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The Roach Hotel
“Gentlemen, we have
a deal.”
Byron pressed the button on the lower right-hand corner of
the speakerphone. The small light bulb went from green to clear, indicating the
call had been terminated. The sharply dressed but disheveled team erupted into
spontaneous applause. Ted popped open a bottle of Champagne; it was a genuine
French bubbly and proudly bore the label, as opposed to the less impressive ‘sparkling
wine’ moniker found on California champagnes. He handed the bottle to Byron
who raised it and addressed the team:
“I want to
congratulate each and every one of you for your hard work and dedication,”
he told them. “This was one of the
most complex negotiations I have seen, but well worth the effort. This deal
with the French will be remembered as a landmark deal in the history of our
young company.”
Byron took a swig of Champagne,
put his thumb over the neck where the cork had been and shook the bottle. He
sprayed the group and then passed the bottle to Ted who poured glasses for the
others.
“How civilized of
you Ted,” Byron said to his right-hand, his deep, serious baritone enhancing
the mocking tone of his voice. Ted took the cue from his boss and guzzled the
remaining Champagne
from the bottle and called for another. The Champagne
tasted good, Byron remembered, despite being warm. The case had been sitting
out, un-refrigerated for hours as the team engaged in the grueling home stretch
of what had become a marathon negotiation. It was nearly 12:30 AM on a
Saturday.
Byron turned to Ted: “Have the lawyers draft the contract and fax it to my hotel in Grand
Cayman for signature, first thing Monday morning,” he said.
Ted nodded in the affirmative.
Then to the now punch-drunk negotiating team: “Alright folks, I am out of here. Thank you
all, again; it was a stellar performance. Feel free to take the day off
tomorrow, except for those of you cockroaches with law degrees, that is.” Knowing smiles broke out on the
faces of the lawyers in the room. There was nobody without a smile.
Byron piled into his Black Mercedes
S-Class automobile, parked in the spot marked ‘Reserved for Chief Executive’. The on-board computer sensed the
presence of its master and immediately went about adjusting things to his
liking. It warmed his seat, adjusted the mirrors, tuned the satellite radio to
a station in South Bend Indiana
where Byron played football for Notre Dame before being suspended for steroid
use, and set the windshield wiper on variable-low to clear the light drizzle
that had begun to fall. Byron dialed his wife on the cell phone as he pulled
out of the parking lot onto the deserted road.
After a few rings: “Honey, sorry to wake you. Looks like the negotiation is going to drag
on through the night. I’ll crash at the office and pick up you and the kids for
the trip to the Caymans in the early afternoon.”
Familiar pause. “Love you, too.”
Byron steered his black Mercedes down
the sandy hill onto Highway 280 and headed north through Silicon Valley toward San
Francisco, under an inky black sky. Dark, saturated,
heavy clouds blocked out the stars like an all-pro defensive line. The Sun tried
to sneak some light through by tossing its beams to the moon, but a massive
cloud flung itself between the moon and earth. Byron dialed his right hand.
“It’s Byron. Have the French wire the money to the following account,”
he gave Ted his numbered account in Grand Cayman.
“And order more of those Champagne
labels with the waterproof glue.”
Familiar pause. “I love you,
too.” He laughed, and like an echo Ted’s laugh rebounded from the other
end of the line.
The rain was falling harder now and
the moonlight was barely visible on the edges of the cloud that had tackled the
moon. Byron cut over to Highway 101 and exited near the Civic
Center. The Mercedes
almost drove itself as it meandered up the familiar knobby hills to the
Fairmont Hotel.
The valet smiled and said: “Thank you Mr. Byron, sir,” as he closed his
fingers over two crisp twenty-dollar bills, one for gratitude, the other for
discretion.
As the valet slid into the driver’s
seat, the on-board computer sensed the presence of its deputized master and
adjusted things back to his liking. It killed the seat-warmer, re-adjusted the
mirrors, tuned the radio to Heavy Metal 24/7, and amped up the windshield wiper
to high as the super-saturated linebacker-like clouds let go their bounty.
Byron took the elevator to a suite on
the 19th floor. The woman inside the room sensed the presence of her
master, and she went about adjusting things to his liking. She put on some soft
music, dimmed the lights, and untied the strap of her robe, letting it fall to
the floor. No sooner was he in the room than Byron was screwing his mistress.
Simultaneously, he was screwing his
wife, his company, and the French.
Next morning the Sun threw its beams
directly now and they pierced the spent, pale, thin clouds and streamed through
the Eastern-facing windows of the Fairmont.
