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mattywritess · 1 year ago

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The Benefits of Commercial Janitorial Services

When it comes to the health and safety of your business, cleanliness should always be a priority. Not only does it keep your employees and customers safe, but it also helps to maintain a productive work environment. But when it comes to commercial janitorial services, it can be hard to know where to start. Fortunately, DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors offers a variety of commercial janitorial services to businesses in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and throughout South Florida. From terrazzo floor repair and concrete floor polishing to carpet cleaning and construction cleanup services, DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors can help improve the cleanliness and productivity of your business. In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of commercial janitorial services and how DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors can help improve cleanliness and productivity in your business.

What Are the Benefits of Commercial Janitorial Services?

Commercial janitorial services can provide a wide range of benefits to businesses, including improved cleanliness, increased safety, and better productivity. Here are a few of the key benefits of janitorial services:

1. Improved Cleanliness

These services can help keep your business clean and organized, which can help improve the overall appearance of your workplace. This can make a great first impression on customers and can also help to improve employee morale.

2. Increased Safety

A clean and organized workspace is also a safer workspace. Professional services can help to keep your business free of clutter and potential hazards, which can help to reduce the risk of accidents.

3. Better Productivity

A clean workspace can also lead to improved productivity. Without the distraction of a messy workspace, employees are more likely to stay focused and be more productive.

How Can DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors Help Improve Cleanliness and Productivity in Your Business?

DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors provides a wide range of commercial janitorial services to businesses in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and throughout South Florida. From terrazzo floor repair and concrete floor polishing to carpet cleaning and construction cleanup services, their staff members can help improve the cleanliness and productivity of your business.

1. Tile Floor Cleaning

Tile floors are one of the most popular flooring options in businesses today. But tile floors can be difficult to keep clean and can quickly become dull and stained. DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors offers professional tile floor cleaning services to keep your tile floors looking their best.

2. Marble Floor Cleaning

Marble floors are also a popular choice for businesses. But they can be difficult to keep clean and can easily become stained and discolored. DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors offers professional marble floor cleaning services to help keep your marble floors looking their best.

3. Carpet Cleaning

Carpets can quickly become dirty and stained, which can detract from the appearance of your workplace. Professional cleaners can offer pristine carpet cleaning services to help keep your carpets looking their best.

4. Construction Cleanup Services

After construction is complete, it’s important to make sure the workspace is thoroughly cleaned. DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors offers professional construction cleanup services to help make sure the job is done right.

Conclusion

When it comes to the health and safety of your business, cleanliness should always be a priority. Professional commercial janitorial services can help to improve the cleanliness and productivity of your workplace. DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors offers a wide range of commercial janitorial services to businesses in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and throughout South Florida. Contact DeLeon Floor Restoration & Cleaning Contractors to help improve the cleanliness and productivity of your business.

#commercial janitorial services #janitorial services

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clarklovescarole · 2 years ago

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June 1938: Officially Rhett

June 1, 1938 – Calgary Herald

The starting date for “Gone With the Wind” has been definitely promised for September 15. But don’t get too excited. It has been definitely promised a dozen times already… A hint for the summer tourist trade. Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck and Gail Patrick can be viewed every Sunday on horseback In the San Fernando Valley ranch district.

June 1, 1938 – The Phonograph

Carole Lombard and Clark Gable really ought to go into the dressmaking business. They cooperated on a sports jacket which Alice Marble, the United States Number One woman tennis player, will wear when she steps out on the courts of Wimbledon, England, to battle for a championship.

Carole designed the jacket (she’s Alice Marble’s best friend), and Clark had his tailor make it. It’s a knockout. And Alice, tall, blonde and pretty, will wear it.

June 1, 1938 – Philadelphia Inquirer

New Tennis Court Presented by Taylor

Had a chance to look over San Fernando Valley on Memorial Day and to see some of the race horses at Marwyck Ranch. I called on Mrs. Zeppo Marx, who has been flat on her back for five weeks with a broken shoulder caused by a fall from a frisky thoroughbred. A new tennis court now being built between the Marx estate and Barbara Stanwyck’s grounds was Barbara’s birthday gift from Robert Taylor.

An arena, where Bob learned to box for his present MGM picture, still stands close to the Stanwyck swimming pool. Carole Lombard and Clark Gable were the holiday guests of the Zeppo Marxes, and Carole told me she had just bought 26 acres near Marwyck.

