by A. S. Anand
Only a few days ago he finally had sex with her again. Yet this only confirmed her fears; as he lay on top of her and made love to her, she noticed that rather than staring into her eyes, he instead closed his eyes and turned his head away from her.
After finding no evidence of any wrongdoing when she had rummaged through his clothes, read his texts and emails and checked his browsing history, she decided to follow his movements after work.
She had come to the cafe ten minutes before closing time and now she had the evidence she needed. Yet she was in two minds as to whether she should burst into the cafe and confront him or return to their house and leave him for good.
21st August
His hand slithered across the surface of her stomach, removing the cream satin sheet that had been covering her frame. His lips pressed against hers, expecting a reciprocity of movement; instead, they remained immobile.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m tired.”
He sighed. Silence.
“It’s O.K. I understand.”
“What?”
“The body doesn’t lie.”
“Please, it’s not that simple.”
“You arrive here two hours late. When you finally get here, you play around with your phone for half an hour.”
“You told me you would finish work late, I didn’t know when you would finish so I met up with some of my friends.”
“That’s a flat out lie! I made it clear to you in the afternoon that I’d be back home by midnight at the latest, I even cancelled some of my meetings to make sure I was here on time and then when I called you at half past eleven you were clearly in some club with your friends.”
“My model friend was leaving tomorrow morning, I had to tell…”
“Then we finally get into bed and once again you’re tired!”
“I need to know first, if you are going to be my boyfriend.”
“What? We’ve only gone out a few times!”
“Well now you have lied. The first time we met was in a club and you brought me back to your flat, and the few times we have met since you have called me to your flat again! We haven’t ‘gone out’ at all.”
“I told you when we met that the hours I work would mean it would be difficult for me to take you out.”
“And I am fine with that, but I need something. That’s why I asked if you would be my boyfriend, and your response has made it clear to me what your answer is.”
“That’s a dirty trick, I didn’t say that at all! I just asked a question…I would be happy to be your boyfriend.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And do you want to be my girlfriend?”
“If you want me to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“OK We can be together then.”
“At last.”
His hands moved straight for her breasts, but before they could make contact, she brushed them away. He jumped up from the bed and headed to the nearby bathroom.
“You want to be friends, I get it.”
“I just told you that we can be together now.”
He splashed ice-cold water over his face several times, before slipping on a discarded magazine.
“Are you alright?”
He sat on the toilet with his pyjamas still on and flicked though the magazine, its words and images barely visible as he had not turned on the light.
“Do you want me to go then?”
“No.”
“Look, you have to understand, I am confused. I told you last time, my last boyfriend he lied to me, he told me…”
“Yes I know what he did, but that was then, yesterday, gone, you have to forget it.”
“It still hurts.”
He arose from the toilet seat and hurried to the bed. Instead of lying back down, he grabbed the wooden chair that was tucked under a glass desk that lay only a foot away from the bed and planted himself upon it.
“I haven’t told you this before, but I too broke up with my ex-girlfriend recently, I thought we were going to have children together, get married. It was messy and difficult, but here I am, with someone I know I like. It can be that simple if you allow it to be. Wait, why are you crying?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“All I’m saying is that either you do or you don’t…”
“Don’t touch me, please!”
“What did I say? I don’t understand, this is not what I signed up for!”
“Fine, I’ll leave.”
“Wait, wait, please tell me what it is I said that made you cry. I am replaying what I said in my head and can’t think of….”
“You don’t want to know, you wouldn’t care.”
“Try me.”
“I killed my baby! And I didn’t want to, he made me, I had to, and now my family, this is why, why I don’t want to be touched like that; you are the first, first guy since, and when you touch me or kiss me, I want to, but all, all that I see is my baby.”
“Shit, I’m sorry…I won’t touch you again, I didn’t…”
“See! This is why I didn’t want to tell you, now you don’t want to touch me, why did you have to push me, and now I have told you, you don’t want to touch me, I knew this would happen.”
“Look how wet your cheeks are, look at how upset you are! You are clearly not ready to be in a relationship. And I’m not being a mean guy, I like you, of course I do, but look, it’s clear you are not ready for anything like this. We can be friends.”
“Friends. You don’t want to touch me.”
“Of course I do. Look at you, you’re so pretty, that figure, those…”
“You don’t want to touch me.”
He jumped on top of her and grabbed her arms; tight enough to ensure that she couldn’t break free but weak enough to ensure she felt a minimal amount of pain.
“Get off. I told you, I’m not ready to…”
“Who said anything about that? There are other ways for you to feel good. And see, I do, I really do want to touch you.”
He crawled southwards; awkwardly though, as he refused to release his grip on her arms.
