Chapter Two: Joey, Joey, Joey
Once inside, a black marble reception area dosed me in reality and I became a preprogrammed android. Just as Ms. Monroe had led me to expect, I found a blond-haired receptionist sitting behind a black marble booth. Her smile drew me on mechanically.
"Yes sir, may I help you?" she chimed in what I sensed to be a worn but meaningful phrase, a phrase that pulled my next words from me.
"Ms. Handlesmen please, my name is Joe Lipinwiskme and I have an appointment," I muttered with a polite limp. I was nervous as could be and sweating hard. I found it difficult to look at the receptionist even with her head lowered, scanning the date book. She was just too pretty for me, even on a dare. I could only hope that Ms. Monroe had been correct in sending me here. If I feared the receptionist, how would I to react in front of a vice president.
"Yes... you may take any elevator from that bank. Take it to the thirteenth floor and exit, then enter the doors you find directly across from you," she explained. She was pointing in the direction of a long wall decorated with mirrors and three elevators.
"Thank you ma'am," I stated through a bold front she obviously saw through. Nothing seemed to help my ego. While walking away I looked around. I noticed all the walls, the floor and ceiling were of marble and reflected like the mirrors themselves. I spotted my figure in the black stone, saw the future and made to walk taller while adjusting my tie's knot.
"It's Ms. and good luck," she shot back. I wanted to look around at her but didn't. I knew she was smiling and probably laughing. I walked into a waiting elevator as quickly as I could, hoping she thought I didn't hear her.
The slow elevator ride seemed like an endless trip to the dentist. The cab's black marble interior, with its dainty silver trim and low lights did little to lighten the moment. I was so nervous I was trembling, I had to pee and I needed to wipe my brow a couple of times, under my nose more often. I'd realized no deodorant was going to get me through this day and I now realized, neither would a couple. I got off the elevator on the thirteenth floor and stepped into another monument to marble. I walked across the hall to the doors as instructed and knocked. I waited, but nothing happened and I almost figured I'd made a mistake, maybe I was on the wrong floor. I wiped my brow and once again caught my breath. There were more doors up and down the hall, but this was the one across from the elevator as I got off. Without thinking, I knocked again. This time I obeyed a voice that bid me to enter. I found myself in another reception room, but one quite different.
This reception room was an elegant study in natures' primary colors; reds, blues and yellows. There were a few white leather upholstered chairs about, near small well-polished tables. The tables were constructed of a very light colored wood that reminded me of flesh. On each table sat a silver trimmed lamp, along with magazines and ashtrays. Strange, eerie pictures decorated the offbeat colored walls. They were captivatingly bizarre and alluring works of art and every one of them reminded me of a man in pain... At least that's what I think I saw. Maybe it was all simply mental residue, ashes left on my id from all those ink blot tests Ms. Monroe had provided me.
Behind a well-polished black lacquered desk, sat a lady whose extremely stern expression contrasted sharply with her young unblemished beauty and the lively surroundings. She seemed to exist in a completely different room, or at least in another dimension. Both she and the desk seemed without color and it took me awhile to acclimate myself. She had black hair that she wore pulled back in a tight bun. She wore a sharp two-piece gabardine suit in black, over a crisp midnight blue blouse. She looked at me with steely gray eyes through black rimmed glasses, expressively terse. Her thin dark-red lips moved little as she spoke, but she was loud.
"Mr. Lipinwiskme," she asked in clear crisp words. Her voice snapped in the air like the tip of a bull-whip.
"Yes ma'am, I'm here to..." I began, but she cut me off with another snap.
"I know why your here young man! You may enter through that door, Ms. Handlesmen is expecting you," she said with an absolute air of authority, while gesturing toward another door. She seemed to have little regard for me and yet her eyes washed over me like a soapy washcloth in a shower. I'd been thrown off balance and didn't have time to think of my fears, I was acting without thought.
"Thank you ma'am," I offered, knowing it was of little consequence to such a cold creature.
I entered another room and gone were the colors. This magnificent office was done entirely in white, solid gloss white and complimented with just enough red to suggest a splattering of blood. It looked as if small bands of English and Irish knights, armed with only axe, sword and shield, had just completed a skirmish. These walls too, were decorated with suggestively painful pictures. There was one that reminded me of a very sore behind. I soon realized that many of the paintings were in fact male behinds, which reminded me of my mom for some reason.