As promised, here's an attempt to do something on Steemit that can't be done nearly as well anywhere else: tell a story where the readers choose the path. Read Carefully.
Below is the second scene of the novel Now You Don't. If you look, you'll find that there is another post with an almost identical title to this one, only that one is Episode 2Z, where this is 2A. Behold the power of Steemians.
The first half of the scene is exactly the same in both 2A and 2Z versions of this post. But the second half is different. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to upvote the one you want to see continue. If you'd like to see BOTH continue, you can upvote them both, but unless something really awesome happens, I will only be continuing the highest vote-getter.
Voting closes Friday, Midnight EDT, for this round. Then there will be a new one, with a new fork. New episodes twice a week, barring the radically unforeseen.
The first scene of Now You Don't is here. You should read that one first. Then the story continues below.
Now You Don't Episode 2A
Abbet’s eyes flicked down to his watch. Four oh eight. More than half an hour now. Shadows had begun to creep along the street, but it would be another three or four hours before the sun got low enough that he could move without worrying about being seen. Because though the two men were inside the diner, one more was left outside, keeping the car running. Abbet could see the driver shift every so often and raise his hand to mop his brow.
Must be nice.
Not for the first time today, Abbet wondered if he was too old for this.
The diner door opened. One of the men—Abbet had begun calling him Whitespats—came out onto the bottom step of the stairs and stretched, adjusted his hat, and climbed up to street level. He scanned the street, and, seeing nothing, bent to chat with the driver through the passenger window.
He was nothing. It was the other man Abbet wanted, the one still inside.
Harold Crane, who was supposed to be forty-six blocks uptown in a posh office a quarter mile from City Hall, shuffling papers for the Mayor. Instead, he was here. Again.
Crane didn’t come out. A bead of sweat collected at the crown of Abbet’s head and decided to roll backward through his thinning hair and down his back.
Come on.
Whitespats lit a cigarette and stood with his back to the car, watching the diner and keeping an eye on the street. From behind Abbet, a car rolled down the street toward them. Whitespats kept his profile low, behind his own car, not crouching, but not presenting a target, either. His hand drifted upward to the bulge in his coat.
But the car passed, chugging down the center of the street, and turned left at the next block.
The street went back to decaying in the sunshine.
Whitespats turned and looked directly at Abbet.
Abbet would have frozen, but he had already not moved in so long he didn’t know if he’d be able to. He was deep in the shadow of the back seat, his head even with the headrest. With the glare off the windshield, he should have been invisible. But Whitespats took a puff on his cigarette and kept his eyes locked on Abbet’s car. With a little lurch, he pushed off his own vehicle, shrugged his coat into place, and started toward Abbet.
Abbet’s left hand found the bulge in his own coat pocket, where his Czech Hotrod lay cool and anxious. He slid his hand into his pocket and gripped it, the slight movement out of sight behind the front seat.
Whitespats took a couple more steps, then turned at the sound of a door opening.
The diner. A black fedora pushed through the door and out into the sunshine.
Crane said something Abbet couldn’t hear, but Whitespats turned, tossing his cigarette into the vacant lot, and went back to his own car. He held open the rear door, let Crane in, and climbed in after him. The car pulled smoothly away from the curb and glided down the street a block. It turned right, and was gone.
The sound of the engine hadn’t died completely away before Abbet was out of the car and making for the diner. He twisted his head, feeling the muscles cramp, trying vainly to loosen them. Eight steps, nine, and he jogged down the stairs and opened the door.
The interior was so dark his eyes had trouble picking anything up but shadows. But a voice called out from in the back, “You forget something?”
Abbet grunted, a noise he hoped wouldn’t be immediately identifiable as not belonging to Crane, and stepped farther in. He drew the Hotrod and crouched behind the counter. Dust coated everything, thick and velvety, except for a trail across the floor from the door back around past the bar and to the right, where a decrepit sign said “estroo” with an arrow.
Footsteps. A man stepped round the corner and looked toward the door. Abbet, deep in shadow, wished his hair was the dark black of his youth. But the man didn’t see him, just kept coming around the bar, a quizzical look on his face. When he drew even with Abbet and reached for the door, Abbet stood up and put the Hotrod against his thoracic vertebrae.
“Hello, Vernon,” he said.