I was originally going to call this story "A Venerable, Snowy Hell," but it seemed inappropriate.
It snowed once recently back at home, which inspired me to write this.
---
Jacques
Dubois was on an island of about three miles long. He was unsure of where he
was or how he managed to arrive here from his previous dream, so he decided to
look at the sky for inspiration but was nearly blinded by two suns that were
shining directly overhead. Having not been able to find out where he was he
decided to look at any posted signs for any information but saw none in his
vicinity. Upon walking around he noticed that each street of the island was
paved with red and yellow bricks and Victorian townhouses painted in an
alternating pattern of light pink and black faced the streets.
Jacques
kept walking for what he thought was about twenty minutes but for the whole
twenty minutes saw nothing but alternating light pink and black-painted Victorian
townhouses facing red and yellow brick-paved streets. He was unsure if he had
just been walking around in circles or walking in a residential district but he
saw no sign of any posted signs, and had not paid attention to trivial details.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Jacques tried to block out of his
mind any trivial details as he had the uncanny ability to remember trivial
details with extreme accuracy. Jacques’ mind was particularly plagued by the
man in a primarily blue Hawaiian shirt who was reading a copy of Anna Karenina on
the second floor balcony of the twenty-fourth townhouse he passed, and the
female cycad tree that had one missing leaf he saw on the seventy-fifth
townhouse he passed.
At last
Jacques gave up and decided to head towards the ocean. He strained his ears to
listen for the sound of the waves and at once heard a horrible crashing sound
that was like the sound of a twenty foot storm surge crashing against a levee
during a hurricane. However, it was a cloudless day and there was not even the
slightest breeze. Jacques was not phased by this oddity and headed towards the
direction of the ocean. After a step the raging ocean that Jacques had first
heard now was a barely audible soft whisper of the waves gently caressing the
shore. Jacques saw the ocean after passing one row of townhouses. The ocean was
a beautiful blue; the exact same color Jacques had seen in the Hawaiian
snapshots he saw in his family’s photo album when young.
Jacques
decided to walk along a street that had the beach on one side, and those
familiar townhouses on the other side. He heard a car approach him from the
direction of the ocean and turned his head. The car was an expensive orange
sportscar; the exact same shape and size he had seen in his family’s photo
album of their Hawaiian vacation, except painted orange instead of red. A person
with a masked face was in the front seat. Something about this person that
seemed so familiar to Jacques struck him with terror.
“Hey
Jacques!”
Jacques
stood motionless.
“Jacques!
Walk over to the ocean. It’s nice in there.”
Jacques
obeyed and robotically walked into the ocean until the water was waist deep.
The water felt nice; like bathwater. The familiar person whose identity Jacques
could not make out for the life of him threw him an object.
“Jacques!
You know what to do with that. Put it…”
The
person made an obscene gesture but Jacques knew what he was hinting at. He felt
compelled to oblige because he saw that the person now had a gun in his hand.
Jacques
felt a surge of pleasure and he looked over one last time at the person and saw
that the person’s mask was gone and Jacques felt a warm blanket around him and
opened his eyes.
Jacques was
motionless. His body was still undulating from the richness of the dream. He
felt a terrible but pleasure-inducing sensation further down his body. For a
minute he was unable to move as he felt something slowly trickle out. After he
regained control over his body he felt a wetness somewhere, which confirmed his
worst suspicions.
Jacques
did not notice that it was snowing outside until he had finished putting his
clothes and bedsheets in the washing machine and had taken a shower. “Those
fools at the Weather Center were right!” he exclaimed.
The time
was just past 8 AM on August 24th and an inch-thick layer of wet
snow had already built up on the branches of the tree outside of his window.
-
Jacques
Dubois was what we would call a yuppie. He had only graduated from the Stanford
Business School two years prior and already had a job at a prestigious bank,
with the potential to move into upper management in a few years. He had only
lived in Batara for less than two months. He expressed no desire to move to an
unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar country, but was forced to transfer to the
bank’s headquarters in Batara from its headquarters in San Francisco after a
recent company reorganization. It turns out that during his interview for this
job, Jacques was the only applicant to give me a positive response when asked
if he was willing to work under innovative environmentally conditions. It
turned out that ‘innovative environmentally conditions,’ simply meant that he
was to work in Batara (the most environmentally friendly city for over sixteen
years in a row by survey of its own citizens) and was not allowed commute to
work by car.
