“More beer! More beer, forthwith Barkeep!” Rick shouted, holding his glass high. Foam had collected in the bottom and run down the sides. As it dripped on his unkempt black hair and forehead he turned around quickly.
“Who did that?” he demanded, slurring his words, clearly in an advanced state of innebriation.
The movement was too quick and the balance centre of his brain had been skating on thin ice before any alcohol had been introduced into his system. He found his eyes looking at a group of college-age boys loudly singing while his brain thought he’d been looking toward the bar. It tried desperately to compensate while at the same time processing the sense of movement. Signals sent to his body generated yet more confusing spacial cues.
Rick found himself suddenly on his back on the floor with legs tangled in his chair. The beer glass in his right hand was still held aloft and he’d not spilled a drop of the foam. He cheered the achievement and descended into laughter as he drunkenly realized just how much more stable the world seemed to be if he remained on his back on the floor.
He caught sight of the ceiling fan. He moved the beer glass around until he was looking through glass and foam at the fan. He frowned and squinted. His lips moved as he tried to count the blades of the rapidly spinning fan. He kept getting lost at three so he gave up and looked around the room. The change of perspective was strangely refreshing.
A pair of well worn Doc Marten boots approached him and spoke, “Rick Williams. You’re drunk.”
Rick rolled over to address the amazing talking boots, “Pissed as a newt my dear!” He hiccupped. Something about it struck him as inordinately funny and he dissolved into incoherent giggles.
A hand reached down and plucked the empty beer glass from Rick’s hand.
The giggles stopped and he swiped an uncoordinated hand in its general direction trying his best to retrieve it. All he managed to do was make himself feel dizzy again so he laid back on the rough wood floor of he bar and closed his eyes.
“I might be a while…” he slurred, waving a hand at the world in general. It might have been a dismissive gesture or just random firing of stuporous neurons.
“Get your lazy, beer sodden ass off the floor this instant!” the hand said
Rick cracked an eye open and scanned upward along the wrist to forearm, an English flag with some words underneath … M - A - D - E … Made In England. He looked up the arm further to light grey Tshirt. Up to an ear, and short hair. Rick began to laugh, “Your hair looks funny.”
The face that stared down at him was familiar. Where had he seen it before? “I know you … you’re the only professional wizard in Chicago!” he giggled.
The other man sighed deeply, reached down and dragged Rick to his feet. He looked over to the barman and nodded, “Cant take his drink. I’ll get him home.”
Rain poured from the LA sky like someone had opened a faucet. It had started quickly: one minute it was sunny and bright the next night had fallen and water lashed the window outside the office. Jeremy had spent most of the night working with editors and the special effects guys and was tired beyond belief. A pretty young woman, college age by the look of her with long black hair and a natural tan most would have paid thousands to a cosmetic surgeon for, had visited midway through the morning with a large basket of cellophane covered bread rolls and plastic cartons of salad. She worked for a “mobile cafeteria” company that had carved a niche among the overworked offices of downtown LA in the previous few months. Executives too busy to even think to order-in were visited mid-morning and mid-afternoon when their blood-sugar was bound to be at its lowest. A good looking, and always young, woman appeared with a cute smile and a basket of over-priced salads and sandwiches. Better still, no money was ever exchanged. Invoices were dispatched to companies, deals struck with the finance departments to carry the costs as a per-diem and charge the meals to expense accounts. What better arrangement? Young lady arrives and urges the hungry older man to eat, offering him items that he doesnt need to pay for, and the receipt always comes to just a few dollars less than need to be itemized for an expenses claim. Who cares that the pastrami on rye and bottled water cost a nickel less than the twenty-five dollar limit for itemization?
Jeremy yawned and listened politely as the young woman told him about Greek Salads, the new Veggie option for sandwiches and how the mineral water was the best they’d ever had. He nodded politely and tried not to lean too far back in his chair or sleep would claim him. He realized too late that the girl had fallen silent and was waiting for him, still smiling sweetly. How long would that last? How long before the smile became forced and she gave up to go to another office. What if he gave her a small indication that he was thinking, but kept on waiting. The girl cocked her head and raised an eyebrow, “Your usual then Jer?” she asked.
He nodded. She put two bottles of water on his desk, added a plastic fork wrapped in a napkin and a box of dry salad. No dressing. Never, ever, any dressing. She’d been asked if they had plain no-dressing salad the first time she’d visited. Since then she’d made sure, just for him, that there would be one box. Sure enough every visit he took it even if he didnt plan to eat it on the spot. He’d even complimented her on the choice of lettuce once. That had been the time he’d asked where she was from, the only time he’d attempted to cross the barrier between consumer and service provider. She’d told him that her family was from Hawaii. It was true and made her seem a little more exotic than the reality: her family traced its roots back through her maternal grandmother back to Hawaii, but they all lived in Kansas these days. She’d gone through high-school and early college years loving theatre and film but it hadnt dawned on her that there might be a career waiting. After graduation she’d picked up some roles in community theatre and finally taken the plunge to move to LA to get “a real acting job”. Her money had run out and the mobile cafeteria was the only comany willing to hire her. Still, it was acting of a sort, always being nice the the tired, letcherous old executives.
Today was easy though. Before she’d left the office she had packed Jeremy’s salad as usual and was about to get into her car with her basket when a tall man dressed all in black had asked to look at her food. She knew the rules of course - once packed she wasnt to let anyone else touch the merchendise. Something to do with health and safety rules. The tall man in black smiled and raised gloved hands, “See, gloves. It will remain untouched by human hands.”
She still wasnt sure. That was when things had turned weird. Tha tall man pulled a wallet from his pocket and waved a hand at the basket, “How much do you think that’s all worth? Thirty or so items? Or shall we call it a nice round fifty? I’ll round up and let’s add something in for the water as well. Would fifteen hundred dollars do?”
Her eyes bulged as he counted out crisp one-hundred dollar bills and handed them to her.
“You take those and I now own your basket of goodies, no?”
He pulled a tiny paper sachet from the wallet, tore off its corner and sprinkled its contents onto the dry salad. It looked like fresh-ground black pepper, course, but silvery in colour. It sat on the leaves for a moment or two then it looked like the grains all moved, burrowed, into the lettuce until nothing was visible. She shook her head. Couldnt have been. Silver specks dont move on their own, climbing leaves and hiding in sections large enough to disguise them.
When she looked up from the salad the man was rounding the corner of the building. He looked back, “Just deliver it as usual. Smile. Yes, smile like someone just gave you fifteen hundred dollars.” with that he vanished.
The deluge outside Jeremy’s office didnt abate all afternoon. When he finally went home the downpour had settled into merely soaking him. He told himself that it could have been worse, could have drenched him to the skin, but it was no consolation when he tried to dock his Blackberry Pearl in the on-dash cradle and the damned thing refused to come alive. He turned it over and back, held it up to the light, smacked it a few times. He couldnt see a reason except that the keypad seemed damp. He might not have suffered from the rain but his PDA did. Either way it was a moment designed to ruin his day. Traffic had been light most of the way back which gave him ample time to compose a dozen complaint emails to the makers of his phone. All in all, a thoroughly rotten day. He was far to absorbed to notice the grey sedan following him through traffic, taking the same exits, and ultimately parking a block down the street from his condo. Two men sipped coffee and watched him enter the building. One spoke into a radio then they settled in for a long wait.