Chapter Fifty-Eight
Herr Voot was doing nothing of the kind. Rather, he was sitting in his office, staring at the back of his hand, while Curtis/Thaddeus pranced about like a mentally disturbed monkey.
“These are the hands of an aging man,” Voot said aloud, to himself. “A man who has wasted his years in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, appreciated by none, productive of nothing. My staff and guests have jointly held me in contempt, and, if the truth be told, my sentiments towards them correspond utterly. If I had a bomb. . .if I only had some huge bomb, which could blow this hotel to dust, then the mountains bury it into oblivion, myself included—to behold the pain on all their faces, as they’re finally forced to admit that which they’ve spent so long sweeping under the carpet: their own mortality. . .! To peer into their eyes as they peer into Death’s! Oh, how I wish I’d been a painter, and could paint that scene, just in an hour, to render it immortal, before I, too, were wiped away. . .”
He looked up over his hand to the piteous scene of Curtis/Thaddeus humping his desk like a rutting skunk.