A Day In The Life, Part I Jun 25 '04 (Updated Jun 27 '04)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Mildred D. Taylor - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: A Literature Unit From $8 Olivier Dunrea - Ollie From $7 The Bottom Line Part I of a short story... Enjoy! This, like the last story that I submitted, was produced for my Grade 12 Writer's Craft. This particular piece was for my final assignment, worth about 15% of my mark and eventually grew to about twenty pages in length. This particular piece is the first half of the story (so don't be confused if you find it really anti-climactic, because there's much more). Part II can be found here. Enjoy! * 1 * Joseph Trescott peered over the steering wheel and aimed the front wheels of his jet-black BMW into the oversized parking spot, its middle damp with leaked oil but stencilled with yellow paint, “Reserved for Executive Vice President,” squeezing between a fire-engine red Ford Mustang and a gun-metal grey Cadillac Escalade with darkly tinted windows. Cool to the touch and no doubt hiding expensive leather seats with warming back massagers and custom speakers. “A few more years; that spot’s mine,” Joseph grumbled, grimacing at the worn, fading and torn interior of his luxury sedan. Yawning quietly, he unconsciously ran a hand through his thinning black hair and picked up his dark leather Samsonite briefcase from the passenger seat, leaving the vehicle and stepping out into the cool air of the downtown parking lot. The sky was dull in every direction; melting piles of snow gathered in puddles on the uneven asphalt and towering skyscrapers seemed to rise from the cement. The buildings were tall - most at least thirty stories, and several at over eighty they seemed to get lost in the dense cloud accumulation the further up someone looked. The grey of the buildings blended right into the sky and the dark windows reflected everything that they saw. On one, miles in the distance but still clearly visible, a cleaning crew was busily going about their work. High enough, Joseph frowned, that they could fall to their death and have their world crumble around them in a split-second. Or seconds, depending on how long they might spend in free fall. The aging executive followed a paved sidewalk from the reserved parking lot, curving gently left until the cement turned to marble and one of the highest buildings in the district completely dwarfed over him, blocking out any remaining sunlight that had managed to fight through the dense lifelessness of the sky that morning. The front entrance of the building slid open automatically to greet its daily visitor; as Joseph stepped through into the opulent, pillared waiting room, the temperature quickly rose and he shook off the morning frost from his chilly bones. The foyer of the Shauster & Stevens marketing headquarters was easily one of the most impressive - and intimidating - rooms in the enormous building, matched only by that of the CEO, whose office had grown over the years to occupy the entire sixty-third floor. Columns, rich with detailed carvings circled the main entryway, supporting the domed ceiling (at least forty feet in the air) that was covered carefully with its own ornate design. Around the edges of the convex dome, a lip protruded and four hand-crafted gargoyles sat opposite from one another, glaring down spitefully on the room below them. All of the anteroom’s light emanated from a single chandelier at the very highest point on the ceiling, crafted from gold, encrusted with diamonds, and whose light barely filtered down to the polished mineral flooring. Around the edges, outside of the circle of columns were several long couches sitting side by side and upholstered with the finest Italian leather that Gene Shauster could personally track down thirty years ago - and in the very middle of the hall was a single rectangular kiosk that dominated the room. Handcrafted from the finest woods from the four corners of the world, it alone was a sight to behold. Four security guards sat on desk chairs within the booth, absently watching a loop of security tapes on a wall of monitors, occasionally whispering to one another. The massive room, however, picked up on even the slightest noise and conversation echoed endlessly in the great hall. Joseph’s heels clicked loudly on the floor, echoing along with the whispers as he marched right by the security booth. One of the identically outfitted guards - dressed in black slacks with a white button-up shirt and a colourful shoulder patch - looked up from the monitors and nodded curiously. “Morning Leroy,” Joseph returned the nod and passed by the desk as the four gentlemen looked back at one another. The open lobby narrowed into a carpeted hallway with harsh, fluorescent lights glowing from the wall panels on both sides, concluding in an endless series of heavy elevators. Whistling, Joseph pressed the nearest button and waited for the gentle ding that signalled the arrival of the next machine, which he stepped silently into - greeted by a number of young men and women in similar business attire staring vacantly at the floor indicator above the sliding doors. A number of buttons, including the one indicating floor seventeen, had already been lit up by the waiting businessmen. People fidgeted awkwardly as the elevator gradually scaled its way up - administration took up the first four floors, janitorial services was on the sixth, and guided tours operated out of the seventh. When the compartment finally slid to a halt on the seventeenth floor, it was nearly empty. A much larger and more decorative elevator catered to those who had Mr. Shauster’s blessings. What was left of the waiting men on this particular elevator car rushed