One Dollar

Alexandra Axe found herself in the center of an intersection of eight streets facing a three-story building. Still sitting inside her car, she checked the address that she had noted on her phone’s calendar. It was correct. She wondered why her boss had asked her to come to this place for professional development.

A man in a grey three-piece suit with a top hat in his right hand greeted her at the front door of the building. “Sir, can you tell me if this is 22 Gestalt Road?” she asked.

“One dollar, one dollar, one dollar,” he responded.

“What?”

“One dollar, one dollar, one dollar.”

To get an answer to her question, she opened her purse and rummaged through the change hibernating at the bottom of it. She grabbed some of it and dropped it into the man’s hat. But he vehemently continued, “One dollar, one dollar, one dollar.”

“I’m sure the change added up to more than a buck,” she said, frustrated.

The man grinned back at her.

Giving up, she entered the building to find herself in a grey-marbled lobby monopolized by fire smoke. Slightly coughing, she covered her mouth and nose with her right hand. And then she heard someone say, “Walk straight ahead.”

Partially blinded by the smoke, she headed toward the voice and bumped into the same man standing in front of a room with red-flapping doors wearing a grey half-facepiece-respirator mask.

 “How did you get here?” she asked.

 “Head inside,” he said, yelling.

Alexandra entered the room, and it was smoke-free. A familiar-looking woman stood behind the podium with a flip chart next to her open to a blank page. She took off her respirator, and she said,” Grab a respirator from the box next to the door. We’re safe here for now.”

Alexandra did as she was told and sat in the back row. She put on her protective gear as the other participants dutifully listened to the speaker, reacting to her every word with laughter or groans. But all Alexandra could hear were muffled sounds coming out of the lecturer’s mouth. Attempting to decipher her words, she finally understood one of them: beauty.

To stay awake, Alexandra began counting how many times the word beauty had been uttered by the speaker. When she reached twenty-eight in her count, fire smoke entered the room. Gazing around, none of the other attendees seemed alarmed.

But Alexandra was.

Suddenly, everyone got up and put themselves in a single file to walk out of the room. Surprise-stricken, Alexandra muttered, “I guess the seminar has ended.”

She stayed seated, waiting for every attendee to leave before heading into the lobby. Once outside, she took off her respirator. The smoke was gone. The people from the seminar were also gone. Usually, in the industry, everyone stayed to network after an event. Alexandra had wanted to ask one of the attendees for their notes while networking. Confused, she thought: This must be one of those new-age corporate resilience improvement seminars. If so, I think I did well.

 Then upon seeing that her car was not where she had parked it, she lost it and shrieked, “Can this crappy day get any worse?” Her cell phone also indicated that there was “no service.” Alexandra immediately became distressed; the drive alone to “no human’s land” took over an hour. And now she would have to walk home. Distraught, she spun in circles until she noticed a group of people down one of the eight streets.

She headed there for directions, and hours later, she arrived at her condo exhausted with feet full of blisters. All she had on were ballet shoes. She automatically crawled onto her sofa and slept for 16 hours. She got up, showered, dressed, and had her dark chai tea. She then called an Uber. Filing a stolen car report would have to wait as it was already early afternoon.

Alexandra decided to take the service elevator upon arriving at her office’s 50-story building, Alexandra crossed her fingers, hoping she would not get caught arriving this late. Even taking the back entrance, Sydney, the office manager, spotted her from the copy room. And screeched, “Holy cow.”

“Please, be quiet! Mark will kill me,” Alexandra said, approaching her. “He wanted a report on his desk about the seminar before noon. If I recommend it, then everyone has to take it.”

She then noticed that all her colleagues gathered around her with bewildered facial expressions. She began having a surge of panic attacks, for she believed they intended to murder her.

“Where have you been these last four years?” Sydney asked instantly, extinguishing her malformed suspicion.

“Stop pulling my leg, Syd. I’m technically only half a day late,” she said.

At this moment, fire smoke entered the room, and her colleagues put on their respirators. But this time, she did not have one at her disposal. She passed out. Minutes later, she regained consciousness due to Mark slapping her face.

“Do you think feigning fainting will get you out of your report?” he joked.

“The only thing I picked up at that seminar is one word: beauty.”

Then Alexandra kept lecturing her class in the room with red-flapping doors as Mark had requested. She wished that she could remove her respirator for a minute to comfort the familiar-looking woman who seemed distressed sitting in the back row. The attendee had been fidgeting in her seat the entire time. She seemed terrified. But Mark had clearly instructed her that she could not speak to any of the attendees during the training, except for, asking them to put on a respirator. And rules were rules.