A PWC moment

PriceWaterhouseCoopers moment: Sometimes it’s the little things I remember. Walking through PWC at 2 am, all lights out but for scattered emergency lights or an occasional office light, on a timer— a worker must have left recently, burning the midnight oil. The walk: exiting the service elevator, passing cubicles and desks filled with paperwork, family pictures, calendars and Ipod chargers. Soft sconces and light pictures fill the corridor walls along freshly cleaned blue carpet, except in the lobby, where the floor is a shiny black marble. The maintenance rooms contain room sized heat pumps, dust and concrete. And though it is a financial institution, (and I say this because I have preconceived notions as financial anythings represented by cold austere imagery), the softness of light and color with the right design of contemporary fonts in its signage, above the big screen monitors behind the check-in-desk feels warm and comforting. Rarely is an office worker there at 430 am as I pass by the kitchen toward the conference room where I take my early morning break/nap. And the climate controlled heat or AC makes the conference room a comfortable and quiet place to nap— fluffy security jacket rolled up in a ball for a pillow, I lay by the window along the back wall and behind the conference table. I set down my Rover keys and Detex, set my cell phone alarm clock for 530 am and close my eyes easily. Sometimes a seagull or two yelp from the roof just outside the window or I imagine the sound of a door creaking somewhere or footsteps or sometimes an optical illusion— twice I saw furry black spiders crawl away from me under the table and when I jumped up and put the light on they had vanished; and then the same vision came again a week later. The alarm beeps and I would rise, head into the kitchen and make two Flavia coffees. I take the elevator to the parking garage, gather my computer and speakers from my truck and walk to the security booth at the garage entrance….