Читать книгу The Key - Jennifer Sturman - Страница 11

A mountain of work waited for us in the office, but we were sufficiently fortified by lunch to get through it at an efficient pace. Still, it was well after nine by the time I let myself into my apartment.

I sensed instantly that something extraordinary was underway.

“Peter?” I called out, kicking off my shoes. I shrugged out of my coat and left it with my hat and scarf draped over one of the cardboard boxes in the foyer.

“In here,” he answered.

“In where?”

“The kitchen.”

“Why?” I asked. An old Van Morrison CD was playing on the stereo, and the apartment smelled strangely of food. My stomach reminded me with a rumble that lunch, however fortifying, had been a long time ago. I picked a path through the cartons that lined the hallway, heading toward the room in question.

“Why do you think?”

“Oh my God.” I stood in the kitchen doorway, frozen with shock.

He was cooking.

“Lasagna all right with you? It seemed like a good choice for a cold night. It’s almost ready. Here, let me pour you a glass of wine.”

I struggled for words. “But—how? With what?” I didn’t see any plastic containers from restaurant takeout, or even one of those orange boxes with the trusty Stouffer’s logo. And the microwave was quiet. None of it made any sense.

“A casserole dish. The oven.”

“It works?” I’d gotten a letter from ConEd years ago, warning that they were turning off the gas since it registered such little usage. I was pretty sure I’d never responded.

“Seems to.” He handed me a glass of Barolo.

“I have a casserole dish?”

“It was a bit dusty, but I rinsed it off.”

“But—but didn’t you need spices and herbs and ingredient stuff?”

“There’s a grocery store a couple of blocks away. They even deliver.”

He was trying to act nonchalant, but he was clearly pleased with himself.

I put my glass down and wrapped my arms around him. “Will you marry me?”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

A few minutes later he banished me from the kitchen so that he could put the finishing touches on the meal. In the living room, I saw that he’d even set the small table. Place mats! Who knew I owned place mats?

I went to stow my briefcase in the tiny room that I used as a study and which technically elevated my apartment from a one-bedroom to a two-bedroom, although it had never been clear to me how it could possibly fit a bed when it could barely fit a desk and chair. The PC was on—Peter must have been using it—so I took a moment to check my personal e-mail account. My BlackBerry was like an extra limb, almost surgically attached to me and ensuring that I rarely fell behind on my work e-mail, but my home account tended to fill up.

Most of it was spam. The Internet was supposed to usher in a golden age of targeted, one-to-one marketing, but I refused to believe that I was the target market for penile implants. I sent message after message into the trash bin, clicking the mouse with increasing impatience and speed.

As a result, I nearly missed an e-mail from Luisa confirming drinks the following evening. In a fortuitous twist of events, all four of my college roommates were in New York this week, and we’d agreed to meet at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel. I hit Reply All to caution them that I might be a bit late, but I resolved at the same time to make it out of the office at a decent hour. Gallagher and his deal would suck up every second if I let them.

The next and last e-mail also nearly missed being tossed into the trash bin. And once I saw it, I almost wished I’d deleted it unread.

The subject line read Important. Of course, all of the Viagra ads claimed relevance and urgency, too.

But the return address was from manofthepeople@rsnd.net. Not the most legitimate-sounding address—it had a self-righteous rabble-rousing air to it—but it seemed more likely to be a real person than one of the randomly assorted strings of letters that most of the Viagra ads came from.

I clicked it open. The message was short, and cryptic.

Perry’s dirty and so is this deal.

And they’ve done it before.

That was it. That was all it said.