There had been a lot of snow over the weekend, but it had warmed up since then and the pristine white piles were quickly melting into dirt-colored slush. We had to navigate the pavement carefully on our way back to the office.

We missed the light at the corner of Madison and Fifty-first, but I was still scoping out the enormous puddle lapping at the curb, trying to figure out the best way across it, when the signal changed from the orange hand of “Don’t Walk” to the striding white figure of “Walk.”

“I’ve got you covered,” Jake said.

“What-” I started to ask.

He grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me over his shoulder as if I weighed nothing, which most certainly was not the case, especially not after the meal I’d just consumed. He stepped easily over the puddle and continued across the street before depositing me on the opposite corner.

My feet were dry, but if my cheeks had felt warm before, now they were burning.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Anytime,” he grinned.

A mountain of work waited for us in the office, but we were sufficiently fortified by lunch to get through it at an efficient pace. Still, it was well after nine by the time I let myself into my apartment.

I sensed instantly that something extraordinary was underway.

“Peter?” I called out, kicking off my shoes. I shrugged out of my coat and left it with my hat and scarf draped over one of the cardboard boxes in the foyer.

“In here,” he answered.

“In where?”

“The kitchen.”

“Why?” I asked. An old Van Morrison CD was playing on the stereo, and the apartment smelled strangely of food. My stomach reminded me with a rumble that lunch, however fortifying, had been a long time ago. I picked a path through the cartons that lined the hallway, heading toward the room in question.

“Why do you think?”

“Oh my God.” I stood in the kitchen doorway, frozen with shock.

He was cooking.

“Lasagna all right with you? It seemed like a good choice for a cold night. It’s almost ready. Here, let me pour you a glass of wine.”

I struggled for words. “But-how? With what?” I didn’t see any plastic containers from restaurant takeout, or even one of those orange boxes with the trusty Stouffer’s logo. And the microwave was quiet. None of it made any sense.

“A casserole dish. The oven.”

“It works?” I’d gotten a letter from ConEd years ago, warning that they were turning off the gas since it registered such little usage. I was pretty sure I’d never responded.

“Seems to.” He handed me a glass of Barolo.

“I have a casserole dish?”

“It was a bit dusty, but I rinsed it off.”

“But-but didn’t you need spices and herbs and ingredient stuff?”

“There’s a grocery store a couple of blocks away. They even deliver.”

He was trying to act nonchalant, but he was clearly pleased with himself.

I put my glass down and wrapped my arms around him. “Will you marry me?”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

A few minutes later he banished me from the kitchen so that he could put the finishing touches on the meal. In the living room, I saw that he’d even set the small table. Place mats! Who knew I owned place mats?

I went to stow my briefcase in the tiny room that I used as a study and which technically elevated my apartment from a one-bedroom to a two-bedroom, although it had never been clear to me how it could possibly fit a bed when it could barely fit a desk and chair. The PC was on-Peter must have been using it-so I took a moment to check my personal e-mail account. My BlackBerry was like an extra limb, almost surgically attached to me and ensuring that I rarely fell behind on my work e-mail, but my home account tended to fill up.

Most of it was spam. The Internet was supposed to usher in a golden age of targeted, one-to-one marketing, but I refused to believe that I was the target market for penile implants. I sent message after message into the trash bin, clicking the mouse with increasing impatience and speed.

As a result, I nearly missed an e-mail from Luisa confirming drinks the following evening. In a fortuitous twist of events, all four of my college roommates were in New York this week, and we’d agreed to meet at the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel. I hit Reply All to caution them that I might be a bit late, but I resolved at the same time to make it out of the office at a decent hour. Gallagher and his deal would suck up every second if I let them.

The next and last e-mail also nearly missed being tossed into the trash bin. And once I saw it, I almost wished I’d deleted it unread.

The subject line read Important. Of course, all of the Viagra ads claimed relevance and urgency, too.

But the return address was from manofthepeople@rsnd.net. Not the most legitimate-sounding address-it had a self-righteous rabble-rousing air to it-but it seemed more likely to be a real person than one of the randomly assorted strings of letters that most of the Viagra ads came from.

I clicked it open. The message was short, and cryptic.

Perry’s dirty and so is this deal.

And they’ve done it before.

That was it. That was all it said.

T he mouse suddenly felt like a burning coal, and I grabbed my hand away. I had the sinister sensation there was someone else in the room, a presence at my shoulder.

There was nobody there, obviously, and the dark night outside meant I could see nothing through the window but my own reflection, yet I still had the eerie feeling I was being watched. I yanked the shade down.

Then I read the e-mail again.

Perry’s dirty and so is this deal.

And they’ve done it before.

The questions started flowing into my brain, but it took a couple of minutes before I could get over how creeped out I was to even articulate them, let alone begin to address them.

First, who was manofthepeople@rsnd.net? And why was he e-mailing me? Here, at home, on my personal e-mail account? How had he even found my personal account?

Second, how was the deal dirty? I wasn’t surprised to hear somebody else thought so, too, but Man of the People had been a little stingy with the details.

Third, what, exactly, had they done before? And who were “they” supposed to be?

And fourth-well, I was back to Question One, Part Two-why was Man of the People e-mailing me?

“Rach?”

I shrieked. The entire concept of jumping out of one’s skin made sense in a way it never had before.

“Sorry-I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that dinner’s served.”

I gaped at Peter.

“You remember dinner? The logical outcome of what I was working on in the kitchen? I know the entire dining-in thing is a bit novel and usually involves the delivery guy being buzzed up, but I promise there’s food on the table.”

“You need to see this,” I told him.

“Can it wait? I don’t want everything to get cold.”

“I don’t think so.”

He came around to my side of the desk and leaned over my shoulder to look at the screen.

“You just got this?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“On your personal account?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know who this Man of the People guy is or why he’s e-mailing you, much less how he got your e-mail?”

“No.”

“That’s sort of creepy.”

“It’s very creepy.”

Peter convinced me it would be unwise to discuss matters any further on an empty stomach. I plopped myself down at the table and allowed him to cut me a large slice of lasagna and top off my wine.