It was a special day for him. I did not know that when I met him.

There is an old song that goes, "If I'd known it was your birthday, I would have baked you a cake."

He told me life does what it can to you. And then you go on.

I think he is right about that.

There are days, most days in fact, when I look the world in the eye. I've never thought of myself as fragile or easily intimidated. I am who I am. Like everyone else, sometimes that's good and sometimes it's the recent past.

Inside the hotel lobby that evening, I waited for someone to show up. When he did, I met someone I never should have met. He was the first person I looked in the eyes in days and days. It was all because he asked me, "Will you watch my suitcase for me, love? Won't be a minute."

It was his voice, wasn't it? I think it was.

When he came back, he reached for his suitcase; it was small, black, leather. He paused, as if he was going to say something to me. But he thought better of it. Instead, he smiled. It was small. It was calm. It spoke of unspoken regret. He was getting ready to back away and leave.

"Are you Terry Thorne?" I asked him. My voice was small. It didn't sound that much like me. But it was me.

He almost shook his head. Not in denial; in surprise. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Miss...?" Yes, his voice. I had been alerted to his voice.

"Something quite odd has happened," I heard myself tell him. "I'm afraid I'm not quite sure how to say what it is."

There is no doubt in my mind why he sat slowly down in the leather-covered divan before me. It was not so much curiosity as it was professional alertness. His eyes swept over me; yet, I knew already that he had examined me before he ever asked me to watch his bag while he had gone to the restroom. He was waiting on a taxi to the airport. I knew that, too. It wasn't there, though. That's why he'd had time to go to the restroom. In any event, he had seen me when he came off the elevator. I had watched him, knowing who he had to be. I wasn't ever sure how I was going to get the guts up to rise and walk over to him and simply ask him his name.

So in watching him examine me, I knew he had formed an assumption about me. It had been quick; but I do that sort of thing as well, so I recognized it. He saw a neatly dressed, professional looking woman; attractive, sophisticated and lost. Totally lost. It made him curious. I know that this is why, of all the people in there, he'd asked me to watch his suitcase.

This is perhaps another reason why he sat before me instead of dashing out to see if his taxi was there. Curiosity. It can be an intoxicant.

"Are you all right?" he asked me softly.

"I doubt it," I said.

"Were you waiting for me?"

"Yes. I had a message to give you."

His eyebrows rose. He ran the tip of his tongue along his upper lip. "Who is it from?"

"I don't know. A voice on the phone."

Now he frowned. He was, quite as simply as I could say it, handsome and resolute. Dark hair, blue-green eyes, formidable body build, large hands. Polished presentation, from his wing tips to his neat hair. He might have been dressed for a boardroom, but he was built as if he operated more easily in more physical pursuits. There was intelligence and cunning in those eyes of his that did not miss anything around him. He carried himself with confidence. I imagined him as federal agent, only he wasn't American; the voice on the phone had warned me that he'd have an Australian accent. From the moment he'd walked off the elevators, I had hoped he was Terry Thorne. Because if he was, then he seemed quite the kind of man who would be good to be with in a bad situation. He just seemed no-nonsense, skilled, unflappable, fearsome if provoked.

"A voice on what phone?" he asked, now letting a bit of steel into his tone.

I looked down into my open palms, at the cell phone resting there. "This phone."

"Maybe if you started at the beginning?"

I bit my lip. It was an odd beginning, wasn't it? I glanced down at the bag near my ankle. "I was shopping. I had just come out of Macy's. A man got out of a car, it was black, and he said he'd almost given up on me and that he liked the bag."

"Go on," he said, encouraging me when I paused to think what was said, in case that was important.

"I told him I had to go. I thought he was trying to sell me something. Honestly, I didn't quite grasp what was happening. He dropped the cell phone in the bag. He said to simply do as I was told. He said someone would be watching me the whole time. And then he got back in the car and it drove off."

"That's it?"

"No, of course not." I huffed a bit, now shifting around and annoyed. It was nice actually to be annoyed. I'd been so many other things in the last hour or so... annoyed seemed like a safer thing to be. It seemed that perhaps being annoyed meant shock was wearing off.

"Then tell me the rest. I have a taxi to catch."

"I don't think so."

He tilted his head at me, looked at his watch, acted irritated and brusque.

"I hadn't been sure what to do. I mean, if he'd robbed me, well, then I'd have called a cop. But he hadn't taken something from me; he'd given me something. I was walking down the street, trying to think what I should do... and then the phone rang."

"Ah. The phone." His voice had changed. I was now a suspect. I knew that. His face was carefully closed down but in his voice, he couldn't hide that he didn't believe me.

"Yes. It was a man on the phone. He said that I should find Terry Thorne in this hotel. That he... you would be checking out within the hour to go to the airport. That I was to be sure and tell you that if you went, your new client's daughter would be the next package. And that I was to say that if you thought he was fooling around, you should call her at home and ask where her daughter was."

His jaw worked. The muscle in his cheek twitched. His entire body tensed. His eyes narrowed. He leaned toward me, hissed out, "Who the fuck are you? If you people think you've got an easy mark, you're about to learn otherwise."

I am positive that my eyes must have opened wide, so very wide. He saw that instant reaction in me; a part of him began to catalogue that I hadn't a clue as to what he meant. But as for me? Let me be succinct: he'd just scared me in a way that nearly made me shut down.

