Night of the Decaffeinated Dead

"Alright, dessert is out. Take out the coffee. Lets move, people," Steve ordered the servers.
The coffee run was the hardest part of any wedding night for Patricio. Sure, the coffee pots were easy enough to lift when they were empty, but they were a massive strain on this wrist when they were full, wrists he would need later. Then he had to walk out the door into the hoard of energy deficient zombies, each with a distant look in their eyes and a single arm outstretched holding a porcelain teacup.  The only way to get these zombies to die down was to fill those teacups with coffee.

One of the better dressed patrons decided that snapping at Patricio was a good idea. In response, Patricio decided to serve everyone else at the surrounding tables, making sure to chat with everyone he served along the way, until all he had left was half a cup's worth. Patricio finally made his way over to the table with the snapping man. As he made his way over, he overheard the man say, "I hate it when waiters can't speak English. If you are going to be in our country, you should know our language and that snapping fingers mean come over here, now." The statement cut right through Patricio. He could have laughed at the irony of the man thinking he spoke no English despite having received a major in it; however, his desire to laugh was overshadowed by his desire to smash the pot of coffee into his face. His limbs did not seem to stop carrying him over to the table and begin pouring.

Patricio had been eyeing her all night. He felt a great emptiness in his gut. Why did the girls always go for the bad guy? Seeing her made him a bit soft, but the man she was with set his brain on fire.
Patricio felt this great longing for this blonde, artistic beauty and resolved to tell her. As he finished pouring the coffee, he couldn't help notice the sleeves of his uniform randomly covered in caked splotches of food that had been cleared off of plates. He immediately felt disgusted with himself, there was no way she would find him attractive looking like someone who was at the epicenter of a food fight. 

"Discúlpeme," Patricio started," eres tan bella que no tienes porque perder tu tiempo con un culero."

Her large blue eyes stared at him, eye brows raised. Maybe she would understand it, he thought as he walked away, but he knew deep down that that was a stretch. Patricio headed back to the server's hallway, behind the banquet hall to fill up his coffee pots. On the way, he began formulating a story in his head. Everyone agreed that smashing the coffee pot into that douche bag's head was a great decision. The hero then received a check for a full-year's pay and then promptly quit his job. It wasn't a story that would win Patricio any awards, but it did made him feel moderately better about his position.

It was while he was lost in this flight of fancy that a small child decided to dart out toward the dance floor. The child's head had performed a rudimentary head-butt to Patricio's pelvis. Patricio flew forward. It all happened to fast for him to block his fall. He tumbled over the child, falling onto his back. For a brief moment the room seemed entirely quiet. Of course, Patricio thought, it had to happen between songs. He sat up, pain surged through his left side. He looked down. The coffee pot in his left hand had shattered, leaving a large piece of glass in his forearm. The other coffee pot had somehow stayed intact.

It's not that bad, he told himself. He stood up and blood dripped down his hand. Shit! It is that bad. Then came the sound, that horrible, condescending slow clap. He turned around to see the date of the pretty blonde grinning and clapping. Patricio couldn't bring himself to look at her, his face was hot. Deena rushed up to him, "Are you ok?"

Through gritted teeth, Patricio responded, "I'm fine."

Deena looked down and gasped. "That looks really bad, you might need to fill out an incident report and get some stitches."

"I said I'm fucking fine, God damn it!" Patricio stormed off, clutching his left arm close to him.

He was not fine.

The Working Dame

The two main doors slid open. One strappy black heel clacked on the peach tile floor. The heels were carefully strapped onto a pale, slender leg attached to a pale slender body. I can’t believe I am actually doing this, she thought. She made her way over to the front desk and asked the young gentleman where the restroom before heading down the adjacent hallway.  She escaped into the tile-floored bathroom from the artistic abortion that was the hallway carpet, a smattering of dark-hued flowers intertwined. Ashley looked under the stall doors. She was alone, just what she needed. Ashley set her small, black, clutch purse down on the sink counter and looked at herself in the mirror. Her long, blonde hair had been curled and it hung down to her chest. My hair looks like shit. She moved the golden mass behind her. Now it looks more like shit. She moved her hair back in front of her. A pale arm raised in the air. The mirror reflected the hem of her dress under her arm was lightly adorned with white remnants of Lady Speedstick. Damn it! She grabbed a few paper towels, soaked one, and dabbed at the stained area.

