Feather on a scale

An Alarm clock goes off, Adam turns in his bed and silences it, he was not used to waking up that early but today he had to as he had to return to meat grinder today, he promised Charlie.

He gets up and checks his phone, he finds one text message, it was from Mike, Adam’s sponsor since he left rehab, the text was sent at 12.01 AM

-Happy Anniversary Adam, today marks one year since you decided to turn your life around, I know it has been a long and difficult road but you managed to walk it with pride and dignity, and even though there were times I had my fear that you would relapse but you really managed to pull yourself through those past few weeks, whatever you are doing keep doing it, I’m proud of you”

Adam turns his phone around, he thinks to himself it’s too bad he doesn’t have any respect to Mike otherwise that would have actually been nice”

He gets up from his bed and heads straight to the kitchen where to turns a coffee pot on, his apartment was clean but not organized, it didn’t have much, the normal, a TV, a sofa and a small table.

The table’s and sofa’s colors didn’t match, they were both brown but not a set, and neither was the TV’s stand, nothing matched in the house, one could tell that no 2 items where bought together but the entire house was built on a need by need basis.

He comes out of the bathroom with wet hair, he wasn’t tall nor was he short, he was good looking, he wasn’t big but he was well built, he had a couple of scars on his stomach and large one on his back. He walked with his back straight and his movement was slow.

He takes the first 2 sips of his coffee before he lights up a cigarette, he stands leaning on the kitchen counter till the cigarette is half way through, he opens the fridge and takes out Eggs, sausage, butter and a human thigh tightly wrapped in a plastic bag, it was a big, so it was tapped really tight so it would fit in the freezer

He heads with the leg to the bathroom where he puts it the tub of hot water he just filled.

He heads back out and starts making his breakfast. He sits in front of the TV without turning it on and eats his meal when he is done he moves back to the kitchen and washes the dishes he just ate and puts it back into place, then he heads to the bathroom where he takes the leg out, dries the plastic and heads back to the kitchen with it.

He places a plastic piece on the counter, the leg on the plastic, then he heads under the kitchen sink and brings the meat grinder, cuts the plastic off and then using a big knife he takes the bones out of the leg completely.

He then cuts the leg to smaller pieces that fit in the grinder, the turns it all to minced meat, he brings plastic bags to bag the meat but before he does so he heads to his kitchen cabinet and takes a big peanut butter jar an puts all on the meat then bags it.

He then grabs the bones and places them on top of 3 thick pieces of cloth and then covers them with 4 of the same, then using a small hammers he starts pounding on the until they are smashed to tiny pieces, then he bags the bones in a different bag.

He pulls all the bags in one bigger bag, then he gets to cleaning, he cleans the counter and the knifes very slowly making sure he goes everything more than once, then he starts cleaning the meat grinder even more thoroughly.

By the time he was done it was time to get ready to work, he heads to the shower, he gets dressed and heads out with the bags in the trunk of his car and heads to work.

He arrives at the gates of the hotel where he is greeted by Mr. Greene from a distance but today he is coming out of his booth to talk.

“Good morning Adam”

“Good morning sir, how are you doing?”

“All good, yourself?”

“Can’t complain”

“I really need to call maintenance about that hole in the fence, I don’t think we should leave it any longer, yesterday one of them walked in all the way to here, I can’t let that happen again”

“You know what you are right, thankfully the guy I was getting the meat from is finished anyway, I got the last batch today, so how about we give them one big last meal and call maintenance in an hour and get things over with”

“That be good” replies the old man with a smile.

He shuffles back to his booth slowly and then opens the gate and lets Adam in.

The 2 of them built a form of friendship when Adam started working there, the old man had been working there for more than 40 years, and he has witnessed the entire history of the place.

When Mrs. Menken told Adam she was going to give him a job in a small hotel that she had when he first arrived with her, he expected a small building with maybe 20 rooms tops but when he arrived he was amazed by the size of the place and how fancy it was, it was a huge mansions with rooms that belonged in 5 stars resorts, it had everything and even though it felt like it was built for residential purposes it had more than 40 rooms and all the facilitates you can expect in a 5 stars hotel, and when he started working and started seeing the prices and comparing them to lesser hotels the whole thing started to feel like riddle, they were crazy cheap with all that they offered but it all made sense after Mr. Greene shared with Adam the building’s history.

Adam drives about a 100 feet and then stops the car, gets out and heads to the back of the car and gets the meat bags and walks with it towards the fence.

The fence was covered with plants, Adam heads there and lands the bags on the floor and opens the plastic bag exposing the meat and within seconds four dogs come running from the hole in the fence, the wiggle their tales and move around Adam for a few seconds before heading straight for the meat.

Adam stands watching them eat, he lights up a cigarette and by the time he was done with it so were they, he then opens the bone bag and the soft swallowing sounds are replaced with loud bone cracking noise but it also doesn’t take more than 2 minute before nothing was left but the plastic bags that the dogs were taking turns licking.

