Written by Santiago Santos
Edited by Vanessa Guedes
Translated by André Colabelli
Copyedited by Natalle Moura
Doizirmo straightens his cap, checks the buttons on his vest, the shine on the toes of his shoes, the fingers of his gloves, the crease of his pants. The couple enters, the husband barely carrying three suitcases, the children chasing behind. Doizirmo grabs one of the carts, places the suitcases on top of it, and has an employee accompany the family to the reception at the end of the lobby, and then to their room.
The group of men in business suits, chatting in one of the environments with leather couches, is served by a waitress from the restaurant. Doizirmo notices drops of soda on the floor. He presses a button on his wrist communicator and requests a cleanup on the spot. Seconds later a janitor crosses the hall, mops it up, and vanishes.
Three girls, very thin and very tall, stagger out of the elevator and ask the tour guide where they can get something to drink and find the best-looking chicks in the city. When their laughter becomes too loud, Doizirmo goes to the reception’s wall, pulls the intercom, calls the front desk, and asks the kid to take them outside and put them in a taxi immediately. The kid obeys, still answering their questions with the enthusiasm demanded by protocol.
As the action lulls, Doizirmo scans the quadrant in its slightest details and tasks thirteen janitors with small cleanup jobs; the electrical team with fixing a faulty lamp socket; the maintenance team with painting over a section of the baseboard, fouled by some child; and the hotel management with reviewing the speakers’ playlist, after listening from two old ladies, in two different occasions that morning, that they felt like they were on a funeral, having such melancholy tones in their ears.
After the intricate asepsis of the lobby, his responsibility, Doizirmo feels a satisfaction that would undoubtedly result in a smile, were it not against his professional policy of conduct to smile or show emotions while an employee at the city’s most prestigious hotel. Something that quite obviously does not hold when the entryway windows shatter with a thunderous rumble, the great chandelier falls on top of a young couple, and the place is overtaken by smoke and splintered furniture.
The kavlani entourage enters, riding small, plump animals. They dismount, holding bows and arrows and deformed dark swords. The tallest kavlani walks in behind them, asks the receptionist to identify which room Fou is staying in. She does not understand. He raises her by the neck, passes his finger from her chest to her groin, and her body opens, blood and guts spewing over the counter. The other receptionists scream and run to the small room behind the reception desk. A kavlani throws something there that explodes and the shouting ends.
The leader walks around the desk and starts meddling with the keyboard. His green face in layers of exposed flesh takes some time to recognize something. He speaks to the entourage in grunts. Three of them enter the elevator and climb to the eleventh floor. Seconds later they walk out with an old man, his hands tied to his back. Doizirmo, fallen under a pillar since the first explosion, unable to feel his left leg, watches. Survivors that scream or complain are pierced with arrows.
The captured man clearly doesn’t know what’s happening. The kavlani interrogates him, repeatedly presses the nape of his neck, punches his face and his body. Unable to obtain an answer that makes sense, he commands one of the guards to draw his dark blade across the man’s neck. The head falls. Some screams are suppressed. The kavlani looks around, gives an order, and leaves the hotel with the entourage.
The unharmed employees gather to assist Doizirmo. He screams as he is pushed out from under the raised pillar. He’s asked to stay still and wait for the ambulance. Doizirmo says he’s fine. When they step away to help the other wounded, he limps on his good leg to the exit. At the parking lot in the back of the hotel, he goes to his car, sits on the driver’s seat, pushes the nape of his neck, and feels his beige skin return to wet green layers.
He finds it strange that no sound comes from the trunk as the car moves. He stops in a residential street, a few blocks from the hotel, takes off the uniform, and throws it out of the window. He presses the button on the panel to open the trunk. Doizirmo steps out of the trunk slowly, in an undershirt and underpants, and looks around. Fou speeds up, watching through the rearview mirror as the manager starts to put on the clothes thrown on the sidewalk.
Now Fou knows without a doubt that the diplomatic meeting with the humans at the hotel was an ambush. He must disappear, turn to contacts made along a lifetime of espionage to find safe haven in the human world and keep himself alive. It won’t be easy. Even less so with a shattered leg. Blessed be human beings and their automatic transmissions.
Santiago Santos
Santiago Santos writes from Cuiabá, drinking a tereré. He is also a translator and a copy editor, among other things. A while ago, he started publishing mini stories on flashfiction.com.br — and in a bunch of other places — until he got close to five hundred publications. Currently, FlashFiction.com.br is on hiatus, prolonged in part by the pandemic sluggishness. Part of this compendium of short fictions ended up in the collection Algazarra (2018, Patuá) and, a little earlier, they shaped the Incan road trip story “Na eternidade sempre é domingo” (2016). Outside of this ecosystem of stories, the novelette "Hei, hou, Borunga chegou" (2020) deserves a highlight, published in the 3rd season of Mafagafo Magazine.
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