Ashley had been very specific on asking Julio what being an escort entailed six months ago when he first mentioned the job to her. He had assured her in his typically sassy voice that it was only a dating service and that no one did anything they didn’t want to. He never mentioned that women were given the option to do more. At least, he didn’t mention it until he knew she needed money and money was in short supply as of late. She tossed the paper towel into the trash and opened her small, black, clutch purse and searched around. She pushed aside her driver’s license and had to pull out a small tube of red lip stain, an eyeliner pencil, and her cell phone to find a joint nestled between two condoms and a petite BIC lighter.

            I don’t have a problem. She honestly didn’t have a problem with smoking pot; she had trouble affording it. The cost of charcoal pencils and oil pants was ridiculous. In addition to her to her rent and utility bills, she didn’t really have much money for much else. Her friends used lend what ever bud they had in good spirit, but, in recent months, had become less apropos about sharing even skunkweed. Sure, anything could be art, but not everything was “good art.” Pot helped her regulate the difference and alleviate her stress. I could either smoke it now or smoke it later. If I smoke it now I will be relaxed, but I will smell awful and be out until my next paycheck. If I don’t smoke it now, I will have to save it. Damn it! She begrudgingly stored her supplies back into her purse and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked at her cute dress and how it showed off her milky calves. The dress was the only piece of nice clothing she had that wasn’t covered in paint. Her mom got it for her two years ago to wear under her graduation gown. This is definitely not what this dress meant for. It was all too much to deal with. She clutched her purse under her left arm and walked out of the bathroom back toward the main desk.

She pulled a small slip of paper out of her bra. The slip read Room 333. Ashley hooked a left along a row of black lamp poles set out along the front edge of the bar. A sea of people seemed to be seemed to be flooding out from somewhere behind the elevator toward her.  Lost in that cadre of wedding guests, her eyes moved from face to face. Tight. Wrinkled. Porous. Babyish. Mustached. Shaven. Please let him be cute, please let him be cute, please let him be cute. She passed through the group of guests and entered the elevator. Looking through the glass back wall of the elevator, she looked down upon the atrium. It was lovely, horrible for painting.

The elevator jerked to a halt and the doors opened smoothly. She followed the door numbers down the hall. Three-forty-four. Three-forty-three. Three-forty-two. They counted down to her starting to lose self-respect. She rounded a corner into the poorly lit hall. In the darkness, the maroon plaque read Room 333.  The sight was horrible. Vomit started to crawl up her throat. Her knees trembled. The scene was perfect for painting, horrible for living. If she wanted to further her art career, she would have to suck it up and follow through. It’s just for the money, just this one time.

Any names or likenesses in this story are completely coincidental.

Steam Room

Kaiden had never been in a steam room before, but his first experience was less luxurious than he expected it would be. The room was essentially gray and white square tiles with a water spigot in the corner and two white, plastic benches. Scalding hot pressurized water exploded towards the corner. A thick layer of steam filled the room. The stench gave in, an acrid odor of dirty assholes. The room had been built in the 80s, but care for it had fallen in recent years. Soon the fog filled the room to the point that not any point was visible. Auburn hair hung down wet and limp from Kaiden’s head, and sweat began to drip, stinging his eyes. He rubbed them and pulled down his swimming goggles. The goggles added pressure to his eyes and tinted the room to a darker shade, but he was able to see. Soon, the goggles fogged up. He wiped them clean. They soon fogged again and he made himself chuckle by wiping the lenses clean with one erect index finger each. He made sure to imitate the squeegee sound that windshield wipers make for authenticity sake. Kwee-kwoo.

