It was March 1964 when the cleaning staff began to ignore the fifth floor at the Wilksbury Arms in Allentown, Pennsylvania. All my attempts to discover why were met with dismissal precipitated by apathy on behalf of the front desk people. Among the myriad ironies of my life, the sheer impossibility of actually communicating with people when I wasn't on the clock has got to be the most crushing. It's like a cook who can't so much as boil water when he comes home at the end of the day. I dunno, maybe it's one of those psychological blocks my shrink friend Harry keeps telling me about. Of course, he's usually referring to my distaste for whitefish. I was in town coaching this toy manufacturer on the topic of internal memorandum effectiveness. In other words, real riveting business. I normally didn't try to speed up my contracts given the per diem, but I had a real dread of indoor allergies and it was only a matter of time in that dusty room.

Early April came around and it was starting to get unbearable. I could feel the sneezy powder accumulating in places I couldn't reach or hadn't thought of. It was this phantom itch that would pop up in the oddest places, the back of the knee or under a fingernail, then disappear before I could claw at it. The day I went down to the tax preparer I couldn't pay attention because of it. I think the guy noticed. "You all right fella?" he kept saying. I didn't say yes, but then I didn't really say anything. It's amazing how much of a conversation can consist of grunts and sighs.

It was raining something awful that day. I got back to my room at the Arms and I dripped all over the place. My mind was elsewhere so I didn't notice the one drop that just sorta stood there, all thick a jiggling. Later when everything else had dried it was still there. I bent down to look at it, thinking it was a glass bead, why ever the hell I'd have a glass bead in my room. When I touched it with my finger it actually slid across the floor. It was soft like an egg yolk and it collected dust in a uniform clump. It was then that I realized there was this giant circle of dust on my floor, high enough to have a visible ridge.

When the dust ball got big enough it started to roll with some momentum. Before I knew it, the thing was going in a spiral all by itself, getting bigger and bigger as it ate up all the dust on the ground. By sundown I had a clod big as a basketball in the middle of my floor. It just sorta teetered there for a while, this high-pitched squeak like a kid during violin lessons coming out of it.

Then all of a sudden it stopped cold. It split down the middle and flopped in hemispheres, dividing three more times until I had a bunch of dust cakes sitting on the floor. They started to rock back and forth until they each formed into little globes and they made a loose formation like soldiers at ease. If I said I saw little googly eyes pop up on them, would you believe me? They meeped and clicked all around the room sucking up dust and toenail clippings, little shards of paper that had come off my binders. By 8:00 PM the bathroom was sparkling and my bed was immaculate.

The feds took me for a ride that year. Real brutal, that 1099. That was the year I considered getting out of the consulting game, even though I didn't. Nearly lost my shirt, but at least my room was always clean. When it was time to move on from Allentown I bought a suitcase and loaded the little motes into it for the trip to Tulsa. My allergies haven't bothered me since.