The first document is found on yellowed paper, and clearly comes from a partially-malfunctioning typewriter, as “K” appears only every third time it ought; the first page of this stapled-together sheaf has the agency logo at the top, clearly from a commercial printer, with the bottom of the page holding three sets of initials: K.L.A., W.E.R., and T.G.B.; each set of initials is found on all successive pages of this particular document.
The sun has risen and decisions must be made: a nearby backwater and a new identity (with all the work which comes with that, including the back-breaking labor which is the only true place to hide) or a tropical paradise, filled with heat and lassitude and poor folks willing to do whatever it takes to get that greenback, willing to love and hate and kill and caress and actually enjoy the thwack of the strap because it puts food on the table, gives meaning to the day, and provides something to look forward to, something to expect, bad as it may be.
Thus a coin-flip: dew-sweaty native girls walk past and sweatshirt-and-blue-jean-clad girls, dirty blondes and muddy brunettes take their place, men in the same clothes but cut a bit differently, houses and lawns and cars to wash come right along with them.
This town is mentioned on the third page of the first document; no one, not even those who would seek the return of these documents, would expect the one who has spirited them away to stop so soon, to stop in a place the name of which is known, a place intimately related to the papers kept safe within the satchel, its dark weathered leather shielding them from wind and rain and children shooting spitballs on the bus.
So an apartment is procured; cash exchanged, a happy landlord, neighbors who speak a bit too loudly and have their TVs turned a bit too low, with late-night alarms and early-morning sirens — a perfect place, a comfortable place, the first night kept on the floor, the satchel a pillow, that first document half-read, lying on the reader’s chest when morning fills the room.