out at once into another long hall. The young men and women walked with purpose, filing one-by-one behind their office doors and disappearing for what would be hours. Joseph, however, was used to this routine and moved against the wall to allow others to pass - patience was his strong point; he had waited fifty years for this privilege so he was going to savour every moment of it. Besides, there was very little to do, anyway. When the hall was again empty, Joseph shoved his hands into his pockets and strolled down it, skipping lightly and humming a tune, occasionally stopping here or there to glance in an office window or give a knob a twist. A number of the doors opened and their inhabitants were greeted jovially by the affable Mr. Trescott. Others were still locked and the boss made a careful note of who had failed to arrive on time, the non-team players who just weren’t right for a team-oriented company like Shauster & Stevens. Joseph loved this part of the day; not only did it allow employees to make a connection with their team leader, but once in a blue moon it also allowed him to root out a troublemaker and present problems to Gene Shauster on the sixty-third floor - Gene Shauster, who was rarely ever seen. You used just about any excuse you could to discover the radiance and brilliant eccentricity of the man who built a multi-national marketing firm from the ground up. The hall turned sharply right after fifty yards and Joseph came to a halt before the corner office. Stencilled on the door was a room number (1717), and above that was a gold-plated plaque, carefully inscribed with Joseph’s job title. Rustling through his pockets, Joseph cursed loudly. The key was sitting on his dresser door in the master bedroom, along with a file that he’d been reviewing late the night before. Unfazed, and with surprising expertise, Joseph Trescott found himself using a library card to jimmy open the rudimentary lock. After a few seconds of jiggling and with Joseph nervously glancing over his shoulder, the heavy door unlatched and swung gently open. The colossal corner office dwarfed the rest of the floor - at least three times the size of a normal office and four or five times larger than the closets reserved for the interns, it was painted off-white. Three ceiling fans hung from fifteen feet above and a mahogany desk sat in one corner, surrounded with desk chairs. Two massive windows against the far wall looked far out into the distant cityscape - office buildings melted into homes and farmer’s fields far off in the distance. The cubist structure of the room was an example of purely beautiful architecture and rumour had it that the higher anyone went in the building, the nicer the corner offices became. The ninety-seventh floor office had been the subject of several feature articles by architectural magazines and television design programs, but it had been empty for seven years since Mr. Shauster demanded that his floor number correspond with his age. Now, with each passing year, the core of Shauster’s empire relocates just a few feet higher. There was one thing that set this particular suite from the others, though - aside from a black personal computer, the desk and chairs, and the company owned Picasso prints adorning the walls, it was completely bare. Nothing in the garbage pail, no family photos concealing the stunning grain of the desk, and no files. It was as if no one had ever used this office as a place of work. Which, Joseph sat down in the leather chair behind the desk, was exactly the way he liked it. No distractions, just the perfect room with a perfect view. Hours passed; Joseph watched the diamond-encrusted second hand on the wall clock tick as he drummed his fingers absently. This was how he spent most of his days: long periods of nothing interspersed with brief flashes of excitement - if, that is, there is anything about marketing that anyone finds exciting. Shauster & Stevens was, according to the widely distributed promotional brochures that Joseph had memorized word-for-word, the fourth-largest marketing agency in the country, with clients as big as Chef Boyardee and as small as the local bowling centre; it was also a firm that dabbled in accounting from time to time (of course, this wasn’t in the brochure, just something that Joseph had picked up on during his stay), as well as a few questionable practices that most of the employees wisely kept their mouth shut about. “Employing 50,000 people worldwide and worth an estimated $73 billion,” Joseph rattled off the statistics quicker than he might the alphabet, “Shauster & Stevens has over 1200 major clients.” And so on. * II * The midday sun was finally breaking through the dull clouds and shining into the room when Joseph lifted himself out of his seat and wandered out of the ‘executive suite,’ carefully positioning a garbage pail so that the doors would not close and lock him out again. The halls, decorated identically to those on the first and every other floor, were empty and quiet. The only sound around was the aggravating hum of fluorescent lights and the furious click of fingers on keyboards that seemed to drift out of every room. One door only a few yards away from Joseph’s own room was half-open: curious, Joseph glanced inside at the office and whistled. Constricting and windowless, with no room to move. Inexpensive Ikea furniture absolutely inundated with and nearly collapsing from thousands of files, technical drawings, sketches, computer printers and powdered doughnut residue. “Morning there, Teddy. I’m a little curious as to why the… uhh… Henderson file never passed by my desk on its way upstairs. Any chance you could scrounge me up a copy for review?” The young man behind his desk looked up and frowned. Teddy