Washington DC’s M Street, NW, was bustling with the rush hour traffic of a bright Monday morning: snarled, angry, and ultimately resigned commuters honking their car horns halfheartedly as they inched their way to work. The deep blue sky, dotted by puffy white clouds, mocked the office-bound who’d endured a rainy weekend.

The Farragut North metro stop escalator, mercifully operational, delivered an uninterrupted line of office-bound drones, as if on a sped-up conveyor belt, from the L Street, NW, exit to the cubicle-infested buildings on M and 19^th and 20^th Streets, NW. Everyone rushed; everyone but David.

An Owen Wilson lookalike at six-four, David could look over most other pedestrians, allowing him to easily navigate upcoming gaps in the crowd. His earbuds kept the noises out and made it easy to follow his phone’s directions. The Ray-Ban knockoffs kept the glare at bay, and the red handkerchief over his nose and mouth filtered out DC’s Indian Summer heat, pollen, and humidity before they reached his lungs. He knew the masked look would remind folks of the pandemic years, so he planned on taking it off once he was inside the building he was ambling toward.

David had a camera slung over one shoulder, a gym bag over the other, a McDonald’s breakfast bag in one hand, and, if you could believe it, a folded hard copy of the morning’s newspaper in the other. He moved with a gliding gait, occasionally peeking at his feet, as if he were unaccustomed to walking in dress shoes but surprised at how quickly he was getting the hang of it.

He was going to work too; he told himself with pride. Heading to his first part-time-to-full-time job. The excitement in his eyes hid the anxiety that lay just under the surface. A paycheck, he thought. Real rent-paying money, all in two biweekly checks. “I can do this,” he convinced himself out loud.

David checked himself in a store window a few doors away from his destination. The tan Chino pants, light pink shirt, blue tie, maroon penny loafers, and argyle socks were the look he had found online the day after landing the job. Then he had emailed his parents, grandparents, sister, and uncle, sending each a link to a different item on his wardrobe wish list and reminding them his birthday was soon approaching. He placed the jacket and tie in his uncle’s list, the only family member who could afford those items.

Suddenly, he dropped all his gear on the sidewalk, dug through his gym bag, and pulled out his umbrella to reach the blue blazer at the bottom of the bag. He pulled it out and shook it to remove the folds. A little wrinkling will only convince everyone it’s been in use, and definitely not just delivered to my apartment yesterday, part of the patchwork birthday gift from my entire family. He took a deep breath, picked up his stuff, and continued walking.

His phone was still speaking its directions when he spotted the building’s nameplate. The renowned eight-story Barclay Building was spectacularly unimpressive. It blended in with the rest of the eight-to-ten-story buildings surrounding it on both sides of M Street, NW to the point of becoming nondescript.

Entering the large lobby, with its fake marble columns and floor-to-ceiling mirrors on one side, he was surprised to be one of the only two people within the expansive space. He walked past the listings of anchor tenants—such-&-such lobbyists, such-&-another accountants, and more-such law firm —straight up to the attractive black woman behind the receptionist’s counter.

“Hi,” he said cheerfully, offering her his best smile.

“Good morning, sir, please sign in,” she replied, looking up from her computer screen to push a clipboard toward him, which had a pen held under the clip.

As David signed, dated, and time-stamped his arrival, the receptionist asked, “Who are you here to see?”

But before he could answer, her phone rang, a security guard signaled to her to sign him in, a mailman dropped off a bag of mail behind the counter next to her, and a repairman, ignoring that she was on the phone, asked her for directions to the building’s boiler room.

David gestured to the receptionist that he had time.

When she caught up with herself, she took a look at the clipboard and then looked up at him and waited.

“Oh. I’m a new employee of…” he started to say.

“Yes, I saw. Were you expected at this time?”

“Kind of. I’m new, and have this letter from CMC, telling me to report…”

“They’re on the eighth, no, seventh floor, suite six hundred.”

David started to ask for clarification, uncertain he had heard correctly, but was interrupted again. A courier arrived, dropped a large duffel bag against the wall behind the receptionist’s desk, and placed a Styrofoam cup of what smelled like freshly brewed coffee on the receptionist’s desk, saying, “Hi, Felice, I’ll be back after breakfast to deliver this stuff.”

“Thanks for the coffee, Cheri. They still givin’ you a hard time ’bout taking the bike wheel into the cafeteria?”