Adam pushes the dogs away and grabs the bags and makes a small ball with before reaching in his pocket and taking out a bottle of alcohol that he sprays on the plastic and then lights it on fire.

The watches the plastic ball as it opens up on the ground consumed by the fire, he watches for a few seconds making sure it was all burnt before heading back to his car, disinfecting his hand with the alcohol on his way back.

He parks the car and gets into the building, the lobby was busier than usual, and he sees Diane standing behind the Reception desk and she sees him too but she was talking to a guess and so he heads into his office, and minutes later she follows him into their office.

“Good morning”

“Good morning to you, what’s going on outside?”

“We just got a huge group, church group”

’Ok, and why were you checking them in?”

“Because it’s a large group and I thought reception needed the help”

“How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t let just other people get you to do their job for them?”

“No one is making me do anything, I offered to help”

And before he can reply another employee knocks and opens the door, he looks at Adam first as if she wasn’t expecting to see him.

“Good morning Adam”

“Good morning Jasmine”

She then addresses Diane

“Diane can you hurry up we really need your help” then she smiles and closes the door behind her.

Adam then looks at Diane for a second and then in a solid manner he says.

“Well you already started”

Diane smiles and heads out of his office.

Diane was in early thirties, she started working at the hotel when she met Mrs. Menken

His office was the complete opposite from his home, it was nothing but one big set and nothing else, his desk had a laptop on it that was given to him when he started working there, and nothing at that office was his on the other hand Diane’s desk had all sorts of plants and pictures of a small girl.

He opens the laptop and starts working, he checks on the church group to see if they had made and special requests that would need any special arrangement but there was nothing, everything was down to a minimum.

He starts walking around his office to stretch his legs, he gets that feeling inside of him, he was very familiar with it, it was the real reason he kept postponing getting rid of the last piece of the food critique ,because he know as soon as that whole incident was behind as soon that he started thinking what’s next?.

He knew that sooner than later that anger that has been following him since he could remember will re appear, he knew that he cannot fight it , if the last 4 years have taught him anything it was that that you cannot change who you are, the best you can do is survive it.

He needed to choose where to aim his anger rather than letting his anger guide him.

He heads to the window and from it he sees 2 from the maintenance crew heading the fence where he was just feeding the dogs to fix the fence., he heads out of his office, he was out earlier than usual for his daily tour but he needed to start moving today.

He starts his tour like usual, by checking the main lobby, it was filled with new guests still checking in and waiting for their bags to be taken to their room, there was denying that the hotel was understaffed but there was nothing anything anyone could do, although the place was really fancy but the owner insisted to have the rent be as low as possible so between cost and maintenance there was very little left for staffing but whoever was working there was still well paid as the owner also doesn’t look to make any profit of the place.

Unlike his usual-self Adam starts going into other departments, he always could find something to ask or a reason to get anywhere, he didn’t need to use that skill that day but he felt like he didn’t want to let himself be alone that day so he started having random conversations with different staff members.

He enters into one of the offices and starts talking to two men sitting behind desks, the conversation was light and held no significance but mid conversation a yellow pencil on one of the desks catches Adam’s attention.

He moves in front of the desk while listening to one of them talking and picks the pencil up and starts looking at the black writing on the side of it.

“I think I had this exact same pencil as kid back home” says Adam.

“Yeah who didn’t?”

“In Egypt”

“yeah, that’s cool, I was buying some stuff for the kid when I found them still selling those, I don’t know why but I bought a dozen, makes work seem like homework which somehow turned out to be more fun than work, who knew”

“I sure know what you mean, holding it brings memories back hard”

“You can have it”

“Yeah, thanks, anyway I better get going” says Adam as he heads out, he gets back to his office, he sits at his desk still holding the pencil in hand looking at it, the pencil takes him back to the first time he experienced the anger he was running from, he remembered that day that changed his life forever, looking at the pencil it triggers the first memory he had of his anger being born.

Adam’s childhood was a time of trial and error for him, he knew early on that he wasn’t like all the other kids, he found them dull and boring, and he didn’t like joining in any play but as he grew older he realized he liked to compete against other kids, no matter what it was, running, swimming, throwing rocks, he always tried to win and no matter how much worse he was at something he wouldn’t stop going at it until he knew he was the best at it and more importantly till all the other kids knew it as well.

He enjoyed the feeling of winning more than anything as a kid, that was his motivation to succeed in whatever he did, he did to prove he was the best.

One winter it all changed when a new student joined his class, till that point Adam was used to being the first of his class in all exams, he was the star student as well as the star football player.

All of a sudden Adam had competition, that new student was as smart as he was, he worked as hard as he did and what made matters worse is that he just lost his mother due to cancer so immediately he became every body’s top priority, he was getting all the attention, he was even named Aaron which means even when they both tied for their monthly exams Adam had to see his name second.

