Later that week, Michael was waiting for Fiona to come out of the ladies' room at the CIA building after their class. He figured now would be a perfect time to call Madeline, because he'd have a built-in excuse to end the conversation. "Hey, Mom. Just checking on you. How're you doing?"
"Hi, Michael. Oh, honey, I know I sound like a broken record, but I still feel shitty. Tuesday will be six weeks, and I still feel just so weak and crappy all the time."
"I'm sorry. Did you call your doctor?"
Madeline coughed several times. "I went in yesterday morning, actually. Laura across the street drove me. Says there's nothing else going on. Just a bad run of mono."
"I'm really sorry, Mom. I wish there was something I could do."
"I know, sweetheart. How are you? What's going on in the land of the living?"
"We're all great."
Madeline waited for Michael to continue and was met with silence. "And?"
"And what?"
"And tell me more! I swear, talking to you has always been so infuriating."
"Charlie's fine. No accidents. Lots of tantrums but Virginia promises us it's normal. Fiona is really getting into being a teacher. She's kind of a mean teacher, though. No surprise there, I guess."
"And you?"
"I'm fine."
Madeline exhaled dramatically. "Michael, all you ever tell me is that you're fine. Honest to god, I think you could be actively being shot at and you'd still say you were fine."
"Well, if I could still talk when I was actively being shot at, then I would be fine."
Madeline didn't say anything.
"Mom, what? What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to tell me what you do! What you think about! How you feel! Anything!" She began coughing again. Michael waited for her to finish, grateful for the extra time.
"I like teaching at the CIA. It's almost laughable how pitiful a couple of these people have been, but several of them are really talented. Definitely people you want on your side."
"That's good, honey. What about having Charlie? What's that been like for you?"
"Oh, you know, something like that's always an adjustment, but it's going well, I'd say." Michael could hear Madeline lighting a cigarette. He sighed.
"Michael, you think it's possible to be any vaguer than that?"
Michael forced himself to take a deep breath and keep his voice at a normal volume. "Mom, this is how I talk. This is how I've always talked. All you're doing is making me want to talk less. So let me end by asking you this: Do you need anything? We'd be happy to bring anything you need."
"No, I don't need anything," she snapped. Then she hung up.
Michael put his phone in his pocket and hopped off the table he was sitting on. He mindlessly started stretching his arms and back, trying to turn off his brain as he waited for Fiona.
"I'll have Charlie call her when we get him," Fiona said as they were walking to their car in the parking garage. "That ought to hold her for a while."
"Maybe he can be in charge of all communications with her."
Fiona chuckled. "I'd be okay with that. So that Elaine seemed pretty prom – " Both Michael and Fiona stopped abruptly and looked to their left, certain they'd heard something. Michael reached in his back waistband for his gun, while Fiona put her hand on hers in her purse. They silently did a 360-degree scan of the garage. By the time they could see the man whose footsteps they heard originally, both were aiming directly at his chest.
The man threw his hands up above his head. "Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah, don't shoot! It's me! It's Spencer!"
Michael and Fi both squinted at the bearded guy who had stopped dead in his tracks. "Spencer?" Michael asked. "Stone Kittredge Spencer? What the hell are you doing here?"
"I need to talk to you guys. Can you stop pointing guns at me, please?"
They lowered their weapons, and Spencer lowered his hands. "How did you find me?" Michael asked. "Again," he added, looking at Fiona. Both remembered how Spencer tracked Michael down the first time. Something about math and the gun range.
Spencer hurriedly walked the 20 feet to them. "I never lost you," he said. "Can we go somewhere to talk? I really need to talk to you guys. It's really important. Like, we need to talk right now. Okay?"
"What do you mean, you never lost me?" Michael asked, at the same time Fiona asked, "Why do you look like a Yeti?"
"I just kept track of you after that alien went to jail. Figured I might need you again. And it's because I haven't shaved in a while. Like three weeks. So can we talk? Please?"
"You kept track of me. What – how – I've been out of the country, Spencer. Several times. How did you keep track of me?"
"It was pretty easy. You follow a pretty defined pattern."
