Page 63 of Two Marlboros

“What’s the matter?”, I asked.

“Nothing; nothing at all.”

We entered the office again and I returned to my station. Ash followed close behind me: he came up behind me and set the coffee down on the table, but the glass slipped out of his hands and spilled onto the top, leaving the coffee to spread across the desk like a bloodstain. It had soiled everything, even the picture depicting the tattooed boy.

“No! What a mess!” I exclaimed.

I stood up sharply, even banging my knee against the edge of the desk; I hurried out of the office and rushed to the bathroom to refinish various scraps of paper towels. I returned to the desk with my makeshift cloth and dabbed the splatters onto the photo. The paper quickly absorbed the coffee stains, but there was a stubborn one. If the others still showed a glimpse of the image underneath, although darker, with that stain there was just nothing to be done.

I dabbed and dabbed some more when a flicker awakened my mind. I tapped the stain with my finger, to confirm what intuition I had already realized.

It was not a stain.

Or rather, it was not a coffee stain.

The paper, at that spot, was completely dry. I looked away to get an overview of the whole picture, and a soft laugh could not help but come out.

“Did it get ruined a lot?”

I looked up at my colleague, a smile on my lips. “It’s not a stain, Ash. It’s a birthmark! Look!”

He frowned, then put his hands on my shoulders. “Okay. Explain this birthmark thing to me.”

I freed myself from his grip and rolled my eyes. “Michael has a birthmark on his right hand. Michael is missing. At the Wit Matrix concert I bumped into a guy with a tattoo identical to the one in the picture, surrounding a birthmark! Do you understand?”

“Quite a bit, yes.”

“Michael is running away from someone, Ash! He hid the birthmark with a tattoo so he wouldn’t be recognized!”

Finally, his face lit up. He tried to say something, but he was too surprised.

Michael Cossner was hiding from someone, most likely someone dangerous. The birthmark on his hand would lead backto him in less than a minute, and so he had hidden it with a tattoo. It was spinning to perfection.

“Wait a minute,” Ash retorted. “Who says this is really him? A birthmark on a hand is not a common trait, but there could still be another person with that same feature.”

“No one says, Ash. However, we can give it a try and interview the leader of the Wit Matrix, what do you say? If the guy in the picture is Michael, he sure knows something.”

I couldn’t wait any longer. I was itching to meet the band leader and ask him some questions. If Michael was really hiding, however, it wasn’t going to be easy to get some information out of him. I had to find the perfect set-up.

We quickly inquired about Wit Matrix’s upcoming concerts, but, unfortunately, they would only be back in Manhattan on the weekend: they were on tour.

“In the meantime, we could always go to the club; tomorrow night if you’re free,” I proposed. “Maybe that’s a better idea than chasing the band around the States, what do you say?”

Ash immediately approved my idea, and we set a time for 9:30 for the University Night, and I instructed him to show up in person, unlike the games he seemed to like so much.

“Look, if I don’t see you coming, I’ll come looking for you at home. And yes, that’s a threat.”

Ashton chuckled and assured me that he would come. Without realizing it, I breathed a sigh of relief- - because it would have been very strange to go withhim, after I had, with a smile on my face, said goodbye tohim.

13

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(?Eurythmics - Sweet dreams)

I couldn’t wait anymore.

It was six o’clock in the afternoon on August the 11th, and time seemed to never pass. I had popped into the mall to do some shopping and had picked up some nice-looking precooked food. My wish was eating would be our last thought, but I had to cope with every eventuality. So, I had slapped into the pantry a package of baked pretzels, to open in case the chips seemed too unhealthy. I had grabbed the large package, perfect for sharing on a romantic evening on the couch after too many drops of sweat and a refreshing shower.

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