Tom Simpson - Sink

“You mean you don’t love little old me, Brandon. All the healthy young men in America do. Why should you be an exception? But to tell you the truth, you’re one hundred percent right. I’m tired of all this Hollywood crap. Why don’t we go somewhere where we can talk?”

“You mean there is a human being beneath that glittery persona. I thought you were all big time show off.”

They wandered away from the admiring fans and were in a little alcove a few feet from the main lobby doors. They looked up occasionally and smiled at the fans that would look over at them but mainly concentrated on each other.

“Listen Brandon. I’m serious about this. My real name is Alice McDermitt and I am really tired of all this crap. I want to settle down and get married and have two point seven kids and have a house in suburbia with a station wagon and barbeques on the weekends. I didn’t think that this life could be so much of a strain on anybody. When I met you on the set, I started seeing the real you. Not the part you play. You were so sincere away from the camera that I thought if I could get a chance to talk to you, I could tell you how I really felt and maybe you wouldn’t throw rocks at me.”

“You really surprise me Tiffany. I mean Alice. I didn’t think there was a human behind all that makeup. You really…” His words were stopped in midsentence as the whole lobby suddenly fell like a runaway elevator. Brandon was knocked unconscious and Tiffany was hurled over backwards by the terrific force of the building falling. When she regained her feet, she knelt beside Brandon and tears came to her eyes. She thought maybe God is punishing me for being such a bitch.

The ornate dark oak doors to the main entrance of the lodge were propped open on their little chrome stops allowing the influx of guests not to have to crowd to enter the elaborately decorated lobby. The hotel manager, Dilford Bailey, stood at attention in his well-tailored tux, eyeing each person that entered the spacious room. Bailey, being solely responsible for the entire grand opening ceremonies, did not want anyone of suspicious character to cause even a slight blemish in his painstaking preparations for what had been billed, “The Event of the Decade.”

Evening gowns and tuxedos were the outfits of choice even though it was the middle of a hot summer afternoon. Many of the guests were quite comfortable in this type of fashion because of their lifestyles. There were many representatives of the state, excluding the governor because of an ill wife, and federal government along with several members of the royalty. Anyone of influential means or important family heredity was definitely going to put in an appearance at this grand opening. The Japanese multi-billionaire who financed the majority of the project was almost a household word and to miss an opportunity to show up at one of his gala parties was an almost certain social error.

The other employees were resplendent in their best hotel uniforms consisting of gold brocade dripping off the bell hops to the crisp starched white blouses of the maids. The entire setup rivaled any of the best New York had to offer and the contingent of guests equaled or surpassed any high society gathering held in the big apple.

Dilford Bailey, with his normal scornful expression, greeted the guests with an air of inpatients unless, they were of the elite, super important. These persons, either by wealth or high public profile, were catered to the minute they passed the doorway. Dilford would snap his fingers at one of the many stationed bellhops and expect the important guest to be led to a pre-marked table setting and a waiter to be immediately summoned to get the drink order. The manager’s hawk like vision noticed two men, he had not seen come through the front doors approach the front desk. Though they were dressed in tuxedos, they looked unnaturally out of place in the plush surroundings. There was something crude about them but, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He started to walk toward the front desk when he saw one of the men pull a revolver out of his coat and point it at the desk clerk. Just as Dilford Bailey opened his mouth to summon the security guard posted in the middle of the wall leading toward the front desk, he heard a gruff voice in his ear and felt a hard nudge in the area of his right kidney.

“Don’t make a sound Mr. Manager sir. I’d hate to blow a large hole in your back in front of all these nice people. Just stand right where you’re at and smile like I just told you a humorous story. Let my partners finish their little job and we’ll quietly walk out of here and no one will be the wiser, capice.”

The sweat broke out on Dilford’s usually cool forehead and he managed a very weak smile. He didn’t know how these idiots thought they could get away with this robbery in the middle of a room full of people but, so far they were. This could really wreck his grand opening plans if word of this got out, so he vowed to himself to not cause a ruckus after the robbers left but to quietly notify his guards of what happened and let them deal with it very sedately. After all his elaborate plans, no petty thugs would put a damper on his party. Only God could do that, he hoped.

Paula Howard, her hands still raised over her head, plunged straight down when the floor gave way. She had been hired just the week before as a temporary desk clerk for the grand opening. Now, she thought as she regained her senses about her, while trying to stand up behind the now collapsed check in counter, I start a new job and I get robbed the second week I’m here and then the whole place falls apart. This will look really good on my next job application. Sometimes, you just can’t win. Paula, part time model, part time actress,

The robbery, foiled in midstream by one of Mother Nature’s little “I will get even” tricks had collapsed as fast as the floor had. Frank Medford and Carrie Petringelo had lost all thoughts of cleaning out the enormous safe very visible through the office door. They now had one thought on their mind. Saving their own skins.

Frank picked himself up and tried to look around the collapsed room. Most of the emergency lights that were strategically placed around the building became dislodged from their locations near the ceiling mountings and were lying in or under the many piles of debris cluttering the room. The light in the room was so dim that any object further than ten feet away was virtually completely hidden from view. Frank looked down and saw Carrie unmoving on the lobby floor and he gave him a swift kick to his ribcage.

“Get up, you lazy asshole. We’ve got to find our way out of here.”

Carrie jumped up like he had been stung by a bee and rubbed his throbbing side.

“Why did you have to kick me Frankie?” He whined. “I didn’t do anything to you.”

“This is no time to play possum.” Frankie answered. “We have to get out of here before the whole place collapses.”

Frankie looked over the crumbled check-in desk and a puzzled look came over his face.

“I wonder what happened to the desk bimbo? She was right behind here the last time I looked.”

Paula Howard had ducked back down behind the largest standing fragment of the smashed desk when she heard Frankie yelling at Carrie. She had gotten on her hands and knees and crawled in the direction of the front doors. She knew she had been dealing with some really bad dudes and she figured they were really going to be mad now that the robbery attempt had been canceled. Paula continued crawling in the darkness until she realized she was out of voice range and she then stood up and ran toward the front of the building.