I came back to the lab....Salon B only to find it locked and the dim hope of a dark sliver of carpet I saw though the crack in the door and the non-reponse to my knocking. I called the front desk from their own phone, reaching over the counter to talk to "frooont de-esk" and hear her say, "I'm right behind you" and hear it echoing in the phone like in "Brazil" where Archibald Tuttle comes through the door. She says the security guard will be down to meet me. "I'm workin over der an I can't get in. S'posed to be a guard or sumpin, right?"

So this minivan pulls up in the spot where they load your bags and sits there. Between me in the lobby and Solon B across the way. "He'll be down any time noo'ow." So I looks at him. Can't see inside but he does seem to be sittin there. I don't know who it is just then but I start to walk slowly out the door. I walk right up to the baroque French doors and kick one of them open with my stride when it gets 2 inches from my face. There's some goons vacuuming the red carpet. It's 2:27 am. It's freezing-desert-air-escaping-from-the-earth cold. I'm a lone Caucasian male, approximately 6'2, wearing what appears to be an orange dress shirt. I walk, almost sideways partway toward the minivan and I start to see some movement inside. It's a hand. It's beckoning me thither. The person inside is apparently the one here to help me but refuses to get out of the van.

I walk over and a big heap of a man scratches out his throat: "You da one dat call for security?" I says yeah, "I'm working in deerrr" Nice an easy like, so as not to arouse suspicion. "Well, lemme call number four!" he says and gets on the horn. Four answers and the guy looks at me like he's handin me my own turds because they had fallen in his lap. But what's he thinking? Hell, I know they's supposed to be in there 24 hours. The guy knew also, the "head of security" was leader of a rag-tag fugitive fleet. You could tell he was half-confident in his man -- his men don't abandon their posts but that don't mean they're not fuckin incompetents. He's half-ready to sell him down the river to appease the client before him.

It was so-an-so. Number 4. The skinny one. The guy who sits in this dark box all night. He was standing there with his back holding the door open for me to walk in side. "You friggin remember me! Do we need to dispense with the formalities." "Well, ghurumbalmuffamulata." "Ok, my badge is over here. By dem laptops."

So I'm back to my 'puter, I see one of the things don't have a dark screen and I say, "You can finish up whatever you were doin on it. That's cool." And as if (because) I'm rubbing his nose in something he didn't do as penance for something he did do, I make like I'm gonna forgive him this one little oversight, a boundary crossed but not broken. I kinda feel for the guy.

After all, I just wanted to get my smokes. This typin' is just covering up for the fact that I just wanted to get my smokes. I'm happy that the only person we really bothered was his fatass dickwad manager.

davep

Oh, can't sign off yet. I just got up 'cause I had to see what it was that's makin all those hypersonic screeching noises (we got a TV in here) - (but I thought the guy looked like an amature HAM radio enthusiast) so I go over and there's a big beautiful deer, a huge fuckin antler farm on the TV. Wow, this guy's watchin nature shows. But there's nobody talking. I strain my ear to hear the words of a benevolent narrator but nothing. Then, BLAM the buck falls. And the guard says, "Oh shit, she dropped him. She dropped him right there. That's one hell of a good goddamn big buck and she done dropped him". (He's a bow hunter of course... (One nice thing about someone telling you that they're a bow hunter is that you really don't have to say anything too that. They don't expect it. Really. Bow hunting is a little deviant no matter what side of the aqueduct you come from.) and he's giggling and sayin' "holeee sheeit" just like the hunters creepin up on the carcass.)

I think I'm gonna play "Clementine" by Elliot Smith over the room's PA system right now. And have that smoke.