They were an odd couple. If Dwayne had any hair on his head, he would’ve resembled a furry bowling ball cover. He didn’t look like a Dwayne but he kept the moniker his parents gave him because he enjoyed the cocked eyebrow that usually followed after he was introduced. Then he’d perform his party trick: he’d flex his pecs and then in theatrical waves, he’d send a series of tight ripples from his diaphragm at the base of his stumpy thick torso up to his shoulders—rounded by years of steroid-assisted weights; they’d turn and travel down the short but powerfully dangerous-looking limbs that sandwiched him, themselves covered with a protective shield of dark wiry hair, past his knuckles—graced with tattoos of “L” and “R”—to his fingers.
Gary, when he worked with Diana, had been Lucky, but since their London episode, Isis had shifted him over as Dwayne’s sidekick for this part of the operation. Gary never needed to work out, yet he had a rapport with Dwayne. Maybe it was a height thing. Gary only went to gyms to ogle the women or steal their underwear. His nickname in high school had been heartless but on the mark: Ferret. He was short and spindly, like the snub-nosed screwdriver he used to keep in his back pocket for raiding the girls’ gym lockers before he discovered the power of his bare fingers. It was his fingers he worked on; they had become Gary’s ticket. With one hand, he could just about squeeze a piece of steel into a strand of wire that he could then wind around your neck to choke you.
“And your accent!” squawked Gary. “You shoulda been an actor.”
“No time for flattery, Gary.” Dwayne’s now mellow timbre revealed his cultured roots, easily mocked in his profession, though never in his presence. “The messengers are on their way—our 230 unsuspecting shock troops from fifteen very ignorant delivery firms. They’ll all be lining up here soon, and we can allocate the drop-offs. First in get the longest trips—that will make the fools happy. We’ll send them on their merry ways and we’ll tap-dance out of here by five.”
“MAXINE” said the badge pinned to her uniform. With pink hair spikes gelled flat, she bounded up to the desk. It was just inside the doors of a warehouse huddled in an area she’d rather not be biking around. “Pickup for Crisis Couriers?” she said.
“Don’t say,” spat the walking neck. “An’ I thought you was goin’ to a costume party!”
“Okay, wise-ass,” she chuckled, remembering the company logo stitched on her breast pocket. “You got my delivery?”
“42nd Street subway station, on the…,” he looked at a control sheet, “A-train platform…”
“No one said anything about a platform.” She’d assumed she’d be delivering to a store there.
Dwayne winced as though she’d dragged herself out of a dumpster. “Yeah, a platform… you know, what people stand around on waiting for trains. Here’s a Metrocard,” he said, handing her one of the pile of turnstile entry cards that would gain all the messengers entry to the subway platforms he was assigning them to. “Our TV broadcast team’ll be waiting for the A-train heading north. You’ll see ’em there with the cameras, can’t miss ’em. Ask for…,” he looked at his crib sheet, “… Vanessa. Like I told your boss, if you’re there by 17:25, we pays. If you’re not, we don’t. Here,” he said and pushed a small screen pad forward. “Sign for it.”
“What’re they filming?” she asked as she scratched her signature on the pad.
“Big promo,” said the artiste-usually-known-as-Dwayne, his eyes lifted to the ceiling in mock derision. “It’s called ‘The First One’. Goes like this...” He lifted his beefy hands in front of his eyes into a camera view-square shape—his fat thumb tips were pressed together and his stubby fingers pointed up, his palms facing away from him so she could see his hardened weight-lifting calluses. “The train pulls into the station. The doors wheeze open. If you’re first off the first carriage of the first train after 17:35, you gets a prize. This is the prize.” He held up a black-taped white box that Gary had passed to him from one of the fast-reducing stacks.
She eyed it suspiciously but decided it would fit under the strap on her bike, only just, and as he handed it to her, she could feel its weight. “What’s in it?” Maxine asked.
“Who gives a… The really big prize is they get to be on SatTV live tonight. They all love it. They get home and show everyone in the neighbourhood when it’s replayed after seven. It’s all marketing crap.”
“Yeah, but the box?”
Dwayne glanced over at Gary and shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care,” he said, ending the conversation.
“But I’m the one carrying this,” she said, a wrinkle of worry crossing her forehead.
This was taking too long. No more Mister Nice Guy. Dwayne furrowed his bushy eyebrow into the deepest vee he could muster, “Listen, I don’t set this up; some guy with a big-buck paycheque tells me what he wants. And my job is to make it happen. If it’s too hard for you, pink hair lady, we got plenty other messengers.” He stabbed his thick stumpy index finger toward the line behind her.
Maxine took the hint, as well as the hefty box, and left the pair to deal with the couriers jostling behind her.