He thrust his hand into his pocket; opened his briefcase, pulled out a file; dialed a number after reading it off of some form in the file. In a very clipped, brisk voice, he asked whoever answered if her daughter was home with her. He listened for a moment and then assured whoever was on the other end that there was no reason for alarm. That her daughter was going to be fine. I knew it was a woman because he called her Mandy and he called her 'love.' Even if he hadn't, I would have known it was a woman he was reassuring. His voice was deep, calm and totally in charge. I watched him; I listened to him. I trusted in him; I knew this woman Mandy did as well.

It is an odder than odd feeling: to be terrified of a man and yet to feel somehow that you trust him. Perhaps those are not always conflicting feelings. But I wasn't sure which man I should have been reacting to: the man I feared would kill me if I made one false step and the man I thought could save me from whatever really bad thing I'd fallen into.

After a long stare at his phone, he looked up into my eyes. Very calmly, he said, "Tell me once more. Run through it. From the top."

I had to trust someone. I couldn't trust the man on the other end of that cell phone... that man, I knew, was a kidnapper who'd picked me out of a crowd to involve me. I'd given this a lot of thought as I'd sat there waiting on Terry Thorne. Sat there, indeed, knowing that the man on that phone had dangerous people watching to be sure I followed my instructions and did not deviate. What I'd thought about was figuring this out: why me? Why had it been me who'd been chosen?

And the conclusion I'd reached was that it was because I had nothing to do with this.

I was a loose end, I suppose, but I was not ever going to be able to tell this Terry Thorne anything that could help him as I really knew nothing. He could investigate me, the police could check under my bed and in my closet... they'd find nothing at all to connect me to this kidnapping. So in that respect, I could be a huge loose end and I would be of no value. Of course, that also meant, with no value, there was no reason they wouldn't hurt me or kill me.

I'd had all that time to think about this. And then this man Terry Thorne had walked into the lobby. There had been the way he'd talked to Mandy. I was desperate to trust someone.

Everything. He wanted to hear everything that had happened. When I finished telling him, he asked, "When you talked to the bloke on the phone, all you did was listen? You didn't ask questions? You in the habit of just doing something this dangerous? Didn't think of going to the cops?"

"I asked questions," I said. I heard the indignation in my voice. He narrowed his eyes but he leaned back a bit. If I was reading his body language, then he'd begun to recognize that I wasn't responding as he might have expected. I forced myself to not be belligerent as I continued, "At first, he just started talking about this hotel and asking me if I had a piece of paper to write it down... I said, 'Who's Terry Thorne?' He said, 'The fellow you're going to find. Now write this down.' And then he gave me the hotel name. He was very rude. But he was also... so matter-of-fact. When he said all this about a little girl, I thought... he was so unconcerned. It frightened me. I asked if she was okay. He laughed and said 'that was a nice touch.' He got angry when I said I was confused. Said I should just do as I was supposed to; come here and wait and find you. He said they'd be watching me to be sure nothing untoward happened."

"That's all?"

"No." I looked down at the toe of my shoe. "I asked him why me. He said I had it down cold."

"Had it down cold? What's that mean?"

"I don't have a clue. He hung up before I could ask. I tried to call back... you know? Use the function that records the incoming numbers... but it said 'unrecognized number' on the screen."

"And you have been sitting here ever since? Why didn't you ring my room from the house phone?"

"Because he said to wait. He said they were watching me. You have any idea how scared I am? Some stranger on the street picks me out of the crowd to get involved in some crime. It is a crime, isn't it? They've kidnapped someone... and I'm chosen to deliver the message, right? And they're watching. And I bet you don't have a damned idea of what to do now. You're stalling for time."

"We wait. They have to make contact. Make a demand. We negotiate."

"You say that like it's so simple. Like I'm a fool to be scared. They're watching! I want to go home but I can't because they're watching and the man told me I had to stay with you because he'd call... and I don't want some child to die because I got scared and didn't follow instructions."

"What's your name?"

The shift in him, in the conversation... it came so suddenly, so abruptly. I looked in his eyes and saw a shadow there. He raised his chin, blinked. "My name? It's Eris."

"Lovely name. Shame we're meeting this way," he said, his hand coming out to touch my shoulder. "There's nothing for you to worry about. I do this all the time. I do it for a living."

"What? You make your living waiting on strange women to come tell you some child has been kidnapped?"

He half shook his head; regret, rueful memory. "I negotiate for the release of kidnapped individuals. Never quite like this, but, love, this is something I'm quite good at. We'll have it sorted out in no time. Don't you worry anymore, right? I'll put you in a taxi, you'll be on your way... no need to worry about it any longer."

"Just like that? I can go? What about the men watching?"

He frowned a bit. "Can I see some identification? Just in case I'd need to get hold of you again... I suppose I should be at least that suspicious of you, Eris... never hurts, right?"

Just then, the phone in my palm started ringing. I almost dropped it. He told me to answer it. He was so calm, so professional. The voice on the other end of the phone asked for Thorne; I handed the phone to him.

I sat there watching his face, his eyes, the way his lips pursed. Mostly, in the beginning of the conversation, he just listened. His eyes darted around, but not obviously. And then he said, "You're not calling all the shots here, mate. Let's just cut to it... You name your price; I'll talk to my client..."

