Joel was sitting at a table with fellow suits in the company cafeteria—-listening to Simmons’ humorless anecdotes about his daughter’s biker boyfriend—-when the stranger approached him.

     “Joel Pritchard?” the stranger asked.

     “Yes,” Joel said, and immediately felt something wrong.  His mind had ordered him to respond with something along the lines of “Who’s asking?” but the stranger’s light green eyes had reached down his throat and into his lungs, seized a fistful of breath and yanked that simple “yes” out of him. 

     “Joel, do you care for most of your colleagues at this table?”

     “Not…terribly,” he stammered.  He wrenched his glance free from the stranger’s biting eyes just long enough to make pleading, wordless contact with Lawrence, who sat just to his left.  Lawrence only shrugged and the stranger went on with his questioning.

     “What of Mr. Daniels?” he said, pointing to the grayed VP sitting across from Joel.  “Or, specifically, what do you think of his wife?”

     “She’d probably let us all screw her at the same time if we asked her to.  She wouldn’t even need to be drunk.”  He shuddered, and tried to break the paralysis that fixed him to his chair.  He heard Daniels gasp.  The old man beamed his anger across the table and it stuck to the side of Joel’s face like burning tar.

     “That’s all?” the stranger prodded.

     “The money spent on filling her lips with collagen would’ve been better spent on fixing her teeth--what the fuck is this?”

     Asking that last question had left Joel’s throat throbbing.  The words were heavy and jagged and he felt like he’d just passed a giant kidney stone through his mouth.

     The stranger ignored Joel’s question.  “What’s your favorite pornography website?”

     “Girls-In-Pain.com.”  Tears beaded in the corners of Joel’s eyes. 

     “Have you ever killed a man?”

     “No.”

     “Have you ever given serious thought to killing a man?”

     “Yes.”

     “Someone at this very table?”

     “Yes,” Joel barked, exasperated. 

     “Who?”

     Joel hoped his withering voice would break before the name escaped his lips. 

     “ Lawrence ,” he said.  In his periphery he saw his friend’s mouth become a cave.

     “Why Lawrence ?”

     “I got drunk one night and told him that I had tried to rape a girl when I was fifteen.  I was afraid he might tell somebody.”

     “And for that, you seriously contemplated killing him?”

     Joel was reduced to nodding now.

     The stranger’s lips spread into a flat smirk.  “Safe to say you’re pretty off in the head, huh Joel?”

     Another nod.      

     “Likelihood of you keeping your job after this?”

     “Probably none,” Joel croaked.

     “Likelihood of you killing yourself in the very near future?”

     “Pretty fucking high.”

     The stranger gave a satisfied nod indicating the end of questioning.  He turned to the other suits sitting at the table, offered them a polite valediction of, “Gentlemen,” and then left the cafeteria.

     “Would you agree or disagree that our agent met your expectations?” the customer service operator at the other end of the line asked. 

     “Definitely agree,” Simmons answered.  “He was even better than I expected.  How did he do that?”

“Now that would be giving away trade secrets Mr. Simmons.  But I’m glad to hear you were happy with the experience.  Customer satisfaction is our number one priority.  If you’re ever in need of our services again--”

     “Actually, while I have you on the phone, I was wondering if you have any sort of preferred customer discount.”

     The operator chuckled.  “Are you a man who collects enemies, Mr. Simmons?”

     He smiled and looked out the living room window.  A growling motorcycle pulled up in front of his house, neither of its passengers wearing helmets.  The teenage girl on back of the motorcycle dismounted and gave the blond, heavily-tattooed driver a long, open-mouthed kiss before walking up the driveway toward the house.

     “Nuisances more so than enemies,” he told the operator.