It was one of those mornings where the sun just wouldn’t come up no matter which way you pushed it. The clouds sagged like swollen udders of a cow so large it bent around the Earth. Not something you wanted to step out into.

Mim stood at the counter, perched as uncomfortably as a heron in a bird cage for a budgie. Sometimes he ventured outside to see a takeoff. Sometimes he ventured outside to chase a customer away. The slump he was in was slumping so slightly more with the news that the linens had been mistaken for dishcloths by the chef. In this industry, a smile is expected, and so Mim had grown behind his face a second one, one to express all that emotion that no one wanted to see because it inconvenienced their already-dreary day.

A bellboy, whose legs moved in the most curious arcs like two handsaws in matrimony, came through the front door hitting the frame on both sides with his wide stance. Mim wanted to put those legs proper, for it was no way for a boy with his bell to walk. He left his anger to his inner face.

“Gert, you look a-shambles, like the wind has cut your trouser legs at your knees and creased your best shirt. What’s all the matter? Tell me quick, before a guest sees you and thinks we hire piles of mud instead of people,” Mim practically hollered, not because he was angry, but because the bellboy was so far away.

It took a moment for the bellboy to get to Mim, for the architect of their establishment had made a pointed effort in extending the entrance hallway to a quarter mile long. Mim had thought this far too long, but in business it was important for managers not to listen to those under them, for this came across as weak and incompetent. So Mim’s manager tuned his earholes to hear not a squeak of Mim’s. At least Mim had met halfway with the architect and she’d agreed to install a set of dollies on electric cranks to transport guests to and from the door and the front counter. A bellboy on a dolly for customers could come across as a forefrontal disgrace, but Mim was now regretting this rule of his.

Gert was practically licking the carpet by the time he got to Mim.

“Get up boy, your trouser knees look like the Pope after a Sunday sermon! You look like a clown. Get up!” And Mim hoisted the bellboy up by his armpits. He felt a little bad about the whole thing, and really just wanted a hot cup of tea right now, but it was his duty to cut Gert into the shape of good bellboy, whatever that shape was.

It was now that the bellboy told Mim about what he had seen that had launched him into such a fervor. Mim bit his lip when he heard the news, which was what he did whenever he heard news and wanted to come across as someone interested he was supposed to be hearing. He had learned this behaviour from his manager. Gert’s news, though, shook Mim right down to his chromosomes, but he wouldn’t let this betray his stately hotel character, and just bit his lip a little harder instead.

The Bickle House Hotel lives between a pair of overdeveloped heaps of concrete. Someone had stuck a lot of glass around them, threaded wiring all through it, and then stacked everything twenty times on top of itself. In every floor but one they erected cubicle spaces that barely fit a beach pebble comfortably, the exception being the topmost floor where the entire inside was plastered with one uniform cut of chaivlon (?) because its occupant hated seams and also wanted to be able to lie anywhere within the one-hundred square-foot chamber.

Both heaps had the exact same architecture, the exact same chaivlon imported from the south of India, the exact same owners that lived on the top floor. The only difference was that from Sunday to about 1pm on Wednesday, the owner lived in the eastern heap, and then from 1pm on Wednesday until Saturday midnight, the owner lived in the western heap. The owner went by the name of Bick Flootarter, but he preferred to be addressed as Mr. B. Dr. Flootarter for his middle name was Drew and it something about it possessed a pungent air of intellect. My that air smelt good. His close friends just called him ‘Bick.’

Mr. B. Dr. Flootarter had never been called ‘Bick.’

Today was the anniversary of the grand opening of the second restroom on the top floor of the western building. Most of the restroom took a month to build, but it had taken two years to lug a sphere of marble from Northern Canada to then carve into tiles for the walls. Mr. B. would only transact in spheres, as his father and his father-father and his father-father-father had so done. Customers received their purchases in perfect spheres, employees their paychecks as balls of cash, and Mr. B. only greeted someone by first balling his hand up into a fist.

Success had little to do with effort or intellect or the large pile of money that a man gifted his son upon death. No, it was due to the habitual and ceaseless principles by which one stood solid and did not budge. Principles like only transacting in spherical objects.

One time a news reporter had visited Mr. B. and wished to interview him to learn through and through the habits of such a successful man. But when it was suggested that perhaps Papa Probability and Mother Multifortunate might have had a play in it all, Mr. B. expelled him from the grounds of his business. The next morning the news reported found on his desk a small parcel addressed to him and from Mr. B. himself. Inside was a great heap of something awful, all crushed together in the shape of a cube.

Mr. B. had stepped out of his whirlycopter, but paused in a spell of curiosity, confounded by the way in which the bellboy at the front of the hotel had seemed to startle and run off like a gazelle who’d just recalled it had left something cooking in the oven.