Acquire

The flowers were sitting on her kitchen counter.  Mark resisted the urge to put them into a vase.  They weren’t, after all, his flowers to do anything with.  They were nice looking flowers, too.  Expensive.  Mark tried to remember the last time he had bought flowers for anyone.  It was too long ago to recall.  It was back when Sue was still alive.  

She paced back into the room, pausing to pick up the flowers and drop them into the wastebasket.  “I don’t know where they came from.”  She said, looking at Mark for the first time since he arrived.

“Huh?” Mark’s train of thought had moved past the flowers and he was stymied searching for a context.

“The flowers,” she repeated.  “I don’t know where they come from.”

“Err…  Maybe a florist?” suggested Mark.

The women shrugged.

“Why did you throw them away?”

“I always throw them away.”

“I see.”  He didn’t.  

Mark figured it may be easier just to play along.  After all, the sooner he was finished here the sooner he could get back.

“Thank you for coming so quickly.” The women said, sitting down opposite Mark on the plush crimson couch. “You come highly recommended.”

"Oh?"

Silence.  The women seemed to be expecting more of a response.

“Uh...  Thank you?”

The women seemed unsatisfied.

“Aren’t you at all interested in how…” The women seemed lost for words.

Mark’s eyebrows arched imperceptibility.

“Ma’am, you and I are both well aware of what it is I do.  I’m good enough at my job that I wouldn’t be her right now if I thought you were trying to set me up.  I also know that you’re serious about requiring my services, else you wouldn’t have paid the ten thousand dollar retainer.”

The women looked at him – eyes narrow and calculating.  She seemed to come to some internal decision.  “Very well.  I guess we have an understanding.”

Mark let a slight smile cross his lips, and leaned back into his comfortable seat. “Alright Ma’am, why don’t you tell me what it is I can do for you?”

The women sat back in the chair, making herself comfortable.

“I need you to acquire something for me.  A book.  Well... more of a manuscript, really.  The head scientist’s log from the Anderios mission.  The scientist’s name is Henry Vangle.”  The women looked questionably at Mark.  “Is that something you can do?"

11/7/2018 (399)