One man stood alone in a room, cooking. In the pan was a thick, aromatic sauce, and he stirred it slowly, savoring the smell with an angelic expression of pleasure.

Another man entered the room, without knocking. They could be brothers, each man a little over average height, thick with muscle, comfortable middles, green eyes, black hair. Their skin hailed from different climes, however. The first man was dusky olive, the other one pale.

The man at the stove turned to the newcomer, steaming wooden spoon in hand, still coated with a patina of red tomato paste, bits of chopped vegetables clinging in the thick sauce. He looked the new man over. "Irish?"

"Yeah. Italian?"

"Yeah. The Irish are all right."

"I used to date an Italian girl."

The necessary words out of the way, both men nodded at each other. "You got the money?" the man who was cooking asked.

"You bring the stuff?" the newcomer replied with a wry smile.

"The stuff? Oh, I get it. You're a funny guy, Irish."

There was no stuff. The men shared a laugh, like they were part of a comedy routine, doing a gag about crime. Funny stuff.

The paler of the two shrugged. A habitual gesture, like he just didn't really care. "Hey, that sauce smells great. What are you having with that?"

"I thought maybe a Guinness and a baked potato." They both smiled and looked at each other again. Another gag. Just two guys having fun, swapping stereotypical jokes.

"Hey, I like you, Dago. You're a funny guy, too." He threw a bag down onto the counter. "You want to take a count?"

The man he called Dago shrugged. "I better do that. No offense." The man licked his spoon, picked up a towel and wiped his hands.

His Irish brother shrugged again in response. No offense taken.

"Did they say what it was they wanted?"

"Sure. They need a man to go down south. Somebody lost something."

"What was lost?"

"Something that belongs to our uncle." The Irish eyes stopped smiling. No more gags. It was all serious business now.

"Ah." The man who was cooking reflected for a second. "But still, there's a lot of green here. More than enough for a job like that."

"This time it's a special job ... there are certain special circumstances. Uncle wants whoever took his belongings taught a lesson."

The Italian man nodded slowly. "I understand. This is still quite a bit more than they'd need for that, even. I mean, the people that we usually use never see this kind of money."

"Say, you're smart, too, for little Italy. See, this time Uncle wants to use someone outside of our neighborhood. He wants a specific guy. A guy you used once before. This amount is what this special guy charges up front. He gets the same amount after the job is done. That's the old school way. They said to tell you that they want him again. They want 'the foreigner.' They said you would know who I meant."

The man who liked to cook nodded again, this time more slowly. He put the spoon down on the counter and shuddered. The Foreigner. "Yeah. I know who they mean."