Adam never thought of hurting him, he hated him but he was mainly focused with beating him, he was competing with him every day, Aaron probably didn’t know how big he was in Adam’s life at that point, till one day something happened Adam goes to check the monthly report and he finds his name and next to it said 2ND.

He stood there looking at the scoreboard in disbelief, he knew he had a 100% score, yet it said second, he thought this must be a mistake so he went into the teacher’s lounge and he headed for his main teacher.

“Hey Adam, how are you baby”

“You made a mistake”

“Excuse me??”

“You made a mistake on this month scoreboard, it says I’m 2nd”

“That’s not a mistake Adam, you are second this month”

“How? I got 100% on all my exams”

“So did Aaron, but he helped the Art team with their project for the states competition, so he got extra points”

“I play on the school’s team for years, we won a state championship where I was voted best player and I never got any extra credit”

“You didn’t need it, you were always first”

“Well I need it now, give it to me and make me first”

His teacher looks at him and she smiles,

“Sit down Adam”

He sits down, she leans forward on the desk and her tone of voice changes to a softer one

“Listen baby, you know Aaron’s mom passed away recently, he had to move here with his grandma, he was through a very rough time recently, I know you like being first, and I know it is your right because you studied hard and got the full marks on all your exams, but now it’s not about who is first, it’s about helping someone else, giving him the extra creditwill help him regain his confidence, and plus you could some competition and next month you can try again, this is good for the 2 of you”

Adam stays quit for a second looking at his teacher who is smiling at him.

“You said it was my right to be first, so it’s up to me whether to give it up or not, and I choose not to, so if you can change it back that would be great” he says that as he gets up and starts heading out

“I Won’t”

“You are second this month Adam, Live with it”

He stands there for a few seconds

“Keep walking, you have classes to catch”

He walks out of the room, he can’t believe that he has to be forced to accept something that wasn’t right, he was being cheated publically and there was nothing he can do about it.

He felt powerless, and this powerlessness started changing into anger, anger that filled every cell of his body, his ears are heating up and he can’t stop grinding his teeth.

He walks back to class, grabs his backpack and heads to gym, he changes and joins the team for warm-up, and he had soccer practice.

He gets there late so he just joins in the training right away, and everything he does he does with intention, he makes sure he wins every race, every dual and every highball, like he was making a point or making sure, not even he could tell which was why he was playing the way he was playing.

He already scored 4 goals but he keeps going for more, he tackles one of the defenders and takes the ball, he plays a perfect lob from distance that lands in the back of the net and as he waves his hand in celebration he hears a whistle, he looks and the coach has his hands up, he called a foul.

Adam starts shouting instantly

“That wasn’t a foul’

The coach doesn’t respond and gestures to continue playing, but Adam doesn’t stop

“Hey that wasn’t a fucking foul”

The coach hears that and starts heading towards Adam Who is standing his ground making sure the play stopped.

“Keep playing, and watch your mouth, just because you are the best player on the team doesn’t mean I will let shit like this slide, shut up and play”

He whistles and starts moving away from Adam.

“No’

He turns back and heads to Adam.

“Excuse me?? I wasn’t asking, Keep playing”

“Not until you count it”

“What the hell is the matter with you today, you already scored 4 goals, and this is practice, let it go, play on”

He says that and he gently slaps Adam on his face in an attempt to absorb his anger.

Adam doesn’t respond back, he doesn’t talk but as the defender comes from behind him to play the foul Adam just elbows him as hard as he can in the middle of his chest, he falls to the ground in agony trying to gasp his breathe, Adam takes of his shirt and starts heading out of the field as his coach is yelling at him and telling him to wait by the Principal’s office.

As he is sitting outside the principal’s office, he is quite, he doesn’t move, he isn’t worried, for some reason he feels good, he is almost enjoying himself there.

His parent show up, his mom stops by him asking what happened but his father keeps moving and asks her to join him as he enters the principal’s office.

They spend about 30 minutes in and they walk out, his main teacher follows them, they talk to her for a few minutes while looking at him every, they take him and head home.

The entire ride home was quite, it wasn’t unusual for his father to be this cold to him, he has been this way since his brother died, but his mother looks worried which was unusual for her, she is usually sad.

They get home and his father asks him to join him in his bedroom they go in and he closes the door.

His father sits down on the bed and asks Adam to stand in front of him.

“What happened?”

“It was just a stupid fight”

“Tell me what happened?”

“I got angry and I hit him”

“Why did you get angry?”

“Because it wasn’t fair, I didn’t do anything wrong, I scored this really good goal and he didn’t count it, made me angry”

“You hit that boy so hard he had to go to a hospital”

“Well, I didn’t know it was going to be that bad”

His father sits back looking at Adam, he looks hesitant to continue talking but after a second or two he does.

“How did it make you feel when you saw what you did?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean after you hit him he must have been in a lot of pain, right?”

“I guess”

“Did you feel bad?”

“Why would I feel bad?”

