Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

I went inside and thought for a long time, while cleaning up and doing various chores that didn’t take mental activity. I waited until all my necessary jobs were done to take the small piece of invisible tape off of the roll of cash. I counted $1650 and wondered if this was a threat to my safety resting in my hands. No doubt someone would be after this money. I guessed not all drug deals were well thought out, especially if under the influence.

The duct tape on the back of the sticker was well-used, though, so I gathered that this little play had been working for a while. The one thing they must have banked on was the usual cursive attention most people give to older, junky cars.

I was an exception, at least on that day, because I was tired of my car being as cluttered as my mind. I took action at the precisely wrong time. These are all just speculations, but I’m also guessing that these drug drops went off without a snag most of the time, without confrontation.

Walking back to my car at dusk, after much acute thinking, I heard ducks making noise somewhere in the indistinguishable surroundings. It was toward the end of mating season, and amorous birds didn’t make me any less nervous. I sipped on my root beer bottle as I looked for something that Bowser might have dropped, any clue I could find. There was nothing. I knocked off the rest of my root beer and walked back inside. As I stepped over the threshold and reached for the knob, I heard the clouds grumbling.

“Spiff,” I muttered to myself. “All that work for nothing.” I savored the last few shiny moments of dusk-lit glory my car had to offer for the time being, and I shut the door. Then I did the dishes.

After all my chores were done, I looked out of my Venetian blinds and noticed two things: one was the dark clouds coming from the East, and two was a black, tinted Mercedes with its running lights on parked across the street, where the LeBaron had been just hours before. “Could anything else go wrong today?” I sighed. It could be nothing, all in my mind.

I scuffled to the kitchen table with bottle in hand to sit and think, but as I sat down the doorbell rang. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I swallowed and opened the door to a well-dressed man of 30 or so with his hands in his pockets, looking to the right. He seemed to be intent on something down the street, but when I opened the door all the way, he turned and faced me. He spread out his words like cream cheese: “My car broke down. Mind if I use your phone?”

I was pretty sure I could hear the engine purring, but the rain was picking up. If the engine really were running, at least he didn’t plan on staying at my place long.

I just went with his little plot. Maybe I let him in because the last adventure I had had was ten years ago when some old lady in her Olds ran into me on my bike and I broke my collarbone, if that could be called an adventure.

As he stepped inside and I closed the door, the noise of the rain picked up, and there was no way to hear anything but the downpour outside.

One of my chores earlier was to put the bumper sticker on my refrigerator door, which was right next to the land line.

I pointed my guest to the phone, excused myself, set my root beer bottle on the coffee table in the living room, and crept back to my bedroom to get my baseball bat. I could hear my visitor talking loudly on the phone. My just-in-case bat came in handy, filling me with just-in-case security. Was I getting too worked up over nothing? I reassured myself that I had reason enough to be cautious, since my car had been used for a drug run, and I didn’t let it be.

I sneaked back to the living room, set down the bat under the coffee table, and sat up just in time. He came around the corner and saw me sitting there.

“Let me introduce myself,” he smoothed out. “I’m Alfred. You can call me Al.”

“Nice to meet you. Do you need help? I’m Manny,” I replied. The nerves started tingling. There was only so much courtesy I could have for a suspicious stranger in a suit whose car wasn’t really broken down.

“No, sir. I have some friends coming in a few minutes to help me with my car. Mind if I stay inside out the rain until they get here?” I said I didn’t, but I did. I asked him if he wanted some water. He said yes, and I walked into the kitchen.

When I got there, the first thing I noticed was the absence of the bumper sticker. That confirmed my suspicions. I started planning my actions. I had the following assets: baseball bat, thorough knowledge of the floorplan, moccasins. My list wasn’t so lengthy. What had I gotten myself into?

So there we were. He sat with glass in hand against the west wall. I was against the east wall on the couch, just below the big window. Two minutes of silence passed. I ventured.

“I noticed you swiped my bumper sticker. I was growing fond of it. Sing, sap.”

He flicked out a switchblade. That was something I hadn’t counted into my plans.