June 3, 1938 – The Daily Claremore Messenger

Carole Lombard calls Clark Gable “Mr. G” when talking with him off the screen…

June 5, 1938 – The Miami Herald

Clark Gable rehearses a love speech in “Too Hot to Handle” with the script girl as Carole Lombard, his girlfriend, and Myrna Loy, his girlfriend in the picture, chat on the set…

June 6, 1938 – Buffalo Evening

Clark Gable parries questions regarding his love life with “I think all women are swell.”

June 7, 1938 – The Wilkes Barr Record

I don’t think Carole Lombard need worry, but 15-year-old Judy Garland has a tremendous case on Clark Gable. And Clark is notably fond of her. On her recent personal appearance tour, she wrote a daily post card to Clark, received three letters in reply and then – nothing but silence. But when she brought her worries back to Hollywood, she found at home 10 postcards which Clark had written from Mexico, where he had gone on a hunting jaunt. Judy’s faith in men was restored. Today, on the set, I asked how her romance is progressing. “Count these,” she chortled, taking all of Clark’s correspondence from her purse. “Carole Lombard’s only got three letters!”

June 7, 1938 – The Kansas City Star

Latest bulletin on the Clark Gable-Carole Lombard romance. Carole arrives with Clark on the “Too Hot To Handle” set every morning – around 8 – goes with him to the makeup department, sits with him in his dressing room until work begins, then sits by the camera all morning watching him emote (including those love scenes with Myrna Loy), lunches with Clark in his dressing room, then goes home for a spot of tennis and joins up again with Clark for dinner. Seems like love, all right.

June 10, 1938 – Buffalo Evening News

Did somebody say too hot? - Wrapped in overcoats and shawls, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, her hair decidedly needing attention, visit during a lull in the making of Clark’s new picture, “Too Hot To Handle.”

June 16, 1938 – Knoxville News

“Pardon me, lady, could I look at your program?” Clark Gable seems to be saying as he squints over Carole Lombard’s shoulder. This could be the beginning of a flirtation, but actually Clark and Carole’s names have been linked romantically for some time. They are pictured on the sidelines at a California society horseshow.

June 17, 1938 – Courier Journal

Seen at a horse show at Northridge, Calif., were these two film thrillers, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who recently formed a partnership to raise thoroughbred and saddle horses.

June 18, 1938 – Collyer’s Eye and the Baseball World

Carole Lombard arrives at parties with Spencer Tracy and later Clark Gable breezes in with Mrs. Tracy – but it’s a gag…

June 18, 1938 – The Spokesman Review

Carole Lombard making one of her few public appearances without Clark Gable, at the new Terrace beauty salon atop the Saks-Fifth Avenue Beverly Hills store, in which her favorite hairdresser, Miss Porter, is a popular operator…

June 24, 1938 – The Daily Times

Clark Gable Will Get Rhett Butler Role in “Gone With the Wind;” Film Slated for Production in February

By Louella O. Parsons

Cheer up, you fans. You get your Clark Gable in “Gone With the Wind.” David Selznick had to go into a producing partnership with MGM to obtain Clark for the Rhett Butler role, but the public insisted on him, so there was nothing else to do. Clark has hardly taken his nose out of the script of “Gone With the Wind” for the last few days. It’s all finished now and the picture is slated to go into production the first of February for September 1939, road show release.

June 29, 1938 – San Francisco Examiner

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard will be caricatured in a forthcoming national magazine – Gable as a monkey and Miss Lombard as a cat…

