Door chapter 1 rough

Every story has a beginning.  This story begins with a door.  

 The Door in question is just a plain door, standing alone in a sea of bland colored bricks.  It is basic in design, common place among other doors.  If The Door was in a line up of doors, you wouldn’t notice The Door ever.  It is that plain and undistinguishable.  No one will stop to look at this door and wonder what it contains.  Its windowless boundaries offer no cause for attention whatsoever, nothing that would intrigue a passerby to investigate.  

 The Door is brown, windowless, almost exactly matching in color to the bricks around it.  It lines a building that was a long boring brick run with windows two floors up.  On the right corner of the building was a small unremarkable deli, the left side was an out-of-business hardware store.  And nothing but brick and The Door in between.  

  Our plain Door, the one that begins this tale, has a purpose.  The Door, as most doors are, is a barrier, a gateway from one place to another. Its job is to protect this gateway from attention, a job it does quite well.  In fact, The Door is so unnoticeable, so drab and plain, that unless someone knew exactly what to look for, where to look for it, they would never find it.  The Door was there simply to keep people who didn’t need to know about it from ever finding it.  Needless to say, The Door was very good at its job.  

 To clarify when this story starts, it begins when she finds the door for the first time, mostly because she was hopelessly lost.  

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 Lucy was late, lost and strangely enough, laughing.  
It was something she did, the laughing, when she was frustrated or upset.  She figured that at least it beat crying, which was what she did when she was angry.  She was hoping this whole situation would be incredibly funny to her later; her hysterical laughing was just a preamble.  It really wasn’t funny, though, and try as she might she had a feeling that there would be nothing funny about this later, either.  

 She was looking for a door, one that she was incredibly late in finding.  The door belonged to her father’s best friend and sometimes business associate, James Swallin.  It was supposedly located as a side door of his business, Swallin and Assoc Realty Co, which Lucy was struggling to find.  

 Already annoyed Lucy thought about the situation.  Her father had left her a cryptic voicemail last night while she was at work which had her slightly worried.  It wasn’t really so much of what he said but the tone in his voice, the nervous edginess she heard in his voice as he left his brief message.  

 “Loos darling,” he had cooed his nickname for her onto the machine, trying too hard to sound casual. “It’s Daddy...  I was wondering if you were free tomorrow morning to come down to James’s office and meet with him and me.  It’s important.  You know the place, right?  Down in Sainsbury, on Market Street.  Meet us at…let’s say 11 am?   James and I have a…proposal for you.  See you in the morning, baby.”  Lucy wondered when he ever called himself “daddy” unless he wanted something from her.  She had a bad feeling about this whole thing before she even finished listening to the message.  Her father never called unless he needed a favor.  

 The whole thing irritated.  She did not know where this office was, she had never been there before.  Lucy had looked it up on mapquest last night and printed off directions, swearing under her breath that she even had to go.  Her guilt and familial duty required her to show up but she didn’t have to listen to what they had to say.  Mostly he probably wanted her to do a quick job for him or some other type of favor.  Last time she did a “quick job” for her father she found herself out of a place to live.  She sighed and tried not to think about the whole awful event.

 To make matters even worse, she had forgotten to set her alarm this morning, much to her chagrin.  She left her apartment in a sleepy daze, rushing to leave.   She forgot her directions on the printer, so of course she got lost.  By the time she found the street she needed she was already fifteen minutes late.  She parked on the street and searched for a quarter to pay the meter, not ready to add a parking ticket to this day that was already off to a bad start.  

 Once parked, Lucy tried to grab her cell phone out of her pocket to call her father. And then realized she didn’t have pockets.  She was wearing a skirt, the first thing she could find in her thick headed rush to get out of her apartment, which meant that she left her phone on the nightstand.  

 “Gah!” was all she could think to say.  Her father was going to kill her.  She cursed her own forgetfulness and contemplated returning home for it only briefly.  If she went home she wouldn’t come back, that was for sure.  Besides, the office had to be on this block somewhere.  She would just have to find it the old-fashioned way, by walking and looking.

 Lucy checked her watch again, it read 11:32.  She was now more than a half hour late to this “proposal meeting”.  She sighed again.  It was going to be a very long and trying day, she could tell.  Her stomach grumbled noisily, agreeing with her and reminding her that she forgot to eat breakfast on top of everything else.  

