The 9-11 Opportunity THE 9/11 OPPORTUNITY BY GREGORY ALLEN Mike had many dreams, but the one that he went to most often and remembered best, was the dream of the green meadow. In that place, he could walk on the soft grass with his bare feet and feel the warm sun on his contented face. And, since Mike was a people person, others shared his fantasy world. Dozens of women walked or skipped cheerfully across the lush field, unmarred by ego or self-consciousness. They had many faces, some that he had seen in movies, some he had seen on the streets, and even a few whom he had known in his life. Their only common features were their lingerie-clad, disproportionately-endowed, slender frames and their innocent and joyous embrace of life. His dream, of late, had changed. No longer was it a vision of the rolling, grassy hill of springtime, populated by lithe nymphs, eager to serve his pleasure. Recently, his private fantasy world had been invaded by his callous and arrogant co-workers. Now, when he dreamed, the grass on the hills was brown and dry, the sun clouded over and a chill breeze was in the air. His precious nymphets were naked, their secret charms now exposed. His dream-girls had become oblivious to his presence, their eyes glazed in pleasure, being serviced in various positions by his contemptuously grinning work colleagues. Even Kendra, his bitch of a supervisor, was there. Most often, she would be sitting at her desk, the choreographer of the orgy. She would rap her pointer on an easeled chart, striking flesh-colored bar graphs that were shaped like long penises. Each bar had a name of one of Mike’s associates. As Kendra smacked each bar, the person represented by the phallic symbol would pause in his lustful ministrations to writhe in pain and pleasure. At the end of the chart, there was a symbol much smaller than the others. It had Mike’s name on it. Kendra whacked the symbol repeatedly, her frustrated ferocity increasing as Mike failed to provide the required pain/pleasure response. Mike could feel the impact of each brutal blow like a kick to his groin. Kendra beat the chart so viciously that, the section, containing the representation of Mike’s abbreviated manhood, tore off and fell to the ground. The participants in the depraved debauchery paused in their lustful pursuits and, in unison, pointed and laughed hysterically at Mike’s substandard nakedness. Mike groped to cover his embarrassment, but could not find the object of his search beneath his suddenly, rapidly growing, stomach. He pushed through the sweaty folds, his panic rising with the jeering crowd’s growing mirth. The alarm pulsed its piecing note for the third time. Mike groped sleepily for the offending device, his clumsy hand at last terminating its annoying tones. Groaning with effort, Mike sat up in the bed, his palms rubbing his sticky eyes, trying to shake off the effects of the dream. The images faded in a few moments, but the residue of the disturbing dream left him feeling betrayed and impotent. Mike dragged his 45-year-old body off the bed and into the shower. He stood there, letting the warm water run down his back as he prepared himself to face another day. He could already hear the empowering, seminar-inspired words being bandied about the busy office, as each of his co-workers vied for the monetary blessings of the corporate gods. He could be sure that Kendra would take him aside and explain to him the meaning of the words “fulfilling your commitments” and “sense of urgency”, or possibly even enlightening him as to the meaning of “efficiency”. Mike had attended many of the mandatory, supposedly motivating, seminars over the years. He knew, very well, what the buzz words were supposed to mean. What were not talked about were the true tenets of modern business philosophy. Mike had penetrated through the carefully selected and deceptive words to the truth beneath, discovering that success was defined by the willingness and ability to do anything, to anybody, as long as it augmented the bottom line. Those that lived the ideals were rewarded with corner offices and trophy wives, those that didn’t were stepped on and cast aside. Mike expected that he would soon find himself in the scrap heap along the fast track to the top, along with all those others who were not smart enough, young enough, tough enough, or amoral enough. Mike had already made preparations for that day by getting his resume together and memorizing the requisite phrase, “Do you want fries with that?”. Finishing his shower, Mike dressed himself in his freshly pressed suit and red power tie, completing the illusion of prosperity that he did not truly possess. He gathered his keys and cigarettes and headed for the door. He almost missed the train, barely squeezing his large frame through the car’s closing doors. As the train lurched forward, he stumbled to one of the few open seats and sat heavily, trying to catch his wheezing breath. The professionally dressed woman, in the adjoining seat, gave him one brief look of well-concealed disgust and then pointedly ignored him by burying her face in the Financial Times. Mike cast one obligatory look down her blouse and sat and watched the lights go by. The details of his dream came back to him, now mutating into more perverse and humiliating forms in his imagination. To distract himself, Mike looked at the other commuters, his fellow travelers on the road to an early heart attack. Some looked bored, some looked impatient, some even slept, but none looked especially overjoyed to be on their way to featureless cubicles and non-sensible job titles. He doubted if any of them had ever dreamed of being, or could pronounce, as children, such non-sensible titles as “investment banker”, “procurement manager”, or “insurance analyst”. He wondered if any of them remembered wanting to have such definitive occupations as doctor, fireman, or football player. Within minutes, Mike began to feel strangely. Pressure built in his ears, as if he were on a roller coaster rushing into the bowels of the earth instead of a train on a horizontal trek a few dozen feet below the surface. Mike tried swallowing, pressing his palms to his ears, and clearing his sinuses, but instead of alleviating the problem, the pressure on his eardrums increased. His temporary, anonymous seat companion noticed his odd behavior and watched him suspiciously as she shrank away from Mike while reaching into, and clutching something in her purse. The pressure increased and brought with it pain and nausea. Mike doubled over, his stomach and bowels churning like he was watching a Meryl Streep movie. He could no longer hear any sounds from the train or passengers. A high-pitched ringing echoed in his head, drowning out all thought. Mike’s activities to clear his head now brought looks of bored interest from some of the other nearby passengers. The woman seated beside him began to look around her for a way past Mike, since it began to look to her as if the man seated beside her might be having some sort of episode of mental instability. Fortuitously, just as Mike felt he could stand the pain no longer and that his head was going to explode like some sort of rotten melon all over the lady’s crisp suit, the train stopped, and the doors opened to admit new travelers of life’s tedious adventure. Mike leapt out of his seat and pushed his way through the entering crowd, earning him sincerely-meant invitations to fornicate himself, and in several languages. He struggled up the stairs until he reached street level, breathing a deep sigh of relief as he felt the pressure in his head release and drain out his ears like chlorinated water after a over-prolonged swim. Mike was fortunate not have embarrassed himself too much, which would have been likely if he had continued any further on his journey. He had been close to expelling his stomach contents onto the train floor and/or the woman, which would have caused her drycleaner some distress, but would have supplied the woman with an amusing anecdote; a story she could tell at the next social mixer, while she networked among her business colleagues and their significant others, giving little smiles to her peers and casual brushes with her breasts to those directly above her that could further her career. Further networking would be done in conference and motel rooms, granting favors to middle-aged men who could grant career promotions with corner offices in exchange for a few minutes of forbidden carnal pleasure away from the pretending ignorance of their socially ascendant wives. After some minutes of breathing the relatively fresher air, Mike had recovered. He realized that he still had to get to work, and so began walking in the direction of his place of employment, arm raised, in hope of hailing a cab. Immediately, the ringing and nausea returned and assaulted his brain. A second attempt brought the same result. Mike knew himself well enough to know that any movement in the direction of work would now be impossible. He was in deep shit at work already and now his mind and body were conspiring to make it worse. Mike decided that he probably could use a day off anyway. Fuck everybody. Kendra was going to chew his ass for this, but that would be tomorrow. That gave him twenty-four hours to enjoy relative freedom of his limited existence. He couldn’t go to work. He didn’t want to go home and stare at the crappy furnishings in his dump of an apartment. He had no idea what he would do. Mike looked around himself and the solution became clear. A small smile, the first in months, crept over his face. He was standing in front of a pub, one of the few open at his time of day, catering to those that worked the strange and deserted hours of the night, when dangerous people of marginal socialization often roamed the dark. Alcohol would not provide any answers, but at least it helped you forget the question. The pub was dark and smelled of stale cigarette smoke and fresh urinal cakes, the way a pub ought to smell. Mike made his way past the tables and found himself a seat at the bar. Even though there were only three other patrons, each privately nursing their drinks, it still took a couple of minutes for the reluctant bartender to set down his cell-phone long enough to take Mike’s order. Tie loosened and cocktail in hand, Mike’s day off truly began. He watched the morning news on the muted television behind the bar, not needing the sound to know what the usual stories were all about. The weatherman came on, going into an unnecessarily long weather analysis, complete with satellite images and a map of the whole country, so that everyone could know the weather in Missouri and Montana, as if anyone in this city cared. A better approach would be to simply display the temperature and anticipated weather for the day and dispense with the expensive, sophisticated forecasting equipment and reassign the overly handsome weatherman to doing fluff pieces about the world’s biggest cookie or lost puppies in never-never land. Locally, two more bodies were found in an obscure back alley. Police would have no leads, of course, but would leave no stone unturned, no donut shop unexplored, looking into the matter. Likely, nothing would come of it unless the offender stumbled into police hands on an unrelated charge. Then, the publicity-seeking detectives would take great credit for the resolution of the crime. With such professionalism, it was a