#clark gable #carole lombard #1938 #pictured #old hollywood #gone with the wind

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biglisbonnews · 2 years ago

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Revealing the Risqué Art of Pompeii’s House of the Vettii The House of the Vettii is one of the most important and spectacular sites in Pompeii. Its nearly 12,000 square feet are replete with bronze and marble sculptures, and its courtyard garden once boasted 12 spurting fountains—all of them stilled by the volcanic eruption that buried the city in 79. Elaborate frescoes adorning the mansion’s walls, which depict characters and stories from mythology, have elicited careful study by archeologists, classicists and historians since the site’s excavation in the mid 1890s. And this year, after a restoration that took two decades, its treasures are newly accessible to the public, in all their colorful detail. And we do mean colorful: Take the portrait of Priapus, the god of fertility, whose tumescent member is roughly the size of his forearm. In an apparently boastful display, he weighs it with a handheld scale against a bag of coins. Peek at the fresco of a man and woman in flagrante delicto on the wall of a small room that was used as the cook’s bedroom—or perhaps, some scholars argue, as a small brothel. What seems titillating to us, however, was a little more prosaic to the Romans. “It really shocks people when they see images of lovemaking on the walls,” notes Steven Tuck, a classics professor at Miami University of Ohio, who drew heavily from the House of the Vettii for his popular textbook, A History of Roman Art. “It forces us to realize that these people are not just people like us wearing togas. They have a completely different set of cultural values.” The specific Romans who inhabited the House of the Vettii were Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Conviva, wine merchants who made their fortunes after being freed from slavery. (Though they’re often called “brothers,” it is unknown whether they were related by blood, or simply grew up as slaves in the same household.) Their path to prosperity was not an uncommon one—the House of the Vettii dates to a time when a self-made aristocracy, including many former slaves, was growing in Pompeii. “It was certainly true that you could have an absolutely hideous life as a slave,” says David Potter, a professor of Greek and Roman history at the University of Michigan, “but there’s also a major path of social advancement, because slaves are educated in a rich person’s house.” The Vettii, who like many Roman slaves would have been freed in their early 20s, likely lived here with their wives and families, Potter says. In Roman society, women and men socialized in the same spaces, and both genders would have experienced erotic paintings and sculptures as conversation pieces perfectly fit for polite company. Priapus symbolized male power and virility, but he was also the enemy of thieves, as well as a humorous figure that might have made guests smile. “What you’re saying with this picture is, ‘Priapus looks after us because we’ve made a lot of money,’” Potter says. “But with the scale, it’s also a natural joke.” Erotic art has been turning up at Pompeii since excavations began in the 18th century. At first, the naughtier pieces would be spirited off to the Gabinetto Segreto (Secret Cabinet) in Naples, away from the innocent eyes of the general public. The House of Vettii, however, was one of the first sites to be unearthed using modern archeological techniques, and its artifacts were left in situ so their context could be preserved for future scholars and the public. Which doesn’t mean the Victorian-era archeologists weren’t still scandalized by what they found. According to an 1896 edition of The English Illustrated Magazine, a House of the Vettii painting “only suitable to that barbarous period of Europe’s history [was] very properly… covered over” before the dig continued. In addition to being a little prudish, Pompeii’s early caretakers also made some well-intentioned mistakes. To protect frescoes from the region’s heat and humidity, they painted on a solution of wax and benzine, which oxidized the pigments over time, darkening the colors and making the images far less crisp and lively than they would have appeared on the eve of the eruption. “The wax had two effects,” says Tuck. “One is that everything looks muddy, like you’re looking at it through a scratched piece of Plexiglas. There’s volcanic dust all over Pompeii still, and it sticks to the surface of the wax and makes the paintings much harder to see.” The other problem, he explains, is less obvious but more serious: Wax doesn’t expand and contract with changes of temperature in the same way plaster does, and over time that material conflict caused cracks in the walls. Technology, however, has come a long way. The recent restoration of the House of the Vettii involved the painstaking removal of all that dirt and wax using lasers, a process called photoablation. Ultrasound and thermal imaging helped conservators understand how the walls themselves were deteriorating with time, and how to shore them up without damaging the frescoes. The payoff, by all accounts, was worth the effort. “The colors, the clarity—it was really wonderful,” says Tuck, who toured some of the restored rooms. Potter, whose research has taken him to Pompeii many times, is already planning another trip, not only to see the restored House of Vettii—and Priapus in all his newly visible glory—but also to commune with the Romans through what is still the best medium we have for understanding this lost civilization. “This work to reconstruct the city is really important,” he says, “because it lets you feel how people lived shoulder to shoulder. Here, you can really be in touch with the ancient world.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/art-pompeii-house-of-the-vettii

#Amy Crawford #Atlas Obscura

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artconservatorslab · 2 years ago

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Historic Document Restoration Services in Miami

Art Conservators Lab is the best painting service in Miami. We are performing conservation and restoration of textile, wood, metals, and marble artwork on canvas and paper. Our experts have restored fine art, library collections, etc. If you would like more information please visit our website.