“Please,” is all she would say for the proceeding fifteen minutes, both in delight and despair.
Once he was done, he moved back to his side of the bed, her hands followed.
“Don’t be offended, but girls aren’t so good at that.”
“I know.”
“But when it comes to the other thing. That can be better than…”
“I don’t like it at all.”
“Alright. I’ll tell you what, why don’t we call it a night.”
Her brief murmur indicated her agreement. Waiting several minutes until a faint and constant groan could be heard from her side of the bed; he crept out of the bed sheet, grabbed the wooden chair and sat down next to the glass table. He switched on his computer, found the appropriate website and finished himself off.
7th September
“...so when the junk bonds are approved by the board members of the FOWJUDND conglomerate, we will be able to guarantee returns for our investors of a minimum of 740 percent.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes sir; that concludes my team’s presentation.”
“First off, you there, with the lilac tie; you’re getting cut out of this conference call. You’ve been here four years and your presentation skills are wetter than an otter’s pocket. Now for the rest of you, d’yu honestly think the various pension funds you pitch to tomorrow are going to accede to this proposal in its current form?”
“If I may speak for...”
“Not you, the man in the far left screen. Why no mention of risk factors?”
“With all due respect sir, there are none.”
“Are all of you imbeciles, how is that possible?”
“The numbers and formulas do not lie...as long as.”
“The minute you use that phrase you are introducing a qualifying maxim that necessitates a degree of risk. Thank G
od I got Hannibal to have you run this by me. If I wanted inflexible mathematicians I would brought those new supercomputers.”
“I implore you to inspect the projections on page 742 and...”
“Hush! I’m thinking. Let me see...right...there are three of you; I am going to tell you three stories. After each one, I want each of you to tell me what you think it means. The person who I think has the firmest grasp of the reasons behind my choice of stories will pitch with me tomorrow.
“The raven had once been a bird of delicate beauty; with snow-white wings, as illuminating as the spotless doves and as majestic as the tall geese. His chattering tongue, however, would lead to his downfall.
“In a distant land there was a girl of unrivalled elegance called Cassandra. She was the king’s favourite child – so long as she remained chaste. One morning, the raven witnessed her faithlessness and rushed to tell his master of Cassandra’s sins.
“When the crow heard of the raven’s planned endeavour, he accelerated towards her and said:
‘No good can from the deliverance of this news from your tongue, heed my prophetic words! Listen to my pli...
“You! On the left, are you sleeping?”
“No sir, I am closing my eyes to visualise...”
“If you weren’t Alben’s daugther I’d tell you to get the fuck off this conference call.
“Anymore of this errant behaviour and you can go work at your daddy’s firm – understood? Good, now seeing as you have the collective attention spans of dried semen, I am going to abridge this story.
“As I was saying, the crow told a lengthy story which described how she once was a bird of rare beauty, but her decision to report similar news to her king led to her transformation by the king into a black crow.
“The raven denounced the crow as a false prophet and flew to his king to report Larissa’s infidelities. In a fit of rage, the king ordered Cassandra’s death. He soon regretted his decision and blamed the raven for delivering the unfortunate news to him. As Cassandra burnt on the funeral pyre and he desperately tried to bring her back to life, he turned the raven blacker than night and thus exiled him from the breed of birds whose colour was white.
“Well?”
“If I may hazard a guess to this story’s meaning, I think the moral of the story is that you should not be the deliverer of bad news, no matter how honest it may be. And if we apply this to our current situation, if there were any risks to our pitch, we should hide them; otherwise our potential investors will choose one of our rivals.”
“I think you’ve misread it completely. The story is telling us not to hide bad news in the first place, so we have to tell them about the risk factors, no matter how minimal. If we claim our investment is chaste and it turns out any other way, our investors will pursue litigious proceedings against us and thus besmirch our company’s reputable brand.”
“You are both being too specific. The story starts by telling us that the raven’s flaw is that he talks too much. I think this is all about confidentiality and ensuring that we stick to the confidentiality agreements we signed.”
“Next story. At one of our rival companies, a new lateral hire was given a number of sweeteners to join that particular company, including a rather attractive secretary. After flirting with her for several days, he took her to the fourth floor photocopy room and had his ways with her.
“By chance, the company’s CEO had just finished firing one of his managers on that floor and therefore walked past the photocopy room and heard a great deal of noise emanating from the room. His first impulse was to hurry into the room and accost the offenders, but instead he crept softly towards the door, which was ever so slightly open to try and recognise the voices that were emitting various moans – he instantly recognised the two voices so he felt no need to look through the door.