wonder anything ever got solved. The scene changed to a background showing the White House, a sober-looking reporter silently and earnestly addressing the camera, undoubtedly relaying the latest scandal involving bribery, perjury, or other felonies that did not seem to apply to politicians and their friends. The news cycle repeated itself every ten minutes. Mike ignored the television, concentrating on his reflection in the bar’s mirror instead. His thick, curly hair, the envy of hairstylists everywhere, was much thinner and grayer than he remembered. Due to his receding hairline, Mike had more face to show, but his handsome, good-looks had disappeared into the sagging flesh of his face, no longer discernable to even the most sympathetic eyes. He closely resembled his father in the last year before he passed on. Mike’s disturbing reverie was interrupted by sound from the television. The scene had changed from the daily dose of predictable news and was now showing a live picture of a tall building with smoke pouring from its side. The building looked very familiar to Mike. He saw it every day. It was the south tower of the World Trade Center. The pub began to slowly fill as people heard the news and came to watch the event unfold on live television. There were unconfirmed reports that a plane had flown into the building, already raising speculation among pundits of how any pilot, of any experience, could make such an error. Speculation ended when the second tower was similarly struck in front of a nation-wide audience. On the bar’s TV, Mike watched as both towers burned. By the time he had had his third brandy manhattan, the first tower came down, much to the astonished horror of the other bar patrons. Mike started ordering doubles. Two drinks later, the other tower came down. Mike hardly noticed. He was still wrestling with the fact that the place he had gone to and people he had known for thirteen years no longer existed. Everyone was gone. Everyone he worked with, his boss Kendra, all those go-getters who worked early and stayed late. It seemed that they had paid for their ambition. They were all dead, buried under a pile of rubble, their $500 suits undoubtedly marred by debris and bloody remains, now only identifiable by their DNA. Mike got hammered, regretting the loss of none of them, except, perhaps, for the little brunette, Natasha, in accounting, the cute little Russian chick with the full sweater. Mike gave a short snort of laughter, attracting curious glances in such a somber atmosphere. He ignored them, continuing to smile at the thought that he had more of a chance of nailing Natasha now, than he did before she became an indistinct mass of goo. Mike drank slowly. He had time. It would take days, perhaps weeks, to sort through the rubble to identify remains, if ever such a determination could be made. At least for a while, he didn’t exist. He now had an unscheduled vacation. Mike thought that, perhaps, he could hole up with a stripper for a couple of days. He laughed again. Perhaps he could find one with a Russian accent. Instead, Mike spent the afternoon developing an alcohol-induced speech impediment. He soon lost interest in the news coverage and the predictable responses from the elites in politics and media; at least those that were not cowering in well-protected bunkers. The condolences and sympathies seemed empty and scripted, like they were written by media consultants with an eye on the next opinion poll. Mike threw some folded bills on the bar and stumbled out of the darkness of the pub and into the dim light of the late afternoon day. The streets less populated than usual. The air was dusty and slightly gray and smelled of uncertainty and fear. The routine of the city had been upset. It would take some time before people ignored each other and their environment once again. Mike stumbled to a nearby alley and unloaded his stomach contents, in one, long, open-mouthed gag, adding to the filth already accumulated on the garbage-strewn pavement. Funny, the booze didn’t taste nearly as well coming up as it did going down. He wiped the vomit and spittle from his mouth with the arm of his sports jacket, and then continued his weaving way on his journey to nowhere. Only a few doors down, Mike found another oasis from reality, this one in the form of a liquor store. He wandered in and down the narrow aisles, not knowing what he was looking for, only sure that he wanted his blurred numbness to continue. He grabbed a bottle at random from a shelf and brought it up for purchase. The man working the register looked him over, noticing Mike’s obvious state of intoxication. The man’s eyes lingered on the stains on Mike’s shirt and jacket, but dismissed them, deciding to proceed with the sale anyway. Mike was a little surprised to see a man like him working. The man was Pakistani or Arab, or something like that. Mike wouldn’t have been surprised to see him dancing in the street and shooting a gun into the air in celebration, like he had seen so many others of similar ancestry perform for the news cameras. Instead, this man was bleary-eyed and subdued, as if he had been weeping. Perhaps his work visa had been revoked. Mike took his bottle outside. In front of the store, waiting for him, was a car. It was parked next to the curb, the motor running and the rear door open. It was one of those 70’s luxury, limousine models, with the reversed rear doors, that were once favored by millionaire rock stars or occasionally used as escorts for hearses. Mike staggered up to the open door and peered inside. The interior was spotlessly clean, looking like it had never been used, but still managed to smell damp and musty, like an old lady’s hope chest. Mike