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William Mathis
Prof. Hermanson
Expository Writing
7 September 2002
Green Tile: Memoir Of This Thing That Happened One Day
The hotel lobby was filled with a happy cheerful volume of sound. A hundred joyously
gay individuals producing a torrent of noise that blotted out all intelligibility. The vast room was
filled with riotous people coming and going, all choosing to join the wall of activity. The
colossal scale of the grand entrance would have normally dwarfed all sensation of mirth with in
it but by shear number the lot had beaten the sobriety of the somber structure until it stood
silently as a spectator in much the same forlorn way a child stands in the corner. Here and there
tiny, inconsequential glimpses of the child could be seen through the mass of revelers. A potted
fichus tree standing proudly, a plate of the skylight glass streaming sunshine down, a thin sliver
of white and green tile as the crowd parted away for people to pass. I moved following the sliver
of green and white as it jumped like a terrorized deer through the blurry colored blobs of the
revelers.
The compressed mass of human bodies slipped apart like a torn blanket looses threads
allowing me a clear path. A short hall stretched before me, filled with a few fleeing portions of
the hotel‟s magnificent décor. Here a fist full of marble shards, polished brass, and ceramic pots
with their pet plants had formed a last stronghold against those who had so badly degraded their
somber atmosphere. Within the loose confines of the hallway a half dozen forward troops had
begun the invasion of this front as well. Their laughter cut through the sound of distant joy like
machine gun fire on a war torn street. Waiting, with my shoulders tense, I was fully prepared for
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a bout of hand to hand with any who might challenge my leave. Luckily the doors parted
quickly and a stream of blurred figures darted out, to be swallowed by the tidal army as it
combated the implacable sobriety of the hotel lobby.
I was a blur of movement entering the silent elevator. My feet had barely touched the
polished tile when my finger closed on the calligraphy 6. Its warm white glow greeted my hand
as it retreated from the control panel to my side. A strange hand appeared adding a glowing 3
next to my 6. My mind considered why I had three hands suddenly but it quickly was clubbed
with the truth by a bright voice that joined in the clatter of the closing door. Silence drifted away
as so much flotsam on the waves of laughter as they crashed against the brass and marble boat as
it sailed upwards. The over powering sound of the lobby had drowned out all reality of the true
volume of its populace. Here isolated from the rest of the mob, sound drifted freely to mix with
the silence and chop it to tiny shreds.
The hand was poorly glued to an arm. The arm was owned by one of a pair of bodies that
had joined me in the box which seemed oppressively small. The pair stood close to each other
laughing and joking about the day‟s events. Filling the air with their mirth until I felt sick with
the annoying foolishness of their rambling. The babbling incoherent pair kept gibbering at each
other like howler monkeys with too much alcohol in their systems. My eyes collapsed to the
floor finding the thin silver striations which inhabited the green marble tile and called the floor
their home. My mind wanted to cry out for the pair to fall silent but my mouth never would have
obliged. Silently I waited forcing my mind to contemplate that polished green surface. As I
stared at that mirror like green the elevator went off, beeping as suddenly as a miss timed alarm
clock. The doors slid apart with a rustle of clanking metal and the laughter spilled out into the
green and blue-flecked carpeting.
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The pair drifted casually through the portal still laughing to their hearts content. The
sound only reached my ears for another moment before the doors sliced closed. I barely
recognized the sigh of relief as my own at first but it soon dawned on me how much these people
angered me. Their strange form of existence made me offended to be in any way near them. It
was a strange sort of offense, the kind of offense you take when you go to an awards ceremony
and never receive an award. Their bustling laughter is exciting, enticing even but at the same
time entirely exclusive, relying without exception on accepting their ideals. This was a fate I
would never consign myself to. Compromising myself for others was not something I would do.
And so they had somehow wronged me in a way only those on the outside of a window are able
to be wronged. Solid hearted I stared at the cold floor as the elevator surged upward making my
chest light.
The Elevator hummed silently away revealing its own sort of satisfaction at its job,
pulling people up and down. In my mind I chewed on the gentle lifting feeling produced by the
elevator being pulled skyward. The tiles below my feet shone in the soft florescence. Their posh
green hue made them seem all the better to stare at when the light deflected back into my eyes.
The silver lines which branched across the green marble seemed to melt and vanish under the
bright light making me wonder if they were real at all. A beep bounced between my ears but
found nothing to latch onto. That sound was so far distant one might argue that it was a galaxy
of its own out in space for all it mattered to me. Even as the doors trundled their way open with
that familiar sliding sound I was elsewhere, outside, detatched.
