Two

I knocked—one rap, a pause, then four raps in quick succession—and he opened the door. He walked back to table and stared out the window. The table was the small hotel standard, the window anything but. The city stretched wide through the floor-length glass, dark with ten thousand pinpricks of light below. All the same, once I had latched the door behind me, it was the table that commanded my attention. I sat in the other chair and folded my hands.

He did not move. Seated across from him, I noted he looked upward, rather than down toward the buildings and streets. He looked to the sky. Whatever he hoped to find there, he wouldn’t, and it had nothing to do with the clouds.

When I cleared my throat, he finally turned. I raised my brow in question. He closed his eyes, but he gave the nod, and I slid the envelope of bills to my side of the table. He still did not speak, so I did a rough count. My rate is $25K. As I’d expected from our previous conversation, he gave me fifty.

Miscommunication is nobody’s friend, certainly not in my line of work, so I lifted my hand, two fingers. His lips trembled, his eyes filled, but he gave the second nod.

I tucked the envelope in my coat pocket and left him, so he could stare at the floor or the clouds or the city where he’d spend the next three days. A phone call would interrupt his stay. He’d have to book a flight home for the funerals.