The Drop

Daisy stumbles to the door, rubbing her eyes as she approaches so she can better see through the peephole. She’d fallen asleep on the couch again, the Chinese takeout box and melted Ben & Jerry’s ice cream pint on the coffee table giving away her sorry and depressed state.

What time even is it? It’s still dark out—she knows that. Before she aligns her eye to the spy hole, she checks her Apple Watch. Dead. So, no clue of the actual hour.

Whatever. She’s not going to answer the door. Whoever is out there is probably drunk and trying to figure out why their own key won’t work. She makes the usual winking face to see who’s outside making so much noise, but no one is there.

What the hell? Truly, it’s probably some drunk neighbor, and they found their way to the right door after all.

Daisy saunters to the coffee table and picks up the pathetic remains of her most recent meal, sending a waft of chicken lo mein into the air. She deposits the debris into the kitchen sink to deal with tomorrow—or, technically, later today. The microwave clock insists that it’s 3:42 AM. Seriously, what an asshole, waking her up at this hour because they got drunk on a Tuesday and can’t find their own fucking apartment.

She walks down the short hallway to her bedroom and collapses onto the unmade bed. The white duvet envelops her like a soft hug, and in her stupor, she snuggles deeper into it, drifting back to sleep almost the instant she lands in it. She’s been sleeping in the middle of the bed to try forgetting that the other side—the one Parker used to sleep on—is empty. Some nights it works, some nights it doesn’t. Tonight, though, it seems irrelevant.

Daisy wakes up again to the sound of her phone ringing from the living room, where she’d first given in to sleep the night before. When she reaches the familiar coffee table, she looks down to see who’s calling. The screen surprises her: It says “unknown caller.”

Odd. It’s a decent enough hour; she can see it’s 8:03 AM. But who would be calling from an unknown number? And why?

She picks up. “Hello?”

“Daisy, it’s me,” says Parker’s voice from the other end. But he doesn’t sound like himself; he sounds panicked.

“Parker? Why are you—“

“Listen,” he interrupts harshly. “I just need you to listen, okay? I don’t have much time, and I can’t let anyone know I called you.”

“Oh-kaaay,” Daisy drags out. “I’m listening.”

“I need you to help me. I can’t explain a lot, but I need you to promise me you’re not going to talk to anyone about this, that you’re not going to ask me a lot of questions, and that you’re going to do exactly as I say. Or things will get ugly.”

“Get ugly?” she replies. “Get ugly for who?”

“For both of us,” Parker answers. “Daisy, please. Please just do what I ask you to do.”

“Parker, this is deranged. First, you break up with me for totally irrational reasons. Now you’re calling me two weeks later to beg for my help in some shady thing I can’t talk or ask about? What is this, some kind of sick joke?”

“No! No, it’s not. Daise, please. Please,” he implores her.

“I can’t make any promises, but go ahead,” Daisy says, a tone of irritation in her voice. If only I didn’t still love him so much, she thinks to herself.

“I need you to go to my place,” whispers Parker. “I left your old key outside your apartment last night, above the light fixture between your apartment and the neighbor’s. When you get there—“

“That was you last night? Making all that fucking noise? Jesus, Parker! What are you playing at?”

“Daisy, please. Just listen. When you get there, go to my closet in the bedroom and look over the built-in shelves. There’s a hidden ceiling tile that moves. I need you to get up in there and pull out the bag I hid. It’s a red duffel, and it’s heavy. DON’T look inside it. I know you’ll want to, but it’s better that you don’t.”

“Fine, whatever,” Daisy agrees, knowing she is definitely going to look inside that bag. How could she not? Who in their right mind would seriously not look in the bag?

“I need you to go within the next two hours,” Parker says. “Daisy, don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. “

“You're sure bold to assume I have nothing else going on today," Daisy challenges. But he's right—she doesn't.

"Let's not do this, okay?" Parker says. "I'm not asking because I think you have nothing to do. I'm asking because I trust you."

Dammit, Daisy thinks to herself, his well-placed compliment hitting her right where he'd aimed it. "And what am I supposed to do once I have this mysterious bag?” Daisy asks.

“Take it to the Rosewood subway station. There’s a blocked-off exit down there with a trash bin in front of the closure sign. Put the bag in the bin.”

“Are you insane? You obviously are sending me on some kind of heist with a bag full of who knows how much money, and you want me to bin it?” Daisy blurts incredulously.

