Shorts
Read a collection of short stories.
The Black Market
​ All she could do was watch it lift and swirl up and over the crowd of shoppers, the chilled breeze enough to carry the small swatch of paper well out of reach and soon … out of sight. She scurried after it for a moment, barely suppressing the ache in her chest that let rise a desperate sound in the back of her throat, losing the paper in the piercing sunlight. She stood shaking, silently berating herself for her slippery fingers. Now what?
She’d arrived early enough, she thought, to give herself time. This was her nature, often showing up more than thirty minutes early to anything, then just found herself standing around. So it was today, now, standing in front of the ginger root seller, unsure where to go next, her directions now on the wind. She cursed herself twice. Once for the wind and once for getting mixed up in this at all. She was sure every pair of eyes were watching, and more so, could see what she was up too. She couldn’t breath.
She didn’t know what the man would look like, only that he was to be holding a clear bag of tangerines … in his left hand. That seemed like a sure tell, but in a goddamned open air farmer’s market, was beginning to look like the worst of ideas. From where she was standing, she saw eight people holding tangerines. Seven were men. Four of them had them in their left hand. Which was her contact? And was it even any of them?
She bit her lip and cowered a little into the shadows of the awning above her head. She clutched her shoulder bag tightly, pressing her arm over it so as to squeeze it more firmly against her waist. She could feel the contours of the small metal box inside along the length of her forearm and breathed a sort of opposing breath of relief and fear. It was still there, like it had been each time she’d checked before, but now, getting rid of it terrified her.
On the plane, six hours earlier, she’d joined the crew as she always had, but there was something different this time, and even her in-flight partner in first class commented that she looked “a little off” today. She had no idea.
“Just a bit tired,” she assured, stuffing her bag into the compartment, hoping it wouldn’t draw any further attention. However, all flight she’d let it consume her, worried that someone was going to find the box inside and then, well, who knows? Something bad.
Somehow, just as she’d been told it would, she got through it, off the plane, through customs, and into the city without a hitch. That didn’t lessen the dread, though. In fact it compounded with every step she took. “What I am doing?” she repeated under breath the entire ride in the taxi to the market.
Sweating so heavily, it was running down along the sides of her face, she noticed a ninth man emerge from the backside of the tent just past the old lady peddling apples. He was harsh-looking, weathered and in a pale blue windbreaker, a small brimmed hat casting his eyes in a band of ebony. In his left hand, one bag of tangerines, the top twisted and wrapped around two fingers. He was it.
She swallowed, hard, and ran the back of one hand across her lips, desperate for a drink … and a breath free of fear. In her head bounced images of her son sent to her via an anonymous text message a week ago, he walking to school with his friends, playing at the arcade, going into the corner convenience store, riding his bike. “We won’t hesitate. Do as we say,” was the only text, which was followed by an envelope handed to her at the airport by a woman who walked away before Subin even had a chance to see her face. Inside were directions.
She took a step into the sunlight and their eyes met. A family scurried in front of her, a couple and their child, a little girl with a bag of candies and then the tangerine man was right beside her. Dizzy with fear, she slipped the bag off her shoulder and waited for him to take it, a chasm of time that seem caught in some sort of slow motion time loop. But he didn’t. He didn’t take it. He instead looked at her with a curious smile and asked what she was doing. And over his shoulder, out of the corner of her eye, she stared, in shock, seeing another man across the way holding tangerines look with frustration at his watch and then lift his phone to his ear, nodding his head as if giving an order. She rushed forward screaming as the crowd swallowed him and he disappeared.
Circle of Friends
The thing about the meetings were the bagels. I had no idea who brought them. They were just kind of always there, stacked in this oddly mesmerizing pyramid by the ancient coffee machine. The top one today was blueberry. Not my fave, but who was I to break protocol and dig underneath? I took it, a single napkin, and made my way to the ring of folding chairs under the array of florescent lights buzzing in the center of the room. Seven were already gathered, including Pouch, the counselor, his pudgy girth testing the clasps on his faded suspenders.
