51 - Secret Agent Man

Tony had called six times and sent just as many text messages Petey came to realize when she finally picked up her phone.  Richie had called once as well, but all the rest of her missed contacts had been Jon.  He truly had spent the whole day trying to get in touch with her.

She shook her head, still incredibly confused by what had happened with him earlier.  Did she go after him and beg him to reconsider?  Or to make sure he was okay?  Should she just let the whole thing die a quiet death?

This wasn’t the time to try and figure it out.  Keeping her job was more important at the moment, and she had to call Tony and offer him an apology for today.

☠ ☢ ☠

The phone vibrated in Tony’s hand and he saw Big Bird’s eyes dart to the brightly illuminated screen.  ‘PT Diehl’ was flashing in bold, white letters and Tony knew the man was reading it clearly.  He dropped the phone into the pocket of his black, button-down shirt and adopted an aggressive stance.

“If you want to leave your contact information, I’ll post it on the bulletin board in case anyone knows this Diehl woman.  If you don’t want to leave your info, then I suggest you go on your way, because I got nothing for you.  I don’t give out information on my employees.  To anyone. ”

The guy sneered at him, lips curled with a distaste that was intended to be every bit as offensive as Tony perceived it to be. 

“Yes.  Well.  Not that you’re likely to pass on the information, but I suppose it won't hurt to leave my card.”  He reached into the breast pocket of his coat, withdrawing a business card.  Holding it with the tips of his fingers, he passed it through the gap in the door as though he feared contracting the plague.  “It may behoove you to know that Ms… Diehl is my fiancée.”

Tony snatched the card from Petey’s ‘fiancé’  with a unpleasant laugh.  “Yeah, whatever.  Like I said, I’ll post it, so there’s nothing left for you to do but get the hell outta here.  And don’t come back.”

The black wingtip slid backward and the glass rattled in the doorframe with the impact of Tony sealing it shut and turning the lock.

Big Bird tightened the belt on his trench coat, stuck his beak in the air and sauntered away.

He didn’t even have to adjust the stick up his ass when he walked.  I would've lost money on that bet.

“Fuckin’ moron,” Tony muttered, taking a moment to scan the luxurious ivory business card.  His scowl grew more pronounced when, at a glance, he tried to read what was printed there.  Hell, even upon closer inspection, as far as he could tell there was nothing to read.  It was just a jumbled series of letters, numbers and symbols that barely fit across the width of the card:

VEhJUyBHQU1FIEdST1dTIFRJUkVTT01FLg==

What the fuck?

It was time to call Petey back.  Girlfriend had some ‘splainin’ to do.

☠ ☢ ☠

She was just wrapping up the voicemail message for Tony when her phone beeped with an incoming call.  Checking the display, she saw that it was Tony and immediately switched over.

“Hi Tony.  I was just leaving you a voicemail.  You can go ahead and delete it since we’re actually talking now.   I wanted to – “

“Petey, we have a problem,” he interrupted somberly.  “And it might be a serious one."  He dropped his voice into a coaxing tone.  "Honey, is there something you need to tell me?”

Oh crap.  Did Jon call him and get me pulled from the tour? 

She nervously pushed her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her left ear and twirling the bright pink ends idly between her fingers.  “I…  I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t huh?  So you have no idea why some guy was sniffing around here looking for you – his fiancée?”

Damn, damn, damn, damn!  Definitely not worse than Jon calling , but it isn’t much better.  Petey mentally ran through every swear word she knew in the English language and moved on to French and Spanish.

“I don’t have a fiancé,” she finally pushed past the iron bands that constricted her lungs even after several deep breaths.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”  Tony sounded angry.  Was he angry with her or his visitor?  “I also thought if you did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be this guy.  He looked like he was out of some bad British documentary, without the accent.”

He’s not getting it, or me, so why doesn’t he just crawl back to Pittsburgh and leave me the hell alone?

“What –“  Petey cleared her throat.  Nothing would please her more than to sweep it under the rug with a laugh, but she needed to know how far she’d been implicated.  “What did he say that made you think he was my fiancé?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Something along the lines of ‘She’s my fiancée’. Oh, no wait.  That wasn't it.”   He morphed from his Jersey accent into a decidely snobby and pretentious one.  "It may behoove me to know that Ms. Diehl is his fiancee."

She closed her eyes with an inaudible sigh.  What a pompous, arrogant-  “Did he say anything else?  Did he say who he was – other than the crap about being my fiancé?”

Tony didn’t bother trying to stifle his own sigh, and he sounded stressed.   For that, Petey was truly sorry, but he wasn’t the only one.

“This guy banged on the front door, saying he heard you worked for me and that he had a time-sensitive matter.   I wouldn’t admit to anything, but that happened to be about the time you called and I’m pretty sure he saw your name come up on my phone.  He looked down his nose at me a while longer and finally left some crazy looking business card for you, saying it was a matter of life and death.”

