The foyer proclaimed the substance and might of the organisation: cream marble floors, too perfect to walk on, a steel and grey granite staircase, and white wood doors leading into the pulsing heart of the building. Immense abstract paintings graced the walls, the colours blending and flowing into shapes that no human eye had ever witnessed, every instant forming a fresh tableau of perfection. And, far away, a receptionist sat behind her desk, a vast satin-smooth plateau of white wood, carefully studying the pages of a document. Though he hardly dared to desecrate the foyer's magnificence, Loofah was sucked in by its irresistible power.
He walked quickly but nervously, his resonating footsteps violating the sacred quiet as he penetrated the empty acres. Soon he was deep into the foyer, a solitary traveller on the marble steppes. The airship-hanger space pressed down on him, crushing him with its vast expansiveness, shrinking him from man to tiny ant. And it seemed that with every step the vastness was becoming vaster still. The polished floor stretched out in front of him, expanding as he walked, and the desk veered away towards the retreating horizon. The walls and the ceiling, already remote, pulled outwards and each step of his thin-soled loafers became an artillery detonation that reverberated through the now infinite hollowness.
For hour after long hour he walked, both crushed to nothing by the vastness and simultaneously sucked out into it, the particles of his tiny being dispersing into the great vacuum as sparsely as the atoms of a deep-space hydrogen cloud. His tiny insect legs made no impact on the expanding miles, the trek across the marble-floored tundra was endless. The steady swing of his legs and the detonation of his footsteps, the echoing space and the infinite plain focused on the vanishing point desk: this was how it would be until time itself ceased, this was his life for now and for always, this was existence itself.
Then, quite suddenly, he was there, standing at the desk, looking down on the receptionist's immaculate coiffure.
She was a hard and angular woman, no longer young yet not old either, with a face chiselled from the same marble as the floor, polished and cold. Wearing a two-piece grey suit with pearl ear-studs, her scarlet lips were permanently moulded into a disdainful sneer. Although she still pored over her document without looking up, he sensed that she was aware of his presence; something in the disposition of her shoulders was deliberately set against him, a barrier.
Loofah waited, she ignored. In the massive silence he felt his own heart beating; the space pressed down, screaming his own insignificance at him. As he waited, Loofah searched inside himself for the determination to demand her attention, to challenge this corporate annihilation of his existence. And yet the longer he delayed, the more impossible seemed taking action – in no time, he knew, it would be utterly inconceivable and he would be trapped with her for eternity inside this bizarre tableau. Just as he was resigning himself to this fate, however, a slender grey telephone purred discretely at her elbow. The receptionist picked up the receiver with a painted claw and held it to a flint-hard cheek.
'Sector Office. Can I help you?' Her voice was silk and saccharine sweetness. 'Yes, of course, Mr Holmes, no trouble at all – I'll see to it right away. My pleasure. Goodbye then, and thank you for calling.' Replacing the receiver, she returned to her document.
This brief conversation seemed to temporarily liquefy the constraining superstructure of the situation, creating a brief window of opportunity. Seizing the moment Loofah coughed softly, the sound echoing round the foyer like a rifle shot. For two or three minutes, nothing. Then, with careful precision, the receptionist laid her document on the desk and looked up.
'Can I help you, sir?' she said, her voice dripping with contempt.
'Miss Leggett… I've come to see Miss Leggett.'
'Do you have an appointment?'
'I… er… don't really know. I think so.'
With a sniff of distaste, she got up from her seat and stalked out from behind the desk, her heels cracking like bones on the hard floor.
'Please take a seat.' She indicated a row of tubular steel and grey leather easy chairs opposite the reception desk and then vanished through a door behind her desk into the bowels of the building.
Forced to sit almost horizontal in the low seat, Loofah fidgeted with his fingers, crossing and uncrossing his legs. He noticed a glossy journal on the glass-topped coffee table beside his chair: 'The Company – Sector Newsletter'. 'Celebration Party!' exclaimed the main headline, with a big colour picture of happy smiling children holding red balloons. At the bottom of the page though, in bold capitals, was another headline: 'Warning! Pervert on the loose!'. He quickly replaced the journal, face down, glancing nervously around.
