Here’s a drabble for travelers of the Macabre Republic…

Preoccupied

By Joe Nazare

Seven cities, six days, zero deals sealed. Red-eye, white-knuckle flight into Newark in the middle of an electrical storm. Futile vigil held at the misnomered Baggage Claim carousel. A livery cab driver who seemed to have learned his craft from Mad Max.

Owen crisscrossed an inner interstate of exhaustion and exasperation as the town car dropped him off curbside at last. His sore eyes fixed on the white picket fence, the immaculately-landscaped front yard, the familiar façade of his Dutch Colonial home, and—framed in the upstairs window—the silhouetted figure overlooking his return.

The only problem: Owen lived alone.