With each word, acid churned more brutally in her stomach.  The light lunch she’d eaten at Gavin’s salon – seemingly days ago – was suffering a cruel and violent death as a courtesy.  By the time Tony had wrapped up his little tale, the acid had staged its escape,  flaring up her esophagus in one of the worst cases of heartburn she’d ever experienced. 

He knows where I work.

The thought made her physically ill. 

It was a long six weeks until the tour kicked off.  She didn’t want to quit her job, but there was no way she would be able to dodge him that long.  It was just a matter of time before he caught her coming or going from the studio. 

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law…”

“Listen Petey, this guy is obviously bad news, so be honest with me.  Are you in trouble?  Because if you are, all you gotta do is tell me.  My people are as good as family, and I take care of family.”

Maybe she could work from home?  It was all electronically based, especially now that they were working on the screen presentations.  The software Tony used was expensive, but if she could stay away from the studio, it would be worth the price.  She would pay for it out of her own pocket.  She would even pay for FedEx to send stuff in, if it became necessary.

“What did the business card say?” she asked quietly.  This all may be moot with Tony holding her ‘fiancé’s’ business card.  Everything anyone wanted to know would be right there.

“Hell if I know.  It’s just a bunch of gobbledy-gook.”

She groaned to herself as relief spread through her stomach like a warm honey, pacifying the acid back into submission.  How could she be so silly?  Of course he wouldn’t do anything as plebian as leaving an actual business card.  It was so much more cloak-and-dagger to leave a coded message, which probably said nothing more than ‘call me’.  Some men were never anything more than overgrown children.

“Could you take a picture with your phone and text it to me?”

Patient concern was turning into exasperation on Tony’s end of the line.  “Yeah, but…  Petey, who the hell is he?”

“He’s nobody.  Just a nuisance.”

☠ ☢ ☠

“Dorothea.”

“Jon.”

He tamped down his irritation at her clipped greeting.  It wasn’t her fault he was having a lousy day, so Jon forced himself to treat her with the congeniality she deserved. 

“How ya doin’, sweetheart?”

“I’m fiiine….”

Great.  He’d swung it too far in the other direction and now she was suspicious.

“Good to hear.  I just wanted to check in with you and make sure the kids are all taken care of for Christmas?  Did we get them all the important stuff on their lists?”

“It’s all been taken care of.”  Landing on the common subject of their children brought her back to center, and she sounded more like herself.  “There are a few odds and ends they’d still like to have, but nothing that will constitute the end of the world if it’s missing on Christmas morning.”

“That actually works out perfectly for me.  I wanted to personally pick up a little something for each of them.  What’s still hanging out there?”

“Feeling guilty, Daddy?” She laughed softly, making him feel like a putz. 

His grumble was noncommittal, and despite his best effort, the next words out of his mouth were snippy.  “So what is it that they want?”

It only took a couple more digs at his absentee fatherhood before Dorothea got down to business and rattled off a few little things from each of the of the kids’ wish lists.  He studiously took notes, hoping he could figure out which store would carry this stuff.  If not, and worse came to worse, he would pick out something of his own choosing.  He’d known them their whole lives; surely he could find an appropriate gift for his children.

“Jon?” the woman he’d loved for the biggest part of his life asked thoughtfully.  “Is something wrong?”

Besides my sex toy becoming a real person when she wants to stay a sex toy?  Not a thing.

“No.  Why do you ask?”

“You just sound…  strange.  Like you’ve had one of those days that ends in the bottom of a bottle.”

He glanced guiltily at the near-empty bottle of Pinot Grigio sitting on the bar.  Yeah, it had been one of those days.

“You know how it is, Dottie.  I’m just having some problems with a... negotiation.”

“Hm.” 

That was the sound of Dorothea’s bullshit detector going off.  He knew it well, courtesy of the string of regrettable lies that had rolled off his tongue during the last three decades.  She was a sharp woman.  It hadn’t taken her a tenth of that time to distinguish the difference between his fact and fiction.

“Don’t, Dorothea,” he warned softly, totally not in the mood to be called to task.  “There’s no point.”

She pretended to consider his vaguely ominous advice for thirty seconds before ignoring it.  He had to give her credit.  It was thirty seconds longer than he’d expected.  And then, on top of that, what she ultimately chose to say exceeded his expectations as well.

“We were always better friends than we were spouses, Jonny,” she reminded quietly, setting him off-balance.  “If you need somebody to talk to, I’m here.  Any time, no judgment.”

Well, wasn’t this day just one friggin’ surprise after another? 

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he told her sincerely.  “That means a lot to me, and I hope that you know that street runs both ways.”

“Does it?”

“Of course it does.  Anything you need, I’m there.” 

She was the mother of his children.  She’d dealt with more than any woman should have to during the course of their marriage, and she did it with aplomb.  It was the least he could do after screwing the whole thing up with his greedy, workaholic tendencies.  He owed her that.

“Thank you," she echoed, and he thought he could hear that soft smile in her voice from oh so long ago.  "I might just take you up on that sometime.”