“Of which part, Alice? The eastern seaboard? The various companies? The oil drills on three continents? The real-estate which covers half of Manhattan?” I trace a rose morphing into a lily, letting my fingers roam over the petals near her navel. “Perhaps I should let her deal with the multitude of contracts and high court decisions that rule my life, too.” I frown, part imagining the catastrophe that would occur with any of those possibilities. “If there’s one person the world does not need in charge of its stabilising governance, my wife is it.”
“Maybe not then. Seems pointless to be married if you’re not in love, though.”
I take my fingers away, turning away from her at the thought of love and heading for the drinks tray. “Hmm. Such is life. Pointless. Tit for tat, Alice. Your turn.”
“Right. Okay. As well as my mother killing herself, my father was shot when we were kids.”
“More.”
“Skin or info?”
“Words.”
She walks closer to the fire, looks at it rather than me. “We’ve been on the run ever since. Hiding, pretending, trying to make the world believe we’re people that we’re not. Suffering is something I’ve done long before you came along.”
“Why?”
“Tit for tat. Let’s discuss your grandfather.”
Irritating game.
The glass clinks, as I pour and mix a cocktail absentmindedly, and I listen to the sound of her moving around the space. Maybe she should have some pills again. Perhaps she won’t be so invasive then. I’m not even sure why she is. She is, though. She asks a question and I feel inclined to answer honestly. It’s not a feeling I’m disposed to, nor is it one I’m predisposed to conceding to.
Strange game we’re playing.
She eventually sits in the window, her gaze directed at the sky rather than me. It’s an interesting vision to me, especially in this new world of clarity over chaos. Still, I enjoyed her in her chaos, more so than this relative normalcy she’s providing,
“My grandfather was nothing like my father. He chose valour over incivility, no matter how much he screwed with the world.” I wander over and place her martini beside her, my own gaze cast out of the window, too. “And when he could have destroyed everything, he retreated here instead. Lived life as a recluse and pondered his reality, his meaning, I suppose. I find the sentiment fitting.”
She picks up the drink, sipping gently as if she’s never tasted a decent martini in her life. That is sad considering she was performing bar keep duties when I first met her. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why fitting?”
“Because that’s what I do when I’m here. I think about me or him. Or nothing at all.”
“And why could he have destroyed everything?”
“Economic manipulation. It’s what he did, what my father did, and what I do now.”
She snorts, disdain heavy in the sound. “No one person has control over the economy.”
“No, not one. There’s seven of us. Two of which you’ve now met.”
She stares at me, probably assessing that information and considering who the other one of us here is. Gray, obviously. All this information must be confusing for someone like her. But confusing or not, it is the truth, which is what she asked for with her tit for tat.
“Well that must be a whole lot of constancy,” she says, standing. “No wonder you need to take the edge off.” I chuckle lightly, relatively happy with that evaluation of my life. “Not really worth killing yourself over, though. Besides, you said you took great pleasure playing with it.”
Sometimes.
And sometimes not.
And sometimes, in my most miserable moments, mostly when I'm in my grandfather's rooms, I consider the good I could do if I strayed outside the rules dictated by years gone by. I could fix things. Put them back together and make this world more fair. But fair means decent. And decency does not prove well for governance. People become greedy in decency rather than fearful, and then they become powerful instead of the meek and controllable we need.
I look at my drink, recognising those ghosts that whisper decency at me every time I think about him, and notice my hand. It’s shaking, and my body’s humming to some unknown song I can’t quite pick up in the air. I consider the sensation, perhaps inclined to play with something resonant rather than penetrating. “Come, little Alice. I’ve finished with this conversation.”
Walking from the room, I amble the halls and keep listening, or at least feeling the sound that vibrates. It’s low, unencumbered, as if its boundaries haven’t been defined, and it leads me straight into a room that’s built for it.
