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Today’s
Prompt:
There are two men sitting in the booth of a
diner eating dinner together and talking. A woman sits outside in a parked car,
watching them through the window. Who are they? What is their relationship to
one another? What are the men discussing? What is the woman thinking? What does
she do next? Write a story that opens with this scene and explores these
questions.
Word Count: 1,422
Outside
in a Parked Car
Time
tapered off. The longer they talked, the dimmer her chances grew.
Cordell
sat in the SUV, staring through the window in desperate anticipation and observed
the two men sipping on champagne and wine, discussing, dining and especially,
sipping on wine and champagne. Damn,
she thought. They look so good at it they
could do it for a living. She saw the anxiety etched in ridges on her fiancé’s
brow and felt more than saw his unease; the issue had possibly hit
a deadlock.
“Damn,” she said, slamming her
palms against the dashboard. Her fiancé had insisted she remain in the vehicle
while he met with the private detective they hired to investigate the case
before it went to court. “I don’t like a woman messing with my head when I’m
trying to piece a puzzle,” the detective said over the phone call that led to
the meeting. Cordell hated the bozo’s guts. Yet, what could she do about it?
Crazy as it sounded, Bono had taken them up on their offer the very first time
they called him up when every other private detective had turned them down. She could not afford to run him off with her
mouth; she had a lot more to lose than a loud detective. Let him do what he had
to do besides, she did not want to marry the man. She would stick with Bono as
long as she could get him to clean up her mess for her.
In
The Booth of a Diner
Mayak
had less than a week left to save his fiancée’s butt from incarceration. The
only man who can make that happen sat in front of him in one of the booths in Anam Diner slurping his soup like there
was nothing left to give. Before now, their discussion had revolved around Bono
saying he would love to go on a date with the waitress and then moved on to the exquisiteness of the Ibibio
chow. “It’s an experience worth reflecting on,” Bono said, checking out the waitress
who had returned to collect the dishes.
Outside
in a Parked Car
A
young woman whose fate hung round the neck of a man, who could not take his
eyes off pretty women even one in a pinafore, counted her loses. She worked at
Langston Corp.; a top-secret research facility located in the heart of the Obudu Ranch in Cross River, Nigeria. A
top-secret package arrived at the facility three days earlier. Nobody but
officers at the top echelon of the corporation had whiff of the package. They placed
it under her supervision and only Cordell had access to the codes because she
was the Chief of Security. “A tough spot for a woman,” Bono had said. “Lots of
competition, too.”
Next morning, the staff of
Langston Corp. reported to work to discover a top-secret specimen sent in from
overseas was missing in action. The high points of the drama was no alarm
system had been triggered and the safe, which codes only one person had access
to, had been turned out. Somebody had cleaned Cordell’s clock. What’s more,
Cordell called in late that morning, something totally unheard of before that
day.
Security
on night shift was taken in for questioning but what has that got to do with
the price of oil in Bakassi?
Cops
discovered the corpses of one or two of the Corporation’s researchers in their
apartments. They’d been executed gangland
style.
In
The Booth of a Diner
“Like I was saying, that waitress
got body. If only I could get with her.” Bono seemed to be having the time of
his life in spite of the circumstance.
Mayak
knew the aim of Bono’s game; Bono was trying to wear him out. Bono had warned him
“People might get killed.” Then, Bono added, “Of course, I’m not scared but are
you prepared to get your hands dipped in a bloodbath?”
“You ought to come out here more
often, your girl, too if she wants to but I doubt she would oblige,” he said,
jerking his thumb toward the SUV and yanking Mayak out of his reverie. “Take
some load off your chest.”
Mayak
glanced in the direction of the SUV probably to wave hi to Cordell but she was
not there. He decided maybe, she went out to grab a snack.
“You and I know I can’t do that,
Bono,” Mayak said. “We got work to do.”
The
waitress came in with a plate filled with table napkin and replaced the former
one. Bono eyed it suspiciously.
“I don’t remember requesting for
that.”
“Oh, I’m dressing the table,
it’s nothing,” the waitress responded.
“So you are,” said Bono. He
didn’t look convinced and his gaze kept making return trips to that plate.
“Bono.” Mayak put his arms on
the diner’s table and leaned forward on his seat. “Can you help us or not? I
want you to quit playing around and give me a straight answer.”
Bono
got rid of the smirk on his face and said one word, which wasn’t a word at all.
“Tsk.” Then he glanced outside at the SUV and noted Mayak’s girl was back in
her seat and observing them like someone watching a movie. Bono wondered
why the words made a lonely kind of sense. “Like someone watching a movie,” he
muttered under his breath.
“What? I didn’t get that. Could
you please repeat yourself?”
“You know, after I agreed to help
you solve this case, I did a little background research on my own. I already
knew Langston Corp. had their hands muddied in dirty deals and botched biotech
experiments. That’s no news to folks like us.
“But when I got whiff someone
had breached security surveillance, sneaked into their storage facility and
let’s not forget, made away with top-secret package, I talked to friends.” He shrugged, as if he expected
Mayak to pick a quarrel over that. “I’m freelance; I work across the board,
sometimes, I might cross the line. Mayak’s face cleared up with comprehension.
“You mean your source works for
Langston Corporation?”
Bono
tilted his head at an angle and gestured with his chin towards the SUV so the
occupant could not see him. Then he touched a finger to his lips. Hush.
Outside
in a Parked Car
Cordell
hoped the men had not noticed her absence. She had needed to fix something. Mayak’s
discussion with the asshole detective was taking too long and she wanted in on
it. She hoped the waitress, whom she tipped handsomely, would not blow her cover.
Damn the girl was so fidgety and she kept giving excuses why it did not seem
right to replace serviette bowls between meals.
The men were speaking again
after a minute’s pause when Cordell thought they got her number. But damn, she
couldn’t see them anymore. Two men carrying a large board were blocking her
view.
“Hurry, the shuck up, dummies,”
she yelled at them.
“We’re doing all we can ma’am,”
one of them said yet, they advanced at a crawl.
“Ask your wife where the
specimen is,” the dumb detective said. “This whole deal smells foul. The deaths
of the two scientists are real, those guys probably opposed the powers that be.
But the missing package was never stolen. I knew if the meeting took long she’d
get fidgety and try something stupid.”
Cordell
heard her fiancé reply, “Cordell couldn’t possibly have anything to do with
this, that’s why we hired you… Where the hell are you going?”
Cordell
sat ramrod straight in the SUV. The
men with the board were still blocking her view she couldn’t see inside the
diner. She felt panic crawl up her spine.
“Ask her to explain why she sent
the waitress to put this in the
serviette bowl.”
Shit,
Cordell thought and tried to get out of the SUV before Mayak and Bono got there.
The men fumbling with the large board cleared the view and Cordell’s jaws
dropped like an elevator with the cables cut.
Outside
Mayak
and his detective friend, Bono stood in front of the SUV. Bono had a cell phone
in his grasp and he waved it at Cordell. Cordell tipped a waitress to fix it in
the serviette bowl, the one she replaced on the table in Mayak and Bono’s booth
at the diner. So she could listen in on their conversation.
“When were you going to tell me,
hon?” Mayak asked. “Your company terminated
innocent people to cover their tracks?”
“Game up, two-timing bitch,”
Mayak said.
The
three stood face to face reevaluating one another—A Woman, A Lover, A Friend—
Just
like the songwriter said.
Eneh Akpan
June
19, 2013
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