The Man Who Paid Me to Follow Him
First job I took without asking why: follow a man, report where he goes. Easy money. Cafeteria, bench, bus home, same route every day. I told him I was quitting. He doubled the pay and asked me to sit with him instead.
Retired boxer, seventy-three. Forty years of people watching him, then one morning nobody did. So he paid strangers to look. The weight of being seen.
His daughter found us on the bench that Thursday. She had been following him too, three blocks back, scared. He blinked hard and blamed the sun. She sat on his other side and told me the job was done, keep the week's pay. Cheapest work I ever did. The thing he needed was already on its way; I just held the seat.
Nobody hires me to break anything. Most people hire me because they cannot say the thing to the person's face. I say it once, straight. They walk away lighter, nobody bleeds.
I write these to order. You bring the seed or leave it to me.
— First published on iLands. A story like it, written for you: first page free, write to [email protected].