And then he didn't say anything for a few minutes. He didn't have to. His face hardened. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. Whatever was being said to him, he was growing determined and angry.

His voice was tight when he finally said, "I'm not going anywhere... you want to meet? We'll do it in a public place and... Mate, you must be joking. You think I'm an amateur?"

I looked around the hotel lobby. I wondered if I would come back here some day and find that the lights were brighter or that the air was warmer.

"No... no way, mate. She's not part of this. She is not..."

I looked at him. He was looking at the floor as he listened on the phone. Every so often, he'd grunt or he'd make some monosyllabic reply. His tie was askew. I could see that the top button was unbuttoned on his collar. I pictured him, in New York on a business trip, on his way home. Up in his room, he'd tossed everything neatly into his suitcase and briefcase. On the way down in the elevator, he began to feel the tightness of the tie and the button. He'd undone them; after all, his business was done; he was on his way home.

Except now he wasn't.

And I wasn't either.

When he got off the phone, he told me very quietly. He said the man on the phone insisted that he had to bring me with him. That a car was parked in the garage. A key behind the front right tire. A map under the driver's seat. Limited time to get to wherever it was they were sending him.

"Why? Why would they insist I have to go?" I asked. You could hear the panic in my voice.

"Is there someone you need to call? Husband? Boyfriend? Someone who's expecting you? Because you're coming with me, Eris. We don't have a choice. If they are watching us, you have to come."

"But why? Why me?"

"He wants you with me because he wants to give me one thing to worry about. One more... loose end. One more distraction."

"Are we going to die?"

"No." He patted my knee. Breathed in and out. Deep breaths. Slow breaths. "You never answered my question about whether you needed to call someone who might be expecting you... We don't want to worry whoever thinks you'll be home soon."

"There's no one." I said it soft. But I said it brisk. And I brooked no further questions down that road.

He made me hold the cell phone. He wanted me to have a job, something to focus on, a little thing that made me feel a part of this.

One thing I knew... he still didn't trust me. There was a dichotomy in how he treated me. His voice was modulated and he said all the right things. However, he was testing my reactions.

The key was right where he'd been told. He squatted down with a tiny grunt. It's when I noticed he had a gun in his waistband. In the small of his back. I saw it as his jacket hiked up as he got on his knees to reach for the key. While he was there, he felt around, for what I didn't have a clue.

The map was also where it was meant to be. He handed me a small mag light from his pocket as he opened my door and ushered me inside the car; told me to check the map out and begin giving him directions. I glanced at him; he was studying everything around us.

The instructions were precise. Turns indicated. Exact mileage between the turns. Even down to the speed. On the road ten minutes and the phone rang. The voice on the other end instructed me to tell Terry Thorne to keep to the speed indicated. When I hung up, he just nodded, as if he'd known what the message would be.

He told me to reach into his suit jacket for his phone. To keep it on my lap. To press the triangular blue button. When a dial tone sounded, I looked up at him and he explained it was now on speakerphone. He said for me to press and hold the "4" button. Another man's voice came on the line. He called him "Dino." He told him quickly, firmly what had happened. Described the car. Had me read him the directions. And Dino told him he'd be there for him.

I don't know why it was, but it was hearing that promise, made without hesitation. Made with absolute assurance.

When I hung the phone up, I looked out the window until Terry tapped on the paper in my hand and told me to read off the next mileage again.

We made the next turn. I glanced at him. Twice. The third time, he was looking at me. "Are you scared? At all?" I asked him.

"No." He said it so easily. I very nearly believed him. "Not yet."

It made me smile. I felt the air leave me; this is how I knew I'd been holding my breath. "Will you tell me when it's time to be scared?" I asked him.

"Eris, you're doing fine. This will all be over soon."

"You said you do this kind of thing all the time. It's naïve of me, perhaps, but I always thought a kidnapping was different. What I mean is, why haven't they asked for a ransom?"

He frowned and stared ahead at traffic. I pointed out the next turn. We'd been on the road over twenty minutes. 

"It is normal for the negotiations to begin with a ransom demand. And then the real negotiations begin. Everything's up for bargaining. So, if you're asking, is this abnormal... the answer's yes. But, remember, nothing ever really goes the same way twice."

"Why would they do it this way?"

"I don't know."

"Take a guess."

"I'm not much into guessing."

"Quit doing that."

Our eyes met. Briefly.

"Doing what?"

"Semantics or splitting hairs or whatever you want to call it. You very well know what I want to know."

He sighed. Glanced back at me. Frowned. It was this moment and Lord knows why it was; but this was the first time that I really noticed exactly the impact he was having on me. I felt a sense of trust in this man that I should not have. I just rather felt that nothing bad would happen as long as he was there to protect me. I felt his power. I felt his skill. I felt the fullness of his masculinity. I felt all the things I have so long denied myself. I felt as if I was a woman in the circle of a stranger to whom she feels some basic, gut level attraction that makes her heart race when it shouldn't.

"You want the truth?" I nodded. The butterflies... my stomach fluttered. "Truth is, this is almost surely either personal or someone who wants to impress me how smart he is. We have to play his way. But that doesn't mean we don't bring in some extra players. The man I had you call? My partner. He evens the odds."

"Would they expect that?"

This time he didn't look at me. Just stared ahead. His jaw tight. "Maybe."

"Then we're headed for a trap?"

"Maybe."

"God."

"You wanted the truth."

