It was one of those glorious late spring mornings, when the sun pours things on so thick one can hardly see, and the outside world beckons with an inexplicable allure it was lacking just two weeks (and twenty degrees) ago.
Through the open sliding doors dividing an elegant hi-rise hotel room from its attached balcony, overlooking the cool blue of the Pacific Ocean, one could observe a man asleep in bed, immune to the morning’s allure.
The man’s arms and legs were awkwardly splayed out from his body, taking up the entire mattress. He looked like an octopus having a good stretch after crawling out of a bottle it had been cooped up in for quite some time.
Next to the bed sat a small nightstand. On its top lay an alarm clock and a cellular phone. The clock was emitting a high-pitched sound, and the cell phone was vibrating violently on the hard surface, registering an incoming call.
The occupant of the bed wasn’t bothered. He slept on.
The cell phone eventually stopped vibrating, and the caller was sent to voicemail. It shortly thereafter resumed its vibration, then once again stopped, then started vibrating yet again.
This third attempt on the caller’s part to reach the sleeping man seemed to work some magic. He stirred. Squinting through one eye at the clock on the nightstand, he emitted a sound of mild disgust. It was only ten in the morning.
Much too early.
He rolled over and covered his head with a pillow, letting the alarm clock continue its pitiful wail.
Suddenly the man’s eyes flew open. He gaped at the clock with a panicked expression. He sat up and switched off the alarm. Picking up his cell phone, he cleared his throat and answered the (now) fourth attempted call.
“Hello?”
“Are you just waking up? Please tell me you’re not just waking up.”
The caller was a woman. Her voice had a desperate tone.
“No,” the man lied, springing to his feet.
“Then why haven’t you been answering my calls? Your ride will be there in five minutes, and the schedule is tight.”
“I was practicing my speech,” the man once again lied, for he had no honor before coffee.
“O.k. I’m going to text you the driver info. Wait out front for him,” she grumbled, only partially appeased.
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“Will do! I’ll be down in no time.”
The call abruptly ended, and the man frowned. Then he sprinted to the bathroom to take a brief shower.
But perhaps I have been remiss, for I haven’t been completely forthcoming about the man’s identity. You see, I was that man.
Or rather, I should say, I am that man. And I was that man. But that doesn’t sound right. How does one express this sort of thing again?
Anyway, I was supposed to be on my way to a press conference being held to announce that I had won the Grensfeld Industries Great Worldwide Sweepstakes. My role at the event was to deliver a short speech to the gathered media. As usual, I was running so late that I was in danger of being a no-show.
My mission, in the speech, was:
* to paint an absurdly rosy picture of my future labors in the salt mines, serving at the behest of the Grensfeld Industries marketing department, and
* to appear grateful that I had been given all the money which the customers had been overpaying Grensfeld, so the company could accumulate the sweepstakes payout.
How can I possibly explain the chain of events that could have compelled me to do such a hideous thing?
You see, roughly this time last year, during a period when I was bivouacking for free on a dusty little patch of government land in Utah, a man showed up at my camper door out of the blue — a complete stranger mind you — and began to verbally accost me about why I never check my email.
I protested that the man’s accusation was unjust, feeling deeply offended. I told him that I do, in fact, check my inbox, at least once annually. If he had been sending me emails and had simply waited, there was a nonzero chance that I might have responded to him within the calendar year.
My words did not meet with a positive response. A number of additional words and suggestions (unworthy of inclusion in a story by a reputable author) were then exchanged in quick succession between us.
With our mutual outrage temporarily exhausted, the man took advantage of the pause and told me his name. It was Fred.
Of course he already knew my name for some reason, since he had been emailing me.
Following this rocky introduction, I learned that the man was a lawyer. It would seem that he had been repeatedly sending me email messages containing instructions on how I could claim my sweepstakes winnings.
Yes, you read that right: sweepstakes winnings. The man had shown up to give me cash. Millions of dollars.
After I came to that realization, my working relationship with Fred improved dramatically. I invited him into my camper for some celebratory Pepsi and Doritos, but he declined, showing a bit too much horror at the thought for my taste. He couldn’t hide it. The man’s face was a billboard for every emotion that passed through him. Right now, his face was advertising, “I could get tetanus just walking into that place. And it smells of old socks.”
Now, I’m not asserting that my new friend Fred was wrong about either the tetanus or the socks, but it was indelicate of him to reveal that the place I called home so revolted him. One wears a dignified mask in these situations.
I signed several forms and agreed to meet Fred again at his law firm’s office in Los Angeles, on Wednesday of the following week, to complete the remaining paperwork and to review the terms of the sweepstakes agreement.
I then secured a small loan from Fred, borrowed against my winnings, sufficient to power my wobbly home on wheels down the long desert highway to LA. This required some firmness, and sadly some further paperwork. I sensed that my new friend Fred did not implicitly trust me to pay the money back. It wounded me.
The proceedings concluded, Fred hopped in his car and drove off. I watched the dust cloud raised in his vehicle’s wake fading off into the distant desert. Then I went inside to have those Doritos.