6.
Anya is standing outside the door, her face a patina of panic and confusion.
The door is solid wood and locks from the inside, but swings open onto the outside. Behind us exists a sort of gravel-covered, fenced-in no man’s land which surrounds two small, blue plastic and metal dumpsters. One for refuse and another for recyclables. There’s some concrete blocks and some two-by-fours set beside the dumpster.
The door opener rattles and begins to open. I push it shut with my arm and shoulder.
“Grab that two-by-four,” I bark.
She does it.
I take hold of it with my left hand, jam one end into the gravel, then shove the other end under the brass closer. Pulling myself away from the door, I search for a way out of that small yard.
“This won’t hold for more than a few seconds,” I say, taking her hand.
“Where will we go?”
The man behind the door might have been following Anya for a while now. He might have followed her to my apartment earlier. In fact, it’s very likely he followed her.
Behind us in the near distance, the ugly gray walls of the American University. A short chain link fence separates us from the school grounds.
“Your husband was teaching at the university. I assume they gave him the use of an office?”
“Yes,” she says.
The man is pounding on the door, the two-by-four about to give way.
“Now’s the time to show me.”
She looks over her shoulder at the university building.
“This way,” she says, and together we make our way over the fence and to the school.
The American University was built back in the 1960s. It is as uninteresting and sterile as the rest of Florence is beautiful, historic, and inspiring. Anya leads us through throngs of young students to a multi-storied concrete building marked “Science and Science Labs.” Entry to the facility requires a key-code which you must punch into the keypad set right beside the metal and glass door.
“I don’t know the code,” Anya confesses.
“Just wait a moment,” I say, shifting myself to the side of the door. “Someone will come along. In the meantime, keep an eye out for the man in black.”
We wait for a beat or two, all the while, my eyes shifting from the door, to Anya, to the road behind me. When a man and a woman emerge from the door, the two of them engaged in deep academic conversation, I take hold of Anya’s hand and slip us both inside.
“Slick,” she says, as we enter into the wide open vestibule.
“What did you expect from a guy named Chase?” I say, smiling.
“Guess this means you’re officially working for me … Ren Man,” she says as we approach the elevator.
“What the hell is Ren Man?”
“Short for Renaissance Man,” she says. “That’s a mouth full. Ren Man just rolls off the tongue a hell of a lot easier.”
“You sure you want me to work for you?” I say. “You haven’t heard my rates yet. What floor?”
“Second,” she says. “Whatever the rates are, I’ll pay them.”
I hit the button containing a light-up arrow that points towards heaven.
“I’m beginning to like you, Mrs. Manion,” I say, recalling how my dog Lu growled at her. “Even if I do suspect you’re nothing but trouble.”
“You have no idea, Ren Man,” she says smiling wryly as a bell chimes and the doors to the elevator slide open.
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