"I know." My voice shook. "Then let's not do it. Let's just pull over and not walk into the trap."

"You'd be able to live if a five-year-old girl died as a result?"

I almost said that I wasn't living anyway. But I kept my mouth shut. Tight. Firm.

"The biggest question right now, the one thing I'd like to figure out this very moment is this: who the fuck are you?" he said. His voice was rough, dark. Sandpaper where it had just been velvet covered with smoke.

"I'm no one." I said it. I believed it. Hadn't he?

"Then why they pick you, love?"

"I wish I had never gone shopping. I wish I had just stayed holed up in my apartment one more day. I wish I hadn't forced myself to..." I stopped in mid thought. Looked out the window. "I don't know why... Although I did ask. I told you... I didn't get a real answer."

"Then tell me this, Eris. You do this often?"

"Do what?"

"Go along with something this incredible, this preposterous? That you? You that kind of woman? Because, baby, you don't seem too fazed by any of this." His body language, his tone of voice... all pure aggression.

I felt my body press against the door. A subtle movement of self-preservation.

Why hadn't I bolted the moment after that first phone call? If I'd simply tossed the phone in a trash can and run the other way... If I'd gone in a store and demanded they call the police... If I'd refused to get in this car... Was it a death wish? Was I that far down that my lethargy had breached my ability to survive?

"Eris?"

"Turn right at the next corner."

"Eris, answer the question."

I could have played a game with him. But I chose not to do that. "Shock."

"Shock?"

"I was in shock. I thought a child's life hung in the balance and, frankly, I wasn't thinking much beyond that. So it must have been shock."

A grunt greeted my statement.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I said, turning to face him. "You think I'm lying? Why would I lie? You think I like this? You are an idiot. To think I trusted you. To think I thought maybe I had a chance because you seem so together, so..."

"So? So what do I seem? Go on, say it, love. You think I'm your knight in shining armor?"

"I was going to say that you seemed like you'd be able to kill people."

He looked out his side window. We rode in silence until I told him to take the final turn. Another 4.8 miles, I said. He only nodded.

"Why did you say that like you resented it?" I asked him eventually.

"Why did I say what?"

"About being a knight in shining armor. Isn't that what all men want women to think they are?"

"All that shining armor, love, it's not what it's cracked up to be. Gets heavy after a while. And if you never get to take it off, it's bloody confining."

"Or it can be defining. The most defining thing about you."

"Maybe. Course, once you get a look at the man inside the armor, he may not be the man you imagined."

"Or maybe he's in the armor because he doesn't want to show his true face."

"How much further?"

"Are you really not scared?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"That nothing will happen to me while you're around."

"You don't strike me as the kind of woman who buys bullshit."

"I don't mind renting it sometimes."

"Nothing will happen to you while I'm around."

"Thank you, Terry Thorne. I know that took a lot out of you."

Gallows humor, my husband called it once upon a time. Facing a black void, but having the spirit to face it nonetheless. I wonder if it had been what he was thinking.

We almost passed it. I grabbed his arm and said, "Here! This is the parking lot!"

It was simply that I would never have guessed that our journey would end at some restaurant done in a pirate ship motif. It was... ridiculous.

The lot was full of cars. Lights showed the building in full swing. It was a restaurant, one of those themed ones that cater to wedding parties and children's birthday shindigs and office functions where nooks and crannies offered convenient protection for hanky panky fueled by alcohol and too many days working near temptation you never quite stop having daydreams about.

I had asked my husband: why did you even look? I had felt foolish about that because I never had. It had never dawned on me. Now I suppose I knew better. He said everyone looked and everyone lusted. But I never had.

And then he was gone.

He died before I put it all straight. I was still crooked, you see.

It wasn't really, in the grand scheme of things, the sort of thing that I wouldn't have eventually gotten beyond. He promised me it would never happen again. I wanted to believe him. But he died before I could.

Life is so fucking messy, isn't it? It's just ridiculous.

"We take this nice and easy, Eris. We wait on instructions. Call Dino again. Have him on while we wait. Then when the call comes, he can hear what we do. So he'll know."

In the dark, we waited. I heard noises around us but every time I jumped, he reached out and touched me to calm my nerves. When the call came in, I grabbed in over his hand.

The man's instructions were for Terry to walk with me, hand in hand, toward the rear of the restaurant building. To weave down its cobblestone path, just between the building's edge and the large privacy fence that separated it from a house on the other side. To ignore other patrons. To go to the rear and face it. To look to our left and see the entrance to the cellar. To enter the cellar. To close the entry behind us. To find the light switch on our right. To flick it on. To descend the stairs, slowly, him first. To know that if he so much as showed a gun or other weapon, we would both die and so would the young hostage. That at the bottom of the stairs, we would find another light switch. To turn it on and turn to our left. Before us, the other side of the cellar, we would find a table. On it, would be further instructions.

When I hung up, Dino said he'd gotten all that. He said he was maybe five minutes behind us. He said we should try to go slow so he'd be there, waiting on us when we left the cellar. That he'd scope the joint out. That he'd be covering us. That we could proceed with the firm knowledge that he'd not let us down. Not let Terry down.

"He is a friend, isn't he?" I asked Terry as he pressed the off button to his phone. He slipped it back into his jacket's breast pocket.

"The best. The kind I'd stake my life on."

"The kind you'd die for?"

