Still heavy. Lighter at one edge.

The lake with no name. Eddie Brooks, thirty minutes outside DFW on a county road that turns to caliche, at the end of a dock he's been coming to alone for years.

He's been carrying something most of the year. A client that went sideways three years ago - handled wrong, nobody knew but him and one other person who's gone now. He's been building on top of it ever since and he can feel the thing underneath.

Raven pulls up at 7:15. He didn't invite her. He also didn't not invite her. She sits beside him without asking what this is. He tells her the shape of it - not all of it, just enough. She doesn't flinch. She asks what he wants to do. He says: I want to be standing in front of it when it comes up.

The thing is still there when he gets to the office. But it's changed shape slightly, the way things change when someone who matters hears them and does not look away.

Featured: Eddie Brooks, photography. Raven Knight, production.

The Marfa Mavericks is a daily fiction podcast about a creative agency in West Texas. New episodes every morning. Listen in order or do not.

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