“Cause he was in pain because of you”

“No he deserved it, I took the ball clean, and after I took he fell and pretended I hit him, but I didn’t dad, I swear, so he wanted a foul he got a foul, it was fair”

His Dad sits back and looks at Adam

“What about Noah, Adam, remember when you walked in the hospital room on me and mom when Noah Died?”

Adam remembers exactly what his father is talking about, he knows that moment all too well, it was the moment his father changed with him forever, he remembers walking in the hospital room where Noah was being treated, was sick quite often since he was born Adam goes into the room because he needed to go to the bathroom and his dad had told him not to go alone and just wait outside, but he walked into the room and his mom was leaning over his brother crying and his dad was just standing there crying.

He went to his dad who hurries to take him outside the room.

He gets on one knee trying to stop crying.

“Hey buddy, what’s wrong?”

“I need to go to the bathroom”

“Sure thing baby”

His dad stands and starts walking when a doctor comes out of the room and starts talking to his father.

Adam walks into the room and sees Noah’s body totally covered.

He looks at his mom, she was falling apart, and then heads back again to his father who is still talking to the Dr. He heads to him grabs his shit

“Dad, is Noah dead?”

The question catches his father off guard, he looks at him and gets back down to one knee again and with eyes filled with tears says.

“Yes, Adam, Noah is dead”

Adam’s face doesn’t change and he replies.

“Well then he isn’t going anywhere, can you please take me to the bathroom I really need to go”

His father looks at him with shock, he stops crying,

He stands up, takes Adam’s hand and goes to the bathroom with him, he watches him as he goes to the bathroom, then they head back towards Noah’s room, When they get close Adam leaves his father’s hand and heads back to where he was sitting in the waiting area, he goes back to his spot, continues eating his cookies while watching the TV like he was doing since they got here.

His dad never played with him after that day, he never hugged him, never kissed him, he spent years avoiding him, and now he was asking about that day again, Adam remembered clearly, he still didn’t know why his father was asking.

“Yes dad, I remember” Adam says with impatience starting to grow on his face

“What did you feel then?”

“I wanted to go to the bathroom”

“yeah I remember that, what did you feel when you realized your brother was dead”

“I don’t know”

“You didn’t feel sad?”

“Not really, he was always sick and you never let me play with him”

“He was your brother Adam”

Adam just stands there, he doesn’t know what his father wants from him, he doesn’t know where this going, he doesn’t seem to angry about what happened which is a good thing but what does he wants.

“Ok, you know what you are right, you were small when Noah passed and you didn’t spend time with him, what about Aaron?”

“What about him?”

Adam’s father sees Adam’s face change, his demeanor isn’t as cold as it used to be a second ago. He was getting angry

“You know his mother just passed away recently right?”

“Yeah, yeah, cancer”

“Yes, cancer, so he has no one to take him of him now, how does that make you feel?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think about his mother”

“So you don’t feel bad for him, you don’t wish you could help him?”

“No dad not really” Adam says growing angrier with his dad questions that don’t seem to get anywhere.

His dad sits there looking at Adam who is looking back at him,

“You never lay hands on anyone ever again, understand?”

“Yes dad”

“Go to your room”

Adam turns around and starts heading to his room but before he opens the door lock he utters to himself.

“I hope mom gets cancer, maybe then everyone will be nice to me”

His father hears him and instantly jumps out of bed and slaps the back of Adam’s head, Adam falls to the ground and his father sits on top of him just slapping and hitting him as hard as he could take it, punches where falling to Adam’s stomach and chest, he balled himself on the ground as his father keeps on hitting, his mother banging on the door from the outside begging him to stop.

Minutes later he stops. He stands up and looks at Adam who is laying on the ground, bleeding from his face and head, holding to his chest, barely moving.

His father looks at him for a few seconds, and though he was in a rage he couldn’t hold his tears back when he sees what he did. And while crying and trying to catch his breath he says.

“You do not lay a hand on another person ever again, you understand that boy?”

Adam is still rolling in agony, his father unlocks the door and his mom runs in, gets to the floor and she is shocked when she sees what he did to Adam, and yet she doesn’t say anything to him and instead just gets to the ground and starts hugging Adam, his father leaves the room.

Adam was suspended from school for a week, he spend the entire week in his room by himself, his mom would come to check on him from time to time, she’d sit with him , eat with him , she tried to ease his pain, but it wasn’t his injuries that hurt him, it was his powerlessness, when he was under his father it wasn’t the hits that got to him, it was his inability to stand up and do something, he didn’t understand why that was happening to him, he didn’t do anything wrong, he hit another kid, this didn’t feel right to him, he felt wronged.

He goes back to school but nothing was ever the same for him, studying didn’t make sense to him anymore, he could just pass without putting in the effort, and it wasn’t a fair game anyway.

He was banned from the football team for 2 month, but even when he came back everything had changed, they even gave his number to another kid, and he wasn’t starting nor was he one of the guys anymore. Everyone was scared of him. They avoided him.