Michael's mouth dropped open as he turned again to Fiona. "He – I follow – I don't under – "
"Michael. Stop. Spencer, get in the car," Fiona commanded. She unlocked the doors with the key fob and got in the driver's seat. She didn't like Michael driving in the best of times, and definitely not when he'd been rendered speechless. Spencer climbed in the backseat. Michael eventually got in the passenger's seat.
"Hey, you guys have a baby? Why is there a car seat in here? Where's the baby? Did you forget it inside?"
"It's a long story, Spencer, but no, we didn't forget the baby inside," Fiona said. "Now what's up?"
"Well, um, I think – I'm pretty sure squash farmers are trying to kill me."
Michael and Fiona stared at him. He stared back, alternating between the two.
Michael spoke first. "What?"
"Squash farmers. I think they're trying to kill me."
"Spencer, I have to ask," Michael said. "Are you supposed to be taking any medications that you're not actually taking?"
"What? No, no, no, this is real. They're following me. I haven't gone home in almost a month."
"That explains the smell," Fiona muttered.
"Spencer, give us a minute, okay? Fi?" Michael said, gesturing for her to join him outside the car. They both got out and met at the trunk.
"Either he's delusional or something's actually going on," said Michael softly. "I'm banking on delusional."
"He wasn't crazy last time," Fiona reminded him.
"So he's due."
"We need to at least talk to him, Michael."
"No, we don't."
"Michael."
"Fiona, absolutely nothing good can come of this. Let's drive him to a hospital and be done with this." He looked at his watch. "And we need to go now if we're going to make it back to get Charlie before they close."
"No."
"I'm sorry?"
"No, Michael. You know, I've been tolerating a lot from you lately because I know you're having a rough go of it for whatever reason. But you're being ridiculous. Here is a man so determined to get your help that he's been following you for three years. The last time he asked for your help, the two of you brought down a traitor to the United States. That's not exactly nothing.
"And I know. I know you're terrified that, somehow, Charlie's going to get hurt by you doing your job. That's a valid concern when you're actually doing your job, but you're not doing your job. You are talking to a man who may or may not be being pursued by apparently the only unfriendly squash farmers ever to have lived. Let's see what this is. If it's too much for us to handle, which I cannot fathom it will be, we'll figure out what to do next."
Michael took and released a deep breath. "Okay, I'm going to drop the two of you off somewhere to talk while I go get Charlie. I'll take him home and feed him. Call me later to fill me in and we'll go from there. I'm not making any promises, Fi. We just don't have time to argue about this right now."
Two hours later, Michael was soaking a pot crusted with the remnants of boxed macaroni and cheese – a food Michael was positive didn't qualify as a food. But Charlie loved it, and Michael was tired of caring about it, so macaroni and cheese it was. Charlie was singing, loudly and badly, as he crashed cars into each other, the couch legs, himself, and anything else that caught his eye. Fiona's name flashed onto the screen as Michael's phone rang.
"Tell me you dropped him off at a hospital" was Michael's greeting.
"Nope, we're on our way home. Grabbed a cab."
Silence.
"Michael?"
"Who's on our way home? 'Cause I know you're not bringing Spencer here."
"Oh, Jesus, Michael, give it a rest. The man is going to take a proper shower, if nothing else."
"Take him to his house."
"They turned his water off 10 days ago."
"Of course they did," said Michael. "Fine. So are you going to at least tell me what's going on?"
"Oh, I think this is something best heard in person. See you in 10."
"Okay, Spencer. Tell Michael what you told me," Fiona said, putting the kettle on.
Spencer was sitting Indian style (which Michael and Fiona had recently learned was now called criss cross applesauce, so then they felt a little guilty about not giving two shits about calling it Indian style) on their living room floor, erecting a complex and elegant Lego structure with Charlie. A Duplo structure, more precisely, giving it a Romper Room feel. And Charlie's portion wasn't that complex. Or elegant. Or erect.
"But you can skip anything before 2012," Fiona said. "No need to hear that twice."
"Okay, well, I guess – I guess I'll start with my girlfriend."
"Girlfriend? Good for you," Michael said, smiling. Then his smile suddenly disappeared. "Wait, is she from Earth or Procyon-A or somewhere else?"
"She's from Earth. I mean, well, mostly."
