I’d been watching the squirrels making their usual rounds, pondering the simplicity of their lives. It was easy to lose myself in a daydream, watching them putter about their little grounds, doing nothing significant, nothing insignificant. But evening was falling and the familiar mental din of my job superceeded my other musings.
I should say upfront that I hate my job. People seem to think it’s easy, but it isn’t. It’s hard. Not as hard as Trumbolt’s, granted, but somehow, even harder...
I stared at the manilla envelope on the metallic park bench next to me. Inside the envelope was a life — memories, a family, friends, a job — a life whose very existence depended on me. But I would be giving it all to Trumbolt soon, so it could keep depending on me as much as it liked, I wouldn’t be around to care.
I looked at my watch. Trumbolt was atypically 10 minutes and 22.3 seconds late.
Everybody in this town knows Trumbolt and that bothers me. I liked it in Dallas, Cleveland, Detroit — where his name drew nothing but blank stares even from the people who hired him. Here, their eyes light up and a slow smile spreads on their faces at the mere mention of his name.
The watch crept past the 14 minute mark. Any second now, Trumbolt would come sauntering out from behind one of those maples, his black sunglasses — worth either $12 or $200 and nothing inbetween — covering his blue eyes, his sandy blonde hair tucked carefully behind his ears.
He’d stop five feet short of me and crouch down, extending a hand with food on it to the squirrels. They’d consider him with an odd mix of suspicio
n and curiousity, then go back to their idyllic puttering. They never took the offered food. But this town was different than all the others, from the blueberry pie down to the squirrels. Maybe they would take the food from his hand here. After all, this was Trumbolt’s hometown.
It was seventeen minutes past seven. Something was wrong — Trumbolt had never been late before. From the very beginning, when I was first assigned to work with him, I had cast the very possibility of his tardiness out of my mind. Then again, this particular job had felt different from the beginning; but it wasn’t my role to question, I only delivered. Let Trumbolt do the thinking, I figured.
I heard a noise by one of the trees and looked up. A squirrel and a pigeon were fighting over a french fry. No Trumbolt.
I eyed the envelope again. I wondered what the person inside had done this time: Maybe said the wrong thing to the wrong person? Or maybe strayed from the accepted path? Maybe it was just another innocent bystander caught in the wrong place at the right time. I stared at it for a long time. It was thinner than most.
I jumped when the alarm on my watch went off. I always set it, like I had been taught to do, but I had known as well as I knew the overcast sky and red-leafed maple trees that it would never go off before Trumbolt had arrived and unburdened me of the envelope. He was twenty minutes late now, and everything was official. His job was mine now.
It wasn’t fair. Sure, we’d had all the same teachers, we’d gone through the same system, but Trumbolt always had a knack for it and I had nothing. He did the job, I carried the packages. It was that simple.
At least, it had been that simple until 43.5 seconds ago. 43.5 seconds ago Trumbolt was going to come and I wasn’t going to have to move off my park bench until I could rest easy that it was in his hands. I would find the diner and get a slice of blueberry pie, then move on to another place. But now, with his absence, I would have to do all of the job. Parts of me had forgotten how.
I picked up the envelope, again noticing how light it was, and hoping that corresponded with ease of the task. I weighed it in my hand, considering it and all the other lives I’d held in balance, without a thought. And whose life was this one?
I looked around one last time, then glanced down at my watch. More than twenty-three minutes after seven, and still, no Trumbolt. I swallowed hard. No more delays. Something had happened to him and it was my duty to finish what had been started. I tore open the envelope, entirely forgetting the delicate silver clasp that held it closed.
I pulled out the papers and looked at them. The name sounded familiar. My head swam with nervousness — this wasn’t the fearlessness they’d taught us at the Institution, but it had been a long time since I’d considered what it would be like to actually do what I was trained to do.
I looked through the papers. There was a blurred picture of a man and a woman. The woman was young and had full lips and impish eyes. She sat on a low couch that looked comfortable and tasteful. Her hand was wrapped around the man’s. His head was circled in blue wax from a grease pencil. I shivered a little but couldn’t tell why.
I flipped through more of the pictures and documents. Meaningless data, addresses that seemed vaguely familiar, information that wandered on the verges of my recognition. My nerves were making my jumpy, and the unused skills of a killer had given me a conscience.
I laughed at my own paranoia. I was being silly: It was just some stranger, like every other envelope had been. It was always someone I didn’t know. Honestly, why would it be anyone I knew?
Another picture slid out, this one of the man alone, even younger and a headshot only. Unlike the blurry couple, this was a good photograph, if an old one. I casually noted that they must have gotten it from the Institution’s files.
I put it down and looked through some more of the files.
Then I thought about what I’d just said to myself. Insitution’s files? I picked up the picture again and my skin went cold.
It was me.
My heart jumped; my mind raced. Trumbolt didn’t know it, but he was coming for me. He had been coming for me, that is. Now he was nowhere and it was my job. My job? My job to kill me?
The irony was unbearable. The one time that Trumbolt was late, the one time he missed a meeting, was the one time that it was his own courier, his own friend of fifteen years, whose picture was in the envelope.
My first reaction was to laugh. My second one, to cry. What had I done that justified an assassination? What was it that I knew, or that someone thought I knew? Bless the Fates, at least now I had warning. But... why?
The church steepleclock began to chime. I looked at my watch. Half-past seven. Trumbolt wasn’t coming. There was something deeper here, but whatever it was, Trumbolt wasn’t coming.
The clock finished its chime and began to toll the hour: one, two, three...
I stared up at it suddenly. It was a block away, but I could see the huge grey hands of the clock clearly. I looked back at my watch: beneath the gold lettering reading "Quartz," it read seven thirty on the dot. The church steepleclock had tolled seven times for the hour.
Was my watch wrong or was the steepleclock wrong? It was Trumbolt’s town, which meant that was Trumbolt’s steepleclock.
I heard a noise behind me and turned, barely breathing.
A familiar face sauntered through the maples. "Hi," he smiled, crouching to offer food to the squirrels. "Got the envelope?"
The squirrels looked at him quizzically and went about their mundane tasks.