https://moelane.com/tag/the-house/
But Wayne proved useful. It turns out that I found it helpful, when doing the sort of thing that I was doing, to have someone who studiously avoids asking too many questions. In fact, when I came to him with an odd request, he asked only two.
“This candy that you would like the agency to mail out as a promotion,” he said, fiddling with the sample that I had brought to him to look at. “I assume that there is nothing wrong with it?”
“Why, my dear fellow, there is nothing at all wrong with it,” I said. “It is perfectly untouched, untampered-with, and completely innocuous. It does not even have nuts or gluten in it. Your agency has nothing to fear from sending the candy to every house within two blocks of my own.”
“Your house,” Wayne murmured, and smiled in a way that most people would have found disturbing. “An interesting promotion; but then, ‘tis the season. May my staff and I partake of the extras?” At my involuntary start of surprise, he chuckled. “I didn’t think so. Better to cast the net more widely, of course.”
“Your net of potential new customers, of course,” I said, with perhaps the slightest hint of nervousness in my voice.
“Of course,” Wayne genially agreed.