Happy Holiday

I went to work on MLK Day. Though we officially had the day off, I'd been out of town in Bolivia and needed to catch up on my job. Plus, we were moving to a new office on Jan. 31—a serviced office, moving 3,000 square feet into one tiny room of about 150 square feet. Three people, two printers, three computers, two scanners, and about 2,000 comic books. I needed to pack more. I'd filled up several boxes on Friday and left them on the floor of my office.

When I got off the PATH train, I noticed a missed call on my mobile. Michael Kraiger. He was going to work today too. I didn't pick up the voicemail. I didn't want to take off my mittens long enough to push the buttons on my phone. New York was in a cold snap. Anyway, I'd see Kraiger in a minute in our office.

The doorman stopped me when I walked into our building.

"There was a flood."

What?

"A pipe froze. There was a flood across six floors. I wanted to warn you because it's a mess."

Ah, hell.

When I got off the elevator, the smell of... damp... hit me. Yuck. Mildew? I don't know. It was the smell of wet paper.

Kraiger let me in. The PIN pad and wall next to the door had a firefighter-sized hole in it. The leak had been on our floor and they'd busted through the sheetrock to get in and shut off the water.

That smell of wet paper? All of our files that had been in boxes on the floor. And the comic books!

Thousands of soaked comic books sat rotting on the floor in boxes.

"Good morning," I said cheerily. "Seems we have fewer things to move."

We started cleaning up.