Programmed for Peril

They ate strawberries I lathered with sweetened whipped cream. After they put! their dishes aside Foster took off his glasses. Without them I he looked less bookish, more like the highbred outdoorsman j he was. He never kissed her with them on. She wished he’d try it once. She wanted to use her tongue as a windshield wiper, just to see what he’d do. She often behaved outrageously when she fancied him growing too serious-minded.
    Amid a long kiss she tried to gauge how much she loved him. To do that she had to know what love meant for her. What she had felt for Carson had begun as love but had over time wandered up a bizarre tributary of that emotion. She had been too swept up in what she allowed to happen to fully explore those waters’ tortuous crosscurrents of meaning.
    She threw off clinging memories and put her whole self into the kiss. He sensed her soft yielding and rolled his mouth against hers with increased energy. I do love him, she thought. I love him very much! She took hope from her own rising passion, like a wobbly candle flame gathering strength —at last!—despite the chill breezes blowing from her past. Please, please, in the end let it be all right between us!
    The phone warbled in the living room. She groaned into Foster’s open mouth. He pulled away and breathed, “Let it ring!”
    “Melody... it’ll wake Melody.”
    She let her arms fall, and he did the same. She stood up on shaky knees and hurried inside, her heart pounding. She snatched up the receiver. “Hello.”
    Silence.
    She could tell the line was open. “Hello? You there?”
    No reply. No heavy breathing. Nothing. Just the open line. Well, she wasn’t going to nourish the fantasies of some pervert. “Hello? Last chance.”
    Silence.
    She hung up.
    Back on the swing she and Foster attempted to resume their kiss and were making satisfactory progress when the phone warbled again. “Do me a favor,” Trish whispered. “You answer it this time.”
    In a short while he returned. “Whoever it was hung up when they heard my voice.”
    “I doubt there’ll be any more calls,” she said.
    Even so, the mood was dashed.
    Monday morning she went to work relaxed and ready for a good week. One message had been left in her phone mail over the weekend, 2:39 P.M. Sunday. She lifted the receiver and dialed in the code for replay. The man’s words, like a sudden blast from the air conditioner, made her shiver "Reconsider by September first!”
    She sat back in her chair, played the message through twice more. She didn’t think she had heard that voice previously, but she wasn’t absolutely positive. From then on she was on edge. Not until late Tuesday did she understand her tension grew from wondering what Rocco would do next. She had reached the conclusion that he had somehow been behind the virus afflicting Pristine Cleaners. What would happen when once again she failed to reconsider by not calling him and agreeing to sell out? What new, nasty trick did the swarthy man have on tap? Or was he merely going to torment her from a distance with tactics like yesterday’s two phone calls?
    The tension caused her to regress as a manager and mother through the rest of the week. She was curt with her staff and impatient with Melody. The last time she had been like this was at the final stages of her stay in California. She had endured Carson’s ever-broadening, destructive demands for the sake of her daughter. As more than three years had passed since her return home, she thought herself fully mended from those days and their punishing emotions. Now, to her dismay, she found herself quickly retreating to the mildest of those stressed behaviors: the short fuse, the long, worrying stares into space, the sudden deep night awakenings. A fog of unfocused anxiety rose and clouded her days.
    Late Thursday afternoon Leftover phoned her. His voice carried a taut tone she had never before heard. “Somebody stole my van!” he said. “I had it parked and locked while I was making a delivery. Somebody got in somehow and drove off!”
    Tremors marched like troops up the backs of her arms. Having fears come true was worse than complete surprise. “What was in it?”
    “Tools and two PCs. Two IBM 386s. And an HP laser printer.”
    “Tell me where you are.” When he did she told him to stay put. She ordered Michelle Amritz to call the police, then report the theft to the insurance company. Rates would go up, but what could Trish do?
    On Friday the