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 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.