He didn’t want to go to school anymore, he got out of class pretending his stomach hurt, or he had a headache and needed to see the school doctor. He has always been a straight a student that just had a rough batch, teachers still kept to that and fell for his excuses.

Then one day during one his walks as he is just passing by the school buildings he finds Aaron sitting there by himself by the window, the window had 3 rusty bars on it, he was drawing. Another school project. For extra points.

Adam stood there watching him as he hummed and drew, at first he was wishing he’d disappear, he feels like he took what was his. He worked hard to be first, to be the best, and he didn’t slip, he didn’t do anything wrong so how was he losing. His thoughts started turning into anger. The helplessness he felt before. How can he beat him when perfect isn’t enough? Adam reaches into his pocket and takes out the pencil he had in his pocket. He grabs it hard and starts moving towards the window, Aaron was very pre-occupied with what he was doing he didn’t feel Adam coming closer.

He knew it was class time, and it was a rainy day so no one was out but him and the school’s stoner. Adam saw him going behind one of the school buses to smoke, He didn’t see Adam though.

He gets right next to the window, and he positions his hand between the bars with the pencil in it, then in one quick hit he puts the pencil through Aaron’s ear.

Aaron screams and falls down from the desk, Adam runs as fast as he could inside the door and goes through one the corridors, and heads right into the bathroom.

He gets into a stall, his heart is pounding as hard as it has ever did.

He is still holding the pencil in his hand as hard as he could, it’s dripping blood on the floor.

He takes a couple of minutes to collect himself and clean the blood drops of the floor.

He gets out of the bathroom and everyone is already huddled by the school door next to Aaron, waiting for the ambulance.

He sees drops of blood on the school ground where they Aaron was.

He goes straight up to his classroom, he takes of his sweater and using tissue he dries the outside of it, he puts his ice cap on, he remembers he still has the pencil in his pocket, he takes it out and cleans it but there is still blood stain in the wooden part, he sharpens it, then places in right on his desk and heads out with the pieces of wood stained with blood in his pocket.

He goes out to where everyone was in gets right in the middle of everything, takes the pencil’s stained wood out and just let’s go of it on the floor in the middle of the huddle, the ambulance arrives and picks Aaron away.

Everyone goes back to their class rooms and sit waiting to be told what to do.

Police officers go from class to class asking kids did anyone see anything, but no one has seen anything.

They call the kids’ parents asking them to pick up the kids, His mother picks him up and takes him home.

After that Aaron was transferred out of school, he went back to being first, his teacher was nicer to him than she was before and he even got his old number back at the football team, on the car drive home it was the best feeling he ever had, he was just sitting there with the car window open, his mother was enjoying the scene of him, she never saw him this relaxed before, he had his hand out and a big smile on his face of course she never suspected that it was him who did that to Aaron, she just thought he was a kid who was happy to get out of school early.

“Adam, Adam!”

“Adam turns around to find Diane in front of him, he looks at her with a kind of surprised look on his face.

“What”

“I don’t know, for some reason I expected to see my mother”

“Aww, that’s so sweet, I will be going home, need anything from me”

Adam nods No, she leaves, he looks at the pencil in his hand one more time, he lays iton his desk, grabs his jacket and heads home.

It has been 2 days now, food critique’s blog hasn’t been updated and his weekly column has been taken over by someone else, everything is starting to tick Adam in the wrong way, every interaction feels like a life time, and to make matters worse he is feeling sharper than ever, his body has recovered as much as possible after 2 years of addiction, his mind has been very clear lately, so he sees everything and hears everything clearer than ever but it was all just deafening.

“Are you ok?”

“Ha?”

“Are you ok?” Asks Diane for the second time.

“Yeah, fine”

“You sure, you seem like there something on your mind those past couple of days”

“Not really”

“You know you can tell me anything right”

“I know, but there is nothing, I think I’m just bored”

“Ok, why don’t you just find something you enjoy and do it?”

“Yeah, I just might” he says as he gets p from his chair and starts putting his jacket on,

“Where are you going?”

“I’m just going to go for a quick tour around the hotel, need to stretch my legs”

’Ok” she replies.

he heads outside the office with no intended purpose in mind, but he knew he couldn’t sit in the office with Dian as she had the intention to go into one of her advice sessions, he appreciated the sentiment and understood that she really wanted to see him do better but he couldn’t bear the hypocrisy of it, getting life improvement advice from Diane felt like taking running advice from a cripple.

As he is walking by the corridors of the hotel he sees Charlie coming his way.

“Hey man, what’s up?” says Charlie nodding at Adam.

“hey Charlie, how is it doing?” asks Adam as they both stop at a crossroad on corridors between rooms where Adam found himself walking, he learned with a paper in hand he can go anywhere and every one would think he was heading somewhere or coming back from somewhere.

