Once upon a time there was a hotel security guard. Everyday he sat slumped behind his desk in the dim corner, away from the light of the concierge's desk. He had a perfect view of the clock, which he would stare at most of every day if it weren't for the jar. He kept on his thrift store desk an old sauerkraut jar full of coins, keys, marbles, doll eyes, and other odds and ends that he found on his few-and-far-between patrol walks of the hotel property. Things discarded by visitors on their way to other destinations. The guard, knowing what it was to be thrown away and underestimated, took pity on the lost and found objects. No one had ever come for any of the trophies he collected, but he kept them in the hopes that there was some decency left in humanity; that one person would remember the tiny fragments that made up a life, and recognize when one was missing. This person would be worth knowing, a kindred spirit.
Prevalent in the guard's collection were keys. The hotel had done away with old-fashioned metal keys; instead plastic cards were slid through a scanner to open each room's door. Generic and impersonal, and most of all disposable after being used by only one guest. The guard was fond of his keys, the iron smell they left on his hands and the tiny teeth they bared.
The hotel's policy on lost and found articles was to dispose of them after a three month period to allow for reclamation. The guard had accumulated six years' worth of keys and glittering detritus, starting from the day he began work asa much svelter man. The manager didn't like the shabby look of a sauerkraut jar full of clinking garbage out in the open for the guests to see, and knowing this, the guard hid the jar next to a shaded desk leg whenever anyone could be looking. But no one ever did.
Once, the guard might have thrown away lost things. When he was wanted, he had little interest in anyone or anything that was not. But now he thought of someone missing something the minute it was lost to the trash collectors. Or a child who had never meant to leave behind a stuffed dog, and needed it now for the will to recover a terrible illness.
Perhaps the guard merely collected for the opportunity to be thanked, for the chance to be a hero. His job offered him neither.
His wife cannot be reached for comment. She was a blissful tourist trouncing briefly through his life. A child with a teddy bear, loving it for a week only to leave it behind in the parking lot when the rain clouds began to gather. She now had a plastic surgeon for a husband. A man with a perfect nose and perfect teeth, but a few habits so twisted they couldn't help but show through in his crooked smile. Their freckled, hook-nosed, gap-toothed children were doomed to adolescences of slicing, bleaching, and sculpting.
The guard was alone now, behind the green glow of his desk lamp. A summer rain rattled against the hotel windows and turned the parking lot asphalt to obsidian. He swung the jar up from the checkered floor onto his desk, poured out the contents for the hundredth time. He slipped a mismatched pair of tiny plastic doll shoes onto his fat fingers and clicked across the phonebook cover with them. One was a cobalt-blue stilletto, the other a blush-pink cowboy boot, so a bit of a limp resulted.
His wife would never have worn either. She much preferred her brown, dykey clogs. Or worse, those hideous orange rubber "Crocs," which were basically the same thing, only in cartoon caricature. He didn't care what she wore on her feet, those days. He would have bought her whatever orthopaedic monstrosities she asked for. But none of it mattered. It was all over. They were all living in Atlanta now. Just as well, because he could foresee no reason he would ever be there to awkwardly bump into them by accident. They were all so far away now.
And none of them knew what importance the key on the security guard's desk in the dark of the Hotel Gardenview was. None of them knew the kinetic possibility crouched within the musty, oily brass. One key of a hundred, estranged from its door. It was only a matter of time until it was reunited with its mate.