Our Autumn Fire

Twenty-Two

    Elliot’s alarm was blaring in his room, but the intended user was out cold. The music shut off for exactly eight minutes before playing again, even louder this time.

    “Mngf,” Elliot moved a tiny inch.

    The music grew louder.

    Elliot’s eyes shot open and they shot back closed so tightly that a bulldozer wouldn’t be able to part them. The pounding headache in his head was too strong. Elliot wanted to stay in bed and nothing to do with life, but the music’s volume only increased, so he had to force himself up to shut the alarm off.

    He rubbed his groggy eyes and chugged what remained of the glass of water next to his bed. Rubbing his face, he tried to remember what had happened the night before, but the last thing he could think of was the shot he had taken with Wesley and the two sisters.

    Yawning and stretching he checked his phone for the time when he saw that he had three missed calls from his favorite client, William Frances. There was no voicemail, though, so Elliot dragged his feet into the bathroom and pulled two aspirins from the medicine cabinet.

    The pills took about half an hour to really kick in by which time Elliot had showered and eaten a waffle. He plopped himself onto the sofa and pulled out his phone to see what William had wanted with him.

    “Yellow,” the voice answered. “This is William.”

    “Hey, this is Eli.” His voice was croaky and deep, so he cleared his throat and began again. “This is Elliot Quentin. I’m just returning a call.”

    “Quentin!” William’s voice sounded of pure annoyance bordering on outright anger. “Where the hell were you? I called at least fifteen times!”

    “Three,” Elliot thought to himself. “I’m sorry, I was… contacting a server host for something about the website,” he lied to William.

    “Well that’s why I’m calling. This website you sent me is unacceptable!”

    “What do you mean? What’s wrong with it?”

    “Well,” William raised his voice to convey his displeasure. “For one, it looks like my three year old nephew could make a better one!”

    Elliot sighed. “I highly doubt that William, but tell me something more specific and I can see what I can do.”

    “Fine. There’s only two links on the whole site, and it barely has any information about our campaign!”

    Elliot closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “William, I know.”

    “You know!?” He was shouting so loud now that Elliot had to hold the receiver a few inches from his ear.

    Calmly, more due to his desire not to exacerbate his headache than any hope of civility, Elliot tried to explain that they had agreed on a provisional site temporarily until the final version was completed.

    “It’s not the site I want!”

    Elliot gave up trying to be calm. “I know! You agreed that this would be fine to make sure you had something for the deadline! The full site will be ready in a week!”

    “Oh, why didn’t you just say so?” William sang in his usual manner.

    Elliot was ready to punch something, but he clenched his teeth to stop himself from doing something he might regret. “I did, but since you want to see the full site I can get you a preview of it.” He rubbed his temples as he had grown accustomed to doing when talking to the executive. “It won’t be visible to anyone but you until it’s done, so don’t be surprised if no one else has this version on their screens.”