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Chapter 18

Let, Please

by A.J. Kohlhepp

Stay loose, I told myself while turning the key. React and respond. Echoes of my old coaches in my head.

What I saw through the open doorway froze me, despite my preparation, like a freakish frame-job crosscourt nick when you are perfectly positioned on the T. This could not be happening.

Sitting in the small, well-lit living room, semi-automatic in his lap and single malt in his hand, to judge by the color of the beverage and his predilection for cocktails, was none other than Jack Vaughn. He inhabited a comfortably faded armchair as if he had already passed some time there. Facing him, and looking considerably less at ease upon a floral printed loveseat, was the woman claiming to be my mother. This tableau, which might bring joy or wonder in other circumstances, invoked little more than disbelief at this juncture.

“That was quite a stunt you pulled in Tarrytown,” offered my dad with clear amusement in his voice. “Steve’s boys are still trying to clean the site before the arson investigators can draw any conclusions.”

“Arson?!” interjected Ted, or the woman who claimed this name.

“Yes,” responded Jack, moving his eyes from me in the doorframe to her in the living room. “Hayden made a fiery exit from the scene of her latest crime.”

“Latest crime,” I blurted. “That was Jean-Luc’s call – or maybe it was yours – or for all I know Dr. Karwah ordered the hit from her Ebola lab in West Africa!”

Increasingly aware of the cold Quebecois night on my backside, I took a purposeful step into the cottage. At the same time, I slipped my hand into my coat pocket, wherein I grasped the rigid plastic grip of the Hi-Point C-9, which the clerk at Pulse Electronique had been kind enough to sell me out behind the store.

Jack, noticing the direction of my hand and sensing the intention of the gesture, slid his right onto his weapon as well. “No need to do anything rash, my dear,” he said cheerfully. “Ted and I are just chatting. Why don’t you come join us?”

I looked from him to Ted, who had yet to budge. She shrugged noncommittally.

Shutting the door behind me, I walked slowly into the room and thought about taking a seat next to her, choosing instead the armchair that matched Jack’s. As I fell into the chair, I shoved my free hand into my other coat pocket, encountering the squash ball I had played with at Club Atwater. The small black orb was good and cold by now, having accompanied me in the aged Volkswagen whose heater seemed to do little more than dissuade ice sheets from forming inside the windshield.

My new throw-away phone, also purchased at Pulse Electronique, was also in my pocket. It was an old-school flip model of the sort that was popular when I was at St Exodus. Like many school kids at the start of the twenty-first century, I had enjoyed the novelty of clandestine communications in the classroom. At St. E’s, rather than exchanging random teen-text greetings, we had swapped esoteric Haikus beneath the traditional surfaces of the Harkness tables. Recalling those days of competitive texting, I half-consciously flipped open the phone and ran my thumb over the familiar configuration.

“You must have plenty to catch up on,” I said, gazing from one parent to another. If in fact they were my parents.

“Actually,” replied Jack, “We see each other fairly frequently. Work-related issues, mainly.” I reversed the order of my gaze, panning from Jack back to Ted, who responded with another shrug.

“Is that true,” I blurted toward Ted – mom – the woman who had only just --

“Yes, Hayden,” she said quietly. “That car crash made it official, but our marriage had really ended years before.“

“Your mother had begun to explore other options long before we agreed to the structural reassignment,” offered Jack in the most reasonable tones, looking intently at Ted now, then swinging his gaze my way.

“What about me,” I protested. “Do you have any idea –“

“We knew it would be hard for you, sweetheart,” said Ted in the calming tones she had always used with me after devastating losses. “But we thought it best – “

“It was time to make the call, Hayden,” explained Jack. “You had come of age, and the company needed a decision.”

“What kind of decision?” And which company was he referring to? It was getting hard to keep the back stories straight in this twisted little narrative.

“We never wanted this life for you, Hayden,” said Ted. “Actually, it was me who drew the line. Your father thought you were a natural.”

“She’s right about that, kiddo,” he laughed. “You had the requisite skill set, and in spades: adventurous spirit, competitive outlook, superior strength and speed. The things that made you great at squash -- ”

“I must say, Jack,” observed Ted. “You always did find ways to invoke squash at the most bizarre moments.”

“Squash is a metaphor for life,” he replied, pausing for a sip from his highball glass. “Of course, life is also a metaphor for squash, if you really think about it.” Ted rolled her eyes. She had heard dad wax philosophical about the world’s greatest indoor racquet sport many a time. Ironically enough, she was the real player of the two, having reached the upper echelons of the junior circuit before playing at St. Exodus and Princeton. Jack had simply picked up the game as an adult and, the deeper I got into squash, poured himself into the theoretical and historical aspects of the game.

“And so squash…” I mused, drawing connections that had eluded me till now. The endless court sprints and star drills, the pre-match inquisitions into my opponents’ traits and tactics, the obsessive memorization of faces and facts of every player on the men’s and women’s pro tours: all of this undertaken, under the watchful eye of Jack Vaughn, in preparation to become an operative?!

“Water under the proverbial bridge,” he said calmly. “You remember what your coach used to say, right? You can’t replay a point that’s over.”

“Right,” I added heavily. “Learn from it and move on.”

I slumped back in my chair, probably looking to them like the quarrelsome teen they had last glimpsed in their household in suburban Maryland, hands still deep in my pockets. With my left I flipped open my phone and began typing a text message; with my right I slipped off the safety on my pistol.

Message done, I clicked the key to choose a recipient. Fortunately, I had entered only two numbers in my new phone as I waited for the cashier to ring me up: Ollie’s, typed in with guilty sentimentality, and Ted’s, entered with skeptical longing. Of the two possible recipients, one was clearly dead and the other was quite possibly fake. Even if she was the real Ted, there was that whole weird business about her phone. Oh well, sometimes you need to take a shot, I mused, hitting send and waiting.

Ted’s phone emitted a plaintive tone from her handbag. She looked at Jack before reaching that way. He nodded consent as he took another deep draught from his glass. Her eyes dropped toward the device as she brought her phone into view. There on the screen stood two simple words:

“Let, please.”

She looked up at me quickly, signaling comprehension or, at the very least, compliance. As she did so, I moved my hand from cell phone to squash ball and, with casual precision, tossed it in the air. The ball arced toward Jack, heading for a dying bounce against the fireplace grate. Before it could land, Jack reached up casually and caught it with his right hand, his left still cradling the highland elixir.

Ted dove toward Jack’s lap, snatching the Glock and returning to the loveseat, just as I pulled out the C-9 and leveled it at the patriarch.

"Well," he observed, downing the last of the whiskey and setting the glass on the end table. "I didn't see that coming."

A.J. Kohlhepp first picked up a squash racquet at Trinity College (before the Bantams’ perennial championships commenced).