Andre Sovic always knew that someday he was going to be important. When he was in grade school, he figured he was going to be important in high school, and when he was in high school, he figured he was going to be important in college. But he wasn't important in college, either, because this really aggravating little war called Vietnam got in the way. As the son of poor Polish immigrants, Sovic had nobody to take his part when his summons came from the draft board, so off he went to war. It was a fine and noble calling, a war, and as much as the mother and sister were heartbroken, as much as the old man was secretly afraid, off Andre went. He didn't become important in the war. He sat on his butt in a supply depot in Saigon and typed up requisitions. Back home, there were no parades, no newspaper interviews, not even any big family gathering. But why should there be? As yet, Andre Sovic had not proved himself to be important. He went to work at the GM plant, got married to a Polish girl with a set of charlies that were truly eye-popping, and then spent the next sixteen years (they now had four kids) in happy oblivion. Then he got laid off permanently (why couldn't they just say 'fired' and have done with it) from GM and spent just over a year collecting unemployment checks and getting sick of the soap operas his wife watched all day. Andre Sovic was still not an important man.
He was thinking of all this as he got off the elevator tonight. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he'd never be important. Maybe this was simply the fanciful notion of some dumb polack kid from Chicago wearing his khaki uniform with the little Ajax Janitorial insignia above his lapel, jaunty dark brown Ajax Janitorial cap on his head, and Ajax Janitorial vacuum cleaner in his right hand.
He went up to the wooden door marked ERIC BROOKS, was surprised to find it unlocked, and peeked inside.
'Hello?' His voice sounded kind of eerie in the stillness.
He wondered why the door was unlocked. Brooks was usually the last one out of here (a lot of times he had babes with him, beautiful babes) and he always locked up.
No answer.
He went inside.
He was scared. He didn't know why.
Odd, too. All these months going up and down inside dark skyscrapers and he hadn't once got scared.
But tonight, now
'Hello?'
What was he scared of? Guy goes off and forgets to lock the door. Big deal. Probably had some babe on his arm who made him forget everything else.
He went into the plum-colored reception area. Paused. Heard nothing. Decided to take a right and go down the short hall leading to Brooks' own office.
'Hello!'
Didn't want to find Brooks bopping somebody on his desk or something. Didn't want to get fired.
By now he was right up to Eric Brooks' office. The door was open.
He peeked in.
The first thing he saw was the blood sprayed and splashed all over the gray fabric wall.
The second thing he saw was Eric Brooks' head sticking out from behind the desk. On the floor. At a very odd and painful-looking angle.
The third thing he saw were the bloody orange-handled scissors several feet from Eric Brooks' head.
'Oh God,' said the formerly unimportant Andre Sovic. 'Oh God oh God oh God.'
Took him three minutes to gather himself sufficiently to lift his communicator from his belt and talk to his black bastard of a boss.
'You botherin' me again, Sovic.'
'You gotta get up here.'
'You got some chicks up there, all right. Otherwise forget it.' Then he seemed to sense Sovic's mood. He dropped his street-jive accent and said in a perfectly normal middle-class voice, 'What's wrong, Sovic?'
'Just get up here. Pleaseget up here real fast.'
Andre Sovic had become important at last. To the police, who would question him. To the press, who would quote him endlessly. To his family, who would forever more tell stories about the night Dad found that rich guy all cut up in his office.
But as Andre Sovic looked at the bloody body, he wondered if he really liked being important after all.
Not even in Vietnam had he seen corpses this savagely cut up.