Endings

Trace poured a second cup of morning coffee and read the last four sentences of the e-mail again.

“I wish you the best of luck. I don’t think you are a monster, you’re just having a very difficult time, but you have lots of people around you now that care. We are all done here. Goodbye, Trace.”

He lit a cigarette and listened to the children playing in the schoolyard across the street, the soundtrack to his life five days a week. That and CNN droning in the background on the hotel TV. He loved white noise, thrived on it.

We are all done here, she wrote.

Trace glanced at the book pitch he composed the night before for a friend. Not bad. He hoped John would sell the book for a cool million. The concept was good enough, he thought, and even had the smell of franchise all over it.

He snubbed the cigarette out in the round red ashtray on his desk. George Clooney smiled up at him from the cover of the latest issue of Los Angeles magazine.

We are all done here.

Well, he thought, at least I have something to write about this morning.

We are all done here.

Quick. Efficient. Bloodless. And totally unexpected.

It sounded like something that he would say.