“Yeah, but they think I’m crazy, so they’ve toned the complaining down so I don’t get out of hand again. You know, and single-handedly destroy their establishment. Which I have often considered.”

“Oh, get out!”

“Here-there, Fee.”

“Here-there, Rick.”

As Rick left, he caught David’s eye and nodded.

David replied with a thumbs up and a hearty “Here-there, man.”

The receptionist turned to David and said, “Oh my, a natural!

“What?”

“I mean, sorry for the interruption. I was looking up CMC for you…or…didn’t I already give you that?”

“Yes. You did. You said eighth or seventh floor, suite six hundred, which doesn’t…”

“Right. There are two CMC offices, and I’ve been getting them mixed up since they both changed floors again, just this spring. They’ve each moved three times since I have been working here. Well, listen, they are most likely on the seventh floor. I’m almost sure you won’t miss them. There are signs taped to the wall on the seventh and eighth floors when you get off the elevator. So, there.”

“Thanks.”

When the first elevator opened its doors, the security guard on board told David he could not “come aboard” because “this is currently a secured elevator.” He then instructed David to wait for the next “civilian elevator.”

This town and its self-importance, boy! David thought. Just nod and blend. Try to understand them. East coast folk are not like we are back in L.A.

The next elevator had four occupants, two dressed-for-success up-and-comers, a knockout twenty-something blonde, and a maintenance man with an overloaded tool belt carrying a walkie-talkie. David nodded a good morning to the group and only received a “morn” from the tool belt. The other three were engrossed in conversation.

The imposing all-American, blue-eyed, extended-curl-blonde jock with the skintight bodysuit and flawless face was getting legal and financial advice from two short, tanned, slightly-built, bespectacled suits whose professions became obvious with each utterance.

“Don’t sweat the small arrows, hon, your wife’s gone social on you because she can’t deal legally,” the dark-haired, dark-spectacled guy said. “He’s right, you know,” responded the prematurely grey man with the gold-rimmed bifocals. “Also, the vast majority of your assets as a couple are in your name and were earned by your precocious downhill prowess, not hers,” he added.

“Listen,” said the lawyer, “Don’t waste your time worrying over the rantings of an older, retired woman. She’s what, thirty-five? And she was never that good a skater, if you ask me. We have it from our investigator that she’s boinking her neanderthal of a publicist, and though we have grainy video, the audio is unmistakably her. She’s a screamer. Did you know she was bi? Well, anyway, she won’t want that performance coming out.”

“I figure you cut her loose with a mil as severance and let her keep the beach house, and you keep the Aspen condo and the homestead in Houston, and of course the other seventy mil. I ran the numbers, and she’ll be thrilled with that, given where she’d be without you,” concluded the accountant.

The snow maiden stood ramrod straight, as if struck by lightning. Her eyes got very small, her upper lip was trembling, and her hands were balled up.

The tool man cleared spittle from his lip. He was nearly drooling as he savored the exchange while absentmindedly fidgeting with every tool on his belt. David had winced at the numbers being shared and then shielded his smile as he realized it seemed the jock just found out her wife was bisexual.

When the doors opened on the trio’s floor, the men exited ahead of their client and moved aside with seeming differential solemnity. But as Amazon moved by them with Frankenstein-like steps, they high-fived behind her back.

As the doors closed, David borrowed the tool man’s wire cutters from the back of his belt, gesturing with them and saying: “Aaand cut! That’s a wrap, folks! Take five!”

On the next floor, David handed the wire cutters to the frowning, confused man as he stepped outside the elevator. Tool man kept one hand on the door and started to say something, but the door slipped from his grasp and closed.

The elevator delivered David one floor up and into the wide, chaotic seventh-floor hallway. There were bright red neon signs that screamed “CMC Orientation,” and the droves of people who were milling about the middle of the hall were being herded toward the walls so they would not impede the movement of others or block the entries to the doors on either side.

Soon, voices yelled orders, and the hordes rearranged accordingly. “All new arrivals in this line! All those who have filled out the form in this line! All those waiting to take the test in this line!” Lines formed in front of each door, but they lined up with their backs to the door. David joined the slow-moving new arrivals line.

After several minutes in line, David was unable to restrain himself, and soon convinced several of his neighbors to join in with him.

“Mooo. Mooooo. Moooooooo.”

