Nick of Time (A Bug Man Novel)

by Tim Downs

Alena didn’t respond.

  “I really am sorry,” he said. “I don’t blame you for being angry. I know—I’m a piece of work sometimes.”

  “You’re a piece of something,” Alena replied. “Just don’t ask me what right now.”

  Nick heard a snap from somewhere in the darkness; the three dogs suddenly turned and trotted off into the underbrush. “Does this mean I’m free to go?” he asked.

  “You’re free to do what you want,” Alena said.

  “Well, I want to get married. Six o’clock, Alena—I’ll be waiting.”

  42

  Nick stood in front of a full-length mirror in the foyer of Resurrection Lutheran Church and looked at his unfamiliar costume: black wool tux with satin lapel, gleaming onyx shirt studs, perfect white handkerchief peeking out from his breast pocket. It looked a lot better on the mannequin, he thought. He tugged on the sleeves, pulling them down a little; the woman at the rental place had assured him it was the perfect length, but it sure felt short to him. He hooked a finger under his collar and tugged; he hadn’t worn a tie in years, let alone a bow tie. For that matter, he couldn’t remember the last time he had buttoned the top button of a shirt.

  Nathan Donovan stepped into the foyer from the sanctuary. “Any sign of her?”

  “Not yet,” Nick said. “How do I look?”

  “No worse than me.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “It’s almost six,” Donovan said.

  “Thanks—I’m aware of the time.”

  “Look, Nick, I’m sorry about all this. If it makes you feel any better, I’m in the doghouse too—Macy won’t even talk to me. When I told her what happened with Alena she was furious. Sorry if I screwed things up.”

  “If anybody screwed things up it was me,” Nick said. “You were right, Donovan—I needed help figuring out what I want. It just took me too long to decide.”

  “She’ll be here, Nick. She’s probably on her way right now.”

  “I hope so,” Nick said with a halfhearted shrug. “What’s the point in figuring out what you want if you can’t have it?”

  “She’ll be here. She’s just making you suffer—women are experts at that.”

  Donovan returned to the sanctuary and left Nick to wait in the foyer alone.

  When the church door opened, Nick jumped.

  “Am I too late?” Dr. Beth Woodbridge poked her head into the foyer and glanced around. “Nick—I’m so sorry. One of my patients had a meltdown this morning and I had to do an emergency session—the joys of psychiatry. I was late getting to the airport, then my flight from San Francisco was late into Dulles. And it’s a full hour’s drive out here—this little town is hard to find. Did I miss it? Did you pull the trigger yet?”

  “Don’t worry, Beth,” Nick said. “You’re still in time for my execution.”

  “Good—I’ve been waiting a long time for this.” She stepped into the foyer, kissed Nick on the cheek, and handed him a box wrapped in silver paper.

  “What’s this?”

  “A wedding present.”

  “Obviously. What is it?”

  “You’re not supposed to ask—you’re supposed to wait and open it later.”

  “I’m not big on waiting.”

  “No kidding. I used to be your psychiatrist, remember?”

  “So what is it?”

  “If you must know, it’s one of those little handheld milk frothers.”

  Nick blinked. “What’s it for?”

  “You know—for lattes.”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “What was I supposed to get you, a toaster? It’s not like you’re setting up house for the first time.”

  “So you figured that by now I’ve collected so many useless kitchen utensils that I actually have need of a milk frother?”

  “Nick, it’s a gift—it’s the thought that counts.”

  “And your thoughts led you to buy a milk frother? You’re a psychiatrist—that should alarm you.”

  “If you don’t like it, take it back—there’s a gift receipt in the box.”

  “Why didn’t you just bring the receipt? It would have saved you a carry-on.”

  “Nick, you’re being even more obnoxious than usual. Is something wrong?”

  He paused. “Alena’s not here. I’m not sure if she’s going to show up.”

  “Oh, Nick. What happened?”