There was a new guy in the room, easy to spot. Good looking fellow with ebony hair and shiny loafers poking out from a pair of baggy pleated and cuffed black wool slacks. He had a manila folder tucked under his leg and was methodically dog-earing the corner, nervously licking his lips. Mrs. Volts holding her sleeping cocker spaniel in her lap, sitting beside him, was fidgeting with her glasses, seemingly oblivious to the new face in the small crowd. Across from her was Larry, the youngest of the lot, a jittery fellow with a penchant for exhaustive oratory spells of personal history. Seated next to him sat Elsa, a young college dropout living with her abusive boyfriend. Eyeing her uncomfortably was Tommy, lost in some sexual fantasy of her extraordinary long legs. Last was Keenan, a troubled middle-aged former doctor with a missing left arm, his narrow eyes bouncing about the room.
Pouch cleared his throat. “We’ve got a new member to our group,” he said, gesturing to the raven-haired man. “Go ahead and introduce yourself … Richard is it?”
“Dick,” he corrected, adjusting the folder under his leg. “Hi, everyone. I’m Dick Tracy, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hello, Dick,” a chorus of mandatory response, followed by few curious giggles. Dick Tracy? Seriously?
“I’m an antiques curator by trade,” he went on. “Sort of an investigative historian as it were. I track lost and valuable mementoes of the past, restoring them and ensuring their preservation. You know, for museums and the like.”
“Well, that’s certainly interesting,” added Pouch somewhat flatly, trying to cross his bulbous leg but immediately giving up. “What’s that job like?”
I shifted slightly in my chair, taking a nibble of the bagel.
“Well, I’m currently working on a rather troubling case,” he went on. “Anyone here a movie buff?”
Only Tommy perked up, at last pulling his attention away from Elsa’s gams. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” he quoted.
Tracy nodded politely. “Nice. How about Indiana Jones?” he prodded. “Remember the ending when they stored the Ark in that big warehouse?”
“Hell ya,” Tommy shifted to the front of his chair, contorting his face as if to adopt a more heroic fedora-wearing pose. “It belongs in a museum,” he quoted again.
Dick smiled. “Right. Well, turns out … it’s missing.”
A collective “Huh?” befell the group. And Dick turned his eye to me.
“Seems the prop was never dismantled and was actually kept in the vaults at LucasFilms, considered by many collectors to be just about as valuable as the real thing, if the real thing ever existed. However, somehow, it disappeared a year ago. It’s a mystery.”
“No leads,” Larry chimed in. “Seems like it’d be a hard thing to hide.”
“Who would even want it?” Mrs. Volts added.
“Never saw the movie,” Keenan shook his head.
“You’re name is really Dick … Tracy?” I finally asked, adding the one question everyone was thinking.
Dick nodded, “Yes. And I read the comics.”
A few chuckled. But I didn’t. “How’d you get on this case? Ain’t this something police should be doing?”
“Oh, they are. But I get called in from time to time on things like this. I’m sort of well, I hesitate to say it, very good at my job. For example, I noticed something unusual at the crime scene the cops missed.”
“What?” asked Tommy, clearly taken by the intrigue, but not above some pokes. “Did use you use your 2-way wrist watch?”
Dick smiled. “No, no. I use the iWatch now. But seriously, I found a Yoda trading card, which might not seem all that out of place in a LucasFilm vault, but this one was different. It had a small handwritten note on the back: Dplain A2 Barret W7.”
“What the heck does that mean?” said Elsa, suddenly joining the conversation.
“Easy,” Dick said. “Dr. Plain. AA meeting on Barret street, Wednesday at 7:00.” He then looked at Keenan. “Right?”
Keenan was looking at me, angrily. “Stupid fool. You wrote it down?”
And in burst the cops as Dick Tracy rose out of his chair, slipped on his yellow coat and hat, then gave me a grin.