“All right, wise guys, cut it out!” yelled a voice of authority.

When he reached the registration desk, which was through the door on the opposite side of the hall from the one where they were lined up, David was handed a hardcopy form that was a different color from the one he had originally been mailed and which he had filled out and sent back. That form was identical to the one he had filled out online. It was an application form.

“Another application form?” he asked out loud to no one in particular. Why do I need to fill this out when I’ve already been hired? I have the offer letter with me? he thought.

“All new arrivals have to fill out the form, attach their resumes and proofs of their diplomas, and go through the process, Sir,” responded a CMCer, as he would soon learn CMC employees were called.

“Please press firmly when you write on the form, sir. There are six copies under it.”

“Six? This form has the same information as the electronic version I filled out online!”

“Sir…”

David filled in the form, repeating his name, age, date of birth, address, and phone number, that he had a B.A. in Economics, was looking for his first job out of college, and had a cover photo credit from Nature Magazine as his only verifiable professional work experience. He pulled out a hard copy of his resume from his gym bag and found a paper clip on the floor to fasten the papers together.

The part he never mentioned on the forms was that he had used his very last money to move east to complete two freelance, DC-based photography jobs. One assignment was for the Architect of the Capitol and the other for the Department of the Interior. But upon completing the work, both employers had chosen not to use his photos and also not to pay the contractually agreed-upon kill fee.

Not having the resources to fight back legally, even after his photos were eventually used after all, David had been forced to find survival employment while searching for anything professional. The irony was that he liked the city and wanted to relocate permanently.  

The rest of the form, as had been the case with the online version and the mailed hard copy version, was a multiple-choice test on spelling and word definitions.

“When you finish, please get in that line over there to wait to take your test.”

Once he reached the end of the next line, David and a half-dozen other candidates were ordered to go into their respective “test rooms.” The rooms ended up being separate, dimly lit closets.

A voice came over an intercom and ordered him—and he assumed all other test takers in their similarly equipped rooms, since he could clearly hear what was going on in the rooms to either side of his—to boot up their desktop computers and answer the questions that soon began to populate their screens. As he read, he realized the online questions were the same ones he had just answered in the form he had just handed in.

The digital timers on the side tables were for their convenience, they were told; the “official time” was being kept by the “official timekeeper” on the other side of the one-way mirror.

As he began to work, five large fluorescent lights came on overhead.

“Hey! These lights are too bright, they glare off the screen, making it impossible to read what’s on it,” he yelled at the mirror.

When no one replied, he used his left hand to shade his eyes and finished the test with his right hand. The moment he finished the last question, the alarm clock went off, and a minute later, the timekeeper came in.

“Time,” Mary Sue yelled, turning the test computer off. “Please follow me. We are going to have your preliminary interview now, David.”

As he gathered his stuff, he heard the alarms go off in the other rooms. None of them went off at the same time. He shook away the thought forming in his mind and followed the lady.

The two walked into the hall and down three doors into another room. “My workspace is at the very end over there,” she said, pointing across the large room to the furthest cubicle on the left, fourteen rows down. “Make yourself comfortable in the guest chair and I will join you shortly.”

She arrived fifteen minutes later and as she approached her desk she said, “Your scores were excellent. You can type fast. You had only two errors. You answered all the word-meaning questions right. And you made no mistakes filling out your personal information. How good are you at making coffee with a Keurig machine? Can you fix a good ham and cheese sandwich? Well, don’t worry, we can teach you all these essential office skills here at CMC.”

“What does…”

“Never mind, David. Ok, listen, we are here to do work, right? So, tell me a bit about your educational background, your career plans, and what you feel CMC can do for you. Come on now, a guy like you, with all these inane skills, has an unlimited vista. Just point the way and we’ll help you get there.”

Innate, maybe? David thought.

“What’d I say, Davie. Did I use a wrong clause, comma, or something? Listen, I got straight C’s in English through middle school, so I know my stuff. I may not have finished high school or been to college like you, but I make a damn good living, drive a foreign import, and own a gold watch,” she said, more in defiance than defense, as she rolled her sleeve to show him a fake Rolex. “I’m Yuppie-adjacent, boy!”

David’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard.

