Ellen Neuborne
Midnight at the Fun-Do Desk
Meg stumbled into the hotel lobby, dragging her carry-on with the balky wheel, juggling her laptop, purse and phone, which never seemed to stay consolidated no matter how many times she repacked.
The cool of the AC was welcome, but the noise and the lights forced Meg to a disoriented halt. Like most Las Vegas properties, The Bacchanalia Resort allotted a tiny portion of its first floor to hotel check in. The rest was a flashing, milling, ringing casino. To her left on the overly polished marble floor, arriving guests formed a queue that snaked through the crowd. It took Meg more than a minute to find the end of the line, scrambling as the soles of her leather flats sought traction.
“For the love of Pete,” she said. “This city is a cross between an obstacle course and an Air Fryer.”
Nobody noted her hilarious observation. The line inched forward and Meg’s blood pressure ticked up with each passing moment. Meg was the last to arrive in Vegas. Most of the Marx Global Pharma team had flown in yesterday to take advantage of a day and a night in Fun City before the work of the conference began – a detail Meg had discovered only after booking her own after-work flight. “It’s just a lot of fooling around,” said Dylan, the team leader young enough to be Meg’s son. By a lot. “We’ll all meet up for the real work on Tuesday.”
Meg didn’t tell Dylan that she knew perfectly well how much “real work” would get done before she rejoined the team. Golf, poker, drinking, bonding. Careers were forged in the downtime of work trips. The good news was Vegas was a 24-hour city. No one would turn in early. She had time to catch up. Probably.
“Welcome to the Fun-Do desk! What will you do for fun today?”
Meg stared into the pale blue eyes of the desk clerk, trying to make sense of the question.
“Um, checking in?” She violated her own rule against up-speak and hoped the tall, crisply-attired clerk didn’t notice.
He didn’t. “Welcome to the Fun-Do Desk! What will you do for fun day?” he repeated, taking Meg’s proffered credit card.
Beside her, Meg could hear the same question posed to other hotel guests.
“The Craps Table!”
“The Vodka Bar!”
“Par-TAY, baby!”
To each, a desk clerk responded: “How fun!”
Not Meg’s clerk. He just looked at her hard a moment as if sizing her up. Then he tapped on his computer and handed over a card key. “Room 8410,” he said. “Have fun.”
“Fun!” Chorused the nearby clerks.
Meg gathered her belongings – once again, unconsolidated and jumbling in her arms like restless kittens – and went in search of the elevators.
She texted as she walked. There was still time to catch up with the team and prove that middle age was not one foot in the grave. Eyes on her screen, Meg channeled the advice of her daughters: Use your thumbs. One sentence per bubble. No punctuation.
At the reflective gold elevator bay, she turned slightly so her rumpled reflection – mussed hair, askew oval glasses, wrinkled travel separates – was less visible. At least to her. She tapped with what she hoped were thumbs of youthful confidence.
finally made it hot as hell out there
(send)
where r u?
(send)
Meg hoped the question mark would be forgiven. It was all she could do to resist capitalization.
The elevator doors slid open and Meg shuffled in, poking the button panel with her knuckle.
“You’re going to Floor 8. How fun!” piped the ceiling speaker. Then it returned to 80s classic rock.
The doors air-puffed closed and the car sped upward. Meg kept her eyes on her phone screen. With each passing floor, one of her cell phone reception bars disappeared. At 8, Meg stepped out into the hall and heard the reassuring alert of her restored service and incoming texts. Ping, ping, ping.
She looked down.
getting into an uber to head downtown
sorry we missed you
see you tomorrow at The Speech
The capitalization was intentional, even Meg’s daughters would agree. Every man on Meg’s team was pumped to hear Brendan Gregory, Navy SEAL Team Six, speak on the topic that made him YouTube famous: How to get people to bend to your will. His speech was titled “Life’s Your Bitch.” Back at the office, the men had joked about taking notes at the event. A joke because none of them ever took notes. It was something you asked a woman to do, you know, because they had better handwriting.
Meg would see them at The Speech. She’d miss the networking. If she somehow managed to connect with her team before they lights went down, it was a good bet she’d be asked to take notes.
Pushing into a pitch-black Room 8410, Meg stretched out her hands, Helen Keller style, and inched forward in search of a light source. Her knee made sharp contact with something solid. “Ow!” she yelled as she swept her arm in the direction of what she hoped would be a light switch. Instead, there was a crash as objects clattered to the floor.
“You just purchased the mixed nuts. How fun!” sang the voice from the ceiling speaker.
“Great. That’ll never get reimbursed,” Meg grumbled.
Finally locating the bed, she sank down, reaching carefully for the bedside lamp. In the soft glow, Meg surveyed her room: a king-sized bed that took up most of the floor space, a tiny glass desk in the far corner, and, directly across from her, a dark wood entertainment center adorned with for-purchase goodies (minus the nuts she’d already toppled and paid for) and a massive black TV screen that seemed to float suspended in the half-lit air.
