A small and intriguing pile of abandoned shoes languished in the middle of the room — a pile that included at least three separate pairs of women’s shoes (along with one disconcerting singleton the image of which stuck in Xander’s brain accompanied by a persistent and unanswered question as to what had transpired with its mate) which fairly obviously did not belong to Rory Grissom.
Precious minutes passed before Xander allowed all of these things to coalesce into a couple of grimly uncomfortable truths. Rory Grissom — scheduled for a GoH appearance that morning — was undeniably AWOL. Even if Xander could locate the man within the space of the next ten minutes or so, according to the evidence available in Rory’s room it would probably be asking the impossible to hope for him to be even remotely coherent enough to appear in public on a stage in the immediate future.
“Damn it. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn it,” Xander muttered, scowling, surveying the scene with his chin tucked into his chest. He allowed himself a trickle of comfort in the idea that any potential audience for that morning’s panel might not be in any better shape than the missing panelist, but it really was no more than a trickle — it was the panelist that he was responsible for, not that audience. His job was to make the panel happen.
And that…was looking… iffy.
Deciding he did not have the time to start a wild goose chase around the hotel for Rory Grissom, Xander abandoned the coffee cup he was still clutching in his right hand on a side table next to the tumbled sofa, whirled, and ran out of the suite, leaving the door open behind him. At least Vince Silverman had arrived at the con safely shackled by the demanding and needy presence of that young wife of his. Maybe, Xander thought, that had been enough to keep him anchored in the place where he could be expected to be found — and even just one panelist…
He turned a corner in the hotel corridor just in time to see Vince Silverman stepping quietly, almost stealthily, out of a hotel room, closing the door behind him with an almost inaudible snick. He looked up just as Xander came to a winded, skidding stop a few paces away from him, and put up a hushing finger to his lips.
“Shh,” he whispered, “Angel’s asleep, and I’d rather not wake her right now. She was in full freak — out mode most of last night, and I finally managed to zonk her out with one of your good doctor’s industrial — strength sleeping pills. He basically told me that it would knock out a buffalo, but even that took a while to work. I’d rather not go through all that again.”
“Is she okay?” Xander asked as he fell into step beside Vince, walking away from the hotel room towards the central atrium and the elevators.
“Let me put it this way. One of Angel’s better attributes is that she lacks any imagination whatsoever. She is utterly literal about things. This is usually a feature, not a bug, because — well — my first wife, who was also a writer, and a good one, had plenty of imagination — and for a while that was wonderful because we fed each other’s muses — but it soon became apparent that marriage, or at least our marriage, was simply too small for two people with measurable quantities of weird imagination to co — habit in together without both of them going insane. It was exhausting, at best — and then there were times that I had to…”
Xander turned to look at him as he stopped talking, unsure if it would be more polite to inquire further or let the conversation lapse.
But Vince, noticing the look, simply shrugged.
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “There was room for only one me in a domestic partnership. When it became a competition, Laura and I simply imploded. It was inevitable, I suppose. That’s why I find Angel so perfect, under ordinary circumstances. She doesn’t try to change or improve or reinvent my worlds. She just tells me she thinks they’re wonderful, even when she doesn’t have the first clue what I’m talking about. But that’s okay. She gives me the space to think, and work, and rest.”
“Um, this morning, the panel…” Xander began, feeling vaguely guilty that he was basically dismissing his GoH’s wife and any further concerns about her but pursuing the thing that he himself was concerned about in that precise moment.
Vince nodded. “I know. Are you expecting anyone to show?”
“No idea,” Xander said. “Beginning with your co — panelist. Rory Grissom isn’t in his room and I have no clue where to even start looking. Can you do a solo if you have to?”
“My dear sir,” Vince said, “I can talk about myself for hours. That won’t be a problem.”
Xander allowed himself a shadow of a smile and chose not comment further.
They did not have long to wait before the elevator doors opened in response to their summons, but they were nevertheless not the first customers. The young man slouching in the far corner looked up as the doors whooshed open, and nodded at Xander in greeting. Xander, recognizing him at once as Sam Dutton’s protégé, the one who had valiantly tried to save the train wreck that had been the panel with Bob the Android, nodded back as he stepped into the elevator, but said nothing.
The doors closed, and Xander, despite the fact that the button for the lobby had already been pushed, poked at it again impatiently before the elevator finally started to move.
“Is it my imagination or is this thing — ” he began, a little irascibly, and then, even as he was speaking, the elevator convulsed violently and stopped dead.
Somewhere, they heard the faint sound of an alarm.
Xander rolled his eyes. “Stuck? We’re stuck? Give me a break…”
“The place seems a little moribund this morning,” Vince said conversationally, sticking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Do you think anyone will notice?”
Xander reached for the com link earpiece that should have been in his ear and realized with a sinking feeling that he had neglected to wear it that morning. His phone, of course, would still be useless.
“Swell,” he said. “Does that intercom thingy in the panel work?”
Vince toggled the intercom switch. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Transportation system failure in Tower 1.”
Marius, in his corner, could not help a grin at that.
But there was no immediate response, and Xander stepped up to the elevator doors and banged on them with both hands. “Hey! Heeeeey! Hellllooo! Can anybody hear me? We’re stuck in here! Helllooooo?”
Vince slouched back against the mirrored side of the elevator car. “It’ll only take a few minutes of someone else waiting for the elevator that never comes and the alarm will be raised somewhere,” he said. “Chill. They’ll unstick us.”
“Do they have personnel on tap at the hotel?” Xander asked. “Someone who knows what to do about this?”
“Far as I know,” Vince said, “that emergency phone goes to the front desk and then they call in the cavalry…”
“What, like some Schindler operative? Or the fire department, to come rescue us like so many stuck cats? I hate to mention it, but those guys might take a little while to get here…” He paused, and suddenly lifted his head to sniff at the air. “Can you smell smoke?”
“Not even a little bit,” Vince said. And then, as Xander muttered something under his breath, tilted his head a little in a quizzical manner. “What was that?”
“I said, 羔羊中的孤羊 Gao yang jong duh goo yang,” Xander snapped. “Sometimes there just isn’t anything to say that the Firefly crew haven’t already said better. I still say I smell smoke.”
“There hasn’t exactly been time for anything to really start burning yet,” Marius said.
“Look, it isn’t that I am generally twisted on the subject of elevators, but stuck ones make me claustrophobic, okay?” Xander said, and banged on the door a couple more times. “Anybody there?”