Work Routine is out of wack in more ways than one

My phone had become Grand Central Station. Or at least that’s what it felt like.

I was back at work, so my emails and office number were back to being forwarded to my cell. I had wisely turned that off when I left the night before the trip and had turned it back on that morning before the All-Hands. Emails I could ignore, generally, until I had a minute to sit. Texts could wait a few minutes, but whether it was a Shift Lead or one of colleagues from another department needing an answer, it was usually a ‘Now-ish’ not ‘When you have time’ situation. The calls could be hit or miss and since we didn’t have our own secretaries I had to take the risk of screening them myself with call display and judging what needed to be answered and what could go to voicemail.

The addition of six girlfriends (or girlfriend-ish relationships) to my social circle ramped up the communications to a whole new level.

I had to take two calls while Dayana and I were making our way across the hotel towards the east end and the pool area. To be fair, she had to take three - she was just as busy and in demand as I was. But I was checking my texts way more often.

My girls all wanted to wish me a good day at work. Terra was keeping me up to date on her plans, and assuring me she was OK and relying on a couple of friends in New Orleans who were going to help her and Cass when they were packing up her life on the weekend. Becca was already back to work doing some photo editing from the trip and sent me some cropped, silly shots from her shoots. Ami was going to stop at the ‘World’s Largest Dinosaur’ in Wyoming later in the day and promised me a selfie. Zenya did remember our phone call from the night before and was embarrassed, and also asked if the work day was a total no-sexting time or if there were some options.

And then there were the texts from Cass and Cattie as they kept me up to date on their touristy sightseeing. They’d stop at the Sign, and since we were going to do the Strip tonight and I planned to walk Fremont Street with Cattie for our date tomorrow, Cass was going to bring her to a bunch of the non-scammy other tourist traps in the city. The Botanical Gardens, the Mob Museum, the Neon Boneyard. Tomorrow they’d do the Hoover Dam during the day and then do an unofficial drive-around tour of some of the famous celeb houses that were ill-kept secrets of the city and some of the non-Casino landmarks from movies like The Hangover.

It took us nearly twenty minutes, with the phone call interruptions and Dayana needing to stop at the south loading dock to argue with a truck driver, for us to reach the pool.

“Jesus,” I said, looking at the scorch marks up the side of the building. They were a good twenty feet tall and marred the marble facing that our poolside was known for.

“Yeah, I know,” Dayana said. “But look up.”

“Holy shit,” I coughed. It looked like the fifteenth and sixteenth floors had been hit with a mortar, with more black scorch marks looking an awful lot like an explosion site. One of the hotel room windows was cracked.

“Scared the shit out of some guy who had gone to bed early,” Dayana said.

“Fire department come out?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dayana said. “And they were pissed.”

“Probably not as pissed as Frankie B.”

“Oh, he almost gave birth to a demon when he saw it,” Dayana smirked.

Frankie B was the head of maintenance and groundskeeping, and he acted like the Vasoseh was a holy temple with the way he wanted to make sure everything was pristine and perfect.

“Were you here to see it?” I asked, nodding at the scorch marks.

“No, I was doubling up on the Statler Wedding so that Jonas didn’t fuck it up and a corporate dinner in the Sunrise ballroom that Tan was in charge of,” she said. “But Crystal was managing the bar out here and took a video for me.” Dayana took out her phone and pulled up the video. It was dusk and the camera work was a little shaky, mostly because the bartender was gasping and trying not to laugh, but the fireworks display was astoundingly close to the building - to the point that the colourful balls of fire were ricocheting off of the marble and bouncing up over the pool.

“Holy shit,” I repeated myself.

The saving grace was that, beyond the loud ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ from the crowd, I could hear the faint sound of Walt yelling at the fireworks guys. To be fair, I wasn’t sure what I would have done in that situation other than hope that I didn’t get into it to begin with. Could you even stop a chain of fireworks mid-display? I really had no idea.

“This is why I do indoor events,” I snorted. “Much less pyro to go boom.”

Dayana snorted. “You say that, but how many times have you needed to put out ‘just a little fire’ with a fire extinguisher?” She dropped her voice to mimic me, and I knew she was using the same words I had in one of those all-hands meetings when I had been in a position where I needed to defend myself.

“Hey,” I said. “All four of those times were very different, and each one was caused by a guest or a client doing something they hadn’t talked with me about beforehand because they knew I would tell them no.”

“Sure, sure,” she laughed, elbowing me.

God, she’s-

Nope.

“So what’s Frankie B thinking?” I asked. “Get in some specialist to clean the marble facing, or do they need to replace the sections?”

“With the amount of budget being allocated, some of it must need to be replaced,” Dayana shrugged. Then her phone rang and she looked down at it and sighed. “Alright, it begins. Lunch at one?”

“I’ll text if I need to push,” I agreed. It was our daily meeting time to go over details for any Ballroom events that night.

“Alright, see you then,” she grinned at me, squeezed my arm and winked before walking away.

I turned and looked at the fireworks damage rather than be tempted to look at her ass.

This was becoming a problem.

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