 She started looking around for some clue that would tip her off as to where the office was located.  All the buildings in this part of town looked the same pretty much so that wasn’t much help.  About two blocks from where she parked her Honda Accord she found her dad’s blue Monte Carlo parked.  Double checking that it was, in fact, his vehicle she looked up at the building it was parked by.  

  The building loomed above her five stories.  It was remarkably unremarkable.  A plain brick building with no doors on the street, there was a deli on one corner, an out-of-business signed window on the other.  She was wondering if that really was her father’s car, that maybe she was in the completely wrong place when she noticed something.  It wasn’t like she saw anything in particular, she just felt compelled to look a little closer.  It was a weird feeling, there was something interesting and even, she struggled for the word…unique about this building, even though she had never been here before.  Even though the building was incredibly unremarkable she was fascinated with it for reasons she couldn’t explain.  

  Lucy noticed The Door.  She could have sworn that it wasn’t there a minute ago, even though it had been there the whole time.  It was so plain and boring that her mind had filtered it out before she had even taken stock of it.  But now, something was different.  The Door was in the middle of the building, nondescript and boring.  It probably wouldn’t even have caught her attention on any other day, but today she was undeniably lost.  And The Door was open, she noticed.  It was just a crack but it was enough for her to want to look inside, and as she thought that, she suddenly had to look inside it.     

  She walked closer to the door and turned her head to look inside.  It was dark, she leaned in closer.  Unconscious of the action, her hand reached out to grab the door knob.  It was a dull metallic color, the shine long since rubbed off with years of use and weathering.  As her fingertips grazed the top of the knob a small charge pulsed into her fingers.  It didn’t hurt at all, the tingling feeling that charged up her arms almost felt pleasant.  She closed her hand around the handle, and leaned in to push the door open when a hand closed on her shoulder and pulled her around.  Startled, she felt the door quickly pull closed as she was turned and she pulled her hand from the knob.  

 Her heart was still racing as she looked up to see who was randomly grabbing her in the street.  Relief washed over her almost immediately as she recognized her father.  “Jesus Dad, you scared the crap outta me!”

  “Lucy!  What in the world are you doing?  I’ve been calling your phone for the last half hour!  And even now, I just called your name and you ignored me, what is wrong with you today?”  He chastised.  “You’re late!”

  Lucy looked at her father not sure if relief was the right feeling.  Dread immediately replaced the relief when she remembered the situation.  And the dread was quickly followed by annoyance and anger. “Well, sorry Dad!  I forgot my phone this morning, I forgot my directions, I forgot to eat breakfast.  I’m not having a good day, I’m starving and I got incredibly lost because you assumed I knew how to get here!”  Her heart was still racing from being startled by her father, and she found herself getting more and more excitable.  She took a deep breath before she continued.  Her father just stared at her, surprised by her tone of voice.  “I’m sorry, Dad.  I’ve just had a bad morning.  Please tell me this meeting at least has coffee.”

   “Yes, we have coffee but it’s probably left over from this morning.  You know James isn’t much of a drinker.  Come on, this way, we have already made them wait long enough.”  

   Lucy followed her father across the street.  She tripped in a small pothole when she heard what her father was saying, twisting her ankle the wrong way in her strappy sandals. “What do you mean that we have made them wait long enough?  Who are we talking about?”  They had crossed the street and her father’s hand was reaching out for the door.  She mentally added her shoe choice to the list of things that had already gone wrong today.  She was sure that she couldn’t possibly be more annoyed than she was at this moment.

   Her father did not answer her question, avoiding eye contact.  It was obvious that this meeting was going to be painful.  He ushered her inside a door that had a small sign on it reading J. Swallin Realty Co.

   The first thing she noticed after her grand entrance into Swallin Realty was that the air conditioning was way, way too cold.  She had instant goose bumps.  Great, she thought, now I’m gonna have to shave my legs again, too, as she felt the goose bumps line her bare legs.  She wasn’t sure that this day could get any worse.  

