I kept an eye on job postings in his company, Rick Hanson’s Corporation, hoping to find a research opening that could lead me to it. And soon enough I did. I applied, and told Steven about it. After sending him the message I realized for the first time that what I had been doing could be more than a hypothetical reality. Iris Dawson had sent Rob Neilson a letter with a short fiction story I posted on the New Yorker as a cover letter, an improbable attempt to sell myself as a spy able to find out about esthanol. Of course that letter had received no reply, but my logic was that if I showed up with actual material in my hands things could change. When I contacted Steven about the job he diverted the conversation, and told me about a seminar in the city where I lived. He was planning on attending, and said he’d be glad if I joined. The seminar was about ethics in science, I assume it was Steven’s way to warn me about what I was getting into. Perhaps it was just a way to meet me, to know if I was worth helping. Perhaps it was both. Whatever Steven’s reasons, I took a day off work and went to the seminar. I should have guessed at the trouble ahead that first day we met, but I chose to neglect all signs and move on with my plan. Had I dropped it, I could have taken a stance about being an ethical researcher and enjoyed my time with Steven from that first afternoon together. The irony is that if I hadn’t felt for Steven, if I had been truly cold, he would have probably been indifferent to me too. We would have not started meeting every other week, at first using science events as a pretext, then admitting we simply wanted to see each other. We would have not started to date one month after that first seminar, Steven would have not helped me get that position in his company and he would have not trust me with his secrets on esthanol. Too many ifs, but here are the facts. Three months after starting my new job I began to learn about esthanol, and I contacted Rob Neilson again. It took more than one trick to get to speak with him on the phone, but when I finally did I gave out enough detail to make him want for more. We met and he hired me, paying me some money for the information I had given that first time and promising I’d receive the rest when I’d be able to provide him with the full recipe to produce the chemical. And sure enough I did, just few months after our first encounter, but not because of my original plan. I had fallen for Steven, hard and fast. I knew everything about esthanol and the money Rob Neilson would give me were enough for me to dump my apartment keys and take off to some exotic island for many years to come. And yet none of this mattered anymore. The Rick Hanson Corporation had started to commercialize esthanol despite all of Steven’s warnings, and Steven felt responsible for what was happening. They had destroyed Steven and I was ready to do anything to destroy them. That’s why I gave away all the know-how to the competition. Why couldn’t I just admit I was not playing games with Steven when I was still in time? I had started falling in love before making the deal with Rob Neilson, but I couldn’t face the truth. I never realized that what I was doing would change my life in ways I could have never expected. You don’t know how I live now, do you? I will show you when the night comes if you want. The life I’ve chosen for myself is so beautifully symbolic, if only you consider how I’ve wasted the one real love I’ve encountered.

  Chapter 12

  “How does Carlie live now?”, John asks, closing the book

  “You’re such a tease”, I reply, echoing his words

  The hint of an evanescent smile appears on John’s lips.

  “Is the story real? What happened to Carlie isn’t in any official record”, he says

  John’s eyes pierce me, their intensity effacing his smile.

  “Wait a moment longer, John. You’ll have the whole story, I promise”, I say, pressing his hand before returning to my position

  My touch is unexpected. John opens his mouth as if to compose a sentence, but he doesn’t.

  I observe him for a moment and notice, for the first time, that he is handsome.

  The realization is unanticipated. It prolongs my silence, but I speak a split second before John does.

  “Let me tell you when I met Carlie again, after her life had become intertwined with Steven’s in ways she couldn’t have known”, I start

  “Tell me”, John says

  “I was travelling to attend a conference, and the conference happened to be in the city where Steven, and now Carlie, worked. It was my last night there. I had been landscaping a number of streets to find a restaurant, when my eye caught a place that seemed unpretentiously cl
assy. The waitress showed me to a table in a corner and I was just about to open the menu when I noticed, hunched over a newspaper and a drink, a man dressed in a black trench coat. I had seen this man too many times to believe this was a coincidence”, I start

  John asks the obvious question.

  “You thought he was stalking you?”

  “No. I simply knew something was going to happen”, I reply

  John’s next question comes in the form of a frown.

  “Something was there, undeniably, but there was no need to rush its discovery”, is my answer

  John sighs and I smile, continuing.

  “I opened the menu, and my attention was rapidly absorbed by the options. When I made my choice I closed the menu and raised my eyes. The eyes of the man in black crossed mine. He raised two fingers in a gest of farewell so brief I could have imagined the fleeting moment. And when the moment passed I saw them. Steven and Carlie were sitting two tables away from mine, the food turning cold on their heated conversation”

  “Did they see you?”, John asks

  “Not immediately. When I did I opened a book, alternating between the pages and the real object of my attention. Steven was sitting back, shaking his head no every now and then. Carlie was begging him not to do something. She was trying to keep her composure with little success”

  John drinks my words, his body slightly protruding towards me, the storyteller.

  “Could you hear what she was saying?”, he wants to know

  “Not everything, only what peaked in panicked notes. Please don’t, too risky, can’t go, why?, flashed in repeated echoes of escalating anxiousness”, I say

  “And how did the conversation end?”, John asks

  “It didn’t, at least not in that restaurant. Carlie paid the bill and grabbed her forehead in a gest of despair, before leaving the table”

  “And?”, John prods me

  “And it was then that Carlie saw me. She had to walk past my table to reach the exit. When she was passing next to me I looked up, and Carlie looked back at me. Was this part of the plan?, I could almost hear her ask me. But she didn’t, and walked away instead”

  I pause, and this time John waits for me to continue.