"Yeah."

"Friends like that... I used to have one."

He looked at me in the darkness of the parking lot. His eyebrows drew down into a heavy frown. "Someday, I want you to explain that to me."

"I hope we have any someday after this night," I said.

It took us only about ten minutes, at the most, to make our way from the car to the cellar. We paused for what seemed like forever at the top of the stairs. The incandescent bulb showed a blunt path, well-lit, but ill-defined in that way such things have when they empty into total darkness. I heard a rustling below and imagined rats. I drew closer to Terry. My hand had not left his since the parking lot. He squeezed in over my hand. And then he stepped off the top riser; down we went.

At the bottom, Terry stopped, drew me behind him. Turned on the light. The table was across the room. Terry's eyes studied everything before we moved. On the table was a key. Brass. Large. A small card said it opened the door behind us.

"They know we're here," he whispered. He put his mouth next to my earlobe and spoke straight through my fear. "Things get bad, drop to the floor. Don't do anything else unless I say. Got it?"

I nodded. I felt his lips linger on my ear. I got the sudden rush of him, sweeping over me, making me glad to be here with him. Making me feel excited when I should have not felt that way. I think now that it was belonging to something bigger than me. I felt invincible. I felt visible.

He unlocked the door with a quiet strength. When it opened to another pitch-black room, a male voice, the one on the phone said, "Wait for it."

I was mostly behind Terry. A flashlight, powerful beam, shown over us, blinding us.

"Wait for it," the voice said again.

"Go on," said another voice, a woman's voice. "Do it!"

And then music blared into the room. My brain froze, trying to recall it, taking a moment to connect it... "McArthur's Park"... 'someone left the cake out in the rain' ... and then across the room, a match was lit and then a candle...

And then another.

And another.

Terry dropped my hand.

Moved away.

Lights came on. The overhead lights. A huge cake, multi-layered, blazing with candles. People filed out from a far room, into this one. Many people. Laughing. A woman grabbing Terry's face and kissing him. A redheaded man slapping him on the back. Terry, gruff, mean. The woman dragging him off. But he glanced at me, an incomprehensible look of disappointment on his face, something hard and impenetrable. I was standing there, floored, just absolutely not understanding what was going on. And my protector, my white knight who resented his armor, was waltzing away like this was normal and I was somehow superfluous to his requirements where before I had been desperately needed.

The redheaded man stepped before me... "You were marvelous! Sherry was right. You were worth every penny. Every pretty penny. What's your poison? Game's up for our boy. You enjoy it?"

"What... What is going on?" I whispered. He bent near me. "What... is... happening?"

"It's the party. You know?"

I shook my head. Backed away. "The little girl... I don't understand..."

"Little girl?"

"Kidnapped. Phone. Terry Thorne. Key."

"What?"

He put his hand on my elbow but I jerked away. I recognized his voice. "Dino?" I asked him. He nodded. "But he said you were his friend."

And just then, another man, this one skinny and blonde, tried to shove a glass in my hand and looked hard at me and then said to Dino, "Who's the skirt? Thought you were flying solo tonight?"

"This was the decoy," Dino told him, nodding his head toward me. "The one Sherry has in her stable. You know?"

"No, that's not her. She's a lot taller. A lot skinnier. Not so ... reserved."

"Then who the hell is this? She's the one who came with Terry."

"Musta been a sub..."

They both looked at me. I looked back. I can't imagine how I looked. Probably deer in headlights. Maybe like a lab rat.

"What is going on?" I asked from within the tremble of my voice.

"You work for Sherry?"

"I don't know a Sherry."

"Then how did you get the phone?"

"A man gave it to me. On the street."

They looked at each other. The second man, the blonde, looked back at me, his mouth forming a smile. "No shit?"

It had been an elaborate ruse. All of it. From the beginning to the end. These two men, this Dino and the other who said I should call him Eddie, they each took an arm. I think I was going to faint. They brought me to a chair, brought me a drink. Told me they had simply wanted to get one over on Terry Thorne. Dino said he'd owed him one. Said it'd been a game. That it had been set up to throw Terry into a situation he'd probably recognize as a ploy, but that they'd have enough twists in there to make him have to treat it as real, just in case it was. And they'd hired some woman through a "placement firm," as Dino said with a cough, to play an unwitting dupe dragged in. Only they got a real dupe when I was dragged in. And the idea had been that Terry would have to protect the dupe, go for the kidnap victim, miss his flight... all the while half-sure that it was a game to set him up to mark an occasion for which he'd come to expect that anything could happen... even nothing.

So all that time; all that stress; all that rush... it had been nothing. It had been something his friends thought he'd enjoy. That at the end of it, he'd be pleased and enjoying that they'd gone to that much trouble. And they'd pay off the dupe; and, maybe she'd stay and party with them; only she wasn't. Because she was me.

And he was having a birthday. Isn't that ironic?

Birthday.

His birthday.

A surprise.

Terry knows we'll surprise him if we can, Dino said. This just seemed like fun. He knew Terry had half-suspected the whole way.

"But I didn't," I said, my voice softly shocked. "I thought it was real. I thought a little girl was going to die. I thought men were watching me. I thought... I thought..."

"It's okay, honey. What's your name?"

I hate being handled. He was trying to handle me. I hate being lied to by men. I'd been lied to that whole night. He didn't give a shit about anything but that they'd fucked up and I was upset because of it. I hate being handled. Hate. Being. Handled.

