An Unexpected Second Man
Up to this point, nearly everything had gone according to plan for Ali, but now an unexpected situation stood staring him in the face. He was expecting only one person to be in the office but there were two. He had to make a decision and he had to make it quick. Silently, he moved behind a bookcase and then positioned himself so that he could see and hear the men.
One of the men pushed his chair back, stood up from the desk, and began to pull on his trench coat. The bald man, seeing him do so, asked abruptly, “Where are you going? We still have much work to do. You can’t leave early every other day. You can’t expect me to cover for you all the time.”
The man in the trench coat said, “I have a very important appointment tonight. I hope you understand. In any case, we can continue in the morning.”
The bald man looked puzzled for a moment, and then he smiled slightly. “The woman does not appreciate being kept waiting. Right?”
“Oh, no!” replied the man in the trench coat. “It cools down her passion!”
“Pay her an extra one hundred Euros.”
“I don’t have to pay!”
“Ha! So you say. Every man ends up paying for these services in one way or the other. In any case, we still have much work to do.”
The man in the trench coat ignored his colleague and continued to gather up his belongings. When he tried to open his umbrella in the office, the other man shouted at him, “Don’t open that in here! It’s bad luck!”
The man in the trench coat was excited about his rendezvous and opened the umbrella anyway. It was quite a large umbrella when opened fully, so he had to keep it lowered so as not to hit a light fixture that was hanging directly above him; consequently, the umbrella blocked his view of his colleague. The man in the trench coat said to the other man, “Don’t worry about the work. We will finish it in time. And by the way, you are such an old woman! That’s a silly supersti–”
A loud thud cut him off in mid-sentence. He shifted his umbrella to one side and what he saw caused his face to contort in horror. The other man’s head was on the table in a pool of blood.