The Doorbell Rings Twice

A chocolate tour in Belgium. That was supposed to be sweet. That was the entire point of the weekend, actually. Maisie and I had been talking about it since spring, and I finally booked it in October for our third anniversary.

Then I saw Antoine in the queue and the whole thing turned to ash in my mouth.

He was standing about twenty feet ahead of us in line, hand on the small of his wife's back, laughing at something she said. He looked older. Thirty-six now, four years since I'd last seen him, and it showed around the eyes. But I knew him instantly. You don't forget the face of the man who screwed your wife while you were engaged to her.

"What is it?" Maisie asked. She'd felt me go stiff.

"Nothing. Just a guy ahead of us."

She followed my eyes and I watched her face change. She saw him too.

"Benjamin." Her voice dropped. "Benjamin, don't."

"Don't what? I'm just standing in line for chocolate."

"You know what."

I did know what. Four years ago, when Maisie was thirty-one and I was thirty-two, I found out she'd been seeing this man. It lasted maybe two months before I caught it, and she ended it before we got married, and we worked through it, and here we were. Three years married. I thought I was over it.

Turns out I was over it right up until the moment I saw his stupid coat.

* * *

The tour hadn't started yet, so we sat in the café area with coffees. Maisie kept glancing at the door like Antoine might walk through it holding a sign that said SORRY.

"He's here with his wife," she said. "Ayesha. I remember her from... from back then. They got married a year after we did."

"I don't care who he's here with."

"You're doing the jaw thing."

"I don't have a jaw thing."

"You absolutely have a jaw thing. Look, we came here for us. For the tour, the town, the bells, all of it. Let's just enjoy it and if we happen to not talk to him, fine."

"He'll come talk to us. He's that kind of guy."

"He won't."

He did, of course. About four minutes later, while I was stirring sugar into my coffee, a shadow fell over the table.

"Benjamin? Maisie? My God, small world."

I looked up. There he was, smirk already installed, wife half a step behind him.

"Antoine," Maisie said. Flat. Careful.

"Small world," I said. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"Business conference in Brussels. Ayesha wanted a day trip, she writes about this stuff." He gestured at his wife. "You remember Ayesha? You met her at the Duval party."

"I remember," I said.

Ayesha smiled at both of us. She seemed genuinely friendly, which almost made it worse. "It's so nice to see you again. Are you two doing the full tour? The bell tower part is supposed to be wonderful. One of the employees rings the old bells on tour days."

"That's the plan," Maisie said, and I could hear her trying to be pleasant through sheer force of will.

"Well," Antoine said, and here it came, I could feel it, "we should all do it together. The four of us. Make an afternoon of it."

"That's very kind," I said, "but we were rather looking forward to it being just the two of us. Anniversary trip."

"Ah. Congratulations, then. Three years?"

Maisie blinked. "How did you know it was three?"

"You told me once," he said, and smiled, and I swear the smile had a little knife in it. "Well. Enjoy your tour. Maybe we'll cross paths in the tasting room."

He walked off. Maisie put her face in her hands.

"Benjamin, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine. He did that on purpose. The three years thing. He did that on purpose."

"I know."

"Promise me you won't do anything stupid."

"I promise nothing," I said, and she groaned, and honestly I meant it as a joke. Mostly.

* * *

The tour was loud. Big machines, cocoa butter smell everywhere, a guide shouting over the noise about tempering and conching. I lost whole sentences to the machinery. Our group of maybe twenty people shuffled through in a loose line, everyone half watching the machines and half watching their phones.

The four of us ended up in the same loose cluster, because of course we did. Antoine stayed near Ayesha, mostly, but he kept drifting toward Maisie. Pointing things out to her. "This is where they..." and "I read that they..." like he was some kind of chocolate historian.

I hung back. I'm not proud of what I did next, but I will not claim I fell into it by accident either.

He dropped his wallet.

It slid out of his back pocket somewhere near the roasting machines, where the noise was worst, and it just lay there on the concrete between his feet and he walked on without noticing. Dark brown leather, fat with cards, a little brass snap.

Nobody else saw. Maisie was ahead of us. Ayesha was taking a picture of a molding line.

I bent down, picked it up, and put it in my jacket.

Then I stood there for a second, heart going, waiting for someone to tap my shoulder. Nobody did. The tour rolled on. Antoine strolled along ten feet in front of me with no idea.

The thing about revenge plans is this. They always feel justified right up until you have to say them out loud. I told myself I'd hold it for the tour, then leave it somewhere he'd find it, humiliated, searching his pockets in front of everyone. That was the story I sold myself. Keep it an hour, teach him a small lesson.

Except when we got to the tasting room and he patted his back pocket and frowned, I said nothing.

"Antoine?" Ayesha touched his arm. "What's wrong?"

"Wallet. I must have..." He patted his other pockets. He was starting to look around at the floor.

"You had it at the roasting room," she said. "You bought the little sample box."

"Did I? God." He turned to the group. "Excuse me, has anyone seen a wallet? Brown leather?"

A few people shook their heads. The guide said the front desk would hold anything turned in.