"None of your business. I want out of here. I am calling the nearest police precinct and I am reporting you people. You sick bastards. How dare you scare me this way? How dare you?"

They tried to keep me there. But then Dino said, let her go... and he followed me up the stairs, the way I'd come in with Terry. I nearly died on the trip up. I kept running and I was scared. It didn't seem possible that this was over, that this was some sophomoric prank, that I was more scared now than before when I'd been holding Terry's hand and walking down the stairs. I was alone in some strange place, with strangers whom I could not trust at all.

I told this Dino to stay away. I dodged around the corner, went to the front... I went into the front of the building... asked them to call me a cab. I looked outside as I waited and Dino was gone. When the cab finally showed up, I ran out the door and was halfway off the bottom step, when a man stepped out of nowhere to grab me.

It was Terry. I struggled with him. Slapped at his chest to get him to let me go. Cursed at him. He held on.

"It's okay, Eris. It's okay. Just let me explain... I thought you were in on it. I was just playing a part..."

"No, you weren't! No one plays that well!"

"I do."

"Did you know? How could you be that sick?"

"It was a misunderstanding. I knew there was a chance it was just a charade. But you were so convincing..."

"Well, of course I was convincing, you bastard! I was scared out of my mind."

"What can I do to make it up to you?"

"Not a goddamned thing. You sick man with your sick friends. Let me go."

When the taxi was about to leave the lot, I looked back. Terry stood there, watching me. His hands in his pockets, his shoulders slumped. A woman, the woman who'd kissed him, she came up behind him, put her arms around his waist. He took a step away. Said something to her. She looked shocked. He never took his eyes off me. I wondered why men look at other women like that. Why do they ever look?

My therapist gave me a book to read. It is called "Why Men Love Bitches." He said sometimes it is the oddest nuggets that we will mine.

I have dug into the ore's vein. I am not sure where the mother lode may be. It didn't seem to be there.

My therapist laughed at me when I told him that I had gone into the bookstore I use and asked the young man behind the counter for the book. The young man had taken a step back, raised his eyebrows. But he typed in the title, said they had a copy and he got it for me. After he rung me up, he was going to say something and then stopped.

"Interesting title, isn't it?" I said.

"Interesting how that word didn't seem like it should come from your mouth," he said in reply.

"Perhaps that is the point," I said.

"Perhaps I should read the book," he told me.

I get along with men. I do not think it is a bad thing that part of the reason just may be that I don't have a problem if the situation calls for me to be a bitch. The kind of man I admire and respect and like, that kind of man wants a challenge.

But sometimes, too much of a challenge is the problem.

He had little to go on to find me. A first name. A face. The bag that had the name of the store where I'd been shopping emblazoned upon it.

When I asked him how he found me, he shrugged. When pressed, he said he'd asked the taxi company where I'd been dropped off.

The interesting thing about that, is that during the drive away from the madness of that glancing encounter with his world, I was in the back of that taxi not five minutes when it dawned on me that if those odd people ever tried to find me, perhaps to convince me to not raise a stink, that would be one way to find me. So I had the taxi drop me off at the hotel he'd been at. From there, I walked home.

When I told him that he couldn't have found me that way as I'd not been let off at my residence, he said pursed his lips most charmingly. He allowed as how he'd figured that was exactly why I'd been let out at the hotel. Said he knew that what that mainly told him was that I lived within blocks of the place. He'd put some of his staff on it; it had only taken them a few days to find out where I lived. He had been intrigued at the purposeful way I'd challenged him to find me.

"That was not a challenge," I said.

"Was to me, love."

"That was a message to not find me."

"Or maybe you wanted to make me work for it."

"Don't be absurd."

"Can I take you to dinner, Eris?"

He had simply materialized a few days earlier. I'd seen him in the park entrance across from my condo building. He was smoking, looking at his feet, then gazing around. It was as if he didn't even care to notice the comings and goings at my building. It was as if his being there was simply a happenstance.

He followed me every day between that first day and the one in which I finally approached him. I was eating lunch and he was standing on the curb, leaning against a light pole. His face was turned to the sun. He held a folded up newspaper in his hand.

I went straight out. Told him that he either had to stop following me or he had to tell me what he wanted.

When he was sitting across from me in the restaurant, sharing lunch, I noticed him looking. At me. I knew just how his girlfriend would feel if she saw him doing that. Or, rather, when she realized he had been doing it. Women know exactly what a man is doing when he looks at a woman like that. They imagine it, this scene of the man they love looking at another woman. They imagine it after the break up or after the admission of an affair. It can haunt a woman for a long time. Something else bad or very good has to happen to destroy that image.

After lunch, I thought he would leave and I would never hear from him again. He had asked me questions. I had told him that he had no reason to know anything about me other than that I had not gone to the police and I was not going to sue and I was not ever going to tell anyone else about that horrible excuse for a practical joke.

He had frowned; gotten a very pensive look on his face.

Why was it that in that look, that one look, I looked deeper?

"That's curious, isn't it?" he asked. He had one hand on the table. He tapped a finger of that hand on the wood of the tabletop. "What makes me curious, Eris, is the way you reacted. For someone to simply find themselves in that kind of situation, I'd have expected... I'd have read you differently, is what I mean to say."