  And then, when she saw who her father meant by ‘them’, her day unexpectedly became much worse.  It was Dick Swallin, James’s son.  He was the last person she had expected, although, she thought, she should have know it was coming with this kind of morning. Dick was the kind of person she avoided at all costs.  Usually it wasn’t really much of a challenge, she hardly ever spoke to her father’s friend since she had moved out of the house a few years ago.  That considerably cut down the amount of time she had to spend with Dick.  Their parents usually threw them together in what she could only assume were attempts to make them friends, something which Lucy was definitely not interested in purusing..  

   First of all, Lucy had a hard time with anyone who wanted to call themselves Dick.  His name full first name was Richard, and he could have picked Rick or Richie or Rich but, no, he asked people to call him Dick.  He was the exact type of person who went by Dick as well, over confident and brash, pushy and strong willed.  She did not get along well with people who always assumed they were the most important person in the room.  By calling himself Dick, she assumed he was trying to make people feel uncomfortable around him, giving himself the upper hand in any situation.  He made her feel uncomfortable just by being in the same room as her.  

   In Lucy’s opinion, if you looked up jerk in the dictionary you would find Dick Swallin listed right after the Caribbean seasoning.  She sighed out loud, disgusted, too upset to try and keep her cool.  He looked up at her as she walked in, making eye contact and smiling with his perfect too-white teeth. The act just made her more upset.   Angrily, she looked at her father instead.  

   Her father, avoiding her eyes, spoke.  “Loos, you remember your good friend Dick, right?”

   Dick took his cue.  “Ah, Lucy Lovejoy, it’s been much too long.  We really should get together more often.  Thanks for taking the time to come out today.  Did you have trouble finding the place?”

  Lucy’s head almost exploded right there and then.  Of course she had problems find this place, she was over half an hour late.  His smugness pissed her off more than she felt was possible.  She felt tears welling in her eyes and fought to control her temper.  There was no way she was going to cry in front of this jerk.  She clenched her hands into tight fists and thought about punching his  perfect too-white teeth into the back of his conceited head.  It helped her feel a little better, but she still didn’t trust herself to speak, less the waterworks begin.  She bit her bottom lip a little and tried to calm down.  

  Without missing a beat James stepped in to control the conversation.  “Well, since we are all here, shall we get started?  Does anyone want some coffee or anything before we get going? Lucy?”  He looked at her with an older yet similar smile to Dick’s.  All Lucy could think of is how many teeth she could knock out of Dick’s face with one punch.  

   Her father answered for her, “She did mention coffee, right Loos?  It’s right in there, why don’t you help yourself?”

   Lucy. grateful for the chance to escape and compose herself, took off towards the room her father indicated.  Thankfully no one tried to follow her.  This was not going well.  She entered the small kitchen area, there was a small refrigerator-microwave set like the kind in college dorms with a coffee maker on top of it.  She found small white Styrofoam cups next to it and poured herself some coffee.  It smelled old.  She found the creamer, the generic powdered type, but it was empty.  She was going to have to make due with just plain old black coffee.  At least there was coffee at all she thought, consoling herself.

    Taking a deep breath she followed the sounds of conversation back down the hallway to the small conference room at the end of the hall.  Her father and James were reliving some glory days golf event or something, she really didn’t care.  All three men looked up at her as she entered the room.  

  Lucy sat in the first chair she found, a comfortable black chair on wheels with a high cushiony back.  Even thought the chair was comfortable enough, she couldn’t let herself relax.  

   “So, Lucy,” James began, “we had all just been talking and, you know how these things get started.  Well we were just thinking that maybe you would be interested in, well, you know how you and Dick were old childhood friends and all, and thinking in the interest of the company...and since your dad and I are such good friends,” he rambled on, “hmm….Dick?  You wanna take this over?”

   Lucy felt the blood rush to her face.  Since when were they ever good childhood friends she wanted to demand.  What do I care about the best interests of this company! she wanted to retort.  She had no idea where this was headed, the anxiety tying her stomach in knots.  Instead she stayed quiet, afraid speaking would break down the wall carefully holding back her anger and frustrations..

