Maid in Seattle [Elvis]

Chapter 4 - Small Note, Big Meaning

My lunch bin clacked as I set it on the table in the employee eating area. It was a room about two times as big as my apartment, and it was filled with round tables. I opened my lunch bin to see that Oh-ma packed some rice, left-over bulgogi, or marinated beef, kimchi, and some other various side dishes. She overdid it with the kimchi, though. It was technically fermented cabbage that had absorbed various spices and red peppers and had sliced vegetables to go along with it. I loved it. That was why she added so much to my lunches. She had always done that, ever since I was old enough to go to school.

I smiled as I pulled all my dishes out and organized them in front of me. I got my chopsticks ready, and as I was about to take a bite of that kimchi, I noticed all the women sitting around the table with me. They all stared.

"What?" I asked, my neck heating up from embarrassment. Just what did I have to be embarrassed about, though? I looked at Carry, and she stared at me as well. I looked around at them all again, five women ranging from my age up to fifty. "Why are you all staring at me?"

"There's a rumor that you met Elvis," said Carry in a whine. "How come you never told me?!"

Oh. This was why they were all giving me looks that I noticed were that of jealousy. "Well, I..."

"I don't believe it!" hollered Bernice, a gal around thirty, and with blonde hair pulled back in a bun. She was pretty with big brown eyes. "Nobody's allowed on the floor he's staying on."

"He can go anywhere he wants," added Patricia, a girl not that much older than me. "She probably ran into him in the lobby or something."

"But she wasn't supposed to be in the lobby this morning," countered Dee, a lady around Oh-ma's age. "How could she have run into him?"

"I don't believe it," Bernice said, Dee agreed, and another sided with her.

"How about Amy tells us what happened, huh?" Carry put in forcefully, stopping the bickering women. She turned to me. "Amy, do you swear on your grandmother that you met Elvis?"

I knew that phrase was mostly said when someone's grandmother had passed, but Oh-mo-ni was very much alive and was living back in Seoul. I talked to her on the phone last week, in fact. "Yes, I promise, as God as my witness, that I met Elvis this morning. And yes... I ran into him. Literally. With my cart."

All of the women gasped, and half of them put a hand to their mouths in shock. "Oh my, you ran into Elvis with your cart?!" demanded Patricia, and her hazel eyes blazed. It made sense since she had fire-orange hair.

I noticed other women and men in the room look over at her outburst, and some left their tables and came over to ours. I supposed I would have to tell the story. I put a piece of kimchi on top of some rice and picked that rice up with my chopsticks. "Yes. This morning, I was on my way – on the 8th floor – to the supply closet since I ran out of glass cleaner. I was looking down at my cart to see what else I needed, so I wasn't watching where I was going. A person came out of the elevator I was passing, and my cart rammed into them. I profusely apologized to them, but then I looked up to see that it was Elvis himself who I rammed into, and he held the cart to steady it. I stared at him in shock. I'm surprised I didn't faint."