was a wiry little man with dark stubble covering his chin and loose locks of brown hair slicked back with a healthy helping of hair gel. Wire-rimmed glasses hung from his uneven nose; his face was pale and haggard from lack of sleep and white doughnut powder covered his lips and left cheek. “Henderson?” He looked around at the chaotic mess of his office, “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with…” Joseph raised his hand, interrupting, “I’m sorry. I meant Hennison. Or was it Henry?” The elder man stepped into the room and moved a set of papers to sit in an uncomfortable chair across from the desk. “Oh, Ok! Henry. Yeah, I’ll get that right for you,” Teddy wiped his nose with the back of his arm absent-mindedly and stood, looking at the mess before him. A few silent moments passed with Teddy under his desk, quietly cursing, before he emerged victorious with a one-inch thick, beige file folder that he handed across the table. Joseph nodded thanks and snatched the papers away, marching out into the hallway and slowly returning to the comfort of his own space. In the background, he could hear the doughnut-faced youngster engaged in another conversation, but the words couldn’t quite reach down the hall. After a brief excursion to the staff room for a Styrofoam cup of disgustingly oily coffee, Joseph returned to the office and sat down, dropping the file with a heavy thud on the table. Legs carelessly draped over the table’s edge, he grabbed a pen and opened to the first pages, thumbing through and making notes in the margins. The file was massive; enclosed in the beige folder and held together with a rubber band were pages and pages written in tiny ink, lines further blurred by repeated photocopying and smudged from over-handling. He had to squint as he tipped back the coffee, slurping it loudly, not at all deterred by the terrible taste left on his lips. Most of the papers were standard forms, carefully documented research and step-by-step brainstorming. The coffee was awful - burnt, as usual - but the files were fascinating. Sketches, slogans, cost figures… everything. Joseph rapped his knuckles on the desk and exhaled. A deal totalling $17 million. He reached for a calculator but found only air. Sitting on the desk, right next to the room key. So, carefully, he kept a tally in his head, mumbling to himself as he did. He went through the numbers a second time, and then a third and a fourth. * III * By the time the clock struck three, Joseph Trescott had been sitting behind his desk for four hours. Every page of the Henry file was covered in blue Bic ink, filled with numbers that on their own meant nothing - but each set, added together, equalled $3 million and change in savings for the company. Of course, some of the difference was added through some “creative” accounting and dodging of laws, but $3 million was $3 million, an amount that no one would possibly turn down. Joseph placed the papers gently back on the tabletop and rubbed the burning sensation and the spots in his vision from his eyes, suppressing a growing hunger in the pit of his belly and a severely parched throat. He spun in his chair and faced the windows, watching the sun slowly falling from its midday peak; the clouds were lurking in the distance, waiting to challenge and reclaim their territory. The natural light flooding through the windows dimmed and a content man sat in an upholstered leather seat, a dazzling, toothy smile plastered over his face. Nearly a half-hour passed before Joseph shook the cobwebs from his head and turned away from the windows. Again he picked up the tome of papers, but this time he thumbed through to the storyboards and sketches. Time stood still as Joseph looked at each one, tracing the pencil lines with his forefinger and speaking softly to himself. Another half-hour passed, then an hour, then two and when Joseph looked up from the drawings, the sky was almost totally dark. With little show, this confident man gathered all of the papers back into the folder and stood, grabbing it and his briefcase and whistling that same tune as he walked out of the office door. Joseph stopped in front of an office door and gazed inside. Doughnut-face was clearly exhausted, at last draping his coat over his shoulders while carefully cradling a load of rolled up papers in his left arm. He glanced up, lips pursed. “G’night. See you tomorrow, sir,” he mumbled softly. “Goodnight,” Joseph nodded in the young man’s direction, “Actually, wait a minute. Could you make a couple changes to the Henry file real quick? I made some notes in the margin and it shouldn’t take too long.” He tossed the papers onto the cluttered desk; a cluster of other pages fell off onto the floor. Teddy’s nervous grin quickly faded and his mouth drooped at the edges. His eyes sunk as he opened the unwrapped the elastic cover and took in the sea of blue scribbles. “I’ll be here all night!” He shook his head and looked as if he was about to protest, then with a grimace thought better of it, resigning himself to his fate. “The files are due upstairs tomorrow morning. Best of luck,” Joseph gave a half-salute and turned back into the hall, but he could hear the rustling as Teddy removed his coat and fell dejectedly into his seat with an exasperated groan. Joseph followed the curve of the hallway to the row of elevators, of which one was already waiting, doors open. He rode it down the first floor, ambled through the hallway and main lobby and out of the front door that closed behind him with a hushed click. As he stepped out from beneath the tall building’s shadow, he shivered and felt the first drops of rain that were indicating a fast approaching thunderstorm.

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