About Exposure

by Kit Zheng
40 pages / 15500 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-163-1, 1-60370-163-X
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc

Vincent makes a living off of being quiet and unassuming. He blends. So when he meets flamboyant and risk-taking Oscar, he knows he's in for trouble. Oscar likes to do things in plain view, likes to take chances, and he's more than happy to drag Vincent along with him.

When one of Oscar's schemes goes wrong, though, Vincent ends up on the run with the police on his tail. He knows he needs to give Oscar up, and learning Oscar's secrets only make it more urgent for him to hit the road. Will Vincent ever get Oscar to understand his way of life, or will these two polar opposites have to agree to disagree?

Sample

Vincent was not a small man, but he could disappear in broad daylight if he had to.  People had a tendency to overlook him.  It was a tendency he learned to exploit. 

For instance:

He was currently replacing some very harmless publicity photographs of a popular public figure with some much less harmless photographs.  Like Vincent, the dangerous aspects of these photographs would not be noticed until it was much too late.  They would be in the hands of several thousand early risers, laid out on tabletops next to half-drunk cups of coffee, strewn about driveways by careless paperboys before someone noticed what was wrong in those photographs.  And by then, the damage would be irreversible, the culprits untraceable. 

Vincent smiled as he strolled out of the maze-like sprawl of cubicles in the newspaper office.  On his way out, he nodded to a few harried-looking workers, including the occupant of the space he had so recently visited.  They all nodded back, but he knew they wouldn’t remember him later.

He said, "Good afternoon, Ms. Fuschetto," to the bored young woman propping her head up at the security desk; but by the time she even noticed the address he was gone, and she shrugged to herself, dismissing the interaction entirely. 

Exiting onto the street, Vincent put on sunglasses and merged seamlessly with the flow of people outside.  Summer was just beginning, and already the influx of tourists crowded the sidewalks.  He shed his businesslike navy jacket to reveal a loud, short-sleeved shirt and jeans, and vanished amongst them. 

Six blocks down he slowed just enough to drop a manila envelope, addressed and stamped, into a mailbox.  He didn't know if it actually made it into the postal system and he didn't really care to know; like Vincent himself, once the task had passed, it fell completely away from memory.  The rusty metal creak of the drop slot and the soft thud following sent him into cheerful whistling: James Brown's "Spinning Wheel" as interpreted by one Vincent Jones.  He might have caught someone's attention then, but the sun was high in the sky and all around there were people enjoying the weather, laughing, talking and even humming as they walked.  He was just another guy out on his lunch break or maybe on vacation in the nation's capitol, enjoying the unexpected balmy weather and relaxing. 

Playing into this role, he stopped at Moby Dick's, where he had the kabob e-chenjeh and ate everything on the plate, including the grilled tomato garnish. Then he window-shopped his way down the street, ending up at Dupont Circle watching the hipsters and the businessmen cruise each other.  It was a ritual of sorts, a way for him to ease down from the exhilarating feeling of being untouchable.  He watched life from the edges until he was ready to be merely human again. 

Lost in this detached observation, he was startled when a passerby in a smart navy pinstripe suit looked his way and cast him an eager, inviting smile.  It took him several moments to realize the flirtation was not directed at himself, but the man who sat beside him.  That shocked him again -- since when was he sharing the bench?