Free Broken Piano for President by Patrick Wensink Page A

certainly doesn’t. She’s the gatekeeper. Redding is your primary objective.”
    “I’m sorry, I’ll try harder.”
    “Anything else?” Tony says, desperate. “Before I let you go.”
    Henry holds his wrapper. The lucky Space Burger number is 12171979.
    “Uhm, oh yeah,” Henry’s voice picks up. “They are running a hush-hush thing called Salute to Genius . Some commercials about Christopher Winters and what a great guy he was. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
    Tony whispers, “ Shit .”
    “No, I can handle things, don’t sweat it. I just don’t think this job makes anything easier. He is dead because of me.” Henry’s tongue runs a back-and-forth line across the cheek.
    “I’m not talking about you.” He is violently quiet. “I’m talking about this horseshit ad campaign. Our memorials won’t be ready for another few weeks. The competition can’t beat us. Winters was our founder. Next thing you know they’ll be blasting Russians into space.”
    “Oh, sorry…I don’t know much—”
    “Just.” Tony huffs through his nose. “Just pump Malinta. Force booze down her throat. She’s got a weak spot. Get info from her, okay?”
    “Sure thing, sir.”
    The phone dies. A quiet wraps Henry. It’s just him and a bag of steam. The car smells like a griddle. His heart sags further with aching dead weight.
    Some guy from accounting walks by and squints into Henry’s windshield. The undercover agent slinks below the dashboard line.
    He crunches through a few more bites, trying to recall the last time he didn’t suffer such loneliness. Cuts kill with the chewing.
    A bang on the window explodes Henry’s silence.
    “Hey, what are you doing?” Malinta says.
    “Oh, Jesus,” Hamler peeps, bucking in his seat. He grabs the familiar gray bag with old-fashioned green lettering, crumbles and stows it under his seat.
    He opens the door.
    “Hey, Malinta, you scared me.” He steps out.
    “Sorry, I just caught you out of the corner of my eye.” Her lips click tisk-tisk-tisk . “And I saw what you were eating.”
    Embarrassment washes over his face and fog pours from his nose in the chilly air. “Busted, huh?” He debates the next move. My cover , he realizes, is officially blown .
    Malinta wears a red and white hat, obstructing her wound. For the first time, Henry focuses on the rest of her. Eyes, even trained spy eyes, are always drawn to gauze and blood spots. The cold pinches her lips into a pink so deep, daughters want their bedrooms this color. She’s cute for a girl , he thinks.
    “Don’t sweat it, Hol date ,” she says. “I kind of prefer Winters myself.”
    “It’s Holgate,” Henry Hamler says, relieved. “And, can I just say, whew!”
    “But that’s a bleeping secret.”
    “No problem.”
    “I’ll tell you something else. I also really like healthy stuff. Tofu, veggies, soymilk. All that. I love it. Is that weird?”
    “Wow, I’ll have to…” Henry’s pulse slows with the lies. “Try some.”
    They share a silence, but Hamler doesn’t recognize it. This quiet isn’t the icy lonesome that normally crowds his time. It’s something whole. Something welcomed.
    “Wanna hear a big secret?”
    They look at one another as their breath knits together. Hamler holds off speaking for a long while. “Um…sure.”
    “I even play the Cosmonaut Game.” Her words are tense and whispered as the breeze. “A couple nights back, I got to fly the suit for sixteen minutes until some punk stole the controls from me.”
    “Really, how was it?”
    “It was the warmest feeling I’ve ever had. Knowing I was helping save those poor, stranded astronauts. It was…” Her eyes glide up toward the sky.
    Hamler counts the hairs in her nose. “What?”
    “I think it was the most rewarding feeling of my life.” Her face turns cutesy and childlike. “That’s not sad, right?”
    “I don’t think so—”
    “It made me realize I don’t get that feeling a lot. Being a good person. It’s so