Nathalie

It's new year's eve, and you're out delivering someone's dinner. Working isn't exactly your idea of spending new year's, but it's hard to argue with the kinds of tips people are willing to give when they're in a partying mood. So you don't feel to bad about working until 11 PM and then hastily clocking out and finding a party to join with a fresh wad burning a hole into your pocket.

But not quite yet. You thread through the already sloshed revelers crowding the sidewalk of this upscale neighborhood, bringing your bike to a screeching halt in front of a ritzy apartment building. You can't help but smile to yourself a little - score! Looks like your last delivery of the day is some hoity toity rich dude with a hunger for cheeseburgers, and more than likely willing to pay a generous wad for the poor working class delivery guy. Hoity toity rich lady, you correct yourself, looking at the name on the delivery note: Nathalie Weller. You step inside the gleaming, marble-floored lobby. Oh man, this place even has a night watchman manning the lobby. Taking the elevator up to the penthouse floor, and stepping into the thickly carpeted hallway, you can positively smell the money already. You ring the doorbell, and after a few moments hear shuffling on the other side. The door opens, and now you can't smell the money, but the musty odor of a poorly ventilated room. You just stare inside the gloomy apartment, vaguely seeing the outline of stacked boxes of deliveries, a pile of leaflets and pizzeria menus on the floor next to the door, and not least of all the disheveled woman in her baggy, ratty gray shirt and way too small shorts looking listlessly past you. She just mumbles something, takes the bag with her food from your outstretched frozen hand, and presses a bundle of bills into your palm. She almost has the door entirely closed, when she opens it again, this time looking directly into your eyes. "Uhm..." she begins, her voice having that distinctly raspy sound of long disuse. "You, uh... would you... would you like to... come inside? If... if it's no trouble?" The question sounds as if she's partially asking it to herself as well.