“It’s all good, I Talked to Joe today and he said he Never saw that mean grinder cleaner since he bought it, he told me tell you, you can borrow whatever you want, whenever you want”

“Tell him thanks, maybe I will hold him to that” replies Adam as he starts moving past Charlie getting away from the possibility of a longer conversation, he takes a few steps and hears Charlie’s voice again.

“We on for next Friday?”

“What?”

“Remember you said we will go and play pool when the term is done?”

“Yeah, that’s this Friday?”

“No the next”

“Ok, yeah sure, we on” says Adam, and as Charlie nods and begins to turn he realizes that he is going to pump into the guest walking behind him with a coffee in hand looking down to his phone, he could say something but he wasn’t feeling particularly good about Charlie so he lets him pump into him, he deserved to be yelled at for being that clingy.

He pumps into the guest and makes him drop his coffee on the two of them, Adam smiles and turns around, he expected Charlie to come looking for him to ask permission to dry clean the guests cloth for free and perhaps send him a meal, he would give him that without taking it out of his salary after being an asshole to him till the day is done, that’s what was going to keep him busy for the next 20 minutes.

He takes a few more steps smiling as he can hear Charlie apologizing to the guests all so sincerely.

“Get your fucking hand of me” says the guest to Charlie who was trying to wipe the coffee of the guest’s cloth. What the guest said to Charlie was along the lines of what Adam expected and hoped for but the tone he used got Adam to slow down to remain within eye sight of what was about to happen.

“Are you fucking blind?” Asks the guest.

“I’m so sorry sir, I didn’t see you” says Charlie almost stuttering

“I fucking noticed that, that’s why I am asking, are you fucking blind”

“You didn’t see me to sir so...”

“Excuse me?” says Harry exploding in Charlie’s face “It’s not my fucking job to see you, it’s not my job to do anything to move out of your way, that’s your job asshole”

The guest’s loud voice and the look on Charlie’s face forces Adam to interfere, he starts moving towards them

“Excuse me sir” says Adam from a distance and as he was moving towards them one of the doors open and old head pops out,

“What’s going on Harry” asks the old head.

“Nothing, father” replies Harry.

“Hello Harry” Says Adam as he extends his hands to shake his hand but Harry doesn’t so Adam lowers his hand.

“What seems to be the problem” Says Adam as polite as he can be.

“Problem is that little asshole spilled hot coffee all over me”

“He is not an asshole, he is just a kid trying to do his job, as for the spilled coffee, I would be happy to get you another one and take care of the dry cleaning for you”

“He is whatever the fuck I say he is, Asshole” Says Harry closing the distance between himself and Adam, he was taller and heavier than Adam, he was poorly dressed even before the coffee spilled on it, his face was healing from multiple bruises and his breathe smelled like his mouth hasn’t seen a brush in years.

At that point the old head had put on a robe and joined them and Harry’s raised voice caused a couple more doors to open.

“Harry, that’s no way to talk” Says the old man

“Fucking look at me, I was minding my own fucking business and now look at me”

“The gentleman said he would get you another coffee and take care of your cloths, there is no reason to make big deal out of this” Says the old man getting Harry to back off, he looks at Adam and Charlie standing behind him one last time before starting to move back to his room.

Doors are shut but the old man still stands next to Adam who turns to Charlie so he places hand on Adam’s arm right above the elbow making sure to let him know he wants to talk.

“Make sure room service sends him a coffee and take his cloths for dry cleaning” Says Adam to Charlie who starts moving away.

“Sorry about that son” Says the old man to Charlie as he is moving away, Charlie looks backs and nods.

Adam turns all the way facing him so that he can take his hand of him.

“Yes, Sir” Says Adam to the priest.

“Hello son, I’m father Jason, I’m the head of this group, I would like to sincerely apologize for Harry’s behavior”

“No need for an apology father”

“Oh yes there is, that was unacceptable, but you will have to excuse him, Harry is going through a very hard time and we are all trying to help him get better”

“Its fine father, like you said no reason to make a big deal out of this”

“Indeed “says the priest with a smile “so can I consider us good”

“Better than good, it’s actually very good meeting you, I’m Adam the guest relations manager, I should have introduced myself earlier but as you can see we are kind of under staffed and we are not used to taking in big groups like you guys so I have been very busy, but let me say I’m all yours now if there is anything I can help you with, any events that need special organization, any special requests for any of the guests I can get room service to accommodate you guys with”

The priest seems very pleased by what Adam just said.

“That’s very generous of you son but I hope it’s not just the heat of the moment, I might hold you to that?”

“Try me” replies Adam.

“In that case we actually have a couple with us celebrating their 27th anniversary this week, we asked the About the price for the hall for a small party an even though the price was quite reasonable for a hall of that size but unfortunately it remained out of our reach, so if you can help us with that I would be very grateful”

“I’m assuming the price included the food, drinks and cake?”