"Mostly?" Michael asked, but Fiona just closed her eyes and shook her head silently, letting Michael know not to pursue this avenue of questioning. "Okay, go on. Your girlfriend."
"Okay, yeah, my girlfriend. Jennifer. She's up in Plattsburgh."
"New York?" asked Michael.
"Yeah, New York. My mom has a little house in the Adirondacks right near there. Yeah, okay, so when I was up there last summer, okay, I was at this orchard and I was working on an equation to figure out the daily apple yield and then I saw this girl over by the squash and she was, like, hunched over the squash and looked really serious, so then I wondered if there was a squash emergency or like squash anthrax or something. 'Cause, you know, that could happen. That could definitely happen."
"Don't worry about the squash, Spencer," said Fiona.
"Okay. Anyway, so I went to go make sure there was no squash anthrax and we started talking and then we ate a lot of meals together and then we had sex a few times – not all in one day, even though that would've been good, too, just like over the course of a week – and then I guess she decided she was my girlfriend 'cause she kept coming over to my mom's house and bringing squash. Good squash. Not anthraxed squash. Also she's really hot."
"Anthrax-less squash is good. Hot is good," Michael said, trying to focus on the positive.
"Yeah, I thought so, too. Okay, so anyway, one day I was driving her to work and all of a sudden this UPS truck pulls right out in front of us on I-87 and just stops. Just, like, stops. And I got all worried because that's one of the ways the aliens come, through delivery trucks. But then Jennifer just went to talk to the guy and then he just leaves. Can you believe that? Just leaves. So that's when I knew it couldn't really be an alien because the aliens don't leave. I mean, hello, that'd be absurd. Anyway, so we continued on to her work - "
"Where does she work?" asked Michael.
"The Blackpool border crossing. It's like 20 miles north of Plattsburgh."
Michael dropped his head down. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no," he mumbled. "Fi," he said, head still in his hands. "Tell me this is not happening."
"Sorry."
"It's nice to say yuh sahwy, Teefee. Dose aw nice wuhds," Charlie said.
"Thank you, Charlie," she replied with a smile.
"What?" Spencer asked. "What's wrong?"
"Spencer, how many squash-inspecting border agents you think there are in this country who want to be your girlfriend? In the world, for that matter?" Michael asked.
"Huh?"
"She's either a spy or an international criminal, Spencer," Michael said.
"What are you talking about? No no no, she just works at the border crossing!" Spencer said, shaking his head.
"Which side of the border does she work on?" Michael asked.
"She doesn't work at a booth. She runs the gift shop thingie."
"She runs the gift shop thingie," Michael repeated. "Fiona, I swear, if you are concocting some elaborate scheme in an attempt to be funny, let me be clear that this is not at all funny."
"Michael, much as I wish I could take credit for this gem of a situation, I assure you I had nothing to do with it," Fiona laughed.
"And now you're laughing. Nice."
"Guys, what's going on? What's wrong with the gift shop thingie?" Spencer asked.
"Fi, you have to – I can't – " Michael trailed off, putting his head back in his hands.
"Spencer. Airports or border crossings or anywhere there's a lot of international travel are havens for spies and serious bad guys," Fiona explained. "They make it easy to explain why you're having lunch with a Czech and a Guatemalan and why you could've invited the guy from Namibia because you speak fluent Afrikaans. And if you can work at an airport or border station but not actually be employed by a government – like if you run a gift shop owned by a private company – you could have a field day."
Spencer looked down to his Duplos. "Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god. Oh, this is really bad. Okay. This is really, really bad. Like monumentally bad. It's so bad. I don't . . . " Spencer trailed off.
"What?" Michael said, not at all wanting to know.
"I think I may have accidentally helped to mount a Québécois insurrection. Oh god, do you think they'll be mad? The Canadians?" Spencer was rocking back and forth, holding his knees close to his chest.
"Do I think the Canadians will be mad that you accidentally helped a minority separatist group try to overthrow the national government? Yeah, I think they'll have some thoughts about the matter," Michael said. "What makes you think you accidentally tried to overthrow the Canadian government?"
"Jennifer asked me to build this program so New York squash farmers could talk privately about their yields and stuff. She said their last three programs had been hacked by this agricultural syndicate out of Ontario."
