The Temporary Agent Read Online Free Page A

rapid vibrations, followed by a set of five more.
    Five-and-five was the pattern that had suddenly buzzed in the pocket of his jeans.
    Even if cell phone use hadn’t been prohibited, or his foreman wasn’t likely to be watching, Tom wouldn’t have dug out his phone to see who was calling, because that would have been unsafe.
    He had come too far and sacrificed too much to do something as foolish as losing a body part to the prewar-era press brake machine he operated nine hours a day, five days a week—for fifteen dollars an hour and no benefits.

    Tom was in the dingy break room located just off the work floor when he finally checked his phone.
    The call he had missed had come from a number he did not recognize. And no voice mail message had been left.
    A wrong number, then, he decided.
    Placing the phone facedown on the table, he proceeded to eat his lunch. Stella always texted during his noon break, and sure enough, a few moments later, his phone buzzed on the tabletop with a familiar pattern.
    Two quick vibrations, a pause, two quick vibrations, another pause, two quick vibrations.
    Stell-a . . . Stell-a . . . Stell-a .
    It was a staccato pattern that he was unlikely to ever miss, especially as he worked the hydraulic press, which sent its own steady vibrations, like currents of electricity, through the concrete floor and up his legs.
    The other members of the day shift spoke Portuguese and Tom did not, so he sat through lunch alone. Even if he could understand their language, or they better spoke his, he still would have kept to himself, simply because he wasn’t much of a talker.
    Reticence was more of a habit than an indication of his nature.
    But there was another reason why he chose to sit alone.
    Stella’s lunchtime texts had recently begun to include the occasional selfie.
    Picking up his phone, Tom saw at the top of the display screen the small preview of a text message.
    It contained a minuscule photograph—not so small, however, that his eye couldn’t immediately detect a significant degree of bare skin within its frame.
    He calmly entered his four-digit passcode with his thumb to open the message.
    And there was Stella, facing her ornately framed bedroom mirror, her cell phone held off to the side to capture her full reflection.
    She was wearing a white Oxford shirt, a string of knotted pearls, and nothing else.
    The shirt was unbuttoned and open.
    The long string of pearls was her ever-present trademark.
    A brief message accompanied the selfie:
     
    Come straight home tonight.
     
    The command was a joke they shared. Tom always went straight home.
    Where else would he go?
    Where else would he want to be after a long shift of stamping and folding metal?
    He sent a reply:
     
    Yes, ma’am.
     
    This was another of their jokes, one that Stella enjoyed because it emphasized the differences in their ages.
    She was forty-five, Tom thirty-three.
    This difference was something Stella called attention to often, but Tom seldom thought of or even cared about it.
    He’d seen the world, more or less, by the time he was twenty-four.
    He’d seen men die—comrades and enemies alike.
    He’d seen family members die, too, this when he was just a boy—too early, by far, to have learned firsthand what certain men were capable of. And while he more often than not kept the details of his past to himself, Stella knew enough about him to know about that.
    Of course, he understood why she would enjoy calling attention to the fact that her live-in boyfriend was a younger man.
    As grounded as Stella was, she was not above vanity.
    Her reply read:
     
    That’s a good boy.
     
    Tom smiled.
    They exchanged a few more texts—the errands she needed to run today, that maybe they could splurge tonight and get takeout.
    Today was her only day off, and the last day of Tom’s work week.
    A precious alignment of free hours, and the energy that came with it, that they knew better than to squander.
    Tom signed off, too, then