"Perhaps you don't read people very well, sir."

"Perhaps." He tilted his chin. Smiled at me with a very tiny grin that fled his face so quickly that I was not sure I really had not imagined that. "You controlled your fear. I find that intriguing. Makes me want to know more."

"No. I was in shock."

He shrugged. "You barely talked."

"Shock."

"You didn't panic."

"Shock."

"You didn't ask many questions. You didn't need constant reassurance. You didn't run away at the first opportunity. You were thinking the whole way, each step."

"Shock."

His hand slipped over mine. A touch. Men always look and then they touch. Like that. In a way that they must measure out and know will get the woman's attention.

"You were angry after you found out."

"What did you think I would be?"

"Relieved?"

"Don't make a mystery out of what isn't one. People respond to trauma in different ways. I close down. When it's over, the natural feeling of anger to be caught in the situation was appropriate."

He insisted on paying for lunch. He put a hand on my elbow and guided me for a walk in the park. We were both dressed very casually. We simply strolled along. Neither of us speaking for a long time.

I broke the silence by asking him how he had found me. How little real concrete clues I'd left, for all the intensity of the experience. For all the intensity of that instant bonding strangers do when they find themselves facing a common, immediate enemy.

So he asked me to dinner. I said 'no.'

We parted company in the park. I stood on the grass, leaning against an elm, and watched him walk away. At the entrance, he paused before turning to look at me over his shoulder.

I thought it would be the last I'd see of him.

He started sending me flowers.

Then postcards.

The postcards came with date and city of delivery stamped upon them. They were always hotel stationary postcards. There was never a pattern. Whenever they were sent from New York, there was always the same message: "I want to know more."

Of course, there was never a manner for me to respond except one. It was not as if I could write him back. If I had, all I had was the hotel addresses. As soon as I'd send a reply in the mail, he'd be gone to some other city, some other hotel. But when he was in New York, he always stayed at the same hotel: the one where I'd first met him. It was within walking distance.

Obviously, he meant to intrigue me, flatter me. Obviously, he meant for me to know when he was in New York and to call him at the hotel. It took three months of this before I noticed that the last two postcards I'd gotten from New York had not borne stamps. That meant, obviously, that he'd hand-delivered them to my building.

I could see him doing that. Knowing he'd been there, right there, in my building, handing the card off to the doorman... well, that had intrigued me.

Did he not have the faintest notion that a man who looks like him should not touch a woman this way without expecting consequences?

An afternoon came and with it, another hand-delivered postcard. I happened to be in the foyer when he arrived outside my building. I stepped behind a column to observe him unobserved.

He seemed too patient. Too reserved. Too gray.

He handed over the postcard. Said a few words to the doorman. Smiled shyly at him. Looked off at the park. Back at the doorman with narrowed eyes that saw everything. Eyes that watched the doorman retreat.

I imagined that Terry Thorne knew a lot more about my doorman in that one examination than it had maybe taken me weeks to learn. Perhaps he even knew something about our doorman that I didn't suspect.

He was a man who noticed. He noticed not because he wanted to, but because it was a habit ingrained in him. A survival technique.

The wind came up. It ruffled his hair. He never bothered to smooth it down. He walked away. The weight on his shoulders seemed heavier.

I dressed very carefully after he left. I wanted to look nice. I wanted to look as if I was still worth this little big game he was making out of seducing me.

That's what he was doing: seducing me.

Let me simply say... this could be the good thing to erase bad memories.

A man like this? He does not come into a woman's life easily. He may glance upon your life... by that I mean, he may take you to dinner, have a brief fling, or quick sex. But when he wants into a woman's life, that is difficult for him.

He said I had intrigued him.

By this point, the numbness in me had worn off. He intrigued me.

I dressed to please him.

Two hours later, I walked into his hotel and asked to have a package delivered to his room. I went to the hotel's bar and waited.

Our eyes met before he even entered the bar. I saw him, he saw me, through the open door. He must have heard the faintest beats of a song that was blaring around me. By the time he reached my table, he was also surrounded by the music.

"Would have been here sooner," he said, leaning toward me, his hand soft over mine, "but I had to read the first chapter, didn't I?"

"You would," I said, feeling a grin in spite of my best intentions not to be charmed too easily by him. Had I not been beside myself wondering just how he would react to me sending him the 'bitch' book to his hotel room? "Feeling the need to arm yourself tonight?"

"Wondered when you would finally break down and come chasing me."

"I'm chasing you?"

"Well, you're the one coming to see me in my hotel, love."

"Ah. I see. We're in the male ego section." We regarded each other as he gave his drink order to the bar waitress. "So it suits your purposes if it's me pursuing you?"

"You've changed, Eris."

"Have I?"

"Got him out of your system, have you?"

I winced. I know I did. I could see the reflection of it in his reaction. It was how he swallowed and felt badly. He hadn't meant that to hurt. He had meant that to impress me, to make me feel he saw me when another man hadn't, to make me feel he was more interested in me than his words let on.

"In all that investigating of me, of finding out who I was, where I lived... did you never find out everything about me?" I asked him. I asked this to open the dialogue because I didn't want this evening to end with us as strangers. I wanted us to be honest.

"Didn't want to find out that way."

"I like that."

"Do enough of it in the day job."

"Did it get to be a habit in your personal life as well?"

"Looking for shadows. Sure."