squinted his eyes to look at the driver, but could see little through the dividing glass other than a dim profile of a man wearing a chauffeur’s cap. He looked like a man he felt he should know. As Mike stared, the driver’s head tilted slightly in his direction. “Get in”, the androgynous voice said inside his head. “It is time for you to go”. Mike was much too sauced to argue, and so got in, closing the door behind him. He unwrapped his bottle from its paper-bag cocoon and unscrewed the cap. The car pulled away from the curb as Mike took his first swallow. Tasting Gin, Mike almost repeated his performance from the alley, but managed to control his spasming stomach. He little understood how anyone could drink this crap. It tasted like piss drunk from the shoe of a leper. Mike took another drink. Not that he was really very curious, Mike asked anyway. “Where am I going?”, seemed the prudent question. “Somewhere else. You don’t belong here anymore,” was the response. Mike decided that the voice sounded more feminine than masculine, even though the profile was clearly male. If she wasn’t currently squashed under a pile of smoking debris, Mike would have thought his driver was Kendra. The bitch. Untroubled by the thoughts that he should be dead and that his recently departed boss was driving his car in someone else’s body, Mike settled into the dusty seat and enjoyed the ride. At some point, he must have passed out. He was awakened by the sound of seagulls and the sound of waves breaking against a beach. He was no longer seated in the comfortable rear of the limousine, but instead was crammed into the driver’s side of an unfamiliar, compact car. It was still late afternoon, but what day it was was unanswered question. He struggled and got his big body out the car. He was still wearing his suit pants and vomit-stained shirt, but his jacket and tie were gone. His wallet was missing, as was any other form of identification. The car was rusty and had Virginia license plates. The sign at the edge of the beach designated this place as Daytona, Florida. He had no idea how he got here. Mike walked down toward the ocean, stopping short when he saw the strange thing there. He sat upon the sands of the beach, thinking of what he had seen, thinking of that message written in the sand. It had been written below the high-tide mark, written in a form of archaic-looking calligraphy. The area was devoid of any footprints or other marks to identify the author. “You have been granted a second chance,” was what it said. All day, Mike sat on the smooth sands of the beach, each wave seeming to crash against the barriers of his self-constructed, false ego; the waters battering against his frustrations, resentments, and preconceptions. As the sun went down, Mike wept. He wept for his departed co-workers, realizing that some of them were not driven to succeed by greedy self-aggrandizement, but by the desire to provide for the children that would never see them again. He wept for Natasha, knowing that no one had ever looked past her sweater contents and truly cared for the person that she was, and consider that she, too, could experience the pain of loneliness, loss and rejection. But mostly, Mike wept for himself, ashamed at the two-dimensional, consuming caricature of a human being he had become. He had become a stereo-type, a consumer of mostly unneeded wants, the desire for which driven by convert, powerful psychological marketing techniques targeted for his particular demographic. He had become common, significant only for his spending habits. Mike lay there, watching the blue waves rolling in, feeling the power and inevitability of the tidal force. Life was like the ocean. Whether you rode the crest, went with the flow, or were overwhelmed by the waves, you were always subject to the random capriciousness of the sea. His emotion spent and the tears cried out, Mike lay on the cooling sands, his concerns and cares washing away with the tide, the waters easily carrying away such matters of eternal insignificance. Mike slept as his cares washed away, and he was made again, anew. He awoke in the early morning, his muscles stiff and his mouth tasting of stale booze. He aimlessly walked the streets of the beach suburbia, past the multi-million dollar private, beach-front dwellings, past the tall, mostly deserted motels, to the older, tourist dependent part of town. This area was largely populated by fast-food restaurants and souvenir shops, displaying bathing suits that few could wear without causing embarrassment to the wearer and varying degrees of revulsion in the observers. The tourists were gone, instinctively returning to the colder, more challenging climates of the north, that had also drawn their ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago, where challenges to survival had spurred adaptation and inventiveness ever since. Little of man’s advances have ever occurred in the ease and peaceful plenty of the tropics. Having no other option, Mike slept on the beach, under the wooden walkways, working when he could, until he landed a semi-permanent job as a bartender at one of the seedier tourist traps near Daytona Beach. There, he met a somewhat flaky, bleach-blonde named Skye, whose passions were uninhibited sex and selling seashell art to tourists with no taste. He moved in with her and let the world go by. Nine months later, his life had finally come to full realization. He had dropped 80 pounds and was tanned head to toe. His dream nymphs returned to him, more passionate than ever, their previous transgressions forgiven and forgotten. Sometimes, Skye would frolic in his dreams alongside them. Mike had at last found true success.
Copyright © 2005 Gregory Allen |