  “I had second thoughts. Then she had second thoughts. I think my second thoughts caused her second thoughts. It’s kind of complicated.”

  “Maybe she’s just late.”

  “I hope so,” Nick said. “I really want to marry her.”

  Beth looked into his eyes. “I’m just dying to see this woman.”

  “So am I.”

  Donovan stepped into the foyer. “I heard the door.”

  Beth looked at him. “Agent Donovan. I see the FBI is providing security today.”

  “Dr. Woodbridge,” Donovan said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I’m not a wedding crasher, if that’s what you’re implying—I was actually invited.”

  “If you say so.” Donovan held out his arm. “Friend of the bride or groom?”

  She gave Nick a quick wink. “Do you really need to ask?”

  When they left the foyer, Nick opened the church door a crack and looked out at the parking lot again; there was still no sign of Alena’s truck.

  Donovan returned from the sanctuary. “Nick—what were you thinking?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You don’t invite an old girlfriend to your wedding.”

  “We agreed to invite friends and colleagues. Beth Woodbridge is an old colleague.”

  “She’s also an old girlfriend. Did you tell Alena the two of you used to be romantically involved?”

  Nick stopped to think. “I may have failed to mention that.”

  “Well, fail to mention it again—you’re in enough trouble already.” Donovan looked at his watch. “Six o’clock, Nick—what do you want to do?”

  “Let’s get started.”

  “What?”

  “The wedding starts at six, Donovan—it says so on the announcement.”

  “It’s sort of customary to wait for the bride—they like to be part of things.”

  “It’s six o’clock,” Nick said. “When Alena walks in, I don’t want her to find me waiting in the foyer like I thought she might not come. I want to be standing up front, right where I told her I would be.”

  “Whatever you say—you’re the boss.”

  They entered the sanctuary together and walked down the aisle to the altar. Nick could feel people staring at him, but he didn’t make eye contact with anyone. There was only a small handful of friends and colleagues scattered throughout the pews: Noah and Barbara Ellison from NC State; Donovan’s wife, Macy; recent arrival Beth Woodbridge; and the three coconspirators who had helped Donovan concoct his ill-fated bachelor party—Pete Boudreau, Ed Yanuzzi, and Blake Brenton. Gunner Wendorf was already waiting at the altar with his Bible open, dressed in his best clerical robes. Gunner’s wife, Rose, was seated at the organ; after playing the wedding processional, she was supposed to join her husband at the altar as Alena’s matron of honor.

  As Nick and Donovan stepped up onto the altar, Gunner leaned forward and whispered, “What’s up? Is she here?”

  “Not yet,” Nick replied.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “We wait,” Nick said. “I want everything ready when she walks in that door.”

  When Nick straightened and looked at the door, Rose took it as a cue that the bride was about to enter and launched into Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.” When Gunner vigorously shook his head, the music stumbled to a discordant halt.

  Now everyone was glancing back and forth between Nick and the door, waiting, wondering what was supposed to happen next. Nick, Donovan, and Gunner just stood quietly, staring confidently at the door as if it would open at any moment.
>
  An hour later, they were still waiting.

  Donovan leaned over to Nick. “Don’t lock your knees, buddy—you’ll pass out.”

  “I should be so lucky,” Nick whispered back.

  Gunner joined the conversation: “I hate to be a quitter, guys, but I think we need to call it a night. We’re starting to lose the audience.”

  Nick looked out at the pews; everyone was looking back at him with expressions of pathetic sympathy and humiliating pity. “I thought walking up here was embarrassing,” he mumbled. “Walking out is going to be brutal.”

  “We’ll go together,” Donovan said. “I take point, Nick goes next, Gunner brings up the rear.”

  “Good plan,” Gunner said. “All for one; one for all.”

  “No,” Nick said. “You guys go ahead—I’ve got something I need to say first.”

  They looked at him doubtfully, but Nick nodded his reaffirmation and the two men stepped down from the altar and took seats in the pews.

