the day i rescued a kitten (part 1)
the first few paragraphs of a short story i'm working on:
“What do you mean, you CAN’T alter the course of this hurricane? Your executives have made terrible decisions which have fucked me into death, into stark and total death. This is your fault. Where the hell are you? OK, you think your hands are tied, fine. Let’s improvise, okay? Don’t you have some sort of mongoloid cousins down here? Like, ones with a surplus of cars in the yard, cars I could perhaps borrow in order to perhaps flee the city? Who is your cousin down here, lady? Speak, goddammit!”
I caught myself in the mirror behind the concierge’s desk and it was repulsive. My shirt was soaked through with sweat and I was purple from screaming into my mobile at the rep from Budget Rent-A-Car. I was unshaven, my cowlick sticking up vertically, my silk shirt wrinkled and spattered with coffee from earlier when I hurled my Americano at the wall in frustration. I was so shocked at my appearance that I stopped awkwardly in mid-sentence. Bastard, I thought. That is a bastard. I looked insane, and was acting insane. I acknowledged to myself that I needed to get a grip so I hung up.
The rep wasn’t even in this state. I imagined her taking off her headset and frowning out the window onto some dry, sunny corporate park in the Rockies, angsting over her helplessness to rescue me from my nightmare. Service is discontinued in the disaster zone, this cannot be averted. In the mirror, I watched a punk rockabilly steal a luggage dolly from the lobby.
Back in my room, I sat on my bed looking out the window into the gray and green landscape, shimmering from the wind. I flopped on my back, letting my head tip over the edge so as to watch the TV upside down. The sound was turned off but I could still make out the media frenzy, in the tickers and in the grave expressions of dignified persons. I’d never heard of such a thing. All the networks ran the same 5 second video of the mayor’s announcement at 15 minute intervals, but I still didn’t believe it. You can’t call for the evacuation of a whole city. This isn’t Somalia. People won’t do it. And they did it anyway, without me.
I’d been in a hurricane before. It was such a non-event that I don’t even remember the year or the name of it. All we got were a couple of downed trees and the neighbor’s dog drowned. We were in the everglades for my mother’s anniversary, always a lavish week-long imposition on the extended family, with a great deal of time and money invested in tickets, paid time off, gifts for mother, summer dresses, golf equipment. When the hurricane was announced early in the week, there was a moment of confusion as we deliberated what to do. Mother’s brother Tom, a Florida native and all around hard nut, quickly reassured us that we had nothing to worry about, and he was right. We had been warned to evacuate, but instead we just moved the party inside the bathhouse we’d rented. The food was great and the power never went out. And the food in this hotel is arguably great, but by ordering the evacuation of the whole city, the mayor has shit all over that and ever other positive facet of this dangerous inconvenience. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten for almost a day. Room service wasn’t answering and the thought of having to go out and hunt for food was just too demoralizing. In protest I would drink from the minibar freely, supplemented with periodic Americanos from the built-in espresso machine in my suite. The bile pooling in my gut was a hairshirt, to remind God that I was suffering for nothing.
There were two tickers on the screen at the same time, each going in opposite directions, which I thought was a terrible decision in terms of motion graphics. They felt obliged to compliment the headline with real time stock quotes, as if to illustrate the gravity f the situation by graphic exhibition of the stock exchange tanking. The quotes didn’t hang together well, human interest quips followed by hard nosed business analyses. Even with the sound turned off, I could tell that they were doing a terrible job covering this story. I remember hoping that whoever was programming that content would get sacked. And then I imagined the producer going to bed that night, tucked in snug with his blond wife under his new down comforter and designer duvet. And I rolled onto my stomach and started sobbing openly. At first it was welcome, pathetic, human, but then the anger welled up and I ended up gagging through clenched teeth, and ran to the bathroom to throw up properly.