Before my mind accepted what my ears told it, my eyes had found new subjects of study.
They had focused like a child in school stares out a window. The focus was on a single
vermilion toe, which sat barely crossing the edge of a polished green rectangle, that had until that
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moment filled my vision. The harsh color on the tip of the shoe was scuffed with heavy wear
from the tip on back, I discovered as my eyes broadened their field of vision. Apparently that toe
was only part of the first of a pair of bright ballet shoes which strode their way into the elevator‟s
broad expanse of space. A glance up at the elevator control panel revealed that no new numbers
glowed their next to my six.
My eyes dropped from the six to that pale tile and its vibrantly colored interloper that
etched itself into my brain. I looked at that shoe wondering if it would vanish upon closer
examination as if it had never existed at all. Instead of disintegrating it, my vision was
vacuumed upward along the helix of ribbons as they wound around gently lathed ankles. The
creamy skin of the calves transformed into knees that Donatello couldn‟t have carved better and
then slid upwards into a pair of thin thighs where they melted into a dress that barely missed
being the color of those shoes. The glossy cotton dress flowed as she moved and breathed
making it flash in the glorious light of the elevator that seemed suddenly to big and empty. As
my eyes examined the dress‟ surface I noticed the hand painted Chinese symbols in gold
regularly across its surface. A vibrantly beaded purse on her shoulder revealed her convention
ID stating firmly that she was only 18 years old which was not far from my own age.
She turned her head towards me and smiled a wide smile revealing a tiny sliver of pearl
white, and then she faced forward again. I looked forward coming to attention like a military
cadet not daring to look again. Instead I looked at the distorted reflection in the brass elevator
door. The outfit she wore was that of a character named „Devil Hunter Yoko‟ from a Japanese
cartoon, it was not uncommon to see characters of this sort wandering a science fiction
convention. Somehow “Yoko” caught my eye as though I were a cat staring at a spot on the
wall. My eyes marched around the reflection examining each detail so that it was burned into
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my retinas. After a moment her eyes locked onto mine through the power of that ricocheting
light. She smiled again, that same smile with its small glimmer of white against red. The smile
sunk slowly through the sluggish swamp in my brain. She turned rapidly towards me in the
reflection and for a moment I almost flinched away expecting some violent outburst.
“Did you visit the Anime Viewing room today?”
“Ah, No.”
Her question was a trip wire it caught my ankle and I tumbled forward not having seen it
coming. Her reflection turned away. It seemed like she was watching me in much the same way
I was watching her. I didn‟t know what to do or say, somehow a simple question and answer had
knocked the breath out of me. She smiled again, her face now matching her dress. A moment
passed and the pair of reflections turned to each other at the same time and began to speak. Our
words collided and became incoherent in the space between us. We both pretended to be
chameleons imitating her dress as our words died away. My words were sheepish when I finally
broke the silence; by then we were both looking back at our reflections again.
“Go a head.”
“Oh, well, ah, they showed Death and Rebirth at 3:00.”
“I‟ve seen it.”
“It was good.”
“Yeah, Asuka‟s battle was amazing animation for the late eighties, and what not.”
“oh yeah.”
Silence engulfed the pair of us once more as neither of us really had anything to say. She
stood there frozen, a thin line of crimson breaking the prefect bronze colored reflections. For
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my part I watched the reflections and buried my hands in my pockets deeper than coffins in the
ground. She smiled again but said nothing until I once more broke the silence.
“Are you from Toronto?”
“KC. Ah, Kansas City, Missouri.”
“Omaha Nebraska.”
“Long flight huh.”
“I took a bus.”
“Ouch”
“24 hours”
“I like my flight better.”
“yeah.”
“So.”
“Ah hey, Um, there is this party in 613 tonight…”
“Really?”
“Yeah, a bunch of fan force members mostly, but anyone is invited.”
“Cool, sounds fun.”
“so you might stop by.”
“Yeah I might.”
We both fell silent as the elevator added its two cents to the conversation. The perky
beep that it issued signaled that it had reached our destination. With the content swish of a job
well done the brass doors parted and the reflections vanished. Those reflections were replaced
by a pool of laughing, smiling, figures which forced the silence to give way. The pair of us
stepped forward at the same time exiting the elevator just as the pool poured in.
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“so you gonna be their?”
“With bells on.”
Her last words were spoken with a laugh as she tapped one of her ear rings that was
shaped like a small bell. Her laughter wore off on me and I laughed two as I turned right
towards my room and those double helix‟s of silk ribbon turned left. I walked letting the
laughter die away until the hallway was empty of all but me and I happily took out my pass key
to enter my room not so alone.