The light beams glided up the bed as the Sun rose, inching closer to Byron’s
eyes. He awoke with a start, as if the light was a knife stabbing at him. He
instinctively turned away from it and buried his head under the pillow. But
something felt odd. Not only was his
head under the pillow, his whole body was under there with it. Byron could feel
the soft threaded sheets beneath his feet, all four of them. The pillow was
crushing his antennae. He lowered his head to transfer the weight to the hard
shell of his back, relieving the pressure.
His in-head computer, although now
considerably shrunken, rifled through long neglected memory files and dusted
off one from freshman English. He had never actually read The Metamorphosis
by Kafka, opting instead to scan the Cliff Notes. With some difficulty, he
seemed to recall the story dealing with an outsider, a loser who suffers
literal and symbolic transformation into a huge, repulsive, wounded
insect.
His predicament was similar to
Kafka’s protagonist at the thirty thousand foot literary level, but at the
ground level of gritty detail it was decidedly different. First off, Byron was
the quintessential Insider; in fact he was formally labeled so by the
Securities and Exchange Commission and required to fill out SEC Form 144 as a
result. Second, he was no loser. Ask anyone, he was king of the hill, and
losers do not make it to the top of the hill. Moreover, he had not been
transformed into a huge, repulsive, wounded insect but rather a small,
repulsive, perfectly healthy one.
A feeling deep inside overwhelmed the
rational voice of his in-head computer. It was a feeling of fear. Oh my
Lord, what have I become?
Byron’s mistress walked into the
bedroom, naked, hair glistening from the shower. He peeked out from under the
pillow and suddenly fear was replaced by comforting warmth surging through him.
Damn she’s sexy, he thought to himself. He forgot himself, crawled out
onto the sheet and said, “Baby, you’re
absolutely beautiful”.
What Byron’s mistress heard was an
awful hissing sound. She looked down and saw a huge Madagascar
cockroach crawling toward her, antennae twirling in the air. “Ahhh,” she
screamed as she jumped back. “Byron, cockroach, ewww, giant cockroach on the
bed.” She grabbed the Gideons Bible
on the nightstand and lifted it with both hands over her head, certainly
overkill, but illustrative of her fear and loathing. Deeply embedded instinct
moved Byron a split second before the Bible came crashing down on the spot
where he had been and sent a shock wave like a tsunami across the mattress. The
wave threw him from the bed, and before he knew what was happening his legs
kicked into high gear. He scurried across the carpet and under the door. As he
fled down the 19th floor hallway of the Fairmont Hotel his thoughts
unexpectedly turned to religion. He had never been a spiritual man but then
again he had never been so close to being squashed by the word of God.
Byron’s theological thoughts were
interrupted by the voice of his mistress speaking hysterically to a hotel
attendant. He looked back and saw her
pointing in his direction and the attendant rushing down the hall toward him.
Byron quickly hopped a ride on the fender of a passing food cart. The cart
rolled into the elevator and, with Byron in tow, descended eighteen floors to
the banquet level. During the ride, Byron climbed the aluminum scaffolding to
the top of the cart.
He had worked up quite an appetite,
what after a night of unbridled sex, followed by a narrow escape of death by
crushing, and sprint the equivalent of 2.7 miles on human scale. The spread
before him was a meal fit for a whole executive team, which made it a veritable
Eden for a
hungry cockroach. There were meats and cheeses and starches and fruits and
syrups.
Byron felt compelled by an oddly
familiar force, one that completely overwhelmed his feelings of love, fear and
religion. He was swept up in it; helpless, he indulged his appetite, beginning
with the sweet syrups – maple, cherry, and boysenberry. The food cart rolled
into a large conference room and Byron rolled off the tray onto the shiny
wooden table, inflated from his gorging. The men around the table stopped
talking. One of them, a natty silver-haired man possessed of a regal air stared
at him with an expression Byron took to be impatience.
“I used to be a Chief Executive,” Byron tried to explain, fearing
the man would only hear a hiss and try to snuff him out with a shoe or
something. But he was too full to care, or to move for that matter.
“How good of you to join our support group,” the man replied. “Now please take your seat.” He pointed to an open chair and then turned
to the group, “Shall we commence?”
Byron watched as one of the men stood
up. “I used to be a cockroach,”
he began.
Out of breath, the hotel attendant
ran up, shoe in hand, and peered through the glass door into the conference
room. He looked from executive to cockroach and back again. Damn if he could
tell the difference.
Murray Brozinsky's fiction and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals.
Most recently he has published pieces in 3711 Atlantic, Aesthetica (forthcoming), Brink,
Laughter Loaf, Opium Magazine, and Prose Toad.
He has also written non-fiction for Wired Magazine and Business 2.0.
E-mail Murray Brozinsky
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