Despite
this minor setback, Jacques could have hardly imagined that he would be in this
position five years ago, when he was a struggling pre-business student at UCLA…
but those details are irrelevant for this story.
-
Jacques
saw no reason that the snow should affect his day and set out for work as per
usual. To get to his workplace, Jacques first took a bus that would take him to
the subway station. Despite it being almost 9 AM, the sky was still mostly
dark, creating a dark blue ambience outside. At the bus stop, Jacques saw that
the four other people at the bus stop were evidently just as surprised by this
unusual snowfall. One unfortunate man was still wearing sandals and at least
five layers of polo shirts. The man was angrily telling someone on his
cellphone about how had left all his winter clothes at his summer home in
Portland and was going to go there on vacation at the end of the week.
Luckily
for Jacques he lived in a completely flat suburb of Batara so despite the fact
that the streets were covered with messy, dirty snow, the bus had no problem
staying on schedule. The subway station was much more crowded than normal, as
it seemed that most people had decided to take public transit to work instead
of driving. Amongst a sea of thick overcoats were some armed security guards,
which were posted at the end of each turnstile, and at each ticket machine,
blowing their whistles and yelling “This way please, sir,” “This turnstile is
reserved for exiting passengers only, sir,” “Keep the line moving, sir,” and
other similar phrases in between the sharp screeches of their whistles. All in
all, chaos, as it took Jacques five minutes to walk from the bus stop to the
entrance of the station, another five minutes to walk from the entrance of the
station to the turnstiles, and another five minutes to walk down the stairs to
the platform.
Once on
the train, Jacques looked at his watch and accepted that he was going to be
late for work, so he decided call his boss to let him know. He also remembered
that he had to run an important errand that day and would only be working until
lunch.
“Hello.
You have reached the office of Gustav Plain,” answered a voice in a quiet
whisper. A person hearing that voice for the first time would have mistaken it
for an automated message.
“Hi
Gustav, this is Jacques.”
“Jacques!
How are you?” At once the voice changed into a raspy, boisterous shout.
“I’m
sorry, but I’m going to be late for work.”
“Jacques!
You too? I’m shocked! I expect more out of someone of your caliber!”
“Look,
Gustav, the public transit is a nightmare today because…”
“Jacques!
Don’t give me those excuses! You sound exactly like every other employee that
called in late today. At this rate, I’ll be the only one here until noon!
Jacques! Why didn’t you drive to work?”
“You
know… company regulations.”
“Jacques!
This is your fault. You’re too rigid, always following regulations. Look at it
this way. Suppose you’re somewhere down your career, and you have an important
task to complete. This magnitude of the importance of this task cannot be
understated; both your and the company’s fates are determined by the successful
completing of this task. Your company says you can’t drive to work, but there’s
a freak snowstorm of the day of the task. What would you do? Take out your car,
or willingly go into the overcrowded public transit system, willingly accepting
the fact that you will be late, and as a consequence, willingly accepting the
fact that you won’t complete the task on time?”
“Gustav,
I don't think anybody else in this city owns Soviet-era military jeep. See, my car would
probably be unable to make it up the hill into uptown.”
“Jacques!
That’s your fault for being unprepared! Look, at least when you drive, you control
your own fate. If the result for not completing this completely hypothetical
task was your death, would you willingly put your life in the hands of an
underpaid, overworked bus driver?”
“Gustav,
it’s my stop. I’ll be at the office in ten.”
“Jacques!
I’ll see you then!”
-
Jacques
looked at the clock just to double check that it was noon. It was still just as
dark outside as when he had left home. Looking outside the window of his
office, Jacques could see that the snow had not subsided at all. From his
window, Jacques had a clear view of the downtown Batara skyline. There was a
certain melancholy Jacques felt from looking at the city covered in snow in
late summer, with the sky still darker than before dawn and the trees still
leafy.
Before
leaving his office Jacques put on his socks and his shoes again, which were
both near the heater since they became soaked on the walk to the office, and
stopped by Gustav’s office to tell him he was running the errand. With a
package in one hand, and his umbrella in the other, and dressed as if he was
going skiing, Jacques stepped outside. There was already a crowd of people
waiting for the bus into downtown that stretched nearly to the door of the
building that housed the bank for which Jacques worked.
The bus
Jacques had to take into downtown also passed by the university, and Jacques
remembered that it was somewhere around the first day of classes, which
partially accounted for the large crowd. The sky had become brighter quickly,
as if the sun had just risen behind the overcast sky, so the crowd of mostly
students was in a jovial mood. Jacques could hear light banter between the
students, most of which consisted of amazement at the early snowfall. Some
students were bragging about how cruel the winters were where they grew up; one
person mentioned something about Canada, as the others around him expressed
their respect.