            At that moment that Kaiden started slowly mimicking a catchy rhythm that was stuck in his head. Boom, kshhh, boom, kshhhh, boom, kshhh. He was reminded of a music video of a man in welder’s goggles delivering lyrics in a haughty tone and sharply breathing in air. Kaiden tried mimicking the voice. As he passed through the first verse, growing confident in his ability to sound like the singer, he slapped his wrists together over his head, pretending they were tied together and attached to the ceiling like in the music video. Inside him the intensity built until he whipped his hair wildly and sang out the chorus without any inhibition, “I wanna fuck you like an animal!”

            Coincidentally, this was the same moment the steel door opened, allowing a bright light in. Kaiden, startled, turned to see exactly who was there, but his goggles were thick with condensation. He wiped his goggles clear, choosing this time to leave the sound effects out. In front of him, holding the steel door was a woman wrapped in a towel from the waist down. Her burgundy swimsuit hid no curvature of her torso, no matter how minute. As his eyes met hers, all he could see was wild hazel terror. Then a small voice came about, “Why is that man singing, in that room mommy?” His eyes darted downward towards the woman's leg and he noticed little head poking out from behind her towel covered thigh.

            “Lets go back upstairs sweetie,” the mom replied. The mother urged her little one on, letting the steel door close behind her. Embarrassed, Kaiden whistled the melody notes, but it brought no sense of joy back to him. Hewas left to soak in the dense, sweat-laden steam, falling into quiet invisibility. 

Silverware

            Salad fork. Dinner fork. Dessert fork, turned sideways. Two steps over. Salad fork. Dinner fork. Dessert fork, turned sideways. Two steps over. Patricio had gotten into the monotonous groove of laying down the silverware. He was showing trying to show the new girl, Alyssa, the order of how to set everything up. She followed close by, taking care of the knives and spoons. She wasn’t quite into the routine of continually sidestepping around the table welling setting down silverware. Instead, she would robotically walk-up behind a seat, slightly bend over, and place a knife and spoon. The black of the uniform slimmed her figure, but it couldn’t hide the curvature of her ass whenever she set anything on the table. Patricio was well of this fact and made sure to take many mental pictures that would be filed under butts, sub-filed away under Asian chicks, and maintained in El Banco de Spanko (or Spank Bank for those that absolutely suck at Spanish).

            He looked over to find Jacob, Tom, Roy, and Jeff laying down the pieces of the collapsible dance floor. A deep thud would resound. One man would stand on one wooden jigsaw while the other would kick the recently dropped piece into place. Thud. Pat, pat, pat. Silverware set-up was a dull task, but it was nowhere near the suck-fest that dance-floor setup was. Steve walked in through the door stage left of the platform where the wedding party would be sitting. He had a stack of circular mirrors and started placing them on top of the crimson runners in the center of the tables. The light reflected off of the mirrors and bounced off of Steve’s bald head. This image brought a bit of a giggle to Patricio.

            All of a sudden, Alyssa shot upright at the other side of the table and gasped. “Oh no!” she shouted, her eyes wide in horror. Everyone else paused what they were doing and looked at her. She continued, “I gotta go!” Her legs carried her out of the room in something between a run and a sashay. Soon enough she was through the doors and gone from sight. Everyone else continued on with organizing the room, but Patricio knew that face. That was the face he felt about to come on whenever the desire to quit was upon him. He had envisioned quitting a number of times, many of them involved a song he had penned for the occasion that was heavily laden with the phrase “fuck you.” Of course, the song had several verses that were dedicated to a variety of people and tasks at the hotel.

