“Gather around, everyone.  Anyone missing?”  Bramford looked around the lobby at the group of people assembled there.  Most of the men looked to be in their thirties or forties, but there were a couple of guys closer to my age and several that looked much older as well.  I had kept to myself since coming back into the lobby other than smiling or nodding at a couple of people, and for the most part I was left alone.  One of the younger guys, he said his name was Ricky, had come up and introduced himself, and while I tried to be friendly, he seemed to pick up on my reserve fairly quickly.  After a few moments of trying to awkwardly chit-chat, he had faded back into the group he had come from.

And that was the way with almost all of them.  Most of the people there seemed to either work together or at least know each other from prior jobs, so they clustered into several discrete groups around the lobby as they waited for the contractor to come in and get started.  The only notable exception to that was a tall, lanky boy who looked younger than the rest and woefully out-of-place.  His sunken eyes stared out at the crowd with a mixture of contempt and anxiety, and when Mike Bramford entered the lobby, the sentiment seemed to intensify.

“We should have nineteen people, myself included.”  Bramford was pointing at each of us in turn as he did a silent headcount.  “Okay, good.  Let’s get started then.”

Bramford walked closer and gestured at the room.  “This is the Imago Hotel.  Some of you local boys know about it, and maybe a few of the rest of you have heard of it.  I am not a local boy, and I never knew it existed before two months ago when I got hired on for this job.  But that doesn’t mean I haven’t heard stories about it.  Spooky shit and all that.  Let me start off by saying, no.”  He paused a moment to sweep the room with his gaze.

“This is not the place or the time for fuckery.  This is a massive, very profitable contract for my company.  This is how I’m going to feed my family and put my two kids through college.  It can also be a very profitable contract for all of you.  If there is no fuckery.”

“Now normally, I would limit my fuckery speech to the usual.  No women…”  He paused and glanced at me.  “Or men…Or women…I don’t judge…allowed at the work site unless they are working the job.”  He looked back over the crowd.  “That means if you have an itch that needs scratching, you go somewhere else to do it.”

“No drinking except between seven and ten in the evening, and even then, only in moderation.  Not having one of you kill yourself or someone else because you can’t hold your liquor.”