  Nick took Gunner’s place at the center of the altar; he pulled off his bow tie, tossed it aside, and released the top button of his shirt. He turned to face the sanctuary, stuffed his hands deep into his pockets, and stared at the empty aisle for a few moments before he finally looked up.

  “I grew up near Pittsburgh,” he began. “A little town called Tarentum, just up the Allegheny. When I was four years old everybody thought I was an idiot. That’s because I was almost blind, but nobody knew it—including me. Shapes, shadows, big blurs of color; I just figured that’s what everybody saw—I thought that’s how the world looked. Then one day my mom took me to an optometrist, and he fitted me with the thickest pair of glasses you ever saw—glasses just like these,” he said, pointing to the bridge of his nose. “My eyesight hasn’t improved any over the years. I’ll never forget walking out of that optometrist’s office and looking at the world for the first time. I felt like Dorothy stepping out of that Kansas farmhouse into a world I’d never seen before. It was the detail—that’s what really struck me. I’d seen light and color before, but the detail—it almost overwhelmed me. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open, taking it all in—my mom must have thought I really was an idiot.

  “Then I looked down at my feet and I saw an ant mound. I can still picture it—a little mound of red dirt coming out of a crack in the sidewalk. I squatted down and looked at it. There were ants everywhere—little brown ones. I could see individual ants, and they weren’t just blurry specks. I could actually see the parts of their bodies—the mesosoma, the pedicel and gaster. Of course, I didn’t know any of those words at the age of four. I couldn’t even identify the species at the time; I realized later they were common pavement ants, Tetramorium caespitum, easily recognized by their—”

  In the front pew, Donovan cleared his throat.

  “Sorry,” Nick said. “I have a habit of getting off track—which is probably why I’m standing up here all alone. Where was I? Oh—ants. I just kept staring at that ant mound—my mom couldn’t pull me away. I saw six of them dragging a maggot back to the mound while another one just stood there and watched. Then I noticed that his head was bigger than the others’—his mandibles were larger—and I realized he wasn’t just standing around. He was a ‘soldier’ ant—his job was to protect the mound while the others worked. I watched them all move and work; I saw teamwork and organization; I recognized order and structure and hierarchy. It was an entire world within a world, and I felt like a god looking down at it from above. It may sound crazy, but I think that was the moment I decided to become an entomologist.”

  Nick stopped and looked at his bewildered listeners. “You’re probably wondering where I’m going with all this. The point is, I’ve thought about that day a lot over the years; I’ve asked myself why I found that ant mound so fascinating. After all, I had a whole world to look at—why bother with ants?” He paused. “Sometimes I think the whole world was too much for me to take in all at once; maybe I needed a smaller world to get the hang of first. A ‘starter world,’ you might call it—a place where I could learn the rules and figure out how things are supposed to operate first.

  “And I did learn. I learned all about that world—the rules and the relationships and the role of each species in the natural order. But the insect world isn’t like the human world, and I’ve never been able to understand why. The truth is, I’ve never liked human beings. I don’t understand them; they don’t make sense to me. Insects are logical; they’re orderly; they act out of instinct and their behavior is predictable. But there’s no order or hierarchy in a human colony; they don’t understand where they fit in the universe and they don’t know how to get along with each other. They have no natural instincts to guide their behavior; there are no pheromones to tell them which mate to select. Their brains are capable of rational thought, but they act irrationally; they have a sense of morality, but they reason it away. They write songs about love but hate each other; they say they want peace, then kill each other. I don’t understand human beings, and I never wanted to be one of them . . .

  “And then I met Alena. Then I knew that there was at least one other person in this crazy world who was as damaged as I am. I knew neither one of us would ever fit in—but somehow I got this crazy idea in my head that we just might fit with each other.

