Assuming two characters and the existence of a bag:
(a) He told her that the bag had to get to Europe. He smiled. She smiled. Like those smiles before sex or at the end of a wedding or when you finally notice you have hands.
(b) She took the bag, bearing imperceptible value onto the road. She gave it to a man with an out-of-town destination written on his face. She told the man it must not get to Europe. It must go to California, instead, she said, and that this was a secret, but that it must be made to seem as if it had gone to Europe (c).
She smiled. He smiled. Like those smiles after sex or the morning after a wedding or when you finally understand you never go back home.
He took the bag into empty countryside. He thought he might be being followed. He met a woman in Bombay where the smoke moved like church ushers, and a child motioned a hand over a water-filled orb. He told the woman, (d) “You must take this to China.”
“I might be a double agent,” she said. “How do you know I’m not plotting harm?”
“I’m betting you are,” he said.
He smiled. She smiled. They had sex in a rented room.
(e) In Ohio she was attacked in an alley, just as she was about to pass the bag to a woman in a red car, but on the phone she had sounded like a man. Two men darted from the shadows with rubber clubs. The red car sped away.
She smiled, blood in her mouth. The men smiled.
(f) On the road, the thieves were smacked to death by a cargo truck racing at high speed. The driver of the truck fished through the crumpled wreckage and the twisted bones, drew out the bag, and the woman in the cab said, “This bag will never go to Europe. No matter what he wants.” (g)
And so, they headed off, and soon, crossing the desert, they passed a sign that said: “Welcome to California,” California, where a man waited in a house on the beach. He opened the door to the woman and the truck driver. (a) The man said, “It’s important that my bag eventually find its way to Europe.”
Repeat and vary a, b, c, d, e, f, g but you must never get the bag to Europe.
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