“You know as well as I do that almost no one passes through that station,” Parker snaps back. “It shouldn’t even be open. So no one’s going to know it’s there!" He pauses. "And I didn’t say there was money in the bag.”

“Well, what else could it possibly be?”

“I can’t tell you that, and don’t look, Daise. Promise me you won’t look,” he pleads.

Daisy doesn’t answer, but Parker seems unfazed. “Once you’ve put the bag in the bin, go home. Don’t go snooping or looking for anyone; don’t wait for someone to collect it. They’ll know if you’re still there, and they won’t take it if you are. And I need them to take that bag,” Parker says.

Daisy promises, but again, knows she won’t keep it. She has to know why Parker’s being so Jason Bourne about this whole thing.

She showers and gets dressed, skips fiddling with makeup, throws her wet hair into a dark, artless pile on her head, and heads out the door to Parker’s place, stopping to grab the key from where he left it in the building hallway the night before. Now she sees why he made so much noise: He’d obviously tried to perch it on the edge of the light sconce, but must have thought better of it when he realized the key would be hot to the touch. Somehow, he managed to knock the whole thing off the wall, and it had shattered. The building super hasn’t been in to sweep up the glass yet, and Daisy does her best to walk around it to the elevator down the hall.

When she gets to Parker’s place, everything looks as she remembers—the living room tidy and sparsely decorated, its unadorned walls screaming “basic beige” and the camel-colored sofa trying oh-so-hard to match; the bar stools perfectly straight, facing the small kitchen on the other side of the tall counter. She smiles to herself as she thinks about how they used to sit there and share meals. She isn’t surprised to see the telltale lines in the carpet, either—evidence that Parker had vacuumed recently, as if preparing for someone’s arrival. The mystery bag collector, perhaps? Parker is the cleanest, most organized guy she’s ever dated, and his apartment is always like this, almost serial killer-like.

Daisy moves through the hallway and into Parker’s bedroom, opens the closet door, and clambers up the built-in wooden shelving on the right-hand wall. Sure enough, there’s a spot in the ceiling that moves, something she would never have noticed if she didn’t already know it was there. It fits so seamlessly into the rest of the painted ceiling, like a true secret passageway.

Daisy moves the panel and gingerly reaches her hand into the dark hole. It doesn’t take long for her to feel the heavy canvas of the bag Parker promised would be there. As she pulls at it, she realizes how right he was—it’s super heavy.

Back on the carpeted floor, Daisy holds the bulky red duffel in her hands, staring at it like it’s a priceless treasure. In a way, she supposes it is, given how much value Parker seems to associate with it. Should she look inside like she told herself she would? Is someone watching? They could be, again, given how weird this whole scenario was.

“Jesus,” she says to herself. “This is so insane.” She tosses the bag over her shoulder and carries it back out into the living space, taking one last look around before she goes. This is the look, the goodbye, she didn’t get to have when Parker broke things off at dinner so abruptly a few weeks ago. She assumes she’ll never see the inside of his apartment again, and she’s not sure she wants to, anyway.

As she opens the door, she puts her hand to the doorframe and whispers, “Thank you.” Not to Parker, not to the empty apartment, but to the space it held for her and the happiness she experienced there. Daisy is nothing if not always grateful.

Back in her car, Daisy looks on her phone for the best way to Rosewood Station. It’s not clear where she could park, so maybe she should leave the car here, she thinks, and ride the actual subway to get there. Opting for the scenic and public route, she looks back over to the bag in the passenger seat, then surreptitiously glances out her window to see who might be in the parking lot, watching.

“Oh, what the hell?” she says, grabbing for the bag and pulling it into her lap. She unzips it and flips it open. What she sees makes her eyes bulge: There is indeed a ton of cash in the bag, but it’s not just American dollars. It’s cash from other countries, beautiful in comparison, brightly colored and plastic-y looking. And there are passports—ten of them, at least, all from different countries. She opens one and, unsurprisingly, Parker looks back at her… But the name printed on the ID page is Steven Jacob Owens. She opens another and stares in disbelief at her own face. She runs her thumb over a name that isn’t her own: Jessica Marie Winters.

She opens a German passport—Parker, with another name.

A Portuguese passport—her photo, with yet another different name.

Again and again, she finds passports for them both. Daisy stops what she’s doing and looks up, staring out the front windshield at nothing.

Parker was right—she shouldn’t have opened the bag.