"There's always a long plan.  A while back nine or ten friends got together.  A favor was asked and they were more than keen to deliver while keeping face in an oh so inner circle.  So not long ago there's just a little egg on the face somewhere, an annoying stain, just that little question mark.  Doubt starts to settle in."

He leaned forward, his plaid face entering the light for the first time "You see Mister Capaldi." there was that little inflection on the honorific "I don't need to do anything.  These people they build their own house of cards.  They doth protest too much.  Image is everything when you have no substance.  So what's the harm in an innocent question?", the question hung in the air as he reclined back into the shadows.

Innocent indeed. If it's around paper towers then nothing innocent at all, whispered with the volume of an atom bomb and not dissimilar effects at any distance.  The bastard was right though, he didn't actually harm anyone, he merely had a knack of asking the one question that someone always didn't want to answer.  An iconoclast, or just a perverse journalist?  No, no journo was that well informed.  But they hung themselves.  "What was your first action on taking over?  Oh really?  At their urging?  Interesting.".  It was a ticking time-bomb he could set off at any distance, a veritable Truman Capote yet unlike that bon vivant was almost intangible.  Oh people had tried, they'd done their best, got what they thought was their own dirt and plans and the bastard must have had fingers in every pie because it always turned to ash then came back to haunt them and once again another victim of "the long plan".  On the other hand he settled his debts good as well as bad.

So what had spooked him, why was he here now?  What if he didn't want anything, the anger welled up but was cut short as if reading my mind "Oh, don't be so melodramatic.  I'm not going to say 'Yes I already got what I wanted' and flounce out, that's not my style.  I'm an honest man Mister Capaldi.  No I need a favor, a little quid-pro-quo and from what they tell me you could really do with the favor.  No breaks in four years?  That's tough, that's a long drought." the anger returned, did he engineer this? I lunged forward but he easily stepped to the side, "No no no, again, and no.  Do try to be sensible.  How would I engineer your inability to put two and two together?  That's entirely on you." fuck that bastard.

"Oh I didn't say there's no merit to your thinking..." he said quickly as I turned to leave "just that it's misdirected."

I paused.  What the hell?

"The favor I want is for you to let me help you by asking you a question."

There was silence.  It continued.  I turned back but couldn't make out anything, oh that son of a bitch, all that "not my style" crapola.

He'd already asked it, and now my mind was racing.

Vim and Vinegar

All works (c)Per-Anders Edwards, I do not permit use of any content for training AI. Go David Mayer 

US based British guitarist, noodling, collaborating, eclectic tastes and always up for a new genre.