Leaning forward, she dangled one hand over the side of the bed and scooped up the two-figure nuts off the carpet. Then she flopped back onto the pillows, kicked off her shoes and reached for the remote on the nightstand, swatting aside the pamphlet the offered to tell her about room’s features. Screw the team. She wasn’t going to chase all over Las Vegas in pursuit of her fading career. Instead, she was going to relax right here with some hotel snacks and Law & Order. “Dun dun!” she sang out, pressing the remote’s power button.
Meg felt the suction force before she heard it. She felt her body rocket up from the bed and pulled forward like a riptide. Meg flipped and grabbed frantically at the duvet, at the edge of the bed, at the stuffed pedestal at the foot, anything to stop the powerful flux. She watched as her fingers came loose from the bedframe, one at a time. The pull was extreme; her grip was pathetic. Her hold on the edge of the duvet was the last to go – in 3, 2, 1…
Unmoored, she shot into the dragging force and was enveloped in a low-pitched roar. The air rapids engulfed her. And then, silence.
Meg opened her eyes.
Pale blue eyes stared back.
“Welcome to the Undo Desk. What will you do for Un today?”
Meg blinked. “How am back here?”
“You’ve never been here.”
“The Fun Do Desk?”
“No, ma’am. This is the Undo Desk.”
“What’s that?”
Pale blue eyes rolled heaven-ward. “It was in the room instructions on the bedside table.”
“I didn’t read any instructions.”
Soft sigh. “Nobody reads anymore.” Meg blinked. Much of him was the same – the blue suit, the dark tie with a florid script B. But now she could see the creases at the elbows, the slight stoop in the shoulders. Then, as if hearing an off-screen instruction, he straightened.
“Okay, then. This is the Undo Desk. You can undo one decision in your life.”
“A decision about what?”
“Anything.”
“Anything?”
This sigh came with a twitch of a smile. “Well, this is Vegas, so many people want to undo a wager. Or a sexual partner. Or spending $4,000 to see Adele.”
He continued. “But it doesn’t have to be a recent decision. Any one will do. Just pick the one that is meaningful to you.”
Meg looked down. “I don’t know.”
The response from behind the desk was surprisingly warm. “Yes, you do.”
Just then, in her mind, Meg could see it all over again. The chrome conference room, two decades ago in the Manhattan high rise that was Marx before the move to the suburbs. All of the young associates crammed in, listening to the department chief talk about the opening of a Hong Kong office, the gateway to expansion in Asia and the new leadership position that would be created to head it all. It will be crazy hours, demanding metrics and the chance to move up the ladder in record fashion. But it’s not for the faint of heart! This is a role for a risk taker!
Meg could feel it all again, the self-doubt, the fear of making a wrong choice, the false comfort of deciding it just wasn’t the right time. Around the table there was a buzz. Who was applying? Meg could see them all, she could see it in their eyes: Me! Me! And her own silent decision: Not me.
Meg gripped the edge of the Undo Desk. She looked in to the clerk’s eyes, and she said it: “Me.”
Then she closed her eyes and waited.
Nothing happened.
No tornado swirl. No crash of cymbals.
Meg opened her eyes and there were the pale blues before her.
“Is that it?” she asked.
“Is that what, ma’am?”
“Is that the Undo?”
No sign of recognition met her question.
What had just happened? Had anything just happened? Had she hit her head? Meg raised a hand to check for bumps – but what she found startled her. Instead of the fraying bun, Meg felt her hand glide over a smooth, soft surface.
“Ms. Fisher! I’m so glad I found you!”
At her elbow, a slim young woman in a grey serge pants suit had appeared. In one hand, the woman held a Lucite clipboard. In the other, she worked a walkie-talkie headset. “Queen Bee, located! Repeat: Queen Bee located!”
Then she turned back to Meg. “Ms. Fisher, I’m here to escort you to the ballroom.”
“The ballroom! How fun!” said Blue Eyes.
Meg turned to speak to him – and then she saw it. In the mirrors behind the desk, she could see her reflection. Her hand was still hovering over her hair – in a neat, dry-bar bob. Her glasses were chiseled frameless rectangles that seemed to hover gracefully before her eyes. She was dressed in a tailored beige shift dress with a subtle diamond infinity pin at her left collar bone. Meg stared, and this secure, confident vision stared back: calm, collected, in charge. Was it possible she was taller?
The escort led her down the mirrored hall, through secured doors and then out onto a stage. Before her, a sea of hundreds of eager faces, a phalanx of cameras and video equipment, golden sparkling footlights. As she approached the podium, Meg looked over her shoulder at the screen on stage.