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polishingmarblemiami · 4 years ago

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goldstarcleaning12 · 5 years ago

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If you’re looking for a reputable, trustworthy company to provide marble restoration in Fort Lauderdale, you should look at Goldstar Cleaning. We have over 15 years of experience cleaning marble floors in luxury homes and commercial spaces. Our highly-trained technicians offer the highest quality marble floor cleaning using the very latest equipment available. We restore and maintain marble floors, keeping them new looking and free of damage for years to come.

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thepointoftheneedle · 4 years ago

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Happy New Year!

I wrote a little New Year’s Eve one shot. It’s below the cut or you can read it on AO3 here. (I’ve started a collection of short pieces just to keep things tidy.) I hope you are all able to celebrate safely and I wish you a healthy and happy 2021.

It was obvious that the party was going off the rails as soon as Archie started lining up shots along the whole length of the marble counter top. He called Reggie out and Reggie never backed down from a challenge to his machismo so they both worked their way along the little bullets of stupid until, breathless and belly laughing, they slid to the floor, their eyes swivelling in their dumb skulls like cartoon coyotes that had just been smashed over the head with an Acme anvil. It was nine fifteen. Betty had wondered if Veronica would be mad about it but she seemed in the mood for some chaos as she set up two more lines of glasses opposite each other on the counter and challenged Cheryl who had never met an unnecessary drama she didn’t like.

Betty had drunk a very pleasant glass of good champagne and had been contemplating having a couple more before midnight. She’d never been a big drinker so for her that was cutting loose. It had been, to put it crudely, a shit-show of a year and she was glad to see the back of it. At the last New Year’s party she had been showing off a dazzling engagement ring, about to start the job that she had been expensively and laboriously trained for and she and her intended had signed the lease on a cute and well appointed apartment in Sunset Park which everyone said was the up and coming neighbourhood. The world had been unfolding for her like a flower. Then the frost had come and scorched the petals with its chill. This year she was single, her job sometimes felt like it was eating her up and that cute apartment burned through every cent of her pay check now she had to make the rent alone. It was possible that she was the saddest girl in a cocktail dress on the whole island of Manhattan, she was certainly the soberest person at the party.

An hour later the shots were completely out of hand and Betty had only just prevented Ethel from throwing up into the piano. Moose made some half hearted effort to restore order, offering glasses of water, trying to start a game of Charades, but Kevin was in too mischievous a mood for his efforts to bear any fruit and instead they were embarking on Drunk Jenga, the rules of which seemed to be that you took a shot whenever you removed a block and then another when you placed it on top of the stack. She imagined you took a shot if the tower fell but she didn’t stick around to find out. She sidled over to where the Pol Roger was stacked, neglected, in its very own champagne refrigerator and helped herself while everyone else was supporting the economy of Mexico by the prodigious consumption of Patron Silver.

She took her recharged glass to the window and looked out at the snowy expanse of Central Park far below. It looked like the idealised interior of a snow globe, the air glassy and still and a huge yellow moon surveying its domain. Betty remembered walking through the park with Trev last Christmas, bundled in a thick coat and scarf. They’d held hands inside one of his mittens. They’d made snow angels. They’d skated at the Wollman Rink and drunk hot chocolate afterwards. Her life had been a cover image from a romance novel. This year she had spent Christmas being patronised by Polly’s constant offers of introductions to a succession of Jason’s frat brothers and golfing buddies. Eventually she’d pointed out that if she’d wanted some obstructionist, bigoted blowhard she could have found one herself, without Polly’s oh so sympathetic intervention. Polly cried and Betty apologised but she still wasn’t going to go on a date with a junior vice president of acquisitions even if he did have a weekend place in Connecticut. She wouldn’t tolerate being paraded in front of prospective suitors like a prize dairy cow at the county show, not by Veronica and certainly not by her sister.

As she reminisced she became aware of Archie and Veronica deep in conversation in the corner of the room. “We have a teeny emergenshy,” Veronica said, her hand on Archie’s forearm. Veronica was never less than perfectly composed but that slur at the end of her word and the ramped up sincerity gave her away to her best friend. She was sozzled. “Only two bottles of Patron left and then the cupboard is bare. I may have over-ordered on the fizz and neglected the tequila.”