“Ok, that was harsh,” Mary Sue said. “You got all dressed up and all. I know how nervous people can get in the interview situation. I just wanted to know if you preferred using one skill set over another in your potential new job. But if you don’t, that’s ok. I can take you straight to your placement interview right now.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“No problem, I’m here to help. So, tell me, you do have career aspirations, right? A tall, good-looking guy like you, I can just tell you’re a winner. And let me tell you, we don’t take on just anyone here at CMC. No siree! People line up and take numbers to see us. We don’t suffer losers. The moment I saw you, I said to myself, Mary Sue, there’s a winner.”

“Ok…”

“Look, David, I have so much faith in you and in the strength and depth of our relationship, I’m going to call our grooming technician right now. He’ll fix you right up and have you ready for your placement interview like you were on the job already.” She leaned around her partition and yelled, “Alexander! Oh, Alex, I have one for you.”

She waited in that strained position for several minutes and then gave up.

“He’s probably on assignment. Let me go find him for you.”

David calculated his odds of making it out the door at the other side of the room before some other deranged CMCer tackled him, but this perverse curiosity took over, and he decided to stick it out.

Ten minutes later, with no sign of Mary Sue or Alex, David was beginning to stand up to leave when a man with short blonde-white curly hair, mascara, earrings, leggings, boots, and a lime green hospital overall, walked over to him. The man was pushing a trash cart and carrying a broom, and as he arrived at the cubicle, he reached across David to grab Mary Sue’s trash can and empty it into the cart. When he noticed David was there, the man stepped back suddenly.

“Oh, sorry. Nice tie!” the man said about to leave.

“No worries,” David replied, “Are you Alex?”

“I could be,” he said in an overly affected voice that contrasted drastically with the one he used to complement David’s tie. “I’m usually not here on this day, let alone so early in the day.”

“As long as we’re both here, and since Mary Sue said you could look at my outfit and opine on its suitability for office work, want to do that?”

“Well, I guess I could. You’re not dressed in my style, but I guess YOU could get away with the look.”

“What would YOU do differently, Alex?”

“Well, first,” he started, motioning for David to stand up and turning to put the broom against the partition, but also disguising his attempt to control the giggles. “I would use some mousse. I’d have applied some today if I had not been so rushed. Then, I would definitely go with leather, black preferably, yes, a nice leather suit with a thin black tie. And you need a grabber, some red boots, that’s the ticket.”

“Uh-huh!” replied David as he sat back down.

Alex pulled Mary Sue’s chair around from her desk and brought it next to David’s. He sat down and looked around to see if anyone had noticed his move, and satisfied he was in the clear, he began speaking in an earnest, hushed tone.

“If it’s nine to five that concerns you, your look isn’t a problem, particularly if you have the sheepskin to go along with it. I would worry about having chosen CMC as a starting point, though. These people are the entire loony bin. I were you, I would get up right now and hightail it out of here. You want any type of career counseling, or an actual job, I can help you better than they can.”

“Really? Great. I am out of work and draining my meager savings, I’ve looked for professional work in all the places you’re supposed to with no luck, and CMC, well, they were my last resort. So, I am all ears.”

“Good,” the janitor said, now returning to a completely unaffected voice. “For starters, you need to accept your stage in life. Right now, you are obviously young, you seem somewhat urbane, but definitely, career-wise, well, a failure. You’ve got to be, what, late twenties to early thirties, educated and looking proper but, really, you’re a tour bus guide? Or do you tend bar? Strip? What?”

“I’ve done most of what you said except the stripping. I’m a waiter now.”

“Right. Listen up. You need to know that DC is two different towns and that to win here, you need two strategies. In the mornings, DC’s the kick-ass capital of the Western World, a tourist haven, and a cultural oasis. At night, it’s a small-town longing to become cosmopolitan before its worldly inhabitants outgrow its provincialism and choose to party elsewhere.

“So, lesson one—everyone will tell you that anything real in DC happens during the workday because that’s when the government is active. That is the truth; most big stuff happens in the AM, so you need to get your AM bearings. If you’re in town, it’s because you’re in government, contracting with it, or lobbying it.

“But it is such a wired town that breaking into any meaningful professional employment without big connections is impossible. So, you need to take the long view, work yourself up from the trenches, and jump at that brass ring the one time it comes within reach. The only way to succeed is to find an in at the bottom of the ladder where they won’t suspect you’re bright and competent, and then hunt for your chance to show your true colors to the decision makers. My most successful friends ended up getting part-time AM gigs simply to be in contact with the folks they really wanted to work with and PM gigs to pay the bills.