Raising Your Voice
A guide for getting what you want in life
Meg Fisher
CEO
Dreamatics Worldwide
Both hands on the podium, Meg didn’t feel the need to look down for index cards or ahead for a teleprompter. She had no idea what she was going to say, and yet it flowed out of her, as natural as breath.
“In moments when you’re not happy, think back: What was the decision that put you here? And what will happen if you change your mind?”
“Your life is not determined by what you do or say. That’s simply the by-product of the actions that have already occurred – the action in your mind that led you to your decision. It’s the decision that fuels the rest of the events downstream.”
Now she moved from behind the podium to cross closer to the footlights.
“So often, women tell me that they wish they had said this or that to their boss, to their clients, to their partners. They fret about the time they spoke, or a time they were silent. They are sure their mistakes were made in that moment. But since they can’t go back, they can’t undo.”
Meg breathed in her new reality. “But that’s false, you can always revise a decision. You can come into new information and change your position. You can take that action. That’s where your emphasis must be. Decisions are where your fuel is stored, where your power is kept, where your weapons of battle reside. Decisions are always yours. They happen before anything else can touch you.”
“Decide. And then raise your voice. Your power is unleashed, not by your words, but by your mind.”
As she finished, the faces before her broke into cheers. Meg stepped back and waved off her grey serge guide. Instead, she moved forward down the steps and into the crowd. Women gathered all around her, to shake her hand, thank her, ask her for advice. Peers asked for her autograph. Youngsters asked to take a selfie. It was hours before the crowd finally thinned and Meg made her way back to Room 8410.
The room was cool and pristine. Meg flopped down on the duvet, and drifted off to sleep, seeing the smiling faces, feeling the warm sense of purpose and clarity.
~~~
“I always feel bad for the big tippers,” said Lucia, taking the $100 off the bedside table and tucking it into the pocket of her uniform.
“Why?” Her partner, Autumn, was already dusting by the television. “We earn it! The Undo Vortex is a bitch to keep clean. What are these all over the floor – nuts?” She reached for her hand-vac. “The guests get a lot more than they paid for.”
Lucia shrugged. “But they don’t realize the limitations.”
“They’ll realize it as soon as they get to the airport.”
Lucia shuddered. “It just seems cruel.”
Autumn dumped the vac contents and moved on to the bathroom. “It’s not like they weren’t warned,” she called back. “I mean, it’s right there in the tag line. What happens in Vegas…”
~~~
Meg closed her eyes and tried to fight the vertigo. It had started in the Uber, worsened after she cleared security. Now, seat-belted in, she gripped the wide First Class armrests and yoga-breathed in search of Zen.
The noise of take-off was loud and indistinct. Announcements. The roar of the engines. The whine of the air currents speeding past as the aircraft tipped skyward and banked east.
Meg heard the ping of the seat belt sign turning off. Then felt a shove at her right elbow. And another at her left. She opened her eyes.
She was wedged into a middle seat, her feet straddling her purse and carry on shoved not-quite-completely under the seat in front of her. On either side, two men too big for Economy class crowded their space and spilled into hers. Confused, she looked around for a flight attendant. But then wondered what she’d say. I don’t belong here. I belong in First Class.
Dizziness returned, this time with a strong side of nausea.
“Excuse me,” she said, grabbing her purse and not waiting for her seatmate to move before she started her scramble to the aisle. Sprinting to the back, she elbowed her way into the tiny restroom and sat with her head down, trying to regain her equilibrium. When she was reasonably certain she wouldn’t vomit, she stood and faced the mirror. And almost threw up.
Wrinkled travel wear, askew glasses, hair pulled back into a bun, tight, but strands escaping anyway, several of them a dull, obvious grey. Acid rose in the back of her throat.
Meg dug quickly into her purse to find her emergency mint stash, but there was a wad of paper crammed in blocking her way. She grabbed a handful of it and took a closer look. Bacchanalia stationary. Her own handwriting. At the top, the initials: BG.
Brendan Gregory. She’d taken notes at The Speech.
Meg stared at the paper in her hands. Minutes passed. Was it longer than that? Until a thought came into her head. And she decided. With precision, she tore each piece of paper into the tiniest possible scrap, pushing one handful at a time into the metal trash slot.
When it was gone, she faced the mirror. Off came the glasses. Down came the hair. She shook it loose and ran her fingers through the strands, letting them fly, watching them land, unhurried, around the contours of her face.
Meg looked into the eyes of the reflection and raised her chin a notch. “Life’s my bitch,” she declared.
Then she pulled the deadbolt back hard and yanked open the door.
Ellen Neuborne is a writer, editor, and ghostwriter living in Las Vegas, NV. She holds a BA in Classics from Brown University and an MFA in Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine/Stonecoast. Her fiction has appeared in Feathertale, ThugLit, and CellStories. Follow her on Bluesky @ellenneuborne.bsky.social and Instagram @readthis_thenthat.