“Yes indeed”

“How about we make the drinks food and cake complimentary from the hotel, that would lower the price by about 35-40%, of course we won’t be able to make a banquette, but we can get about let’s say 50 people fed, and happy and we will get a cake tasty cake that looks good in pictures, will that do”

The smile on the priests face seems to have reached its climax.

“That would be perfect, thank you so much Adam”

“No worries, I will make sure I will prepare everything by tomorrow morning, when is the anniversary?”

“Friday”

No worries, I will get everything ready by then” says Adam as he turns to leave

“Adam” calls the priest so Adam turns to face him again.

“Yes, Father”

“I hate to do this but I’m afraid I have something else to ask of you”

“Sure” replies Adam starting to feel trapped.

“Some of our group members are recovering alcoholics and I have been trying to figure out a way to a have meeting, god knows it would benefit some of them to talk” he says raisin his eye browse at Adam and pointing at the room Harry entered, Adam gets the hint and the priest continues.

“I was planning to have the meeting in one of the triple rooms but meetings like that need a special atmosphere where everyone can feel safe o that they share soy was wondering since I got you now if you any place here where we can have the meeting,”

Adam doesn’t respond and appears to be thinking which he was, not of a place, there was plenty of places where he could arrange for a dozen of people to remain uninterrupted for an hour or two, but he was actually thinking what would be the easiest place to hide a recorder and get the best sound.

“Have you been to the game room?”

“That’s a very public place”

“it’s only got one way in through one door that has 2 keys, so let’s say I get the 2 keys, you take one and lock yourself inside and I keep the other key with me just in case of an emergency, I’ll schedule with maintenance to leave an under maintenance sign on the door as well to make sure no one knocks, will that do?”

“I honestly don’t know what to say, you are very kind”

“In my own way” says Adam “ it was nice meeting you” he says as he extends his hand to shake the priest’s hand to make sure that was officially over and he will let him go.

“It was meeting you, Adam” says the priest to Adam who starts heading back to his office, his pace was fast and his walk was completely different, like he had a goal now.

He gets into his office where Diane was just about to leave, he gets behind his desk and opens his laptop and starts typing.

“Aren’t you going to leave?” she asks.

“No, something came up”

“I can see, you don’t seem to be bored anymore”

“Oh, I’m not” he says still looking down at his computer, she leaves.

He starts opening the hotel log book and going after the guest’s names looking for a Harry, until he finds him. Harry Harold, he then googles him and he finds a Facebook page that he checks out.

Last thing was a post he wrote 5 days before arriving at the hotel thinking everyone for their thoughts, wishes and prayer. Prayers for what wonders Adam, he then heads to Instagram and all he finds are pictures of him with a woman, the last post was about a month ago.

Adam heads back to google page and finds a news article with Harry’s name in it. It was a reporting on a fatal car accident 24 days ago, apparently a woman by the name Melissa Thomas was driving the car Harry was in and she drove into an older couple driving both cars into a tree destroying both cars and killing 3 out of the 4 involved, Harry was the only survivor.

Adam finds the car crash pictures and starts looking at them, judging by pictures of Melissa from Instagram she was much shorter than Harry, and both seats were pulled all the way back, the passenger door was the side the car slammed into the tree and so it was blocked by the tree so the only way she could have been taken out was through the driver’s side but then there would have been no need to pull her chair all the way back like that, Adam didn’t know what to make of it but all he knew at the moment was that Harry just didn’t sit well with him, he starts going in and out of fantasies including him, Harry and a lot of blood but he keeps trying to pull himself out by thinking about how dangerous it would be to take out a guest where he worked but he still couldn’t get Harry out of his head, he looks at his watch, he has been alone in his office for 40 minutes and so he calls it a day and heads home where he knows he will spend the rest of his day and his night trying to ignore himself, and even though he has been trying to do that his whole life, yet all he does is that he fails at it.

Adam gets in office late the next, he spends all day in office, he tell Diane that his leg is hurting and asks her to go outside on the tour instead of him, he was thinking about Harry all day but kept against the urge to leave the office.

Diane finishes her tour and she gets back in office but she wasn’t alone, she had the priest with her, he knocks before coming in.

“How are you Adam?” he says to Adam as he stands up to shake the priest’s hand.

“How are you father?”

“Good, I was asking about you and they told me Diane here was taking care of things today, and then she tells me your leg is hurt”

“Not really hurt, an old injury, just acts up from time to time”

“I hope it’s nothing serious”

“It’s nothing to worry about, I got it under control”

“That’s good to hear, so I was thinking maybe we can have one of our sessions today like we spoke”

“Absolutely, let me go take care of things, give me 20 minutes to set things up for you”

“If it would be any trouble, we can reschedule”

“No, it’s no trouble, I also need to head to the kitchen to schedule tomorrow’s event as well”

“you can get your guys and meet me down stairs in 20” says Adam as he grabs his jackets and starts putting it on and as he leads the priest out of the office and leaves with him.