"Let's play in the shadows instead."

"What do you have in mind?"

That essence of him has stayed with me long after he's left. He has promised to return. I believe him. I also believe that, at least for now, I am nothing so much as a woman he plans to date when he is in New York.

We neither of us are fools. He sees other women. Some are girlfriends, like I suppose I am destined to be, and others are passing fancies. He won't think twice about taking a bit of pleasure in the arms of a woman somewhere off in another land, somewhere he needs relief and comfort and the illusion of intimacy.

I won't think once about "dating" other men. That is what this is. Dating. But I am that way... I am not a player. I don't like being handled. I don't like having to keep my stories straight. I do like feeling life.

Shadows, to me, are shades of gray. It is not that light does not reach into the shadows. It is that light filters into the shadows. You see what you will see.

The most interesting thing about shadows, to me, is this: inside a shadow, you gaze from sunlight to dark. And in that shadow, you see outlines and fleeting flicks of details rendered in relief by the interchange of highlights and lowlights. Your mind, your memories... these are what give you the second sight to make sense of the shapes in the shadows.

Once you are into the shadow itself, you see the reality of what was there. And it is so often, to me, that what you imagined from that interchange of sensorial memory and unintelligible lingers in dark, is so often wrong. But within moments of adapting to the environment, your mind tricks you into believing that you always pretty well knew what you were seeing.

Not that you did.

He inspires me in ways that have not been invented.

This is what I think.

I truly do.

I told him this once.

But not that first night.

How do you approach a first night when it's been so long?

This is how.

We had a drink. It was far too noisy in that hotel bar.

I asked him why he thought they did that: blast so much noise in a place far too cold to be anything but brittle.

He said he thought they wanted to fill the space up and give people a place to hide within the illusions. A hotel, he said, can be a gilded illusion that you have to be aware of before it traps you. It made me think about all the postcards he'd sent me from hotels in other countries. Had he become trapped? Is that what he was feeling? Was I to be the key or was I to be the door?

Or would I just change the paper in the bottom of the cage?

Because we couldn't talk very easily in all that noise, I looked at him across the small table from me. I felt butterflies to be with him. He was that good looking. Though it was more than that.

There was a ruggedness, an individualistic aspect of him. Even clothed as a normal man, he stood out as a man's man. He made me feel things. Edgy things. Obvious things. Heart-pounding things. Rhythms that made me blush to myself to feel pulsing in anticipation.

At some point, he moved to sit right next to me on the bench. He moved, settled in next to me and then he reached for his drink and pulled it over to set it deliberately right next to my glass. He leaned in on me, lowered his face until his mouth was close to mine. I thought he was going to kiss me; he meant for me to think that. He meant to make me nervous. He meant to get a rise.

But he turned at the last second and spoke right against my ear after his hand slowly pulled my hair back to give him unfettered access. Why tonight, he said. I shrugged. I'm glad you're here, he said. I turned; our mouths were close again. I smiled at him. Mouthed out, "thanks" to him. This time, when he put his mouth back close to my ear, he nuzzled in a bit. His body seemed to come nearer to mine and I'm not sure he had even moved, really.

He put a hand on my knee. I kept thinking he was going to say something. He didn't. Not for a hazy while. He kissed, quick and deft, on my bare shoulder, right at the strap. I shivered. He asked if it was as good for me as it was for him. I tried so hard not to laugh at his cocky sense of the absurdity of us finding ourselves interested in exploring the attraction we felt. This was when he asked to take me to dinner.

I realized that being there, with him... having taken the initiative after all this time of him popping into my life via postcards... I felt that for once in my life, I was one of those people you see somewhere and you wonder what it would be like to step into their lives.

It's not always great.

Although... it is now. It is for right now. It is when he's here.

When he's not, it's still better than it ever was before.

We went out to dinner. It was soft light, linen tablecloths, muted tones, very upscale and understated.

He was irreverent over dinner. He was "on" as if the need to entertain me was important. No, that is not right. It is not fair to him. Perhaps he was just giddy. In a masculine way, of course. He does everything in a masculine way.

We talked about the book over dinner.

I laughed, full out, belly shaking. He said when he'd seen the title, he'd been afraid it had been the chambermaid who'd decided to move beyond giving him the eye and purposefully moving all his things he'd so neatly and precisely laid out on the bathroom counter. He said he knew she moved everything on purpose.

Maybe she just wanted to clean the counter, I said. Maybe it's required of her to clean that damned bathroom counter every day.

No, he said, she got some perverted delight out of imagining him coming back in and cursing to have to put everything back the way he liked it.

Does she also fold your towels in a certain way to irritate you, I asked him.

It's not the towels, he claimed, it was the sharp tongue she gave him over the way his bed was wrecked every morning when she came in to change it. Why is it wrecked, I asked him, looking off as he lingered over dessert. Lime sorbet.

Because every night I dream myself making love to you, he said.

What he said; the way he said it. I had to be careful. He was going to make this too complicated if I wasn't thinking all the time.

"Do you always dream in the shadows?" I said, now looking at him. Full on. Totally intent. Leaning toward him.

"Always."

"Can I see your shadows?"

"You would have to brave enough to be willing to look."

"I'm good with shadows."

"You gonna make me dream you again tonight?"

I never had done something quite like this. There was no way I would let that hold me back anymore.

Life had knocked that out of me.