All he had to do was wait, K.Krost thought Donaldson’s formerly brilliant red hair had receded to a fringe of dirty pink and his eyes seemed weaker and more watery every day, isolated in a pale face that more and more resembled a piece of paper that somebody had crumpled and then tried to smooth out.
I could have had your job, Krost thought to himself.
All I had to do was ask Leroux and it would’ve been you playing nursemaid to a bunch of old women who can’t speak English instead of me. But when we came over from the Meltom Building, I played nice guy and let you have it.
Donaldson was tying his laces, puffing while he did so.
“Don’t go doing one of your fancy disappearing acts tonight, Krost; stick around where I can get hold of,you.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Donaldson,” Krost said. “Just give me a ring and I’ll come a-running.”
Donaldson looked at him contemptuously. “How the hell can you be an Uncle Tom when you’re white? Go to work, Krost-and get rid of that bottle!”
Krost scurried out, making a mental note to avoid Donaldson for the rest of the evening. There was an easy way to do it, since Donaldson seldom checked the Apex Printers’ utility room on the twenty-fifth floor. He had hidden there from the maintenance super on more than one occasion when he had wanted a little time to himself or a chance to catch a nap.
He paused at the escalator and glanced back. Donaldson was standing in the door of the maintenance locker room, hands, on hips, glaring at him. Sonuvabitch, Krost thought, I really ought to fix his wagon. The right word to Leroux … And then he decided it was better not to push things. Leroux might remember the two formal complaints that Donaldson had already lodged with Captain Harriman about Krost drinking on the job. There was no need to remind Leroux of those, no need to give him a chance to put two and two together. No sir, no need for that at all.
But there was no need to get rid of his bottle, either-at least not the way Donaldson intended. He crossed over to the elevator bank in the main lobby and caught a car going up. A few minutes later, the bottle was safe and sound in one of his numerous hiding spots around the building and he was back in the lobby, buying a copy of the evening paper. The women would be on duty now, he thought; he’d checked them early so he could have time off later on. Despite the extra floors, it shouldn’t be too hard a night.
There was an elevator going up and he made dash for it. Douglas, the fag decorator, and one of Leroux’s bright boys, an architect named Barton, were on it. He buttered Barton up for a minute-never know when that might come in handy-then got off on twenty, automatically checking the doors of the offices along the corridor to make sure they were locked. The cleaning women had keys, but it was good insurance to be able to say that somebody had forgotten to lock up, just in case anything was ever missing. He stopped for a moment to talk to Albina Obligado, who was vacuuming the north corridor. She was a small, olive-skinned woman who understood practically no English and perhaps because of it rarely if ever knew just where Krost stood in the managerial hierarchy, aside from the fact that he was very important.
Krost ordinarily didn’t care for Puerto Ricans but Albina was, obviously, different. She was deferential, looked at the floor when she spoke to him, and hadn’t missed a day in the six months that she had worked at the Glass House.
“You let Dolores do the south corridor,” he told her, automatically raising his voice. “You understand? Dolores does the south corridor.”
He’d have to spread the help around tonight.
Albina nodded without looking up and nervously tugged the vacuum cleaner a few feet farther down the hall. “I understand, yes sir, I understand.”
Krost turned back to the elevators and for a, moment considered going up to the sky lobby and talking with Jernigan-he wasn’t too bright but not a bad sort, for a colored man-then changed his mind. He could also go to his own official cubbyhole on the twenty-first floor and wait for Donaldson to check him out. But the “office” was bare and uncomfortable, outfitted with a desk, a phone, a tablet, and overhead fluorescents so bright they gave him a headache. Or he could look up the bottle -no, that was for later on, to welcome in the holidays in the right way! Which left the twenty-fifth floor and the Apex Printers’ utility room, a nice, cozy place to relax on a night when the city was being coated with freezing sleet.
Well, why not? Besides, if he remembered correctly, he had left it stocked from a previous visit and there was no sense in letting that stock go to waste, no sir!
He caught the elevator up to twenty-five and looked up and down the hall when he got off to make sure that Donaldson wasn’t around.
You could never tell … When he got to the entrance of the utility room, Krost checked the corridor again to make sure Donaldson hadn’t materialized out of thin air to keep an eye,on him, then quickly opened the door and entered, closing it behind him even before his hand had reached the light switch.
The room itself was small, perhaps 12 by 18, part of it taken up by a small locker containing toilet and cleaning supplies, and the rest of it by a battered desk and easy chair, a small skid of printing paper, packages of mimeo and reproduction bond, and drums of inks and thinners. Somebody had used one of the drums recently and failed to close the spring-loaded valve tightly. Krost grabbed a rag from under the sink and wiped up the spill; the rag came away black and greasy. He wrinkled his nose. Better have Albina or one of the other cleaning women in here later in the evening. He tossed the rag into a nearby metal container, almost full to the brim with other such rags. Have to clean that out, too; the super was touchy about solvent rags.
Krost inspected the cleanup with satisfaction, then went to the door, took a ‘final look outside, closed and locked it. He walked -back to the locker and opened it. The top shelf was lined with rolls of toilet paper which Krost kept constantly replenished so the owners of Apex would never have to fish around in the back looking for a final roll. Now he carefully took two rolls from the front and reached in back and pulled out a mug, a small immersion heater, a jar of instant coffee, and a bottle of powdered cream substitute. A good cup of coffee on a night like tonight would go just right, he thought.
He placed them on the chipped, porcelain-topped metal table next to the slop sink, then filled the mug with water and stuck in the aluminum-coil immersion heater, plugging it into the electrical outlet midway up the wall. He unscrewed the top of the coffee jar, then realized he hadn’t taken the spoon out with the rest of the fixings.
He went back to the locker and, standing on tiptoe, felt around behind the rolls of tissue.
He found the spoon and then his hands brushed against another bottle.
He fought with his conscience for a moment and gracefully lost.
It was a cold night outside and a bitch of a night inside and a man could use a little something to warm his guts.
He pulled out the spoon, along with a Windex bottle.
The contents of the bottle were a light brown, rather than the usual blue. If Donaldson ever found it and went to the trouble of smelling the contents, Krost thought, it would be all over but the firing-unless he figured an employee of Apex owned it. At any rate, there was no disguising the aroma of good brandy. A few days before, he’d helped himself from the bar in Consolidated Distributors on the twenty-second floor; it was good aromatic Portugese brandy that danced smoothly over the tongue and seemed to vanish before it ever reached the throat.
He unscrewed the cap, sniffed appreciatively, then upended the bottle and let a few drops dribble into his mouth. Man, that was fine stuff!
He smacked his lips and set the bottle down beside the coffee cup.
Already the water in it was showing a swirling motion around the aluminum coil.
Krost rubbed his hands together, realized he still had some grease on them from his cleanup around the solvent can, and walked over to the sink to wash. His hands were wet and soapy when the phone on the wall beside the door rang. Damn, he thought, no paper towels. He dried his hands on his blue chinos while the phone continued to ring. Finally, he took it off the cradle, automatically said, “Krost here,” and not until then realized he had made a tactical blunder.- Donaldson’s voice was enough to blister the paint right off the wall.
“What the hell are you doing up there, Krost? Running off a winter seed catalog? I spend half my goddamned time trying to track you down!”
“I was checking supplies, Mr. Donaldson,” Krost said lamely.
“Since when are Apex supplies any of your business?”
