Robert Swartwood - Legion

The waitress brought their food, and they each picked up a fork, ready to devour their salads like ravenous herbivores.

“So anyway,” Melissa said, smiling again, her best friend back, “tell me about this loser. I could use a good laugh.”

Talk about bad luck.

I’m in some office building on Fifth Avenue-after a while they all start looking the same-on the twenty-seventh floor, and I’ve just picked up a package that needs to make it downtown in forty-five minutes. It’s only eighteen blocks, so it’s really no sweat, and I’m in the hallway headed toward the elevator when the lights briefly flicker and an alarm starts going off. I look around, just like everyone else, wondering what the hell this is about, when a voice comes on over the intercom, one of those calm but scary voices, informing everyone in the building to please stop what they’re doing and go to the nearest stairwell and head down to the street.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” says a guy in a suit in front of me, standing right in front of the opened elevator.

My sentiments exactly.

So then everyone’s up on their feet, headed down the hallway, past the elevators toward the stairwell. And, for the most part, everyone does so in a nice and orderly fashion. Except we’re twenty-seven stories up, and there’s another ten stories or so above us, and the stairs, they’re not very wide. Everyone could probably squeeze two at a time going down, but for some reason everyone goes single file, and the lights keep flashing and that alarm keeps blaring and that calm but scary-as-fuck voice keeps asking everyone to please stop what they’re doing and evacuate the building right this second.

I’m conscious of the time as we descend, checking my watch every thirty seconds, as if that will move things along any quicker.

Murmuring works its way up and down the line, people speculating what could be wrong-fire, terrorists, the usual bit of scariness-and to break the tension I contribute the possibility that we’re in the midst of a zombie attack.

Nobody seems to think that’s very funny.

The stairwell quickly fills with the overbearing stink of aftershave and perfume, the combined odors making it almost impossible to breathe. One of the suits in front of me, bored now with the speculation of what’s causing the evacuation, mentions Timothy Carrozza, and like that, it starts off a chain reaction of questions and comments, these jokers being lawyers, after all, even if they are corporate. One of them mentions ADA Baxter, and another says he saw her on the news and boy oh boy is she a fox, and something inside of me starts to stir, a big brother impulse to stand up for his little sister, which is strange because she’s three years older than me, and besides, I don’t even know her well enough anymore to feel as if I need to stand up for her in the first place. And besides, this guy isn’t badmouthing her; he’s just commenting on how good looking she is, and really, is that a crime?

Still, the last thing I want to think about is my sister and her big career-making case, so I tune out the guys in front of me and listen in on what the women behind me are talking about, which happens to be a bachelorette party one of them attended over the weekend. Okay, now we’re talking. Only, it seems, this bachelorette party is the lamest bachelorette party of the year, the girls going shopping and having dinner at a fancy restaurant (the kind, one of the girls says, where they use a brush to wipe the breadcrumbs off your table), then going to the movies to see the new Matthew McConaughey flick, because, apparently, the bride-to-be is a recovering alcoholic (one year next month), and the girls wanted to make sure she had a good time.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I mutter without realizing it.

Behind me, the women stop talking as we continue our exodus (what floor are we passing now, the seventeenth?), and I glance back and see a few of them giving me the kind of glare that’s supposed to signify just how much of an asshole I am.

I smile back and shrug. “Fucking zombie attack, huh?”

Nothing. Not even an eye roll.

I glance at my watch, just like I did thirty seconds ago.

Like I said, talk about bad luck.

• • •

Except no, I’m wrong. Bad luck isn’t getting stuck on the twenty-seventh floor of an office building, moments before getting on the elevator, before an emergency alarm sounds out and then being forced to hoof it down those twenty-seven floors with a bunch of suits to the street. No, bad luck is going through all of that to come outside to find someone has stolen the wheels off your bike.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!”

Nobody even notices my outburst. Why would they? They’ve all just escaped the terrifying clutches of their office building, and no, the reason is not a zombie attack but a fire. At least I have to assume it’s a fire based on the two fire trucks parked out front, their rooftop lights flashing, a couple firemen directing people out of the building while a few others head inside, decked out in all of their gear.

Everyone crowds around on the sidewalk, while taxis and buses and cars go zooming past, while tourists and the usual Manhattan hustlers and bustlers walk on by like there’s nothing wrong.

I hurry over to the bike, fall to my knees, grab hold of the titanium frame, as if it’s just an illusion that both of my wheels are missing. Nope, they’re still gone. The son of a bitch who did this-and who the fuck does something like this, really? — used wire cutters. No, not wire cutters- bolt cutters. Surprisingly, they didn’t even touch the chain keeping the frame secured to the pole. Sure, my bike isn’t the most expensive piece of equipment currently gracing the streets of Manhattan (it’s not even halfway expensive, really), but I’ve had it for two years and, fuck, it’s mine .

“Shit, shit, shit, shit! ”

Again, nobody notices my outburst. Well, that’s not true. One of the women who was behind me on the stairwell, one of the women from this past weekend’s lame bachelorette party, notices, and is she trying to suppress a smile? That bitch, I think she is! I’m half-tempted to give her the finger, but I have to remember I’m representing my company right now, and the last thing I need is for her to complain to Hank, my supervisor, because he’d just love a reason to get rid of me. I’m good at what I do, no doubt about it-in fact, I’m one of the best, always deliver my packages on time, never lose my manifest-but I’ll admit, I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with, and Hank is the kind of supervisor who would love for his entire crew to be trained yes men and yes women. My only saving grace is Reggie, my dispatcher, who like most dispatchers is a retired courier who knows the city, who knows the streets, who tracks our locations when we pick up and drop off, so we don’t have to go far out of our way when he sends us to the next client.

My mind races. What am I supposed to do now? Take a taxi? It could work, but we’re talking about the noon rush hour, and quite honestly, all day is rush hour from here to my intended destination. There’s a subway entrance three blocks up, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s headed downtown. Won’t let me off right on the block I need, but it would be close enough.

Fuck it. I reach into my pocket for my cell. I dial Reggie’s number, and listen to it ring two times in my earbuds before he picks up.

“Yo,” he says.

“I have a problem.”

“What’s up?”

I fill him in.

He says, “Shit, dude, are you serious?” I hear voices in the background, typing, the usual dispatcher noises. “That sucks.”