"Squash hackers. Really," said Michael, head back in his hands.
"Yeah, that's what she said. So I built this amazing program. It was so beautiful. So far it's uncrackable. One of my friends from MIT has been trying for two months and hasn't gotten in. That's what my friends and I do. We try to crack each other's code. One time I got so close to getting into Dave's code for – "
"Spencer, focus," Michael said. "What's so important about this program you wrote?"
"Well, everyone was writing in French. Why would New York squash farmers be writing in French? I mean, one of them, okay, but not all of them," Spencer said. "Also I don't think any of them really ever talked about squash as far as I can tell."
"What did they talk about?" Fiona asked.
"I don't know. I don't speak French."
"So how do you know they weren't talking about squash?" Michael asked.
"Well, I know the French word for squash is courge. I mean, who doesn't know that, right?" Spencer chuckled.
Michael and Fiona stared at him blankly.
"Okay, well, anyway, I never saw them say courge. Also one of their handles was paulinemarois13."
More staring. "Who is Pauline Marois?" Fiona asked.
"Oh, she's the premier of Quebec," Spencer said. From his hands, Michael mumbled, "Head of the Parti Québécois. Elected 2012."
"Michael, if I asked you who the president of Botswana is, would you even have to think about it?" Fiona asked.
A muffled "Ian Khama" came from Michael's hands.
"Jesus," Fiona said, shaking her head. "Okay, Spencer, continue. Why do you think you helped mount an insurrection?"
"Jennifer used to go to these parties. Squash parties. Right? And everyone would, like, trade squash and talk about squash and stuff. But they never ate the squash, see. They just ordered pizza."
Michael was silent for a moment. "And?" he prompted.
"And doesn't that just seem weird to you? Why would squash people not eat squash at their own party?"
"Because nobody eats squash at a party, Spencer," Michael said, trying to keep his voice at a civil volume. "Is that all you're basing your theory on? That they didn't eat squash?"
"Well, and the French."
"And the French," Michael repeated. "Fiona, you thought this was something why?"
"He didn't tell me about the party, Michael," she snapped. "Obviously I wouldn't have been concerned had I known about the squash parties."
"All right, Spencer, here's what we're going to do," Michael began. "First, you are going to shower and cut that squirrel off your face. You can use the bathroom in Charlie's room. Then, you're going to tell us more about Jennifer because I still don't buy that a hot squash farmer would want to be your girlfriend. I mean, sorry, but I don't. In the meantime, Charlie, you need to have a shower, too, so head into our bathroom and I'll be there in a minute."
"Nooooo, no showuh. I wanna do Legos," whined Charlie. "Me, too," whined Spencer.
"Spencer, let me put it this way. Either Fiona or I am going to make you take a shower. You choose."
"Her," Spencer said quickly, hurrying to the guest room. Michael leaned down to pick up Charlie, then held him upside down by his ankles as he walked to the master bedroom. Charlie cackled with glee, the Lego trauma forgotten.
The next morning, after they'd dropped Charlie off at school, Michael, Fiona, and Spencer met Sam at the Carlito. Sam was in charge of figuring out Jennifer. He'd already pulled together a good bit of information during the night. He would've gotten more if Elsa had slept the whole night rather than demanded some Sam time.
"Hey, Spencer. Good to see you, pal," Sam said, extending his hand. Spencer no longer looked homeless, but Michael's ill-fitting clothes weren't helping matters. His growing potbelly stuck out from Michael's polo, and the jeans were rolled up three inches. The next stop after the Carlito would be Target.
"Oh, yeah, hi. Hi. Thanks again for getting me that job. I quit like three months later, but it was really good for those three months."
"Do I wanna know why you quit?" Sam asked.
"None of us want to know, Sam," Michael said. "Jennifer. What's up with Jennifer?"
"Well, good news first. She's not a spy as far as I can tell. Her photo and her cover didn't raise any flags anywhere."
"And the bad news?" Fiona asked.
"Oh, she's a middle manager in the second biggest drug running outfit in the northeast," Sam said. "Oh, hey, Andrés! Can we get some breakfast menus over here, por favor? Gracias, buddy."