Maisie looked straight at me. She didn't know for certain. But she looked at me, and I looked at the sample truffles, and that settled it, for the moment.

* * *

After the tour we ended up back in the café, because the tasting room was packed and the café had corner tables. Ayesha came over before we could stop her.

"Would you mind if we joined you? All the other tables are taken, and Antoine is at the desk asking about his wallet."

Maisie said, "Of course," before I could arrange my face, so Ayesha sat down and Antoine came back a minute later looking gray.

"They don't have it," he said. "Nobody turned anything in."

"Maybe it's in your coat," Ayesha said. "You put it in the coat sometimes."

"I never put it in the coat."

He sat down heavily. Ayesha ordered four hot chocolates without asking anyone, which was friendly of her, and for a few minutes we made small talk about the machinery and the town and the church bells. She was easy to talk to. That's the annoying part. She asked Maisie about the pastry work, and Maisie lit up the way she does, talking about laminated dough, and for a minute I almost forgot I was sitting across from a man whose wallet was in my jacket.

"Did the desk check the lost and found properly?" Ayesha asked me. "Sometimes things get set aside without being logged."

"I wouldn't know," I said. "We didn't see a wallet anywhere."

That was a lie. It came out smooth. Antoine looked at me when I said it, just a beat too long, and I wondered if he suspected. He had no reason to. But he looked.

"You're sure?" he said.

"Why would we have your wallet, Antoine?" I said, and laughed, and he laughed too, a thin kind of laugh, and Ayesha said the hot chocolates were here, thank God.

Maisie's knee pressed against mine under the table. Pressed hard. I knew what it meant. Later, she was saying. Later we talk about this.

Fine. Later. For now I drank my hot chocolate and watched Antoine sweat a little, and I have to admit it felt good. Better than it should have.

"So," Ayesha said, "has anyone told you about the old doorbell? In the factory's original section? The guide mentioned it on our last visit. It rings by itself sometimes. Nobody knows why."

"The one by the bell tower stairwell," Antoine said. "Ayesha loves that ghost story."

"It's not a ghost story, it's a mystery. There's a difference."

"Ayesha," he said, "it's a broken doorbell."

"Then why does it only ring when..."

She stopped, because right then, faint through the café wall, from the direction of the old section, we all heard it.

A bell. Two short rings.

Nobody said anything for a second.

"Well," Antoine said. "There it goes."

The guide, a short woman named Hedwig with flour on her sleeves, came by our table with a tray of samples nobody asked for. She put down six little squares of chocolate and pointed at the wall behind us.

"That ringing," she said. "You heard it? You are lucky. Some visitors never hear it."

"Is it really a mystery?" Ayesha asked. "Or do you tell everyone that?"

"It is the bell of the old wing. Before the factory had a clock, the foreman rang that bell to start the shift. When the church built the tower in eighteen seventy-something, the two bells got wired together somehow. Nobody remembers exactly. The tower ringer was a part-time job then, and it still is. The man who does it now, Filip, he says when the tower bell is rung by hand, the old doorbell answers. Like they talk to each other."

"So it rings when Filip rings the tower bell," Antoine said. "That's the mystery solved. It's wiring."

"He rang at three o'clock. It rang at three-fifteen. There is your wiring." Hedwig shrugged. "Also it rings when it wants. Some days not at all. The legend says it rings for a secret. Somebody in the building hiding something."

Maisie's knee found mine again under the table.

"Or somebody with a stuck relay," Antoine said.

"Or a secret," Ayesha said, and smiled at me, friendly as ever, and I drank my hot chocolate and did not look at my jacket on the back of my chair.

* * *

We killed another hour in the museum part, old copper kettles and photographs of men in aprons, and then Ayesha wanted the courtyard for photos, and Antoine went with her because he always did, you could see that. Maisie pulled me behind the kettle display.

"Benjamin."

"What."

"You have it. Don't say no. You had a face all through the tasting."

"That's just my face."

"You have his wallet in your jacket right now and you watched him dig through his pockets like a man looking for his lunch money."

"He did that to himself," I said. "Four years ago. I'm just holding the bag."

Maisie crossed her arms. She was thirty-five and she could still make me feel like I was the one who'd been caught at something. Because I had been.

"It was two months, four years ago, while we were engaged," she said. "I ended it. I told you everything. You said you were over it. We booked this trip in October. We've been talking about it since spring."

"I'm over it."

"You stole a wallet."

"I found a wallet."

"Benjamin."

"Fine. Give me an hour. There's a place I want to put it where he'll feel stupid, and then it's done and we never talk about it again."

"What place?"

"You'll see. Go take pictures with Ayesha. She seems nice."

"She is nice. Which is why this plan of yours is terrible." She kissed my cheek, which I did not deserve, and went off toward the courtyard, and I went the other way, toward the old wing, with a brown leather wallet with a brass snap in my jacket pocket.

The old section was roped off but the rope was one of those drooping velvet ones that nobody enforces. The stairwell to the bell tower was there, stone steps worn into shallow bowls, and a sign that said NO VISITORS above a smaller sign that said the door was alarmed, which it plainly was not, because