The Letter

"The letter, of course." Curman watched Hal like a distant spectator, which was starting to upset the ole slob. Curman ignored Hal's visible irritation. "What did it say again? What do you remember?"

Hal sighed, a finger to his temples. "Like I said, it said something about how asking permission with, like, the word 'may' would make it all work. Or something."

"That's it?" Curman pestered. "There was more, right?"

"Yeah," Hal snorted, "stuff like... stuff... well, there was a lotta stuff, Bumboy. It was all shit you could've said in three words made into some essay. And the stuff about some curse thing if it went wrong."

Curman seemed to hold his tongue before replying as normal, "You said it came in a black envelope, right? And that it had an address on it?"

"Yeah?"

"Well? Do you at least remember the address?"

Hal's forehead wrinkled a little, but only for a second. "I... nah, actually, how could I? After all that shit?" he shook his head.

Curman had that distant-spectator face again. A breath passed before he continued, "Was there anything special about the letter itself? How did it look? How was the style of the font? Was there any emblem or logo or something? Names of people or a company saying who it was from?"

"Nothing," Hal shot down, getting a headache. "Well, I mean, there were some fancy-ass twigs surrounding it. Like the ink kind, in Stu's sketches. A border thing." Hal's fingers rubbed against the side of his pants, adding, "I guess it felt kinda soft. Like it wasn't ordinary paper material, you know?"

"And it basically asked for your signature, and claimed once you wrote it down, you would be able to use the word whenever you wanted?"

Hal grunted a yes.

"And you said you had to keep it inside something for an hour?"

Hal grunted another yes.

"And you sealed it with a strip of tape, went back out, slid it into the mailbox, and without a stamp or any evidence of postage."

Hal shrugged. "Yeah."

Curman just held a knuckle to his chin. "And later that evening Martha saw it inside and noticing the shoddy job, took it back in, opened it, and even read it.... Hal," he mused, "did you meet or have any weird encounter with someone or some surreptitious group of people recently? Online, face to face, all the above?"

"No."

"And you said the last time you saw this letter was this morning at breakfast, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

Curman lodged a finger against his conversation partner's chest. "Make sure you don't lose that letter. When you get home the first thing you do is look for it and keep it in a safe place where no one else will touch it. Am I clear? Besides, everyone knows you're a mastermind when it comes to covert schemes, man," he lopped a hand over Hal's shoulder a time or two, "so you already have that one in the bag! Just let me take a look once it's secure, okay?" Curman withdrew the hand, murmuring something about discrete mathematics in his inner voice. Back in distant-spectator mode, Hal noticed with a scoff.

Meanwhile, he brushed Curman's germs from his faded black T-shirt while blowing some off a shoulder. "Someone thinks they're the princess of this candy kingdom," he muttered, not caring who heard, as he smirked. "But damn right. I got spy nerves an MI6 agent would go into debt for." He made a mental note to snatch the letter from the table and stuff it in a drawer before anyone else got to it later that afternoon.