This bus
that Jacques was waiting for arrived every five minutes during the day. It had
now been over twenty minutes, and only one other bus had arrived. The bus
driver, a lady in a very bad mood, yelled in a raspy voice “I can only take two
more people,” and when a third person tried to enter, she shut the door,
trapping the person and his fingers in the door for almost half a minute,
before she opened the door again, and the unfortunate student stumbled back
onto the sidewalk, clutching at his bleeding fingers. The bus then sped off,
only to lose traction and crash into some parked cars at the side of the road
less than a block away.
Ten
minutes later, road crews had arrived and sealed off area around the stalled
bus with cones. Somebody had made a snow sculpture in the shape in the shape of
knuckle with a protruding middle finger, and eager students were taking photos
of this sculpture and posting them on social networking sites. Jacques had
given up trying to take the bus into downtown from this stop, and decided to
walk down the hill that led into downtown, and take a bus further down the
road.
Jacques’
idea was of no use. He was now on the part of the hill that was too steep for
buildings and saw three stalled buses, each blocking one of the three lanes of
the inbound half of the road. Each bus, still displaying “Happy Holidays” on
the front, was surrounded by a ring of cones. Further down the hill police
barricaded the inbound half of the road, diverting traffic onto the much
smaller River Road. On the outbound half of the road, Jacques saw a line of
parked buses that started at the River Road bus stop and spilled on to the
bridge. Cars were crawling up the hill in the remaining two lanes. The way the
traffic moved on this road was reminiscent of the Hurricane Katrina evacuations
Jacques had once seen on television.
He then
looked around and at once forgot about the chaotic scene on the road. He saw
the snow-fringed branches of the trees and tops of the mansions that lined the
riverfront, and further down the bridge, the snow-fringed yachts in the wharf
and the snow-capped condominiums of the downtown riverfront, and at once
decided that this scene would make a perfect postcard picture and took a nice
cellphone picture. Somewhere in all of this observing and photo-taking, Jacques
forgot about the important errand, which we would later learn, was one of those
‘ultra-important, hanging-his-life-in-the-balance’ errands his boss
nonchalantly mentioned in their talk earlier that day.
There
was this restaurant in downtown that Jacques read about on a well-known Batara
food blogger’s blog that he wanted to try yet never had the chance to, and he
thought that today would be a perfect day to try the restaurant. Afterwards, he
thought, he would take the subway from downtown back home, dry off his shoes
and socks, and have a nice cup of hot chocolate.
-
Somewhere
else in Batara’s Uptown, there was a shabby two-floor concrete building on 12th
Avenue that was sandwiched between two recently renovated glass office
buildings. In the front window of the first floor there was a large sign that
read: “Kasparov Bros., Real-Estate (Both Home and Office) Contractors, Inc.;
Est. 1982.” In the large window facing the second floor a passerby on the
street below could see two men resting their bulky elbows on a desk, which
amongst computers and lamps and other regular desk items, had two large fans
blowing air right into their faces, bright red with consternation.
On the
screen of their computers were live feeds from various street cameras. They
were both fixedly staring at one particular camera in the upper left corner of
the screen of one computer. The camera had a view of a section the Faternot
Street Bridge that led into downtown. Their eyes were glued to one man in a
thick black jacket that was walking against the direction of the blowing snow
who happened to be Jacques Dubois.
“Pyotr!
Why has he not called us yet. It is already thirty minutes behind the scheduled
calling-time!”
“I know
not, Harry. Maybe it’s due to the weather. I don’t know really.” The man named
Pyotr twiddled this thumbs in anxiety. “I don’t know really. Maybe it’s due to
the weather. Harry, do you have any ideas?”
“Pah!
These towns-folk! I had no trouble at all driving here. Look at all these
fools, we get a few centimeters of snow and all of a sudden they think the
roads have become staking rinks!”
“Harry,
maybe you should prepare the guns.” He twiddled his thumbs again, licked his
lips in rumination of this sudden realization. “Yes, Harry, prepare the guns.”
“Right!
Why hadn’t we thought of this twenty-nine minutes ago! Pyotr, call a coach.”
“Wouldn’t
it be more sensible to drive ourselves rather than call the coach?”
“Right,
right. Let’s go down to the cars.”