Adam heads down to the kitchen first to arrange for refreshments for their meetings and anniversary tomorrow, the offer to be of help to the priest was a moment’s impulse to insert himself in the middle of the group to keep Harry close, but now that he decided not to pursue it, he dreaded every moment of it. It felt like an art class he took only to be close to his crush that ended up leaving and he still had to sit through fucking art class.

He reaches the kitchen and asks for big Sam, he is told he is by the kitchen door, Adam walks through the kitchen but before he gets to the door he notices a girl standing there talking to someone, she wasn’t pleased, she was beautiful, black hair tied behind her head, a small cross down her chest, her face was red and her long neck had a vein popping out of due to her trying as hard as she could not to yell at whoever she was talking to. Adam keeps moving forward to find out that she was talking to Big Sam,

Big Sam was a man in his fifties, he wasn’t a tall man as the nick name would suggest but whatever he missed in height he more than made up for in bulk, he was liked by everyone. He, Rob in administration and Mr. Greene were the only 3 employees left from before the place was a hotel, and even though he was menacing individual and a very respected chef who was always in complete control of his kitchen, he stood their taking it from this girl without as much as saying a word back to her.

Adam keeps his distance watching her display complete dominance over him without showing an ounce of strength, like she owned him or like he owed her something, she finishes talking and heads out, and she leaves through the kitchen door.

After she leaves Big Sam looks at Adam recognizing that he sees him and Adam starts moving to him, Big Sam sits on a small chair,

“How are you Sam?” Says Adam,

“Good, you?”

“I’m pretty good, so listen we have this large church group and they have a couple of things they need our help with”

“Like what?”

“First of all, they have an anniversary Friday for this really old couple and we I want to help them out, so I made a deal with them, they will pay for the ballroom and we are going to send complimentary food and drinks, they got about 20 people there, and we need to make them a cake”

“That will be a problem”

“We don’t make cake, we buy them”

“Ok, so?”

“So, things we can make here are fine we can take care of it with what we have, but will pay for the cake”

“How much would that be?”

“About 120 bucks”

“Fine” says Adam reaching into his pocket and takes out 120 dollars and gives it to him but Big Sam doesn’t reach to take it.

“What?” Asks Adam,

“There is another problem”

“That girl you just saw here, that was our bread and pastry provider, and just said tomorrow is her last day supplying and we should find someone else starting next week, so I don’t think asking her to make a cake on short notice is going to fly with her”

“Is there no one else that you can ask?”

“It’s the end of the day today, and tomorrow is Friday so everyone is fully loaded heading into the weekend I don’t know if anyone will make us the cake especially after what we did”

“What did we do?”

“We cut them off without notice and gave all of our supply to Morris Bakery”

“That’s the girl that just left?”

“Why did we do that?”

“The boss asked me to”

“The boss?”

“Mrs. Menken”

“When did she do that?”

“Last time she was here, before leaving she came down here and said she saw the Morris Bakery re-opened on her way here and when I told her that the daughter of the owner re-opened after her father died she asked to give her all the supply for everything”

“That’s odd”

“Not really, she knew the young kid whenever she and the old man used to have parties her the girl’s father would supply all the party needs, on the setup day she used to come with him and help, she must have been no older than 12, the old Mrs. loved having her around, but then the kid stopped coming with her father and a couple of years later she moved out and went to stay with her grandmother”

“Then whey does she want to stop supplying, we late on payments?”

“No it’s not that, we offered her to take her money in advance but she refused”

What is it then, we doesn’t she want to supply?”

The old man sighs and looks at Adam.

“Because I made her come her today”

“What?”

“When I asked her to supply, she made one condition, she never has to come here, she will send her statement with someone and we send her the check back, we send out a car every day to pick our order”

“Why the fuck are going through all of that?”

“Menken said to do whatever she asked for”

“ok and what Happened”

“today our car wouldn’t start and there was an order late and I asked her to deliver it herself, she said no, I said there was no other way, she said no I got pissed because I thought after all I did I was nice enough you know, I kind of got mean and said if she you don’t deliver then I won’t pay for any of it, so she brought it and said as a courtesy she will supply tomorrow’s order but that’s it”

“And there is nothing you can do about it?”

“I don’t think so, she didn’t want to supply here in the first place, but I said I needed her, I reminded her of all the sweets I made her when she was a kid and she said she would do it for me, now she won’t”

“Shit, and there is no other option?”

“If you can wait till Monday and can probably arrange for something”

“Sure I will go back in time 40 years and ask the young couple back then to postpone their wedding for just 3 days”

“Fine, Morris Bakery right”

“That’s right, what are you going to do”

“I will try something, anyway they also got meeting that’s about to take place in the gaming room, if you can send them something to drink that be perfect”

“What kind of meeting”

“A private meeting”

“A church’s private meeting, I can send them free beer”

“How about a fresh pot of coffee?” says Adam with a smile?

“I can do that, I also got some donuts about to go bad, I will send those well”

“Perfect” Says Adam as he heads out back to the main lobby.