LACUNA
S. Vollie Osborn
Rabia, I’m sorry. Have a drink for me. - François
It was a curious suicide note. Were Rabia aware of the the phone ringing back in her apartment, or the knife-wielding danger creeping toward her, she would have put the note down somewhere on her desk for later pondering and headed out the door. Instead, she sat down at her desk, and, with no sense of urgency, decided she had no cause to refuse a last instruction from her former supervisor. She reached her finger down and pulled on the small latch that opened the secret compartment in the floor. It was at this point that Rabia realized she had been so engaged in clearing out François’s desk that she had totally forgotten to get drunk and had, instead, succeeded in working late into the night. Perhaps François had foreseen this and did not want his felo-de-se to interrupt her daily routine. Perhaps he thought it might ease the grief she would surely feel at his departure from the plane of the living. Perhaps he did not want someone else to find the bottle and have his reputation so tarnished. All of these possibilities drifted through Rabia’s mind as she opened the little compartment and discovered that none of them were anywhere near the truth, for in the small compartment hidden in the floor, next to the bottle of rakı, was a folder with large, insistent, crimson words written on it. They read:
TAKE THIS AND RUN. FIND MY WIFE IN TARLABAŞI. SHE WILL PROTECT YOU.
And below that, in particularly manic letters:
THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU.
Rabia stood still for a moment, glanced about. The room was silent. Everything was still. Rabia flipped open the folder. It was filled with a thick wad of papers: reports, spreadsheets, newspaper clippings, company and personnel bios. Each page had been underlined, annotated, highlighted, and lined. At the top of each page, Project Murat had been written in François’ distinctive cursive. Rabia had always thought François’ penmanship conveyed a very distinct, French condescension. Not knowing what to make of the note, annoyed by the patronizing loops of his L’s and P’s, and nowhere near interested in doing any more work than she had already done, Rabia closed the folder, and placed it back beside the rakı.
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