  “I went up to see her last night, but I couldn’t get in because she changed the lock on her gate. So I climbed her fence, just like I did the first time we met, and she stopped me in the middle of the woods. She was angry; she was hurt and upset. She talked to me, but she wouldn’t let me see her—she stayed in the shadows under the trees, just like the first time I met her.”

  Nick lifted his arms and looked down at his tuxedo. “So here I am, dressed in this ridiculous monkey suit, left standing at the altar on my wedding day—and there you are, staring up at me with those sad puppy eyes. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t mind looking silly; I don’t mind being humiliated—that’s what I want you all to know. There’s a lot I would change about this last week if I had the chance, but there’s only one thing I’m really ashamed of: I sent Alena back to the darkness—and I may not get a chance to fix that.”

  He just stood there for a moment, staring straight ahead.

  “I want to thank you all for coming tonight,” he said at last. “I know you came to see a wedding, and I’m really sorry to disappoint you—but believe me, nobody here is more disappointed than I am.”

  Nick stepped down from the altar. The guests began to stand up and approach him one at a time, offering their sympathy and encouragement.

  Beth Woodbridge was one of the last. “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “Is it possible to not know how you’re doing?”

  “Why do you think there are psychiatrists? Look, here’s my card; if you need someone to talk to—even just as a friend—call me, okay? Anytime, day or night—just call.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek and turned to leave.

  As she walked up the aisle, Donovan stepped up and took the business card from Nick’s hand. “I’ll hang on to this for you,” he said. “If you want the number, call me and we’ll talk it over first.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  “You’re welcome. You don’t need any distractions right now—especially attractive ones.”

  When Beth opened the church door, a tiny dog with a jutting jaw and an almost hairless body squeezed past her and trotted down the aisle to Nick. The dog had a red ribbon tied around its neck.

  “That’s Ruckus,” Gunner said. “Alena must have sent him.”

  Nick knelt down and untied the ribbon; when he held it up, he found Alena’s engagement ring dangling from the bottom. He held the ring out for Gunner and Donovan to see. “Well—I guess that makes it official.”

  Nick took Beth’s business card back from Donovan and pulled out a pen; he crossed out the side with Beth’s contact information, then turned the card over and used the pen to pu
nch a hole in one end. He scribbled a quick note, then slipped the card onto the red ribbon and tied it around the little dog’s neck. Nick walked the dog to the church door and opened it; Ruckus trotted out the door and up the hill toward the mountain, and Nick returned to his two friends.

  “Sorry, Nick,” Gunner said. “I’ll drive up there tomorrow and have a talk with her.”

  “No,” Nick said. “I’ve been letting other people do the talking for me too long. Alena said she needs time. I’m giving it to her.”

  “Well, if you want to talk to me, just let me know. Pastors come in handy at a time like this. We’re very good listeners.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Donovan said. “Nick’s been shot at, held hostage, chased through bayous, and set on fire. He’s been through worse than this—right, Nick?”

  Nick looked at him. “No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

  ***

  Alena waited under the trees where the last paved road from Endor came to an end and the virgin mountaintop took over. She watched the little dog trotting silently toward her—just a little zigzag of pink flesh following the dotted line up the hill. She pushed the underbrush aside to let Ruckus through, then noticed the red ribbon still tied around his neck and the white card dangling from it. She knelt down and untied the ribbon; to her surprise, she found her engagement ring still attached. She looked at the card. It said:

  This belongs to you—and so do I.

  Alena smiled. That’s it, Nick—come and get me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance in my research for this book: Randy Misco, “Mr. Skytop,” Regional Sales Manager and Skytop Club Secretary at Skytop Lodge in the Poconos; Angie Wright, Owner and Lead Consultant, Chic Details Weddings and Events, Cary, North Carolina; John Shindledecker, Real Estate Agent, Coldwell Banker Lakeview Realtors, Hawley, Pennsylvania; the kind people of Hawley, Pennsylvania, who were patient with all my annoying questions; and all the others who took the time to respond to my e-mails, letters, and calls.