A bright smile. “Good morning!”

A twitch of the brows. “How’s it goin?”

A nod of the head. “How do you do?”

A respectful bow. “Sir, Madam.”

A lively cheer. “Top o’ the mornin to ya!”

Man, am I running out of greetings.

“Guten tag,” I say to the elderly couple I saw leaving the hotel earlier this morning. “I’m Jeremy. Feel free to ask me if you need anything!” I shout as they walk away. They’re on their way to the elevators and respond with awkward smiles. Probably wondering what the hell forty-something-year-old me is doing loitering around the lobby the entire day.

Technically, being polite to hotel guests and visitors isn’t part of my job, but I need something to break the monotony of daily twelve-hour shifts broken only by two thirty-minute breaks to snack or take a piss. The rest of the time, I stand in my little corner and watch the world go by.

I was hired because I possess a very particular set of skills. Skills that I have acquired… well, I didn’t really acquire them. And they aren’t a set. It’s just the one skill. More of a genetic mutation really. Congenital. I didn’t even have to work for it.

“Bonjour,” I greet a woman in a pantsuit rushing by me. On the way to the business center, no doubt. I’ve watched enough people coming and going to form educated guesses on where they’re headed.

Somehow the manager of the hotel saw this defect as a superpower. But what does Ivan know? He lives out the plot of Dazed and Confused half the time. I’m not even sure Ivan understood what I meant when I explained it. And when I explained it again later and stressed just how useless this “skill” was, Ivan had called it a superpower nonetheless.

It’s possibly the most useless superpower on the planet. Not even super, really. But what’s the opposite of super? Does an antonym even exist? Probably not. This talent of mine is so un-super that they haven’t even come up with a word for it. “Subpar” doesn’t come close.

I’m not part of the reception staff. I’m not maintenance, either. The closest thing I can call myself is “part of the security team.” But I’m not equipped with a gun or a taser or a baton. I don’t even have a walkie talkie. I’m just here to observe, basically. And, on the off-chance that they actually need my services, I get escorted by one of the security guys on duty—usually the laziest one who couldn’t spot a security threat even if it was wielding a gun in his face—and taken to the hospital across the street.

On one of his Wacky Tobbacky Weekends, as Ivan liked to call them, he made a deal with one of his buddies who just happens to be an MRI technologist. They met when Ivan “slipped and fell in the shower” and bashed his head on the sink. Though, if I had to guess the real story, Ivan passed out on some form of psychoactive substance and tried to fly off his couch again.

Anyway, Ivan’s buddy Greg allows us occasional use of the fMRI machine for whenever something untoward occurs at the hotel, like a bag snatching. Or a celebrity outburst. Their hospital is equipped with the latest equipment—including a machine that can reproduce digital images of my memories as I replay them in my head. A brave new world indeed.

Sometimes, Ivan won’t even bother with the MRI if he just wants to get the dirt on some girl he’s stalking online. One time, the girl stayed in the lobby talking to some dude for a whole hour. Ivan made me replay the entire hour over and over that night: I watched her in slow-mo, fluttering her vapid eyes and clacking that damn pearl necklace as she told the guy how impressed she was that he was a data analyst because she “loved computers.”

It was more likely that she loved the expensive watch and the expensive suit the guy was wearing—and the money he used to buy them.

I felt a little bad reciting their entire conversation to Ivan. Working in guest services at the hotel—even if he supervises a small bunch of people—doesn’t exactly pay that well. His shoulders slumped and he looked at the floor before telling me to repeat their conversation three more times. When it finally sunk in, he said “thanks, Jer” and lit up a joint. Our conversation got real philosophical that night.

Now, standing in the middle of the lobby for the four hundred and ninety-eighth day since I began this job that required no discernible skillset whatsoever, I start to wonder if anything interesting will ever happen while I’m here. The bag snatching and celebrity outburst happened months ago, months apart. I’m afraid I’ll be going an entire year now without having anything to show for it—or anything to show the higher ups, who’re already starting to bug Ivan about how I would be the best lamb to slaughter in the event that layoff season came round again. It would be a crappy Christmas indeed if that ever happened. Although it might actually push me to get off my ass and find a better job that doesn’t involve me standing around like a moron.

As dazed and confused as Ivan is, he’s been real clever about convincing hotel management to let me stay on. First, he brought up how there had been a power outage last year, which was the only time the hotel found out that their twenty-year-old generator wasn’t generating shit (and probably hadn’t been for years). Not only did the security cameras cut out, but the power surge corrupted a huge part of the data on their computers—including security footage.

After that, Ivan went on about this huge heist that had targeted a bank in New York. It was an inside job, he said, so the security tapes had been erased for the entire five hours that those ski-masked, leotarded hooligans (his words) were popping the candy store cherries out of their vaults (also his words). “With Jeremy,” he said, “you can’t erase nothing. It’s all there all the time,” he said, waving his hands around his head like he was describing a lunatic instead of an overemployed employee.

Lastly, Ivan told them—and I had to give him credit for saving this for last—that I’m being paid minimum wage, without any benefits. Which is a huge win for the hotel because, with me, they basically have an extra lobby emoloyee that guests can ask for directions or other concerns. An extra employee that they don’t pay as much as their actual lobby attendants.

That placated management enough to allow me to stay and, when I met up with Ivan later that night, he looked at me smugly and said, “Always be closing,” right before lighting up a huge blunt.

“Do you even know what that means?” I asked him.

“Sure I do,” he said through a throat straining against weed smoke. “It’s sexual. But it also applies to what I just did for you, masterfully, artfully, this afternoon.”

I was about to tell him he’d gotten “always be closing” absolutely wrong, and that what he did wasn’t exactly the work of a master manipulator, but I stopped myself. Ivan is the only reason I’m not homeless or starving or dead right now. It was true that night, and it’s still true now.

I survey the lobby. I watch kids running around the huge oak table in the middle of the foyer. I see a group of women having brunch, drinking mimosas and toasting nothing but the time between early morning and noon. I see an irate man gesticulating angrily at Audrey, the woman manning the front desk.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that will break the monotony of my day and get me into that MRI machine which is, pathetically, now a goal of mine just because. Just because it’s the only thing that will actually make me feel useful. The only thing that can visibly prove that there’s a reason for the freakshow mutation that happened when I didn’t even look human yet. Hadn’t breathed in air yet. Hadn’t seen the light of day yet.

“Have a good day,” I say softly to a man heading to the revolving doors. He’s sporting a shiny briefcase and a shinier wristwatch. Probably off to earn the big bucks using his big brain and his big business instincts.

I sigh, wallowing in my own mediocrity. Thinking about how the only guy who thought I was hireable and friendable and not-a-waste-of-space was a burnout who could only get girls in his dreams, or in my closed-circuit-camera of a brain. I can’t even fast forward my memories. I can only replay them and slow them down, in my screwy brain that controls my screwy life—here, now, in the real world. Where I’ve been living in slow motion my entire life.

I look around me and see people walking, strolling, shuffling. Even standing still, they’re all moving too fast for me.