by Kevin Bliss
Not that it matters. They do a lot of typing. Thus, they’re our kind of customers. Not everything that comes from Dunigan ribbons adds up to great ideas and great words.
The receptionist I expect to find out front is in the conference room, firmly planted on the lap of one of the Bittingers – and none too happy about it if I read faces well. So brazen. Even as I sit down at the table and present the product line, the Bittinger in question doesn’t let the receptionist climb off his lap and resume her duties.
No fool, me. I’m just meeting these fellas. Better to get an order than have any of them know that I think the imposition on the receptionist is crummy stuff. I’m rewarded with a purchase of ribbons only slightly lower than Trussphink’s last business with them. Things are a little stagnant, they say.
“We need more, you’ll hear from us,” the youngest Bittinger tells me. He’s no more than thirty, wears a suit off-the-rack and is clearly low man on the totem pole to his siblings. I can relate.
Escorting me out, younger brother fetches a cup of coffee called for by one of the older brothers. I leave the office, glancing over my shoulder and catch him spitting in the cup before returning to the bull session in the conference room.
I don’t know much about lawyers, but I hope the Bittingers are not as bad as they seem. I worry they’ll find it hard to stay in business the way they conduct themselves…and I’m going to need sales to hold steady if I want to keep this territory.
It’s eleven-thirty-five in the morning. Plenty of time to walk to the plaza I was told would be the best place to see Kennedy. The tip comes courtesy of a bellhop at the hotel:
“Grassy area. Like a little park. I see where he’s going past there. That’s the spot I’d pick to watch him,” he’d said.
I’m happy to put the Bittingers behind me and go do something that I’m betting no one in Tyler City has ever done before. My sample case is a bit of a burden, but that won’t stop me. It won’t diminish the experience – even if I have to leave it somewhere to get a better look at the President.
It takes the elevator a good long while to reach the fifth floor. When it does, three secretaries pour out and scatter into various offices along the hall. I climb in, press the button for floor number one and wait. It’s one hell of a clunky elevator – the sort that seems as if it’s run by a pair of chipmunks on an exercise wheel. I press the button again just as an obese man at the far end of the hall pushing a dolly with a stack of cardboard boxes appears and holds up one hand for me to let him share the ride. I can almost see the beads of sweat on his shiny head.
I don’t consider myself to be much of a bastard. But I have my moments. This is one of them. Pressing and pumping and growling at the first floor button, I manage to engage the elevator. I’ll probably never forget the look on the man’s face as he loses the rush to beat the closing doors with his ungainly load slowing him down.
Some things are too important. I’m going to grab my piece of ground like the homesteaders years ago. I’m going to see the President. Everyone else be damned for the next hour.
What I don’t count on is the way that life – the universe – whatever it is, has a habit of bending you over and kicking you in the ass when you’ve done something rather shitty. I’m not thinking of the really horrendous acts – crimes and such. It’s the little stuff. The occasional “tests” that allow us to be decent to our fellow man in a seemingly inconsequential way. And I have just failed.
Somewhere between the fourth and fifth floors, the elevator jolts to a stop. The lights flicker once or twice and then go out completely. So black I can’t see my watch. Still, I try like hell to squint and make out the time, as if I’ll develop the ability to overcome pitch dark if I will it to be so.
Surely, this kind of thing happens a lot with such a turd of an elevator. What could it be? Five minutes? Ten at the most?
Funny how being deprived of light and sound can distort one’s sense of time. For the entire duration of my wait, I convince myself that there’s still a chance to see the President.
The light never returns to the elevator. With jerks and rattling, the darkened box begins to move, an inch at a time. They must be cranking the damn thing down by hand. A final thud, settling me on solid ground, is followed by an insistent creaking and the grind of metal on metal. The doors are pried open and a flood of light accosts me to the point where I have to cover my eyes with one forearm until my pupils adjust. I finally manage to read the time on my watch: 1:51 p.m. Kennedy’s long gone. No doubt about it.
“You okay?” asks one of the firemen tasked with opening the crappy little box which had kept me from the experience of a lifetime.
I nod, too frustrated to speak.
“You didn’t do anything strange up there, did you? These things aren’t supposed to fail.”
It’s someone else talking to me. It takes a second as I squint at him. Somebody in a suit – he probably belongs to the building somehow.
“I just pushed the button. That’s all,” I say.
“Okay, okay. We’ll give it the once over. Building manager asked me to pass along his apologies. Hope we didn’t make you late for anything.”
“Yeah,” I say, not bothering to mention the President’s visit. It might make me sound like a tourist to these Dallas folks.
I stretch my legs for a minute, peering out the glass doors that lead to the street. The fireman has fetched my sample case and sets it beside me with a nod. The fella with the apologies is back:
“Listen, you’re going to hear soon enough, but you might find it hard to believe. It’s true what people are saying out there. Confirmed on the news and everything.”
“What’s true?” I ask.
“Kennedy. He’s dead. Somebody shot him.”
Also by Kevin Bliss
To read the entire book, just go to False Witness at Amazon.
