|
|
| Line 27: |
Line 27: |
| ===The MTM Grand=== | | ===The MTM Grand=== |
| {{Opco business day convention scene}} | | {{Opco business day convention scene}} |
|
| |
| She’s nervous. She looks about. She gasps – clocks something, someone, over her shoulder.
| |
|
| |
| She gets closer.
| |
|
| |
| She gets suuuuper close.
| |
|
| |
| His dander is up. It’s aching, bad.
| |
|
| |
| She leans in. She whispers in his ear – her lips touch his lobe. He wants to explode.
| |
|
| |
| “Have you got something for me?”
| |
|
| |
| “Do you want something?”
| |
|
| |
| “I’ll accept anything. No questions asked.”
| |
|
| |
| She says, “come find me. Come find yourself.” She presses something into his hand.
| |
|
| |
| It’s a key. It’s on a ring, a number punched into the plastic. HACIENDA 547.
| |
|
| |
| “You can give me anything. I will accept it.”
| |
|
| |
| The Negotiator groans.
| |
|
| |
| “Meet me at the end of the month. For business.”
| |
|
| |
| Boone checked his Rolodex. The end of the month was tomorrow.
| |
|
| |
| “Tomorrow?”
| |
|
| |
| She leaned in close. She breathed into his ear. Her breath was hot. “Work it out, big boy!”
| |
|
| |
| His professional circuits clicked in fast. Tomorrow was Saturday. It was the thirtieth. It was month-end proximate. He tipped the ambiguity right off the bat. “Wait: Following or Modified Following?”
| |
|
| |
| “I like the way you’re thinking,” She drifted away. She dissolved in the crowd. “Actually –”
| |
|
| |
| “I – Actually? But wait – what’s your name?”
| |
|
| |
| She turned and drifted on the current of sales bullshittery and lofted canapés. She floated further. The ocean closed up, and she was gone. Through the chatter, there was a tight-point whisper, and it hit him broadside: “I’m Marissa.”
| |
|
| |
| Bus-boy rocks through with the bacon-wrapped scallops in newsprint party hats.
| |
|
| |
| “Careful with her, sir: She’s an agent.”
| |
|
| |
|
| The girl winds up murdered on a heart-shaped satin bed, in the Hacienda while it is being imploded. In her mouth, rolled up and tied with a blood-red satin bow, sealed in blood-red wax with a curious dark mark: a legal document. The Negotiator pulled the bow: it dropped to the floor. | | The girl winds up murdered on a heart-shaped satin bed, in the Hacienda while it is being imploded. In her mouth, rolled up and tied with a blood-red satin bow, sealed in blood-red wax with a curious dark mark: a legal document. The Negotiator pulled the bow: it dropped to the floor. |