Sliced Bread 2: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

Yesterday there was a—just a second; there goes the phone.

I think this basement where we have our office was originally intended to be underground parking. Not because there's a big ramp or anything; just because of all the space we have. The main room, my office, is pretty big, but it's a drop in the bucket compared with all the rooms that are down the left hallway.

Here's the layout. Coming out of the elevator, you've got my set of desks right ahead of you, in the middle of the room. The room is, I don't know, fifty by fifty. On the left wall is the door to the blue room, which is where the coffee machine and fridge and poker table are. Also the john. On the right wall is the door to a realm of impenetrable darkness, which I originally thought was Greyghost's office but now I'm pretty sure is a tunnel to a house down the street where, for all I know, he lives. On the far wall are two doors. The left one leads to a hallway containing lots more doors; the right one is locked (and I have to say I'm getting kind of curious about it).

I haven't looked at all the rooms in the left hallway yet. There are dozens of them. Some are unlocked, some are locked but I have the key, some are locked and I don't have the key. One of these days I have to map the whole place out and figure what's where.

But not today. Today I bit the bullet on Room Two.

If we're numbering the rooms in order from the start of the left hallway, Room One is full of old car parts. I think there's an entire station wagon lying dismantled in Room One.

Room Two is crammed to the brim with everything. Today's mission is to sort out the everything, because quite frankly some of it looks kind of interesting.

I started in on it in the afternoon. The first thing to go was a set of snow tires. Room One for the snow tires. Also the bicycle, the outboard motor and the weed-whacker.

Under that was a metal desk with an old ass Alphaplus word processor. The kind where the screen and keyboard and printer are all one piece. I had Room Five all ready to receive office crap like this. Those things are heavy, though.

That gave me some room to work. I got rid of some more beaten up chairs and parts of chairs, and homed in on my main objective: the couch. Weeks ago I had noticed an old leather couch buried under the rubble in here and had remembered it many times since while working the late hours. Once this baby was cleaned up I'd be on rails.

I cleaned out the dartboard and the Pianosaurus and the weight bench and the hatracks. The annual reports and license plates found new homes. The giant roll of brown paper and the empty toner cartridges were gently but firmly shown the door.

Then there were the cardboard boxes. The first few were all blueprints and invoices and other stuff left over from the construction. (Room Five!) The next one was porn. I spent a very absorbing thirty seconds placing its origins in the mid-'80s and trying to figure who it could have belonged to. And the last one . . . oh, the last one.

It was a superhero costume. Powder-blue, with navy shorts, boots and gloves, and a navy cowl and mask. No cape. There was a little logo on the chest, the letters 'GG' superimposed on a little grey Pac-Man style ghost. I must have stared at it for five minutes, stupefied. God damn, that's an ugly outfit.

I phoned Ingrid and told her about it. We agreed that it was too good to waste and something had to be done. She said she'd take care of it and give me details. Hey, Greyghost can't fire her.

Room Two looks pretty good now. Next time I have to wait up until three in the morning waiting for a call from Greyghost, I'll have someplace I can take a nap. Bring in some blankets, Carl's old boombox, maybe a lamp . . . I could even hang one of the blankets between the shelf and the couch and build a fort.