The ice machine was inside its own little room about halfway down the corridor, a few doors away from the elevator bank. There was also a soda vending machine, but it was outside the ice machine’s room, freestanding in the corridor. The room for the ice machine wasn’t large enough to put anything else in with it, so the soda machine got relegated to the public hallway.
Worried the ice machine was back to shooting out random amounts of ice all over the floor, I edged up to the cubby, but there’s no ice shooting into the hallway. The banging and noise was louder. And someone was cursing up a storm.
Guess they really wanted some ice. At three in the morning. From a broken machine.
I sighed and pulled on my professional mask, even though I was wearing pajamas, and turned the corner into the ice machine cubby, prepared to ask if there was a problem and could we help.
Only to see a man I’d never seen before crouched down with his hand up the ice machine shoot, cursing and banging the machine. I couldn’t tell if he was stuck or reaching for something. Either way, he wasn’t happy about what was happening.
Neither was I. The machine was already broken. This wasn’t gonna help. And who was this guy? He wasn’t a guest, unless he’d checked in very early or very late and hadn’t gone back through the lobby while I was on shift. It was possible for me to miss a guest for a day, maybe, depending on timing. But unless I’d just had a couple of days off, I knew most of the people, at least on sight, that came in and out of the hotel. In fact, I prided myself on recognizing faces of our guests.
I hadn’t been off for a couple of days. And the hotel wasn’t busy enough for me to have missed someone completely unless they checked in with Miguel super early and hadn’t left their room since.
Because we weren’t very busy, I even knew exactly how many rooms on this floor had guests. And I could literally place all of them by face—I’d have to look up a few names. I’m better with faces than names but I get the names eventually. None of the people on this floor were this man.
Now, I know he could have been from another floor. That was possible. But the other floors had working ice machines. Why come to a different floor for a not working ice machine?
“Can I help you?” I asked, my voice professional but neutral. None of my usual friendliness. It was three in the morning after all.
The man startled and looked back at me. He didn’t remove his hand from the machine. “This is none of your business.”
“You stuck? I can call someone.” Also, why did you stick your hand up the ice machine? But I figured that question wasn’t getting answered by this guy.
“Mind your business.”
“I work here. This is my business. That machine has been broken all day. You’ll notice it’s unplugged. We have ice machines on other floors if you are desperate for ice.”
To be fair, the hallway was warm. The owners were cheap in some ways, but they didn’t stint on heat for the guests. Comfortable guests were happy guests who returned often. But I didn’t think the guy with his hand stuck in the machine was actually looking for ice at this stage. And now I really wanted to know what had gotten stuck in the machine, that the repair guy hadn’t seen.
“You’re in pajamas.”
“Your point?”
“You can’t work here.”
“We have a flexible dress code for employees. You appear to be stuck. I’ll call the front desk.”
Before I could pull my cellphone out of my pajama pocket, the man pulled something from his pocket with his free hand and pointed it at me. A gun.
I hated guns.
We also had a very strict policy about guns in the hotel. But I didn’t figure this was the sort of person who paid much attention to policies and regulations.
Heart thumping, I raised my hands, leaving my cellphone in my pocket.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” the man said. “I’m going to get my hand out of this machine. Then you’re going to walk me out of the building through whatever back entrance the employees use. And you’re going to forget everything you’ve seen here. If anything happens, I know where you work. Don’t think I won’t come for you.”
This would all be pretty terrifying—and honestly, it was pretty scary. I wasn’t used to having guns pointed at me—but I was pretty sure this guy’s hand was actually stuck. He hadn’t pulled it out while pointing his gun at me. And he looked to still be tugging at that stuck hand, trying to make it look like he wasn’t stuck.
He was inside a cubby. And guns didn’t fire around corners.
I did a quick calculation. There was no one in the room across the hall, so no chance of a bullet going through the door and accidentally hitting a guest if he actually fired.
Heart pounding, pulse racing, and adrenaline giving me new life, I dove to the floor outside of the cubby.
Five
Throwing myself onto the floor far enough from the cubby the gunman wouldn’t be able to see me, I scrambled along the floor toward the elevators, a very undignified move, but I could hear my own pulse in my ears, so how I looked at that moment wasn’t top of my priority list.
No gunshot followed but a lot of cursing and banging came from the ice machine cubby.
I pulled my cellphone from my pajamas pocket when I reached the elevator bank, hiding in the small foyer outside the elevators, watching back down the hall. The guy was making so much noise now, he was about to wake up the rest of the floor and that was going to open the possibility of hostages or something.
Dan answered downstairs within a single ring.
“Percy?”
“We got a guy with a gun on Three. He’s got his hand stuck in the ice machine, not sure how long that’ll last.”
“Calling the cops now. You okay?”
“Fine. He’s making a lot of noise. People are gonna start coming out.”
Dan was quiet for a moment. Then, “ETA for police is five minutes.”
I scanned the hallway. A door, opposite side of the hall from the machine cracked open and an older man looked out. That was Mr. Amir, here visiting his daughter at college. I waved a frantic hand at him. “Please go back into your room. Don’t come out. There’s a situation but it’s being taken care of.”
Mr. Amir’s eyes widened, but he ducked back into his room, slamming the door shut. And even over all the cussing down the hall, I heard his lock click and the bar lock slam into place. Mr. Amir obviously had good self-preservation instincts.
