Slugfest

Two

Why was I such a softie? Where was the ruthless media exec who had trampled corn-fed kids like this on her way to the board room or edit suite in a previous lifetime? “Okay, who gets it?” I asked, holding out my hand for the note and the directory.

“The company’s new. I’m not sure which name they’ve settled on, so I need to look it up.” He stood up and clumsily juggled the note, the directory, and his bags. The throng of exhibitors waiting to set up condensed, and we slid a few feet closer to the door, the way you do at Disneyland or airport security when you need to feel like you’re getting somewhere but in fact aren’t. I picked up one of his bags to keep his belongings together. While he searched the bricklike book for his friend’s name, I inspected the patches on the bag. I’d been to a lot of the same places—Hong Kong, Rome, Utah. As he flipped through the pages, the crowd clustered around Rolanda until the doors were opened and a gold-rush-like sweep of people attempted to enter the halls all at once. Credentials were checked carefully at every door and we inched up to the door of Hall E until it was our turn.

“I know he doesn’t work for you, missy.” Rolanda Knox peered at my badge to let me know she’d remember me. “Miss Holliday, Primo’s Outdoor Art. And you, Mr. Happy Valley, how many times do I have to tell you, you ain’t going nowhere? How do I know you don’t have an incendiary device in those bags? Or an envelope of anthrax?”

I was still holding the guy’s bag and reflexively held it out toward him. Great. I’d be collateral damage and an unwitting accomplice to a terrorist act or some obscure ecological protest like Free the Albino Tree Frogs. Passionate and ready to take a stand, a handful of antichemical demonstrators with placards were stationed outside the convention center. For all we knew, this kid was one of them. He made a move to open the bag with his free hand.

“Don’t do that, fool. I don’t want to see your dirty laundry. You never heard of a rhetorical question? I was simply illustrating a point. No badge, no entry.”

We’d stepped aside to let in a slight man in a black cotton outfit, who’d obligingly raised his badge up to Rolanda’s eye level, when a bloodcurdling scream ripped through the cavernous convention center.

“What the…”