Invitation: Four
Of course it was raining; he had grown to expect such reflective circumstances.
• The following is a continuation of Invitation: Three. Please also note that the earlier segments of this story have been ever so slightly revised; you may want to re-read them.
Of course it was raining; he had grown to expect such reflective circumstances. It was raining and she hadn't shown up. It had been more than twenty minutes; it had been forty.
Still Mr. Hanover waited, in the rain. The bus station was closed.
He began to consider the possibility that he had imagined the whole thing; the conversation, the flirting, the odd request that made him feel important. It was not altogether unlikely; he was prone to extended periods of intense fantasy, often realizing after an hour or so of daydreaming that an hour or so had passed. He watched the patterns the droplets made in the night-blackened puddles; each new drop complementing those of its predecessor and giving the wet darkness form. His eyes followed the drops off of the end of his nose to the ground between his feet. He shivered and thought of home. He turned his head and leaned forward to step off of the curb.
A black, polished sedan came out of nowhere and stopped in front of him, causing him to nearly fall over. The rear door opened and two attractive eyes peered out.
"Get in."
Mr. Hanover blinked exactly twice, slowly, stabilizing himself, and got in the car, shutting the door behind him. "You're late."
"I'm nothing of the kind. We were testing your resolve, Edgar."
"We?"
"Yes: we. Towel?"
"Please."
She handed him a plush, blue towel and instructed the driver to turn up the heater. "Don't worry about the seats. Are you comfortable?"
Mr. Hanover returned a quizzical look, one eyebrow raised, then continued drying himself off.
"Right, well; now, to business."
Mr. Hanover paused with the towel covering his face and his hands on either side of his head. "Exactly what is this business you keep referring to?" The words came slightly muffled from beneath the towel, masking the note of trepidation in his voice.
"We need you to make a delivery of sorts. I have an envelope that I need you to place where someone very special will find it. Someplace where only you have access. The contents of the envelope are of an extremely sensitive and secure nature and it is therefore imperative that no one see you place the envelope; that absolutely no one deduces how it got where it will go; and that no one traces the envelope's origins. There must be no fingerprints, no skin cells, no hair follicles; in short, no signs of anything. It must be made to seem as though it simply appeared there."
The mention of an envelope forced the invitation to the forefront of Mr. Hanover's mind, at first splintering his concentration, then crystallizing in a manner to which he was unaccustomed. Up to that moment, he had yet to come up with any sort of plan regarding exactly how he was to get to Boston. His job paid his rent with barely enough left over for eating. He lived, literally, between paychecks. There had been latenight dreams of hitch-hiking, carjacking, and even ones that involved bicycles. The newly discovered link between his current situation and his constant obsession provided him with a renewed sense of interest. He brought his head out from underneath the towel.
"And what do I get?"
"We are prepared to give you ten thousand dollars for your troubles."
He swallowed hard. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money to Mr. Hanover. In a testament to what was quickly becoming his newfound sense of self confidence, Mr. Hanover recovered his composure and leaned back in his seat. He looked through the window at what were now the quiet rain and the haloed streetlights and the clearing night that once again absorbed it all. He refocused and saw his own reflection in the window, eyes thoughtfully squinted. He folded his hands in his lap, breathed deeply and turned to face her.
"I'll do it."
more to come...