Chance Operation (with its first line from Ernest Hemingway’s “Fifty Grand”)
“You hear what the reporters said about him?”
“No, what’s that?”
“Well, they said he tried to cover it up by burying her body.”
“Oh yeah? Where’d he hide it?”
“Not where. How.”
“Well, how?”
“Under rocks. Like, a pyramid.”
“Not under the ground?”
“Nope. Just under rocks.”
[silence]
“It’s like he wanted to get caught. For someone to find her.”
“He’s just an idiot. Stupid.”
“No. That’s easy. Plus, he got that far.”
“I guess.”
“It’s like he got to where it was time to hide it and chose to do it this specific way for some reason–conscious or not.”
“I dunno…. Seems pretty dumb to me.”
“No.”
[silence]
“I think it was deliberate. Just like everything else. He meant to do it. You just don’t do stuff like that without meaning it–somehow.”
“Yeah.”
[silence]
“Well, anyways, he left the evidence, like, right there. Plain as day. They could totally tell it was him.”
“What’s weird is that he’d be so careful to disfigure her and then end up leaving her body above ground.”
“Loser.”
“No. Creep.”
[silence]
“It’s sort of like a sacred burial tomb–he even prepped her for it, like a ritual. Like a mausoleum in the wide-open desert, like he wanted people to see what he’d done, like he wanted to get caught.”
