WE SOLVIN MATH PROBLEMS WITH THIS ONE [fire fire fire fire fire]

I hate numbers. They indicate to me the unending architecture of my place of employment, and the last time I dared to count all the floors, after stopping at the last prime, I gave up, told Continental to destroy the floors above it (all the composite floors only as he refused to believe it was the last), and further ranted to Aunt Nishi of this endless, unforgiving, unlasting place we call home.

But for me it’s always work, and work for the Family indicates a need for assistants. And I don’t need them! I drop the card.

I don’t know if Continental ever actually destroyed those floors. But it wouldn’t have changed anything, or left even an iota on the canvas of my dreams. My palace unending.

The truth. Always, it lies above. Above the last floor.

It doesn’t exist, Hilton, Marriott would say. Of course, he would. If it did, we could retire to the third dimension, and you could finally read. But as such, the Floors were endless, unending, unforgiving in the walk required of them. If only an assistant would leave me, unable to take them.

But they were only concrete; and concrete, as they say, is hard.

“Ms. Hilton, Ms. Hilton,” Rafflesia urges, tugging on my sleeve. I gracefully stop myself from colliding with the door – just standing there, brown, mired in dust – intricate designs of the ancient – no frame, just standing there. I execute a quick half-step, into en garde, but it’s just a door, I was quick to be influenced by Raffle’s raider racket, it’s just a door. Wide, tall, and the thoroughfare of many destinations, empty in rhetoric.

Raffle, my fledgling assistant, is still tugging.

“Why,” I say, and then, as I step to the side, to move around it, I see tall, heavy, and black, a suit concealing weapons, polished ebony shoes. A face that nods to his Hotelier, calls me by my first name. For the most instantaneous of iota I think with a gasp, Marriott, but no, he has just stood, a book in hand, pierced through, the smell of sand brimming from it – he is Continental.

“Continental,” I greet him, as is proper. He nods again, and, closing the book, faded linear photos showing glimpses of unbred time, broken statues, docked boats – Not a book, not a book, I can see – sits. A chair materializes beneath him. And then I see his guest, or rather one of the guests on this floor, the Mode – a peering face, flecks of orange, questioning eyes – the early riser, the astute observer, Ben Faulk.

He is looking past me. He’s having one of his own dreams.

“Mo-g’morning, Con-Continental,” Raffle quaffs, executing poorly a right-angle bow, instead doing an Olympic somersault. Continental merely nods. He seems to be watching Ben, and the rest of the hall is empty. Rightly terrified by our most terrifying Assistant. Said to be the sole responsible for Wyndham’s grievances…

“We are moving down to the foyer,” I tell him. “To greet the new Assistant.”

Continental nods. Ben continues to look, his lips moving.

Well, the Mode is an interesting floor, but I must move on –

Chirp, chirp. A bird. The bird. Now, I can’t help but stay. I find another chair, and sit upon it. I turn my head. Yes – this floor, rare for it, has a Window. And while the window does not look out beyond, into what lies there, I see the bird, fluttering her grey wings, tapping on the glass. Our most esteemed (well, for me) guest, Clarissa, today a morning dove, able to fly, directing me, I see, to a shard of mirror just below her window, on the floor. Two figures, father and son, pass through it.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Yes, I understand,” Continental tells Ben. Ben is nodding, his feet doing square, lost in time.

I don’t, the bird seems to say. I just see. I keep staring at the two figures. They, too are lost, in an endless step – they are still passing through it.

“How is the moon?” Continental asks, his voice the light that falls upon the ivory. I think of Luna, brushing her keys, doing the duty for all of us – and I adjust the lapel on my breast that reads, Chief Hotelier.

“The daughter is saccharine,” I respond. I – for a second – imagine the two, Continental keeping his weapons steady, as he twirls Luna around, her glasses reflecting. A series of notes, going through them as they laugh.

Continental nods. He is still looking ahead, at Ben. “And who is this assistant? Are they not coming up, to meet their hotelier?”

A sense of affirmation fills the room – from Ben Faulk, filling the room with his understanding and the different way he sees. He lives in a world that treats its assistants not like the ruler of his domain.

Well, not the chief ruler. There are still words to go by that the original Matriarch, the Trivago, still polishes glass pieces in some far-off place, a reflection, or a floor I have yet to visit…

“I will attend,” Continental says. “I have word from your brother.”

“Marriott?” I nearly choke, on my nonexistent liquid of Faunus. Raffle makes horrifying scratching noises on their racket. Luna, back on the piano, must have struck the soft pedal too hard. If Marriott sends word then perhaps I do have a job to do here. I let myself laugh, just a bit…

Continental in a sightless gesture rearranges his weapons. There are five of them, I think – at least within the torso. “No, your brother does not send word. But he has visited the Sciences and Chosen Adventure, and after his passing, some guests have left their rooms to go up.”

“Up? Up where?” We decide their rooms, we the staff, their ordained overseers, their regal retainers. With cards to play, coffee to sip, or curtains to pull back. A guest leaving their room is something to do. Sighing, I give my assistant – Rafflesia, who is not my equal – a profound tap on their shoulder. “It’s time to go. Which floors?”

Pray, do tell, he does not say, the Memory Comes, for that floor is haunted, with the laughing of children. But surely, my new assistant can wait a day.

“Those two, Hilton. As well as Fahrenheit and Regalia.”

“I sent H. F. D. to Regalia, with dessert samples.” Continental hates H. F. D., which is why I always send the dogged assistant on errands to floors far above the Foyer. At least two hundred above. Or was it two thousand? Where is Regalia again? Bones and surreal dales.

“I believe H. F. D. is their guide. He’s well familiar now, with all of the deliveries you’ve given him.”

Ben Faulk is now whispering, but of course I can’t hear it, I’m straining to listen to this new scheme of my eldest, dear brother who just cannot tolerate “Hilly” having this new position, Aunt Nishi trying her best to calm us, as we welp and scream with gnashing of teeth.

But it’s Continental. And I gave him a mission.

“Continental, but the floors above the last prime were destroyed. With your armament. Your armoire.” I beckon rather diligently to his shoes, which know I contain, at least two separate and dignified pieces from two different continents and two separate worlds.

“I’ve come from up there, Hilton. There is a new prime. Marriott is giving the guests an idea. To go up to the top floor.”

“There is no top floor.” I say it because I know it to be true. I do not say it because I know it to be real.

Rafflesia whines, and Faulk has retreated to his room, pulling the door (a clock hung from the knob) shut.

Continental stands. He looks at the intricate door, embossed beyond his understanding. Drawn, some of the guests say beneath their blankets sewn of comets, beneath their shrouded stars, from the same material of the Mural. He looks at the door and knows where it leads.

“Marriott is expanding the hotel. A guest that spends the night, requires a room.” And with that dour sentence, the once assistant of Hyatt, going under a different name then, opens the door and walks through, crossing the threshold of grey.

“Your brother is giving them… inspiration,” he says as he descends. His bowler, dim in the dark, lights the way. I do see the doors that open behind me, for some others are awake, calling one another by their names and the references they received to come, to arrive upon the Foyer, but I am thinking deeply, now, and it’s not because I’m yearning for the coffee they serve on the Menu, but it is because there are still so many floors to go, and Rafflesia besides me just wants to play raider.

Or that earlier sport that mocked a certain member of the gourd family.

“What’s next?” I ask them, and as the guests call for their hotelier, asking where’s the windows or can you show me to the spa, Raffle holds the door open for me, faded angels and sour states seeming to crowd the filigree, and I walk through.

“Comicon.”