            Patricio continued setting the forks on the tables. Salad fork. Dinner fork. Dessert fork, turned sideways. Two steps over. He had to find his rhythm again and try not to think or he would slowly lose his mind. Salad fork. Dinner fork. Dessert fork, turned sideways. Two steps over. He soon lost his rhythm again when he looked up and saw Alyssa walk into the room. Her large chestnut eyes looked more relaxed than they had before. She swept a long black strand of hair out of her face over her ear. In that brief moment she looked like a vision out of a dream.

            “Everything alright?” Steve asked.

            “Oh, yeah. I just had to take a huge dump,” she stated before her face scrunched up and she giggled, completely pleased with herself. Steve shook is head at her response as if the words had just slapped him. It was about that moment that the vision was gone and Patricio’s erection was lost entirely. He continued setting forks and debating whether or not he should shred some recently acquired documents at his personal bank of spankitude.

Any names and likenesses in this story are entirely coincidental.

The Fountain

            Ryan stood at the edge of the hotel fountain in slacking some line for the aquatic vacuum when he was tapped on the shoulder. Megan, the pocket-sized bartender, was behind him in all her beauty.

            “Watcha doin’?” Megan asked in a silly little voice that came off as mildly flirtations. They way she talked, it normally did.

            “Vacuuming. You clocking in?” Megan looked over the edge of the ledge and saw the mouth of the vacuum moving slowly about the floor of the lowest tier of the fountain. It had been picking of the coins, the metallic wishes from those who had stopped by. Her mouth went agape and her eyes went wide. “Why are you doing that?”

            “Cleaning the fountain,” he answered mechanically. The job was perfunctory, but this had been the only time anyone had asked about it. He normally got it done earlier in the day before anyone checked in, but he was a little late today. There were too many things to get done before hand.

            “You’re stealing wishes!”

            “If I don’t clean the coins, the drain gets clogged up.”

            “What do you do with the coins then?”

             “I, uh, dry them off and, uh, give put them in the safe.” Ryan shifted uneasy in his thick-soled work boots. 

            “But those are people’s wishes!” Ryan shrugged and returned to his job. He didn’t have a response for her that would placate her emotions. It wasn’t his job to think of any. It wasn’t his job to give a crap what those in the front office did with the money nor did he care for what the coins meant to those who tossed them in. He soon heard her walk away. This was just another task to get done on a long list of shit to fix. He extended his tattooed arm, giving slack to the aquatic vacuum, it whirred louder and it slurped up wishes into its greedy stomach.

Any names and likenesses in this story are entirely coincidental.

The Pit

The Conversation Area was the fancy name given to a lowered pit behind the elevators, toward the front of the atrium. It was a rhombus of gaudy hotel-floral carpet that seemed to get in the way of getting from the restaurant/bar to the pool area. It was also the area where assorted crackers, finger foods, and alcohol were placed in order to deter early wedding from coming in to the banquet hall. Jacob and Tom flanked Steve the banquet manager, towering over him like guards to a child, in the walkway above the pit in front of the Cascade Bar & Grill watching for what snacks were running low as the various guests picked at them like so many seagulls.

Little kids threw coins into the hotel fountain and made wishes, adults drank, teens awkwardly looked around while dressed in clothes that, while looking nice, were a little tight. It was not until Steve looked over at the snack table and noticed the table skirting was moving that he saw the problem. A small child crawled out from the table with a massive grin while a dark fuzzball scurried away from the child at intense speed. He walked to the bar and told Megan to give him two tumbler glasses. The rat had to be removed and discretely. When he returned to his post between Jacob and Tom, he noticed that nobody was screaming or scared. Nobody else had noticed the rat. Everyone had been to busy having a good time to notice anything crawling at their feet. He then recalled the last time rats showed up in the pit and Patricio ended up making a huge scene because he shattered a tumbler glass trying to catch one, missing the rat entirely. Steve set the glasses down on the ledge of the divider wall in front of him. He would wait until the guests were in the banquet hall before he notified Ryan from maintenance to take care of this.

Any names and likenesses in this story are entirely coincidental.