This is all happening.
Zachary dissolves into instant, near-hysterical laughter. A bubbling giggle that he attempts to stifle and fails. The man’s expression switches from mild concern to moderate.
This man gives an immediate impression of agedness, probably because of his stark white hair, worn long and styled in impressive braids. But Zachary blinks and stares and as his contact lenses reluctantly focus he can tell the man is maybe pushing fifty, or at least not as old as the hair implies. It’s also dotted with pearls strung along the braids, camouflaged when their sheen isn’t caught in the light. His eyebrows and eyelashes are dark, black like his eyes. His skin looks darker in contrast with his hair but is a mid-toned brown. He wears wire-rimmed glasses balanced on an equine nose and reminds Zachary a little bit of his seventh-grade math teacher but with much cooler hair and a deep red, gold-embroidered robe tied with a number of looping cords. On one hand he wears several rings. One ring looks like an owl.
“May I be of assistance, sir?” the man repeats, but Zachary can’t stop laughing. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but nothing will come. His knees forget how to work and he slumps to the floor in a pile of wool coat and gold paint, finding himself at eye level with a ginger cat who peers around the edges of the man’s robes and stares at him with amber eyes and this somehow makes the whole situation even crazier and he has never laughed himself into a panic attack before but hey, there’s a first time for everything.
The man and the cat wait patiently, as though hysterical paint-covered visitors are commonplace.
“I…” Zachary starts and then realizes he has absolutely no idea where to begin. The tile beneath him is cold. He slowly gets to his feet, half expecting the man to offer him a hand when he does a particularly clumsy job of it but the man’s hands stay by his sides, though the cat takes a step forward, sniffing at Zachary’s shoes.
“It is perfectly all right if you need a moment,” the man says, “but I’m afraid you will have to leave. We are closed.”
“We’re what?” Zachary asks, regaining his balance, but as he does the man’s scrutinizing gaze settles on a spot near the third button on Zachary’s open coat.
“You are not supposed to be here,” the man says, looking at the silver sword that hangs around Zachary’s neck.
“Oh…” Zachary starts. “Oh, no…this isn’t mine,” he tries to clarify but the man is already ushering him back toward the door and the elevator. “Someone gave this to me for…disguise purposes? I’m not a…whoever they are.”
“They don’t simply give those away,” the man responds coolly.
Zachary doesn’t know how to reply and now they’re back at the door again. He’s gathered that Dorian is a probably former member of the organization collecting rogue doorknobs to decorate their Manhattan town house but can’t be certain if the sword is Dorian’s own or a copy or what. He was not prepared for jewelry-based accusations in underground cathedrals currently closed for business or renovations. He was not prepared for anything that has happened this evening except maybe the cab ride.
“He called himself Dorian, he asked me to help him, I think he’s in trouble, I don’t know who the sword people are,” Zachary explains in a rush but even as he says the words they feel almost like a lie. Guardians don’t seem to work the way that Sweet Sorrows suggested, though he’s fairly certain that’s what they are.
The man says nothing and having walked Zachary politely yet forcibly back to the elevator he stops and gestures at the hexagonal button next to it with his ring-covered hand.
“I wish you and your friend the best in overcoming your current difficulties but I must insist,” he says. He indicates the button again.
Zachary pushes the button, hoping the elevator will continue to be slow in order to buy him time to explain or understand what is going on but the button does nothing. It doesn’t light up, it doesn’t make a sound. The elevator doors remain shut.
The man frowns, first at the elevator and then at Zachary’s coat. No, at the paint on his coat.
“The door you entered through, was it painted?” he asks.
“Yes?” Zachary answers.
“I gather from the state of your overcoat that door is no longer operational. Is that so?”
“It sort of disappeared,” Zachary says, not believing it himself even though he was there.
The man closes his eyes and sighs.
“I warned her this would be problematic,” he says to himself and then he asks, “What did you roll?” before Zachary can ask who he means.
“Pardon?”
“Your dice,” the man clarifies, with another elegant gesture indicating the wall behind him. “What did you roll?”
“Oh…uh…all hearts,” Zachary says, recalling the dice tumbling into the darkness and feeling light-headed. He wonders again what it means and if maybe all of anything is a bad thing to roll.
The man stares at him, scrutinizing his face more thoroughly than he had before with a quizzical expression that looks like recognition, and though it seems like he is about to ask something else he does not. Instead he says, “If you would be so kind as to come with me.”
He turns and walks back through the door. Zachary follows at his heels, feeling like he has accomplished something. At least he doesn’t have to leave as soon as he’s arrived.
Particularly considering he’s not certain where he is, exactly. It is not what he expected, this sweeping space with its crumpled chandeliers and dusty piles of books. There are more tiles, for a start. It is grander and older and quieter and darker and more intimate than he imagined it would be when he got here and he realizes now how certain he had been that he would get here somehow because Sweet Sorrows implied as much.
Not yet, he thinks, looking up at the universe spinning above him with its hands pointing in alternating directions, wondering what it is that he is meant to do now that he is here.