So now, what possible use could one have of a more ore less reduntant old blog, some kind of remnant from a university-course in webaesthetics? What I mean, should I give it some direction or just continue to post my reflections on everyday life? One idea I came up with, was to write stories. The beauty of it, is that I could tell anything I want, without claiming it to be true. I could leave that entirely for you to decide, whether the story is plausible or not. Actually I have a few written down already. Some of them have been told by friends (and enemies?), and others are totally results of a vivid imagination and possibly too much wine. Others again are very true, as they are recallings of my own experiences.
I think I'll start with this one:
The Lunch
He woke up with an excruciating pain jolting through his head. It felt like someone had connected his brain to an electric circuit. His eyelids were swollen but with a tremendous effort he opened an eye and he was in for the first shock; he didn’t have a clue where he was. As a matter of fact, when he came to think of it, he didn’t know who he was either. The walls around him were spinning so he closed his eye again and tried to make some sense of it all. Thinking wasn’t the easiest thing to do when the upstairs department was closed off with electric wiring, but some fragments of his memory somehow found their way out in the clear. A woman made her presence before of his shut eyes, and some woman she was! He was sure she was a dream come true, with those legs and those eyes looking right through him. A piece of conversation surfaced from his scattered memory:
-How nice of you to come, Mr McCullough!
-The pleasure is all mine, Miss Smith.
”Mr McCullough must be me then”, he thought while searching through his memory data-bank. ”Sounds familiar actually, wonder if there is a first name that goes with McCullough?” At this stage his brain worked as smoothly as a piece of fine machinery - filled with saw-dust that is – but for some reason a name popped up. ”John! That’s it, that’s my name: John McCullough!” Miss Smith was still a mystery but it might come back to him later. All this thinking made him weary and he dozed off again.
In his dream he hurried down West Hubbard Street to reach his office at J B Hardy Investors Inc. It was winter, and winter in Chicago could be really bad. Snow was whirling from and into every possible direction and he was covered in a thick layer of white as he entered the building. He greeted the clerk at the front reception and rushed into the overcrowded elevator. His office was on the 14th floor so that’s where he left the elevator not a second too soon. How he hated it; packed liked sardines, conscious of not showing his disgust with the odour of garlic from yeasterdays take-aways and the smell of damp woolen clothes. He knew that to everybody else he was the picture of perfection; and he sure wasn’t going to let them think otherwise. Still a bit woundup he ran into a person in the hallway and they both almost fell over. Then he suddenly felt something really hot running down his leg, and he found himself drenched in caffè latte.
-Oh my God! I’m soooo sorry, I didn’t mean to. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?
He was just going to say the standard ”No thanks, I’m fine” when he looked at the person. It wasn’t merely a person, it was a woman and not just any woman. It was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid his eyes upon and he had laid his eyes upon quite a few. He suddenly felt like an awkward schoolboy and the woman sent off an unarming smile showing a row of perfect white teeth. Too good to be true, he thought.
-How about me taking you for lunch later today?
-Sure, Miss…?
-Smith, she said , let’s meet by the front reception at two, OK?
-Yeah, OK, he answered slightly flustered.
In his office, he changed into a pair of dry and clean pants; he always kept spare clothes there in case of any kind of emergency. A little smile played on his lips when he set out to work on the day’s agenda. He called his secretary, Miss Benton, and told her to set up a meeting with the chairman of Wakefield B C Inc., a fairly large industrial building contractor which had been run by the same family for ages. Like everyone else in the same business they strived to get contracts these days; nobody seemed to be building anything for the moment. And that’s where J B Hardy stepped in, offering a solution most of them were willing to accept. But in their despair they were fooled by the quirks only a lawyer could put in a contract and so in the end they were bought up, devided and sold out and the only one happy about it was old Hardy and friends. The rest of the morning John spent running figures and estimating the total he would add to his bankaccount when the deal was through. When he went to his lunchappointment he was still smiling…
Or was it a dream? Lying there in this strange room he felt that the lunch with this Miss Smith had been quite real. He even remembered where they went and what they had to eat. They had caught a cab just outside the building and she directed it to a very ”in” and not to mention very pricey place; d.Kelly on West Randolph Street. The place in itself was worth a visit, if only for a drink, with it’s exposed brick walls and roomy layout. And if you fancied the the photographs hanging on the walls one could be yours, with frame and all, if you had couple of hundered bucks to spare. Even if food was the last thing John longed for he could still feel the taste of the hearty chicken matzo soup he had, served with crisp Cuban panini, on his tongue. He also remembered that he made a mental note that this might be a good place to take the poor chairman of Wakefield B C Inc..