“The lateral hire had heard the footsteps approaching the door as he reached climax and saw the unmistakeable shine of the tip of his CEO’s left shoe by looking at the reflection of the window in front of him. Although he was deeply concerned that he may face censure at his new job on his first day, he hid his anxiety from his secretary and conjured a mischievous plan as they got dressed. Telling her that it would look highly suspicious if they both left the photocopy room at the same time, he told her to wait for five minutes after he had left the room until she left it herself.
“He suspected the CEO would be waiting in the room next door, and told him that he had found something disturbing in the copy room. He had to rush to a meeting, but the CEO alone would be able to address the problem he had found. The CEO was unaware that the lateral hire had any knowledge of his own knowledge of the current situation, so he decided to play along. As he entered the photocopy room, he found the lateral hire’s secretary re-fastening her bra. She burst into tears, confessed everything and begged for forgiveness. As the CEO comforted her, within minutes he was having his own way with her; all the while, the lateral hire listened in from outside the corridor.”
“This is a ridiculously sexist story – I’m out.”
“And then there were two. Anyway, as I was saying, the lateral hire returned to his room, where the CEO came to meet him half an hour later. He told him that he had heard and seen what he did with his secretary and would thus have to suspend him for three months without pay. Without hesitating, the lateral hire delivered a speech filled with double entendres that made it clear that he had heard the CEO’s own indiscretions. The CEO therefore forgave his lateral hire and they both agreed to arrange a private room where they could have meetings with the lateral hire’s secretary at regular intervals.”
“This one is easy. Our company is renowned for never resorting to lateral hires and this story demonstrated why; if you have not received your education from here, you can never fully understand this company’s culture.”
“Wrong, how do you then explain the ending where they agree to share the secretary? The story tells us that if we are taking extravagant risks in the market, we need to make sure we protect both our own position and the company’s position with some sort of leverage, no matter how dubious it may be.”
“Many complain the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life. When the sage says: ‘Go Over,’ he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labour were worth it; he means something unknown to us, something that he cannot designate more precisely either, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least.
“All these parables really set out to say is merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.
“Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.
Another said: I bet that is another parable.
The first said: You have won.
The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.
The first said: No, in reality; in parable, you have lost.”
“I need to think about that for a minute.”
“That’s Kafka isn’t it?”
“There are no prizes for spotting the tale’s origin – what does it mean?”
“Is the story meant to negate any meaning the previous two stories contained? Yes, I’m going with that.”
“This non-parable parable tells us that there are a few cases where confidentiality can be broken.”
“No, this story tells us that there is no certainty if we allow ourselves to...”
“Shut up, please, no more, from any of you. Send the documents to my team and I will deliver the pitch by myself.”
9th October
A row of grey-coloured clouds scattered across the sky, suffocating the sunlight and sprinkling the concrete jungle below with gentle rainfall. Much to Richard’s relief, the walking tour he had commenced with his soon to be father in law Henr
y would have to be abandoned; the miniscule raindrops that slid from the sky were in danger of ruining Henry’s dark brown velvet ankle-high boots. So they jumped into the nearest taxi and headed straight for the Library.
Richard had no problem with exploring the various streets and avenues in his local area nor did he shirk from spending time with Henry. He simply disapproved of the route that they had selected. His fiancée Katherine had given him strict instructions on how to deal with Henry when he arrived in Sector 2932023 to see his daughter and to primarily meet Richard for the first time.
An unexpected extension of a business conference meant that Katherine would only be able to join Henry and Richard in the early hours of the morning the day after Henry arrived, which meant Richard would have to look after Sam during his first evening in Sector 2932023. Although Henry had never visited Sector 2932023, he possessed an erudite knowledge of the area due to his voracious appetite for consuming travel guides.
The travel industry had feared that the mass homogenisation of the world’s destinations would result in the death of their industry. Initially, the novelty of the Sectors’ allowed them to find a mass market for their product. Once this novelty diminished, they were relieved to uncover the fact that although the Sector’s were outwardly identical, the Global Government had allowed the interiors of certain buildings to be used for different purposes (although they rarely altered the commercial use of a building).
After all, the free market was one of the underlying principles of the Government, and if a business was not successful in a particular area it would be unfair to sustain it for governmental purposes. This also allowed the lucrative tourist industry to market different Sectors for particular patterns that conglomerated in their particular Sectors. Sector 2932023, for example, had gained a reputation for having the Globe’s best Korean restaurants.
Henry had memorised the names of all thirty-nine Korean restaurants in Sector 2932023’s city centre and had insisted on choosing the location for his first meal with Richard. He sincerely believed that although he was a man of limited ability, one of his few assets was his aptitude for instinctively selecting the best bars, restaurants and walking routes from a broad selection of travel guides.