He sat and he sat, and then he sat some more, squirming uncomfortably in the impossible chair. The metal and the marble of the foyer pressed in upon him, digging into the soft flesh of his senses, and the vast paintings became dark, sinister shapes, beings of abstraction that watched him with cold suspicion. And underlying everything, emanating from the floors, the walls, the furniture, was the slow throb of arrogant power, a power that crushed him to dust, that reduced him to nothing.
After another eternity the door swished open and the receptionist returned.
'Miss Leggett has asked me to say that she is very busy,' she said.
'Oh. OK,' said Loofah, adding hopefully as he struggled up from the seat: 'Perhaps I should come back later?'
'But she will see you shortly.'
'Will she? That's good,' he said, sinking back despondently.
The receptionist moved forward until she was standing over him, a power-dressed bird of prey.
'May I offer you a cup of coffee?' she asked in a tone more suited to offering poison.
The idea of drinking – or indeed performing any bodily function – in such a place was beyond conception.
'No, thank you,' he replied quickly.
'Tea?' Loofah shook his head. 'Mineral water, either sparkling or still?'
'No, I'm fine. Really.'
A small sigh of annoyance. 'Then perhaps you would like to copulate with me?' she said, coldly. With this she turned and walked haughtily back to the desk, bent over it and hitched her skirt up over her buttocks.
Stocking tops, straps of black lace stretched over ceramic flesh, crisp white knickers. Loofah looked from the woman to the steel and granite staircase, and then back to the woman. Why hadn't he just said "yes" to the coffee?
'It's OK, I'll just wait,' he managed to say, 'But thank you anyway.'
Her shoulders tightened with irritation. She stood up, straightening her skirt.
'Very well then: someone a little… younger,' she said tightly, pouring all her revulsion into the final word, 'One of our junior secretaries perhaps.'
'Please – no.'
Ignoring him, she picked up the telephone, pressed three buttons and muttered into the receiver.
'I'm quite happy just waiting, honestly.'
The door beside the stairs opened and three girls came in, all big hair and short skirts, Benidorm tans and white stilettos. They chatted and giggled together, casting Loofah occasional glances of distaste as, with expressions of studied ennui, they lined up like beauty queens, with one leg forward, hands on hips. Then, at a nod from the receptionist, they hitched up their skirts in unison, revealing expanses of satin-smooth, olive-brown thigh.
'If you would care to choose. Any one of the girls will be pleased to oblige you.'
'I'm sure they're lovely girls, but…' he stammered.
'Or all three, if that's what you would prefer.'
'I think I would rather…'
'I assure you that these are our most attractive girls. Ladies, please,' she said, again nodding to the secretaries. Sighing with bored aggravation, they began to unbutton their blouses, opening up vistas of soft curve and tightly filled lace.
'Stop, please. I don't want a girl, any girl!' cried Loofah.
All four started, staring at him with amazed contempt.
'Thank you, ladies,' the receptionist said slowly, 'So sorry to have… wasted… your time.'
The girls filed out, muttering to each other and bristling with indignation.
'I'm sorry,' Loofah called after them, 'but I'm just not… like that.'
The receptionist stared at him with wide-eyed revulsion.
'I see,' she said, 'I will see what I can do.'
She swung round behind the desk and again picked up the phone. Realisation dawned on him in the pause that followed – but too late. The door opened and three young men trooped in: gelled hair, sharp cut suits and garish ties, with sidelong sneers at Loofah followed by shared guffaws.
'Oh my God,' he whimpered, to no-one in particular.
'Our Sales Team,' said the receptionist, 'Very busy young men but always happy to oblige a visitor to the Company.'
Then he saw it, on the far side of the foyer, a bolt hole: two doors, side by side, with a little silhouetted figure on each.
'Please excuse me,' he muttered, and fled.