Pyotr
and Harry got up from their desk, which also had a nice view of the snow-capped
buildings of Uptown and downtown, and walked towards the stairs. Before
reaching the stairs, Harry took a pistol out of his pocket and handed it to
Pyotr.
On the
first floor Pyotr felt obliged to tell their secretary of their sudden leave.
“Romanov,”
said Pyotr to a young Asian lady with long, flowing black hair and, who was
sitting at a desk that faced the front door, “Harry and I have some important
errand to carry out. Please watch over the office and direct all inquires to
our auxiliary office.”
“That
can be done, sir,” said the lady named Romanov.
“Thanks,
Miss Natasha!”
Once the
two men disappeared down the stairs that led to the garage, the lady continued
sitting at her desk to continue her work. She took off her glasses and resumed
trying to balance the brass name plate that read “Romanov Natasha” on the bridge
of her glasses.
In the dimly-lit
garage, there were five refurbished Soviet-era military jeeps crammed into a
space not much larger than a master bedroom. Harry chose the jeep that was
parked closest to the garage entrance, which was at a right angle to the way
the jeep was parked, and entered by climbing over the back and jumping into the
open sunroof. Pyotr followed in a similar manner.
“All
right, Harry. We know he’s on the Faternot Bridge. Let’s waste no time in
finding the client.”
Harry
turned on the jeep’s engine and then Pyotr inserted a CD into the jeep’s CD
player. The Leningrad Symphony started to play.
-
Jacques
Dubois envisioned himself as a lone soul, alone in a dark, snowy desert,
blizzard blowing into his face, heading towards a faint light that almost
seemed like a mirage far away. He held his umbrella like a shield, directly in
front of him, but it was of little use, as his shoes were soaked and had
started to accumulate a pool of water in them, which he could feel through his
slightly numbing toes. His pants had become bi-colored: perfectly dry in the
back, but darkened by the snow which had assaulted the front. The snow had
started to turn into sleet already, causing the sidewalk to turn into slush
that splashed the bottom of his pants with each step.
A car
passed by dangerously close to Jacques, causing a mess of partially melted
dirty snow, dirty ice chunks, and dirty water to splash onto his jacket and
hood. He silently cursed. His mood had deteriorated with his progress along the
bridge towards downtown.
He then
received a call from somewhere, and out of frustration ignored it. A minute
later, another call, but again he ignored it. Another minute later, the call
came again, but this time Jacques looked at the downtown skyline and noticed
that it had indeed become closer, which brightened his mood just enough from
him to bother to pick up the call.
“Hello?”
Jacques demanded.
“Hello,
Jacques Dubois, this is Pyotr Kasparov. As you may or may not be aware, you had
an important appointment you were supposed to call us about and schedule. You
failed to do so. The deadline is an hour in passing, and normally this
negligence would be the cause of grave consequences, but out of the generosity
of our hearts, we have decided to make you a final offer before we have to take
action. Our offer is simple…”
Just at that moment another car passed by
dangerously close to the sidewalk, and again, for the thirteenth time, splashed
that awful mix of dirty partially melted snow, dirty ice, and dirty water, this
time straight into the side of Jacques’ face.
“Pah!”
spat Jacques into his cellphone.
“What?
Jacques, if I am not mistaken, you have declined our magnanimous offer without
hearing a single word of what we have to offer. I’m sorry, but these actions are
inexcusable,” said the voice on the other end in a reprimanding tone, which
almost reached a crack at ‘inexcusable.’ Jacques could faintly hear the climax
of the Leningrad Symphony in the background. “I’m afraid we have to terminate…”
The call
suddenly dropped off.
-
Pyotr
shrieked. Any passerby would have thought a woman was having her purse stolen.
Luckily for Pyotr’s dignity, the powerful sounds of the climax of the Leningrad
Symphony coming from the jeep’s audio system masked his sudden outburst, so
that any person who happened to pay enough attention to hear the shriek simply
thought a piccolo played slightly out of tune. The cellphone on which Pyotr had
been about to hand Jacques his judgment laid on the floor of the garage,
crushed under the jeep’s massive wheels.
“Harry,
you really should improve your maneuvering skills. You nearly cut off my hand
there!”
“An inch
off here, an inch off there, what does it matter! There’s only one inch of
clearance space on all sides of the jeep so something like this was bound to
happen sometime. Come, Pyotr, and help me unfold the mirror, the door handle,
and the side bumper, now that we’ve managed to get out of the garage!”