As he slowly recovered his memory he felt a little better, but only for a while. He still didn’t know where he was or why he was there. And physically he was a mess, that’s for sure. Never before had he been so hungover, and wining&dining was as natural to him as for a dog peeing on a lamppost. Carefully he again opened his eyes and looked around. It looked like a hotelroom, but nothing like one he would pay for to stay in. The walls were hung with a paper so hideous it made him if possible even more sick. A burgundy floral pattern with golden, velveteen patches scattered around. Here and there strips of wallpaper were missing and the dirty wall behind shone through. Above him the ceiling threatened to fall down on him, heavy with nicotine from decades of smoking. What the floor looked like he didn’t know, he hadn’t dared to turn around yet, but could it be anything but absolutely disgusting that too? The bed was a real piece of work, heartshaped with a built-in massage function. At least he assumed it had one having watched a lot of bad movies, and this more and more reminded him of a really, really bad one.
In his mind he went back to the lunch, trying to remember what had happened. He had a vague feeling that the mystic Miss Smith had been in charge of the events from the very first beginning. Anyway, this was not the usual way he dated women, he was the man, the one who took the initative with his smooth moves. Just for once he was mesmerized by this stunning woman and all he could do was to play along. The bottle of wine accompanying the lunch was soon followed by heavier drinks. Two Long Island Iceteas could make any man lightfooted, and it didn’t stop with that. They talked of this, that and the other, who they were, and where they came from. He told her the same lie he told every chick he dated; the poor boy from the district who made a fortune, and she told him about her family which was, until she met him, the most important thing in her life. She said she believed in fate, and fate had brought them together. The lunch became quite extended in the end, actually to the degree that they could almost hit the nightclubs directly, and so they did. Didn’t she pay for the lunch as well? John thought. Normally he wouldn’t have accepted such a thing, but this was someting different, he knew that.
The District on West Lake Street was a high-glamour hang where a VIP-driven clientele congregated. They had even more drinks and tried to keep up an conversation in the noisy bar. By then everything was kind of a blur to him but fragments emerged from the deepest corner of his memory.
-John, don’t you just hate it when someone you trust screws you around? she shouted in his ear.
He recalled discussing friends and what they might do to you, making them less of a friend. He had told her about an incident when Robert who he thought was a friend; they worked together, had closed a deal which was his and by that got hold of something like three million dollars. What do you need enemies for when you got friends like that?
-My father isn’t feeling very well these days, she told him. Maybe you could help him, with all your contacts and everything. John had as always made the impression that he could do almost anything and knew almost everybody, at least anybody worth of knowing.
-I just might, he answered.
What had happened after the nightclub was even more obscure. This totally numb feeling was something he had never experienced before, and that added a sense of uneasy anxiousness to his poor mind. Did he walk the streets? To places where never sat his foot before? (Perhaps in another life, long before he made his fortune.) And it still didn’t place him in this sorry excuse for a hotel. By now he was so sick he just had to make an effort to reach the bathroom, hopefully there was one. If he was really unlucky this was the kind of hotel where you had to go out in the corridor to get to something resembling a bathroom. He rolled over and his suspicions about the carpet were confirmed; it might have been a royal blue once, but all the stains, which origins he really didn’t dare to think about, made it look like it was supposed to be patterned. Anyway, he was at least happy to see that the room in fact had a bathroom, and he crawled in that direction. He noticed that he couldn’t see any of his clothes on his way, neither did he wear his gold Cartier. He couldn’t help himself but emptying his stomach, sitting on all four. Totally exhausted he dragged himself up and looked into the mirror. When he was a kid his mum and dad had taken him to a horror cabinet with wax figures, and that had totally freaked him out. Still, what faced him in the mirror now was even worse. And all of a sudden he realized he had to alter the intention of the meeting with the chairman of Wakefield B C Inc., Mr Alan Smith.
After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch, which the brightly colored ink-snake slithering down his still sore chest would forever remind him of…
So, could this have been true? Is it?
I think next story might be a of a different kind alltogether, stay tuned...
