He sipped a bit of the coffee and burned his
tongue right away. It was too hot and he was in a hurry, so nothing different
could have happened. He decided to put at least half the pot he had made in a
thermos and just take that in the car. It was pitch black outside and the van
would pick him up in any minute.
Of
course he hadn’t had any sleep at all. He usually went to sleep very late and
he had in the auditorium at five in the morning, with didn’t really gave him
much time to do anything. He decided to not even try to sleep and shower and
get ready at around two of the morning, se he could have breakfast before they
came to pick him up at 3:30 AM.
But as things that shouldn’t happen always
find a way of becoming truth, he dozed off for a while and he lost the time to
have a proper breakfast, which resulted in him burning his tongue and running
around his house like an idiot. The van arrived only minutes afterwards so he
just took his thermos with him and went as fast as he could, although the
elevator apparently had a problem with that, as it felt it took double the time
to get to the ground floor.
There he finally met the man that drove the
van, who he apologized to. The man didn’t even acknowledge that an explained
him that he needed to check him for envelops, microphones, cameras and so on.
The poor guy that hadn’t slept more than half an hour wasn’t sure he was
getting what the driver of the van was telling him. The man attempted to touch
him but he just pulled apart in fear.
- “It’s for security, Mr. Thomas!”
Somehow, that enunciation woke him up a bit
and he decided to stay very still as the man checked his pockets (jacket and
pants), felt everything he had to feel and even asked him to take off his
shoes. He complied to everything as if he was in a boot camp which made them
loose about fifteen minutes of their time, that he had thought to be precious.
After checking the shoes and even the socks, the man finally told him to follow
him to the van.
Mr. Thomas sat down in the far back, not
wanting to talk at all with that man during the ride. After all, it was a
half-hour drive from his house to the headquarters of the services firm where
they had to pick up a suitcase that had all the information they needed by five
in the morning in the theatre. He knew he wasn’t the only idiot waking up at
such time of the day and that made him feel a little better about himself. So
when the van started moving towards the highway, he was a bit more awake than
before.
As they travelled through an unusual cold morning
in Los Angeles, light still absent, he decided to finally have some coffee and
just enjoy the ride. He decided to pay attention to the world and the world
revealed itself to him in a way he had never seen. After all, it wasn’t
everyday that he woke up at this time of day, when every single person that was
up seemed to have a certain thing about them.
The driver was the first in that list. He was
a very tall guy, the kind that when they bend over it looks ridiculous. When he
was checking Mr. Thomas’s shoes, his body contorted in the most funny shape
ever and the owner of those shoes almost laughs, partially because of the time
of day but also because tall people always looked funny in the simplest
positions. Besides his height, he had this weird thing where the mustache was
the same color of his hair, which was blonde, but the eyebrows were very black.
Somehow it looked odd, as if he was a big Mr. Potato Head.
The next person that drew his attention was a
lady on the street. They stopped in a red light for a while and he saw this
elderly woman, body curved as it was humanly possible, walking her Chihuahua in
the middle of the night. What was curious about the woman was not at all the
fact that she was walking her dog at that time, which he knew to be very common
among dog owners, but that she was wearing the strangest combination of
clothing. She had a large overcoat, the color of flamingos. Under that she had
a flowery shirt that looked too big for her, kaki shorts and fluffy sleepers
with a baseball cap crowning her head.
She was a sight to behold and that was only
for a couple of minutes, before they got in the highway and he only saw some
cars and a couple of dead pigeons that had been killed by crazed drivers or
just by people that had not realized that birds wee not the brightest creatures
in the universe. When he saw those bodies, he couldn’t stop thinking about the
poor man or woman that had to clean that up from the asphalt of the highway as
his or her job. That thought made him realize he was a very lucky guy with a
very good job and that he had no right to complain about something as silly as
waking up early in the morning.
It seemed that in no time they were in
downtown Los Angeles, stopping in almost every stupid traffic light. He saw his
watch nervously, telling himself that if he was a couple of minutes late it
wouldn’t really be that big of problem as the show began a little later than
five. But then he remembered he had to pass the information to the people than
made a nice little presentation video for people at home to get what the
presenters were saying. He worried again when he thought of this.
It was right then when they finally got to the
skyscraper where the services offices were located. He got out of the van and
remembered what they had told him: he had to go the information desk and ask
for Tamara Parks. Then, they would direct him to the top floor where Ms. Parks
would give him the briefcase with all the information they needed in the
theater.
So
he did just that. The man at the information desk was a security guard;
obviously the person that tactually worked there had not yet arrived. The man
gave him a badge and told him to take the middle elevator and press the button
to the top floor. Said elevator took forever to arrive and also to get up
there. It seemed to be going for ages. He checked his watch several times and
repeated to himself that they were on time and that the theater was not that
far away. He realized the elevator had a mirror so he decided to check his suit
for stains or anything unusual, his teeth and his face. It was right then the
elevator decided to stop and open.
This startled him but no one was outside
waiting. He had to walk to an office and wait there in a waiting room for the
woman. But he didn’t have to wait at all. She was there and greeted him with a
big smile that he would be unable to do at that time of day. She asked him to
follow her to a conference room and there he found the briefcase but also two
big guys, with black glasses and earpieces. Somehow, it was funny to see them
there, as if they were thing to put in a room like plants or statues.
Ms. Parks explained they were the security
team assigned to join him to the theater to ensure all the information got
there safely and that only the people that had to see it saw it and no one
else. They checked everything in five minutes and then they were good to go. He
left the smiling Parks in the top floor but was joined in the elevator by the
two big guys who didn’t smile at all.
He was a bit relieved when he got to the van
and this time the driver decided to speed up as he realized time was running
short. The theater was not far away and, with the presence of the two big guys,
Mr. Thomas had no opportunity to see the outside world, mainly because he was
trapped between those two mountains that were apparently people.
Exactly at five in the morning, they pulled
off outside the theater and there was already someone waiting, telling her they
were a bit late which was a lie. Apparently people there were very stressed.
The four of them walked, almost jogged, to the theater and there straight to
the master room when a lonely woman was waiting for them behind a computer. It
was Mr. Thomas job to only look at her work like crazy for the next twenty
minutes, helped only by another man.
When the presentation was done, Thomas’s work
was done. The big men would guard the briefcase and he
could just sit in the back of the theater and hear the name of the nominees
from there. At that point, he was finally awake and also very excited because
he knew he was part of something that meant a lot to many people and that was,
somehow, the pinnacle of their efforts and the most coveted prize in the cinema
industry.