Archie nodded, taking the situation as seriously as his wife. Then some kind of light dawned on his handsome face. “We’ll get the magic doorman to get us some. He’ll be on duty now. I’ll go slip him a fifty and he’ll take care of it.” He turned to reach for his wallet and promptly fell on his face. It was ten to eleven and all was decidedly not well.

Betty went over to help Archie off the rug. He grinned even though his nose was bloody. “Ronnie, Betty’s all sober and sensible. She can go talk to the wizard. Here Betty, here’s fifty for a tip and Ronnie’ll give you her credit card for the booze. Okay? Shit I’m bleeding… still it’s not a party til something gets broke.”

V was looking at her imploringly now. Somewhere there was the sound of glass smashing and Monroe’s attempt to do chin ups on the kitchen doorframe seemed to be bringing plaster down on the floor. Betty would rather be almost anywhere than right here so she nodded at her friend. "What do you need V?”

V explained that the building’s night doorman was a kind of fixer. When Tom in 204 had forgotten his wife’s birthday Jones had got him a gluten free chiffon cake iced with her name at two thirty on a Thursday morning along with a bouquet of out of season narcissuses....narcissi? When the little boy in 116 had told his mama at midnight that he needed a George Washington costume for school the next day the night doorman had sourced it, complete with powdered wig, before the little tyke had finished his cheerios. When V had realised an hour before her 5.15 a.m. flight to Miami that she had completely forgotten her niece’s confirmation gift he had sourced a personalised Catholic Bible bound in white leather which he handed to her as she got into her cab. “He’s a miracle worker B. Just tell him we need a case…no two cases of Patron Silver before midnight. Give him the fifty but tell him I’ll make it a hundred if he can fix it by eleven thirty. OK?”

“Sure. On my way.”

She travelled down in the elevator imagining the doorman. He’d be some old guy in a uniform with gold braid on the chest. He probably knew all the residents and their dogs by name and had one of those old timey extended families so that he could reach out to Cousin Ike for last minute birthday cakes or get his nephew’s wife to sew a costume at no notice. She needed a fixer herself since her life seemed so broken. She wondered what he could do for a lonely woman who was trying to work out if getting a cat was too much of an admission that she had given up.

As she stepped out into the lobby she was slightly taken aback by the mismatch between her expectations and reality. He was behind the reception desk, dark head bowed over a laptop, no braid in evidence, no grey whiskers or paunch, just this dark, poetic looking guy in a black sweater. She approached the desk and he looked up at her, fingers still flying over the keys without him needing to glance down. He seemed to reach a natural pause, closed the lid of the laptop and smiled politely. “Yes ma’am, how can I help?” His eyes were blue. They seemed to look through her probably thinking she was just another rich girl bringing him problems. He must get that a lot.

“Yeah, hi, I’m a guest of Mr and Mrs Lodge Andrews up in the penthouse. They’re having a little New Year's Eve party and they’re running low on liquor. They wondered if you could source them a couple of cases of…”

“Patron Silver? Yes ma’am, of course. Who should I charge it to?” She had no idea how he could have known what she was going to ask for. It made her want to say that they wanted Stolichnaya or absinthe or something, just to surprise him but she’d been sent for Patron and Patron she would get.

“Oh, yes, I have a credit card.” She handed it over, “and Mr Andrews said to give you this for the trouble.” She passed him the fifty, embarrassed.

“No incentive to get it here before the coaches turn into pumpkins?” he asked, eyebrow raised. She thought he was making fun of her but she couldn’t be sure.

“Oh yes, that’s right. Veronica said another $50 if it’s here by eleven thirty.”

“Okay ma’am. I’ll buzz up when it’s here. If that’s all.”

“Oh please don’t call me ma’am. I’m Betty.”

“I’m Jones... Jughead. Nickname. Long dull story.” He raised an eyebrow, clearly wondering why she was still standing in front of his desk.

“Look, it’s a little crazy up there. Would it be okay if I just stay down here for a minute? Just say if it’s inconvenient. I don’t want to disturb you if you’re busy.” She didn’t think she could bear to be the responsible adult at Veronica’s party for a moment longer. Here it was quiet and no one needed her to hold back their hair while they were getting sick.