“The job to get is the one that periodically puts you into contact with the big whigs without having them suspect you’re able to do the work they’re paying their college roomy or cousin to do. Then, you find a way to show the biggie that you’re the real deal and the cousin’s just that, a hanger-on, freeloading, nepo. Eventually, if they need to get work done, organizations will sub out the nepos for worker bees. And that is your chance, bee.

“Lesson two—you need the right night job, cause we all need to eat. I know you know this cause you’re doing it already. But the reason you want that restaurant night job is that it feeds you at work, and it allows you to job hunt in the AM. This is a great city for a night job because almost everyone is so damn professional, they would rather die than be seen doing a menial job. But those same professionals are so uptight during their protocol-laden day that come nighttime, they dearly need to let off that pent-up steam. So, they go out, and boy, do they spend money. This town’s full of Yuppies who think it’s a macho thing to out-tip their peers, so they overtip.”

“Lesson three—you need to get to know NW DC physically. I say NW DC because the town is not laid out as a traditional diamond-shaped city. NW accounts for 46% of the land area of DC and houses all its key government and cultural locations.

“Also, know your metro and buses, where the cheap eats and entertainment freebies are, what buildings allow you to get out of the cold in their lobbies for a few minutes, where the public bathrooms are safe, and that a Metrorail car, the MLK library, National Cathedral, and Union Station are your best bets for a safe snooze.”

“Finally, if you’re serious about making it in DC, you need to show you are committed to staying. The city’s population is so transitory that those who make it their home want to know you share their values before they’ll accept you as one of them. So, you begin by plugging into its Zeitgeist. Know what is happening in national and world politics, what the current DC pecking order is—who’s who on Capitol Hill, the White House, and on SCOTUS, but also who the top players are at the lobbying, legal, financial, and other powerbroker niches, including the media.  

“Everyone in DC acts by their own rules, expects you to know what they are, and expects you to abide by them if you want to deal in their arena. The people who count in DC are few and far between, but everyone acts as if they are the ones who walk on water. Think the Hollywood has-been actor who pretends to still be an A-lister. The key is to look under the surface to see who’s got standing and who’s treading water.

“And an added word to the wise. In the new white-collar business world, the key is to blend in, as if in a herd that travels in a tight pack. The easy prey is the standout, and no one stands out like a known competent person. The mediocrities that abound in all organizations will gang up on you and make sure you are brought down to their level. They do this not to compete and succeed by doing better, but to survive by knowing no one else is seen to be doing well. If everyone is similarly mediocre, no one has to exert themselves, let alone exceed expectations, to succeed; they just need a heartbeat.

“You have to find your niche. Me? I’m a Yuffy, like you, and proud of it. Yuffy, get it, Young Urbane Failure. This is the best city in the world to be one. To succeed in DC, you need to be educated, smart, and urbane, or most of what really happens here will go over your head. But those of us with those attributes but lacking in connections are the professionally unemployed everyman. The key is that we are naturally the ideal superior-inferiors.”

“Woah! What? Superior and inferior?” David couldn’t help but finally interrupt.

“Yeah, man. Listen, Baby Boomers, with a few Silents and Gen-Xs mixed in, run this town with their Yuppie minions. They’re all smart and strivers with the right sheepskins, connections/nepo-set-ups, and money. They are the establishment. But to feel like they are on top, there must be someone to lord over, right? Someone beneath them.

Those who are obviously too outclassed to compete are no fun to dominate; it’s too easy. But if they could find someone smart enough to have been part of the establishment, if they just had the nepo-connections-money triad, well, that is delicious. To them, there is no better feeling than to lord over a superior-inferior. The catch is they have to let you into their clubhouse so they can show you off to their peers—you know, like an exotic pet. And now you have the lay of the land and directions to the topmost peak. Here-there, man. Here-there.”

“Oh, excuse me,” said Mary Sue as she literally tripped over David’s new acquaintance as she rushed into her cubicle. “May I help you?”

“No. I’m on my way out. Just cleaning up as it were.”

“Well, you’ll have to excuse us, David and I are very busy,” she said while using her hands to shoo the lime green man away.