“Seriously,
Harry, it took you until the climax of the symphony to be able to back out of
the garage…”
The
Soviet-era jeep made short work of the slippery, slushy mess that was still in
the middle of 12th Avenue. While it was travelling at regular
speeds, other cars were struggling to crawl by at speeds one would drive at in
a parking lot.
“Pyotr!
Have we any idea where Jacques still is?”
“Presumably
still on the bridge, Harry.”
“So then
let’s take a left turn here, and wait – what’s this?” Harry had to slam on the
brakes, stopping mere inches away from the minivan in front of him. The two children
in the back seat had a look of agony on their faces as they were expecting the
jeep to crash into their car.
“Those
fools, Pyotr! They’ve barricaded the inbound segment of the road simply due to
two stalled buses! Look, look at the space,” said Harry, pointing to a crevice
in the middle of the two stalled buses that was just as wide as the garage
entrance. “Wide enough to let a tank through! Why must the police barricade the
street?”
“Look,
Harry, we can simply follow the police diversion onto River Road, then take the
side streets back up the hill, drive a few blocks to the west on 7th
Avenue, and take the North Street Bridge into downtown."
When the
two brothers reached the North Street bridge, they found that it was also
blocked in the inbound direction by two stalled buses.
“No
problem, no problem,” said Pyotr, “We can simply follow the diversion onto
River Road, then take the side streets back up the hill, drive a few blocks to
the east, and take the Local Highway 91 Bridge into downtown. Buses are not
allowed on that road, so there should be no stalled buses.”
To Harry
and Pyotr’s increasing consternation, when they reached the Local Highway 91
Bridge, they found it also blocked, this time not by buses, but by two police
cars which had stalled in the snow, their sirens and lights still activated.
“What
now, Pyotr? Shall we call a coach? Is that reasonable, or are we fated to
continue wandering around Uptown in search of barricades and horrible drivers!”
“Let’s
just take the subway, Harry.”
“Pyotr!
You know what? All this searching has made me more and more eager to be able to
terminate that complacent, good-for-nothing…”
-
“The
fries must be double fried. Such is life. All good things happen once, they
must happen again, non? The first
time cooks the fries; the second time adds the coating. The first miracle: we create
life; the second miracle: we define life. Then, once you have life, you must
make it fluid, but not before adding the cheese curds. Cheese curds: the
embodiment of heaven in the mouth, that sensation which melts at once and
squeaks with the passion of a perfectly engineered dish, the epitome of our
cuisine! We have created genius, perfection, David in edible form, but it
nothing, just a sculpture, merely, just inanimate. The last step: make life
fluid, through which our creation will be able to breathe. Let the creation
breathe! Until the dish is fluid, it cannot breathe, it cannot live, it cannot
inspire! What is eating without inspiration! Nothing but ingestion! Ingestion;
that word gives me the shutters at the tongue, for it is devoid of all of passion
and emotion, such an insult to the work of art I am about to create for you!”
“Jérémie,
it’s not my first time here. I’m Jacques!”
“Ah! Désolée, I thought it was your first
time here so I was giving you the spiel.”
“No
worries; it was still as eloquent as the first time I came here.”
“Jacques!
You look. Drenched! How can I say it any other way other than, drenched!”
“I had a
little walk in the snow, which then turned into a walk in the sleet, and in the
final block before arriving, rain! Yes, the snow is now finished, for good.”
“Well,
well, what shall I get for you?”
“My
regular order.”
“Very
well.”
Jacques
paid the money, took a glass of water, and sat down at a table. He was unable
to relax because he was, well, drenched. He desperately looked for something to
draw his attention to while the master fry-cook was preparing his meal. The televisions
were off. “Must be due to the Hockey Strike,” thought Jacques. He then pulled
out his cellphone, but it was unable to turn on due to excessive water damage.
He had no other resort left other than to stare at the master.
Jérémie
was hard at work preparing a dish that, health-wise, should be eaten only once
per month, yet ever since Jérémie opened his quaint fries shop in this
particular corner of downtown five years ago, Jacques had frequented the place
at least once a week, sometimes twice, or more. He looked like the kind of
person who should have been a model for a Californian fashion company; he was
tall and of a shining bronze complexion, his muscles still showed through the
bulky sweater he had on, and his hair still seemed to shine despite dim light
in the fries shop. “I guess he really enjoys what he does,” thought Jacques.
