Something Mordecai had always found vexing was the insufferable self-righteous attitude of the elderly. He spins irritably on his heel in the sand, but even after he faces the building, his head continues to twirl. A wave of roiling nausea overcomes him, and he stumbles urgently to a vast mahogany writing desk for the best bowl-shaped object he could find. After grabbing an umbrella stand fashioned from a stout hirsute leg (evidenced as such by the umbrella that caught the majority of the first surge of sick), he collapses next to the desk and coughs between tides.

The metal rim of the stand provided a cool band across his forehead, but a disk of pain had wedged itself lengthwise in his skull. It wouldn't sit right with him to leave the desk as it was, but with the wind picking up, he didn't have much of a choice. Sitting up straight, he takes a few deep breaths through his nose, and turns his head to his audience. "Owing to the circumstances, I believe it may behoove us to assist one another to the threshold."

His pushes off from the desk, replaces the stand, and gets to his feet a little more steadily than he felt. He sincerely hoped that there wouldn't be much more conversation before they got inside.