    Dick smiled his smug smile, flashing his super white teeth.  He must bleach them, she thought to herself. No one’s teeth are that white.  Her hate was so strong at that point she almost couldn’t stop herself from leaving.  Her nails were biting into the palms of her hands she had her fists clenched so tight.  The pain helped her focus on not beating the crap out of this smug bastard or breaking down into tears.  

   “Well, Lucy, I was wondering... would you like to accompany me to a business awards ceremony.... As my date.”  The way he said it made it seem like he was informing her that she had just won some amazing prize.  Lucy almost screamed in disgust right there.

 Instead she took a deep breath and said “No, Dick, I would not like to go anywhere with you.  Ever.”  The force which she spoke made her father cringe.  Dick looked like he didn’t hear her.  She could feel the tears building up, breathing was becoming difficult. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything else.  

    “Lucy, darling, it’s at a nice Italian place downtown.  Lots of bigwigs and important people will be there.  I do hope you like Italian.  Of course you do.  Are you free on Friday?  I’ll pick you up at, let’s say, how’s seven sound?”  

  Somehow this conversation continued without her consent.  Her anger consumed her, and she was pretty sure her fingernails were cutting into the skin in her palms.  Taking a deep breath and throwing caution to the wind she said “Dick, I will not be going as your da-da-date.  I’m not going at all.”  She said it quietly, the way she said the word ‘date’ made it sound venomous, as if it were a bad word.  She wanted to scream at him but if she did she would lose her cool and probably start to cry.  There was no way she was crying in front of him, she would rather slit her own throat.  She was embarrassed by the stutter in her voice, too, but pressed on.  “I refuse.  If you are done….?”

    Lucy did not wait for a response.  She stood up much too quickly; the chair pushed out fast and slammed into the wall with a loud bang, causing her father to flinch.  Before anyone could say anything she ran out of the room and towards the glass entry door.  She pushed the door but it wouldn’t budge.  A guttural sound escaped from her throat as she was pushed over the edge.  She kicked the door, hurting her foot in the process.  Slamming her hand on the glass she realized that she needed to pull the door open.  She swung the door with such force that it too slammed too hard into the wall.  By the time the door closed she was already across the block.  

   She tripped over the curb, twisting the same ankle again and breaking her strappy sandal.  “Ahhhhhhhh!” she screamed, ripping the shoe off her foot.  She flung it across the street where it hit a white Audi.  She hoped it was Dick’s car.   She half expected her father to have followed her, but it seemed that no one was coming.  She kicked the brick wall in front of her with enough force that the heel of her still good sandal snapped to the side.  

   “Shit shit shit shit shit!” she swore as she tore that shoe off as well, throwing it at the same white car.  She missed and the shoe landed on the pavement behind the car.  Tears now stung her eyes.  She went around the corner, refusing to stay anywhere in sight of where that detestable Dick might see her.  Her vision blurred as the tears poured over her eyes and down her face.  She couldn’t breath and she wanted to disappear.  Or, rather, she wanted Dick to disappear.  ‘How dare him!  He didn’t even care what I said, he was gonna do what he wanted anyway!  What the hell is that!?,’ she thought, ‘Who does that kind of crap?!  What the hell, assuming I’d be happy to accompany him!’  She fumed, imagining herself punching his smug face into a bloody ugly thing.  She wished she had the upper body strength to even hurt him a little, knowing that even if she did hit him it probably wouldn’t hurt him.  

  After a while and some crying, she was able to breathe again.  As she calmed down her eyes began to sting from crying so hard.  Taking deep breaths, she stood up and wiped the tears from her cheeks.  When she felt she looked somewhat presentable, she walked around the corner, heading to her car.  She noticed her father’s car was already gone.  Boy was he going to hear from her later.  She took another deep breath trying to control herself.    

   She was rushing down the street, heading to her car, when she saw the Door again.  It brought her to a complete stop, her anger immediately completely gone.  It was replaced with a feeling of overwhelming curiosity, so strong she couldn’t resist but to go up to the Door.  It was open a crack again; she could have sworn that it had slammed closed when her father pulled her away before.  She walked up to the Door again, touching the knob lightly with her fingers.  The tingling feeling that she felt before pulsed up her arm again. She couldn’t exactly describe how it made her feel, some combination of comfortable, calm and collected.  She took a deep breath and pushed open the door.