Jason’s business thrived. The extensive contacts he had established over the years with rug producers in both Greece and Turkey stood him in good stead, and provided Jason with a monopoly of sorts. Instead of opening a retail shop in New York, Jason had wisely opted for a wholesale business. It was a lean operation. He had no employees. All he had was an office in Manhattan and a warehouse in Queens. He outsourced all his shipping and inventory control and occasionally he hired temps for clerical work.

The business operated by telephone and fax. Consequently Jason’s office door was always locked.

On this particular Friday his mail was dropped through the mail slot as it always was, but due to a thick catalogue it landed with a louder than usual plop on the wooden floor. At his desk, Jason’s attention was plucked from his bookkeeping. He balanced his omnipresent cigarette on the edge of his overflowing ashtray, then got up to retrieve the mail. He was counting on receiving a significant number of checks to alleviate his burgeoning accounts-receivable balance. Regaining his seat, he sorted through the mail, placing each piece in its appropriate pile and the junk mail directly into the wastebasket. Reaching the next-to-last envelope, he hesitated. It was thick and square instead of rectangular. Jason detected a small, irregular bulge in the center. Glancing at the postage, he noticed that it was a first-class letter, not bulk mail. In the lower left-hand corner the envelope was stamped with an admonition: Hand Stamp. The explanation was: Fragile Contents!

Jason turned the envelope over. It was made of rather thick, dense, high-quality paper. It was not the usual paper for an advertisement, yet the return address was for ACME Cleaning Service: Leave Your Dust to Us. The business was located on lower Broadway.

Flipping the envelope over once again, Jason noticed that it was addressed to him personally, not to the Corinthian Rug Company. Below the address were the words personal and confidential.

With his thumb and index finger, Jason tried to determine the source of the bulge. He had no idea. His curiosity getting the better of him, he picked up his letter opener and sliced through the envelope’s top flap. Peeking inside he could see a folded card made with heavy paper of quality equal to that of the envelope.

“What the hell?” Jason said aloud. This was certainly not the usual advertisement. He pulled out the card, marveling that some advertising executive had been able to talk a cleaning service into sending out such an expensive gimmick. The card was sealed with a tab. In the center of the front of the card was the single word Surprise!

Jason worked the tab loose from its bed and as soon as he did the card leaped in his hands and snapped open. At the same time a coiled spring mechanism propelled a puff of dust along with a handful of tiny glittering stars into the air.