“Busy getting hold of twelve bottles of good tequila on New Year's Eve but that’s all. I just need to make a call. Excuse me.” He stood and walked away from the desk, his back turned to her. It was a good back. He was wearing the black sweater over grey slacks with a key chain hanging from one of his belt loops. He had broad shoulders but his neck was fine, not thick and meaty like the guys who needed to lift weights to manufacture some self esteem. He was slim at the waist and the hips, long legs, tall. The hair was the USP though, dark waves of it tumbling freely as he dragged long fingers through it, waiting for someone to pick up his call. Finally he yelled “Hey Toni. Yeah, two cases of Patron Silver asap. Yeah, I’d noticed that but mark it up. Can Sweetpea drop it over? Yeah right now. Hey, ask him to get me a burger on the way too.” He turned and looked at Betty with a questioning look and she shrugged and nodded, “Two, make it two. Ok, thanks Toni. Yeah you too. See you Sunday.”

He ended the call and made his way back to the desk. “My pal Toni runs a bar,” he explained with a grin.

“Veronica says you’re magic, a wizard,” she told him.

“Nothing occult about it. I’m just observant, that’s all.”

“Seems magical to produce a George Washington costume overnight,” she countered.

“Oh well, that was a lucky break. My sister’s a textile artist. A struggling one. I gave her the brief and she knocked up the costume in a few hours. Now all the upper east side mommies have her business card and she can afford to buy materials and pay her rent. She had to pull an all nighter but it paid off pretty big in the end.”

“Birthday cake? Out of season flowers?”

“The husband’s kind of a dick. He forgot last year too. They had a fight about it in this very lobby so I wrote down the date and got ready to save his bacon. If he’d remembered the date I’d have had cake for my breakfast and sent my sister a bunch of flowers. As it was I made a couple hundred bucks.”

Betty was laughing now at the smug look on his face. “So you could have reminded him beforehand?”

“Could have, but maybe the expense’ll help him remember next time. Anyway if the doorman knows more about your wife than you do it might be time to review your priorities.”

“Ok but what about the Bible? That seems pretty miraculous.”

“Actually it’s kind of the opposite. The kid’s confirmation name is Maria. Hardly original. My buddy Joaquin’s little sister was confirmed a few months ago. Her confirmation name’s Maria. She hadn’t made a whole lot of use of the Bible. Your pal paid me three hundred, Joaquin’s kid sister got two hundred in her college fund.”

“Seems like the side hustles are more remunerative than the pay check,” Betty observed.

“It’s all a side hustle. I’m a writer. This job’s kept me supplied with characters and plot lines and given me eight hours of mostly uninterrupted writing time.”

Betty flushed pink and jumped up from the corner of the desk where she had been leaning. “Oh I’m so sorry. Here I am wasting your time. I’ll be on my way.”

“No, wait,” he reached out and put his hand on her arm. It tingled. “I didn’t mean it like that. This is research. Maybe I’ll put you in my next book. The sad girl in a party frock who’d rather be in the lobby than with her friends at a party being kissed for New Year.”

“There’s no-one to kiss up there,” she confessed with a sad smile and then, without having any idea why, she said “I broke up with my fiancé last February.”

“Aha,” he said. “There’s the plot. Tell me.”

“He’s great. A really good guy. Kind, loyal, handsome. Everything I should have wanted. Any girl would be lucky to have him. I think I broke his heart.”

“Why?”

“We started to plan the wedding and I wanted to run away. I couldn’t bear to think about it. Then one day I found myself imagining what I’d do if something bad happened that prevented it, like if he got sick or if I was in a car accident or something. It was pretty clear that I couldn’t go through with it if I preferred the idea of one of us being in a coma to the idea of my wedding day.”

“Cold feet?”

“Oh freezing but it wasn’t just nerves. When I imagined being married to him I couldn’t see myself, I was just a blank. It was… I don’t know how to say it…like I was finished. I’d never be anything more than I was, never change or grow or struggle. It was all too easy. No grit in the oyster. I know it’s crazy.”

“You didn’t say it was you not him did you? You didn’t do that to him?” He was smiling at her, sympathising not mocking.

She blushed. “I did. All the clichés. How could I explain? I don’t even understand it myself.”

“I understand it. You want to find out who you can be and he couldn’t give you that. He was happy with who you were, didn’t want you to change. He was probably scared of losing you. Anyone would be.” He looked at her with an intensity that made her nervous so she tried to change the subject.

