Angie could tell I was anxious and held up one of her fingers in the hand that was holding the walkie she wasn’t currently talking into.
“Booth five-zero-zero-one, Earl,” she was saying into the other one. “Right at the front of the hall. They’ve been waiting for internet access since six last night. Get someone over there and get it taken care of.”
I tried to say something, but Angie wagged her silencing finger at me.
The walkie-talkie next to her face crackled, and then Earl’s voice came back. “Okay. Booth five-zero-zero-one.”
“And then get a scissor lift over to booth seven-five-one-five. The sign your guys hung above their booth is crooked and they want it fixed.”
Crackle. “Seven-five-one-five. Got it.”
“And then get all the empty crates off the show floor. There’s a whole pile of them back by the south restrooms. We can’t start dropping aisle carpet until all the forklifts are off the floor.”
This time the crackle was slower in coming, but I knew better than to interrupt. Angie and I stood looking at each other, waiting for Earl to acknowledge.
Crackle. “Copy that.”
“What is it?” Angie asked me suddenly.
“Are we going to be ready?” I asked, popping my arm out to look at my wristwatch. “We’re supposed to open the hall in twenty-six minutes.
“Yes, no problem,” Angie replied matter-of-factly, handing me one of the walkie-talkies she was holding. “Go man the front entrance. Keep the ropes up until I signal you.”
I took the black Motorola from her, looking it over and trying to remember the insufficient orientation I had received in its use.
I had no time to ask. Before I could say another word, an exhibitor inserted herself between me and Angie and started complaining loudly about malfunctioning lights in her booth.
“Earl,” Angie said into her remaining radio, as she began moving purposefully in the direction of the frustrated exhibitor’s booth. “Have an electrician meet me in booth two-six-eight-two ASAP. Those lights are blinking out again.”
If Earl acknowledged that last command, I never knew, since Angie had already moved out of my earshot. Earl, I knew, was our service representative at the company we had hired to set-up, coordinate, and tear down our exhibit hall. He was a hard-working man, someone with a thick Chicago accent, who frequently took his clients out for drinks and who always looked like he had slept in his clothes. Where he was, and how he was coordinating all the things Angie demanded of him over her walkie-talkies; I didn’t have any idea.
At the front entrance of the exhibit hall, a thin rope line had been set up, something to keep the gathering masses at bay while the sense-overwhelming experience of our exhibit hall was prepared for them. And the masses were starting to gather, at least a hundred milling about when I arrived at T minus eighteen minutes. A line of three hired security guards stood equally spaced immediately behind the rope line, guards who had let me pass minutes before on the evidence of my staff badge, but who didn’t know me from Adam. I waved my newly-acquired walkie-talkie at one of them as a symbol of my authority.
“Angie’s going to call me when it’s okay to open the hall,” I said.
The person I was speaking to simply nodded, his droopy eyes giving the appearance that he hadn’t slept in days. His uniform pants were too long for his legs and his coat was too big in the shoulders.
I looked at the other two in turn, repeating myself, waiting for someone to show a glimmer of recognition. I was not so rewarded, so I simply took my place among them. When they all silently adjusted their positions so that the four of us were equally spaced across the rope line, however, I couldn’t help but feel like I had been accepted, a little like an extra outfielder in the peewee leagues.
When they started rolling out the bright red aisle carpet, we had no more than five minutes to spare, and the crowd on the other side of the rope line had grown at least five fold. They were all pressed tightly against each other, forming a concentrated mass of humanity. Tall and short, fat and thin; they were there in strength. But they were, I realized, almost entirely old, or at least older than me, and all dressed in the same business attire one would wear to an interview. The men among them all looked like Paul Webster and the women all looked like Eleanor Rumford, certainly not in their skin colors and hairdos, but most certainly in their age, attire, and bodily presence. They were professionals, well established in their careers, and yet here they stood, willingly packed together like teenagers trying to get into a rock concert.
One of them met my eyes. It was a woman, the lanyard of her name badge hanging crookedly across her breast, and three bags -- a purse, a briefcase, and one of the throwaway convention bags we gave to each attendee -- hanging awkwardly from straps on her shoulders. She was pressed between two men, neither of them seemingly aware of her presence. For a moment a look of discomfort passed over her face, and then her eyes seemed to drift back into a kind of willing and learned obedience, like a beast of burden waiting for its turn at the feeding trough.
My walkie-talkie crackled. “This is Angie calling Alan.”
I looked at my watch. It was one minute before nine o’clock. I pushed one of the buttons on the walkie-talkie and waited for it to beep.
“Go ahead, Angie.”
Crackle. “You can open the hall now.”
“Ten-four,” I said, and without having to tell them the three security guards moved forward to unhook and remove the restraining rope. In an instant the crowd began flowing into the exhibit hall, exactly, I thought, like Christmas shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving, anxious to get their hands and their credit cards on the shiny baubles that the witch doctors in a hundred different marketing departments had been working all year to convince they could not live without. I stood like an unyielding boulder in a stream, the people flowing all around me. At one point I even closed my eyes, and focused solely on the breezy sensation of their passing.
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/
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