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[HappyBuddha]

This is an ongoing assignment for my Creative Writing class, of which the end product will hopefully be a story of several (8+, roughly) pages. Every week or so, I'll be adding another page onto this topic, in keeping with the pace of homework in my class. I would greatly appreciate any and all commentary or support you readers feel like volunteering. Most of all, I hope you enjoy the story!

 

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Tom read the card with concealed delight, dancing on the inside to a tune his rigid face seemed not to hear. Looking up, he found his gaze drawn back again to the guilty pleasure of success:

 

Employee Evaluation Form

Uniform: Invariably immaculate

Deportment: Entertaining, yet proper

Work Ethic: Slavishly devoted

Overall: Excellent

Lifting his eyes, he noiselessly slipped the card into his pocket and straightened once more in the mirror before taking a deep breath and emerging from the staff room. His stride was purposeful; his gaze hung unwaveringly upon his destination, that sleek silver portal. Indeed, he exuded resolution, the succinct pride of a man doing the job that he knows he does best. It didn’t waver in the slightest when he accidentally brushed against Evan, the new mail clerk. No, his stride didn’t break, his heart didn’t forget to beat and his gaze most certainly did not peel to the right in an effort to catch a happy glance of Evan’s handsome face.

 

All these Not Events were swallowed by the rushing comfort of return to the familiarity of his agile cocoon. Happily ensconcing himself, he ran a gloved finger over the elegant buttons on the panel. He traced rows and numbers, finally settling on the round circle of #36. There he found it: that slight, invisible chip in its surface. To think those bastards in management called him part of a dying breed. A smile inflated his face as the doors to his elevator slid shut behind the day’s first guests.

Edited December 6, 2005 by HappyBuddha

[HappyBuddha]

Tom turned to face them, his soothing smile hanging like a pearly mirage before the eyes of his charges. Like all mirages it stretched and bent, rearranging invisible material until it became promising appearance. But as Tom knew all too well, like all mirages the reality was distant, so terribly distant from the tempting lie that prods the desperate on until entrapping illusion crumbles beneath their feet. Tom knew that any man lost within the glimmering crevices of that smile need only shift his glance to the eyes above, where far toothier sands spread like landfills into places only melanin was meant to go, leaving the irises wiggling for an escape from the encircling hollow.

 

Which is why Tom always wore contacts (Why no one but his mother had ever seen him naked. Would ever see him naked. Period. End of sentence. No ellipsis.) Tom found it funny that a melanin deficiency in the eyes could throw people so off-kilter like that. But the good host caters to company, and Tom was a good host, so contacts it was. “The fifteenth floor?” he asked, having already filed the group before him away into a neat little category during the jarring second it took for them to get beyond his smile. Tom loved categories; he was extraordinarily good with them. Take this group: a family for sure, the father with just a twinkle of pride in his eyes and a slight flush in his cheeks, both speaking volumes (only slightly abridged) to the thrashing he had just given to poor Lisa at the front desk. That told Tom enough; they’d undoubtedly bullied their way into that free room on the fifteenth floor, where they could get a good view.

 

The rise of startled eyebrows answered his question quite well; he had already pushed the button by the time the mother yelped, “Why, yes! How did you know?”

 

“Because I can read minds, of course!” he replied, pausing to reapply his smile before he continued with the standard routine. “They don’t let just any old bum get this job, oh no! Only special mind-reading bums like me!”

 

Amidst the ensuing chuckles came a giggling “Nuh-uh!” from a diminutive little girl.

 

Without breaking either his stride or his smile, Tom leaned down and brought his face within a foot of hers. “Yes I can! Right now, you’re wondering where I got this lollipop!” And with that his fist flashed open to reveal the promised candy. The girl lit up and snatching the candy without hesitation. Her laughter continued even after she’d plopped the sucker into her mouth (quite an amazing feat of ventriloquism.)

 

Ding!

The doors flushed open unto an empty carpeted hallway. Within nary the shedding of a second, the father had pulled the whole bunch off the elevator and towards their room, where his ever-so-precious view awaited – the view that he would be happily trumpeting for the rest of the vacation (the view that he would remember rather better than the actual vacation in subsequent years.) The girl turned around once, briefly mirroring Tom’s smile with her own. Then the doors slid shut before Tom’s face, and their ironclad silence snapped apart her giggles. Tom lost his own smile in the time it took to discern that the lobby was his next destination.

 

* * * * * * * * * *

That night, Tom briefly lingered in the doorway to the elevator shaft, as was his habit after his maintenance work was finished. He’d long ago taken the upkeep of his elevator upon himself, never trusting the shabby engineer they always hired to do a good job of it. It’s not like that fool would have to take responsibility for any catastrophe. The man never gave the elevator more than a cursory inspection, 10 minutes tops, and then spent the rest of his nominal hour of work cracking jokes in the lobby and helping himself to leftovers from the hotel’s dining room. Tom had rsolved to do independent elevator maintenance work after witnessing just one of these sham “inspections.” Once a week he would descend into this shaft and lovingly pour over the traction grooves, test the strength of the counterweight’s cable, inspect the hitch plate, examine the drive sheave, and (of course) oil the gearbox.

 

Nothing would go wrong on Tom’s watch, not tonight. Every item in his mental agenda had a merry little checkmark dancing inside the “Done” box to its side. Everything works like a charm, Tom told himself. Yep. Like a charm. Like you planned it. With a start Tom turned and slammed the door behind him as he hurriedly left the maintenance area behind. The door’s Boom! welled up within the elevator shaft and echoed back to him in a muffled yet insistent thunder that kept time with his hasty footfalls.

Edited December 6, 2005 by HappyBuddha