“A writer then? What do you write?”

“Mostly mystery stories. Magazines and online so far but I’ve just got a publisher for the novel. I’m going to quit this next year. What do you do?”

“I’m a psychologist. I work with kids who are in trouble. Try to get them back on track. I love it but it’s hard sometimes. I hear things that it’s tough to leave at the office.”

“You need to take care of you first. You can’t save someone if you aren’t safe yourself. ”

“Writer or life coach?” she smiled.

He chuckled. “Sorry. I’m not good at small talk. I get too intense too fast and freak people out. Oh hey, cometh the man, cometh the tequila.”

A tall guy in a leather jacket was pulling boxes out of the back of a truck that he’d illegally bumped up the curb outside.. He looked a little scary. Once he was in the lobby she saw that he had a snake tattooed on his neck. He fist bumped Jughead and then pulled him into a side hug. “Hey man. Happy new year and all that. Hey,” he said, noticing Betty for the first time.

“Hey. Thanks so much for bringing it over. There’s a whole apartment full of drunk idiots upstairs just waiting to make themselves sick on it. Oh!” He turned back to Betty, aghast at what he’d said. “Sorry Betty.”

“You’ll not get an argument from me. That’s why I’m down here talking to you.”

Neck tattoo laughed and held out his hand “Sweetpea. Pleasure doing business with you.” He turned back to Jughead, “So I have to get back, I’m supposed to be on the door at the Wyrm. See you Sunday?”

“Burgers?” Jug reminded him and his friend nodded, trotting back to the truck to grab a take out bag and toss it back to Jughead who snatched it from the air like a dolphin snatching a fish at Seaworld.

Betty buzzed up to the penthouse to get one of the assembled jocks to come and collect two cases of tequila and bring down a bottle of Pol Roger and the promised fifty dollars. It was eleven twenty four. Ten minutes later she was sitting on the reception desk eating a burger, washing it down with $200 champagne. “This is the best New Year's Eve I’ve ever had,” she grinned, a little disinhibited by the bubbles.

“Weren’t you engaged last year?”

“This is much better. I was pretending last year. Now I’m just being me.”

“I always find that works better. The not pretending bit. Especially not with someone you can love.”

She certainly wasn’t pretending at eleven fifty nine when she reached out to him and he took her in his arms and kissed her softly as cheers and yells rang out from the parties all over the city and fireworks exploded high above the park, casting confetti of coloured lights across the marble lobby.

As the kiss ended she looked up into his blue eyes, wondering if it was the champagne that was making her blurry and relaxed or if it was him. She thought she’d have to keep on kissing him to know for sure. He really was a fixer though. Her heart felt lighter, hopeful.

He grinned. “Spectacular as that was, this is probably the most surveilled lobby in the city. Can we schedule the repeat for when I’m not actually on the clock?” He gestured at the security cameras covering every inch of the space and she blushed to think that somewhere there was taped evidence of her trying to seduce the sexy doorman.

“Can I stay here and talk to you some more if I promise not to touch?”

“I wish you would. I get off at six and I know a great diner for breakfast. We can tell people our first date was breakfast. They’ll be scandalised.” She couldn’t hold back at the mention of the first date, of them telling people about it, so she kissed him on the cheek before retreating back to the edge of the desk with her hands up.

They talked about her work, his writing, they compiled an ultimate New Year's Eve playlist and top tens of movies and books. She found herself distracted by the fullness of his lips, the expressiveness of his face, the heaviness of the locks of hair that fell forward over his eyes only to be pushed back impatiently. They agreed on almost nothing and that was exactly how she liked it. When she crept up to the penthouse at five thirty to collect her coat and change her party shoes for snow boots, she was met with a scene of devastation. Prostrate bodies sprawled on every flat surface. The two cases of tequila sat unopened in the kitchen, clearly surplus to requirements by the time they had been manifested. She picked her way through the carnage and found the coat closet where Archie had put her things when she’d arrived the night before. Opening the door she noticed the cases of liquor stacked inside, three unopened boxes of Patron among them. She realised that Jug wasn’t the only fixer in the building. She made sure to lean over her sleeping friend to place a kiss on her forehead before she let herself out, locking the door behind her.

#bughead fanfiction #bughead fan fic #New Years

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