“Sure, I understand, Miss Mary Sue. It was good meeting you, David. My name’s Paul, by the way. I work here, part-time, nights, as a janitor. Felice told me a Yuffy candidate with real potential came through her lobby and described you to a tee. If you stop by her desk on the way out of the building, she’ll give you directions to where the Yuffies will meet tonight. Hope to see you then.”

“Did that man have eye shadow on?” Mary Sue shrieked.

David nodded and got up to leave when another man carrying his own test score sheets arrived and announced he had an appointment with Mary Sue, “right now!”

“Oh, you must be Rogers Clements. Any relation?” she replied. “Please have a seat. David, please follow me.”

She led David into a large, round, startlingly bright room, with fluorescent lights and lots of windows, and desks arranged in a circle. It was like the Roman Colosseum with a ceiling.

He was told to wait at the iridescent yellow line on the floor and not to cross it until his name was called. He looked around the place and then upward.

That ceiling was about twenty feet high, with a chandelier hanging about ten feet above the center of the large space. Arranged in a circle around that hanging light fixture were several shaded lights that resembled upside-down goblets, each about five feet above each of the desks. Grouped in the exact middle of the room, on a raised circular base that seemed a small stage, were a large cowbell on a small table and a large step-up stool.

At each desk sat two people, one asking questions and one answering. The echo allowed him to overhear everything. They were asking and answering the same questions that were on the multiple forms he had been filling out all morning long. The people asking the questions were called counselors, but he did not see a single law diploma around.

“David!” yelled a disembodied voice.

“Yes…”

“It’s your turn. Get with it!” said the woman, waiving him over from a desk with an empty chair in front of it.

David looked down at the yellow line to make sure he stepped over and not on it, and walked over.

“My name is Sandy Pearl McTyre, with a y. You can call me Sandy-P. Sit.”

For the next twenty minutes, David was asked to detail his responses to every question on the forms he had already filled out, and the entire time, the ample, pale-skinned woman, with the blue eye shadow, caked-on make-up, and blonde wig, filed her nails and gobbled chocolate bonbons from her desk drawer.

“So, David, what do you want to do with your time on God’s green earth? I mean, you can’t just snap photos your entire life, and you sure aren’t making any money off them economy smarts. You can type ok, spell well, read well, ever think of secretarial school, or maybe joining our temps pool?”

“What? No. I came here because I was offered a job as a coder. But no one has listened to me since I arrived. I have this job offer letter for part-time work,” David replied, pulling out his letter from his jacket pocket.

“A coder? What the hell’s a coder? You read zip codes all day or such?”

“The job is retro basic, probably will be an AI domain soon, but for now, it entails reading legal reports, summarizing them, entering the summaries into the law firm’s database, and then letting their legal software highlight specific words and passages in the documents. The software then produces a coding report, which is attached to the summaries, and the whole package is sent along to the attorneys handling the given cases, who determine what coded info is germane to their legal strategies.”

“I lost you at tails. Whose tails you talking about? Some hound dog back home? Listen, honey, Sandy-P’s got no time for your nonsense. The Jackson Five’s been over decades ago, and poor Michael’s dead.”

David knew he had entered the twilight zone, but wasn’t sure how to exit it.

Just then, the cowbell exploded, stunning him to attention. Sandy-P rose at her desk, and David turned around to face the center of the room.

A man stood on the stool, ringing the cowbell proudly as if he’d discovered ice cream.

“Hey-hey! Marty got a placement. That’s two this month! Shit, I hate him. Oh well, let’s go pat the old SOB on the back, come on, Davie, boy. See how everyone else is congregating?”

Marty told the group that his CMC client, Iggy, had just been placed as a custodian at the local movie theater. The entire room congratulated the counselor for several minutes, then returned to whatever career they had been pursuing.

David waited for Sandy-P to sit down before speaking. He remained standing, his frustration finally making him angry. “What is going on here? This isn’t Coding Management Consultants, is it?”

“What? Oh, shit, boy! You been wasting my time! This here is Career Management Counselors.”

Red-faced, David pulled out his umbrella from his gym bag and opened it. Then he walked over to a red lever mounted on a wall and pulled it down before running over to the stool on the stage and climbing on it to watch the chaos.

The siren that blared was deafening, and a torrential sprinkler downpour soaked everything and everyone but David. He smiled broadly, twirled around once on the stool, and made it to the stairs exit before security arrived.