The dish
soon arrived, which Jacques wolfed down, after which he gave a short farewell
to Jérémie, and ran out of the fries shop. The snow had transitioned completely
into rain, creating rivers on the side of streets, rivers that passed in
between the sidewalk and layer of melting ice on the side of the road. These
rivers also created daunting barriers between crosswalk and sidewalk, and
Jacques at first tried to jump over them, but after few failures, simply
decided to splash around in the rivers, as if the fries dish he had just
consumed energized his whole being.
Jacques
could now see the entrance of the Downtown subway station in the distance. A
fearsome wind started blowing; piercing rain flew into Jacques’ eyes and
blurred his vision. He was now four city blocks away from the station, and the
wind had started to rock the small, bare maple trees that dotted the city road.
Three blocks away, and the wind had started to send branches flying through the
air. Two blocks away, and Jacques saw that the wind had grown strong enough to
start to uproot these frail maple trees, and barely managed to duck in time as
one flew past him, which ended up crashing into a store window.
Jacques,
who had been running ever since he left the fries shop, felt an urge to slow
down. He was not tired; maybe there was some urge that told him to appreciate
this chaotic scene. He slowed down, first to a jog. The wind calmed down
slightly, as a tree that was about to be uprooted right in front of Jacques was
spared, and now only gently rocked back and forth. Jacques then slowed down to
a brisk walk, then to a meander. The wind stopped.
The
subway station was crowded as usual, but since the snow had turned into rain,
Jacques felt everything return to a relative normalcy. A snowplow, the first
Jacques had seen all day, started clearing what was left of the snow on the
main road that ran above the subway line.
-
“Pyotr,
there’s the target!” said Harry, pointing at the third window of the second car
of the subway train which was parked at the opposite end of the platform.
“I can’t
get a clear shot from here. We have to follow him.”
This is Downtown. Doors open on
the left at Downtown.
The
doors opened, and Harry and Pyotr pushed through the crowd on the platform in
an attempt to board the outbound train. There was a loud beeping noise that
started.
“Quickly,
Pyotr! The door is about to close!”
“Harry,
why don’t you tell the conductor to wait.”
“Conductor!”
yelled Harry, “please, wait! Wait for us to board the train!”
Harry’s
yells were of no use. The train left without heeding his pleas. The people
around Harry started chuckling, and someone started to explain to the
unfortunate Kasparov Brothers.
“Are you
tourists here?” said a student, “the entire subway system is automated.
Controlled by computers. No conductors on any cars. What a marvel!”
Instead
of admiration, the student’s apparent pompous tone broke Harry. He grabbed the
poor student by the collar of his sweater, made his glasses crash onto the
rails, and screamed right in his face.
“What a
day! What a day! First the police barricade every possible route into the city,
then we find the coach is out of service, then the grand finale, some smart
person tells me that the subway trains are magic, run without any conductor!”
Pyotr
quickly mediated, and pulled the student out of Harry’s vice grip.
“Harry,
we can just take the next train. After all, we know where he lives…”
-
Jacques
returned home at slightly past four. The sun had already set two hours ago. A
set of drenched socks, boots, jacket, pants, undershirt, sweater, and underwear
were drying on the radiator. Finally in fresh dry clothes, Jacques felt at
ease, and started to recollect the memories of the day. He seemed fixated on
the snapshot he took of the view of the hill facing downtown.
He heard
a ringing sound.
“Hot
chocolate’s done – no wait – that’s the doorbell. I wonder who it could be at
this hour?”
Jacques
opened the door and saw two tired and sorry looking men facing him. One had a
manila envelope tucked under his arm. The one without the envelope opened his
mouth, and started whispering in a barely audible tone.
“Hello…
my name is Harry Kasparov…”
Just
then a snowplow passed by on the street, drowning out any hope that Jacques
would understand what the man named Harry Kasparov had to say to him. It
dropped off a pile of snow right on top of what Jacques made out to be an odd-looking
jeep that was parked in the restricted snow-clearing area of the street.
“…terminate
our deal. Please comply.”
The
other man handed Jacques the envelope. The one named Harry now had a gun in his
hand, but was evidently disillusioned, pointing it at some odd direction off
into a snowbank. Jacques had no idea how to respond, so he just nodded his
head, which seemed enough to satisfy the men, and they turned their backs and
walked back into the darkness.
Back at
his desk, cup of hot chocolate in hand, Jacques opened the envelope. It was an
unsigned copy of a contract of which a copy he had already signed and verified
the day before.
“Poor
men,” he thought, “they should get some rest.”
