I was on my way to my new house when I stopped off to pick up my suitcase at the house I’d been staying at with a young couple.
I tried on a pair of running shoes I was sent as a replacement that did not fit, my left foot was rubbing against the side which was indented.
The young man I’d been staying with said he had just arranged for a colleague to come and pick me and drive me to my new place as it was on his way home.
Now in the car with the colleague, I told him I didn’t speak Dutch and we were silent for a couple of miles until he started speaking to me in perfect English.
We got to my house and I handed him my business card thanking him for the ride. In turn, he handed me a large envelope telling me to open it when I had time.
I got inside my new house and found a bunch of papers and the license plates to the car I acquired when buying the house.
I went outside to look at the car then went back into the house to get the license plates and a screwdriver. Looking carefully at the license plates I observed they were from the state of California and, in the top right hand corner, had a code of numbers and my surname intermixed.
Later, I opened the envelope the guy gave me and inside was an invitation to join the couple and their children for dinner on the 28th, which I realized was that very day. Inside the envelope were also some drawings his kids made for me.
I arrived at the guy’s house and was greeted by wife and their two toddlers, a boy about three and a girl barely able to walk; I picked her up and thanked her for the nice drawings.
Then, the guy had mentioned something about having released a single as a joke when he was drunk at a work party and the single—and a music video someone had made and uploaded to TikTok—both went viral.
Crowds soon gathered in the street outside the apartment building where he lived, cheering and blocking traffic.
I said I’d help manage his career and—with the intention of savoring the moment—I told him to put on any costume he had in the house and he came back a few minutes later with a superhero costume with mask and cape.
I turned the speakers towards the windows blaring the song out onto the street below; I told the man to get ready to step out onto the balcony when the song ended to greet his legions of new fans.
I shuffled the curtains and he stepped out onto the balcony to the din of the hysterical crowd below.
Knowing my work was done and that the man would be soon be famous, I packed up my suitcase and shave kit and headed for the door, but not before spilling a whole container of talc all over the suitcase.
Before I left, I looked in on the kids; the boy was sound asleep in his high chair at the kitchen table and the girl was lying on her parent’s bed fidgeting herself to sleep.
Then I woke up.
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