This deal could have made me. The whole reason I was down there, the result of a year long personal campaign of ass kissing, deception, sacrifice, and genuine hard work had bought me a shot at something truly unique, inspiring. It wasn’t the money, it was the positioning that killed me. People would be coming to me to get things done. People from all over. I’d have a friend in almost every corner of the globe. I could see myself being fed grapes while bumping along through some swarthy tycoon’s private estate on their grandfather’s elephant. That would have been me. I’d be talking with Tokyo and being fed grapes. And it’s not like I would get a second chance. It’s a fluke that I was even allowed to travel, let alone operate in this kind of executive capacity, and Larry, who’s wife I stole and accounts I sabotaged, had figured everything out the minute I got on the plane. I imagined him wooing his wife back with tales of what a rat I truly am. And I offered to pay for the room. And then I thought, clearly, reassuringly, no, I will not fucking pay for this room.
“What do you mean, you CAN’T alter the course of this hurricane? Your executives have made terrible decisions which have fucked me into death, into stark and total death. This is your fault. Where the hell are you? OK, you think your hands are tied, fine. Let’s improvise, okay? Don’t you have some sort of mongoloid cousins down here? Like, ones with a surplus of cars in the yard, cars I could perhaps borrow in order to perhaps flee the city? Who is your cousin down here, lady? Speak, goddammit!”
I caught myself in the mirror behind the concierge’s desk and it was repulsive. My shirt was soaked through with sweat and I was purple from screaming into my mobile at the rep from Budget Rent-A-Car. I was unshaven, my cowlick sticking up vertically, my silk shirt wrinkled and spattered with coffee from earlier when I hurled my Americano at the wall in frustration. I was so shocked at my appearance that I stopped awkwardly in mid-sentence. Bastard, I thought. That is a bastard. I looked insane, and was acting insane. I acknowledged to myself that I needed to get a grip so I hung up.
The rep wasn’t even in this state. I imagined her taking off her headset and frowning out the window onto some dry, sunny corporate park in the Rockies, angsting over her helplessness to rescue me from my nightmare. Service is discontinued in the disaster zone, this cannot be averted. In the mirror, I watched a punk rockabilly steal a luggage dolly from the lobby.
Back in my room, I sat on my bed looking out the window into the gray and green landscape, shimmering from the wind. I flopped on my back, letting my head tip over the edge so as to watch the TV upside down. The sound was turned off but I could still make out the media frenzy, in the tickers and in the grave expressions of dignified persons. I’d never heard of such a thing. All the networks ran the same 5 second video of the mayor’s announcement at 15 minute intervals, but I still didn’t believe it. You can’t call for the evacuation of a whole city. This isn’t Somalia. People won’t do it. And they did it anyway, without me.
I’d been in a hurricane before. It was such a non-event that I don’t even remember the year or the name of it. All we got were a couple of downed trees and the neighbor’s dog drowned. We were in the everglades for my mother’s anniversary, always a lavish week-long imposition on the extended family, with a great deal of time and money invested in tickets, paid time off, gifts for mother, summer dresses, golf equipment. When the hurricane was announced early in the week, there was a moment of confusion as we deliberated what to do. Mother’s brother Tom, a Florida native and all around hard nut, quickly reassured us that we had nothing to worry about, and he was right. We had been warned to evacuate, but instead we just moved the party inside the bathhouse we’d rented. The food was great and the power never went out. And the food in this hotel is arguably great, but by ordering the evacuation of the whole city, the mayor has shit all over that and ever other positive facet of this dangerous inconvenience. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten for almost a day. Room service wasn’t answering and the thought of having to go out and hunt for food was just too demoralizing. In protest I would drink from the minibar freely, supplemented with periodic Americanos from the built-in espresso machine in my suite. The bile pooling in my gut was a hairshirt, to remind God that I was suffering for nothing.
There were two tickers on the screen at the same time, each going in opposite directions, which I thought was a terrible decision in terms of motion graphics. They felt obliged to compliment the headline with real time stock quotes, as if to illustrate the gravity f the situation by graphic exhibition of the stock exchange tanking. The quotes didn’t hang together well, human interest quips followed by hard nosed business analyses. Even with the sound turned off, I could tell that they were doing a terrible job covering this story. I remember hoping that whoever was programming that content would get sacked. And then I imagined the producer going to bed that night, tucked in snug with his blond wife under his new down comforter and designer duvet. And I rolled onto my stomach and started sobbing openly. At first it was welcome, pathetic, human, but then the anger welled up and I ended up gagging through clenched teeth, and ran to the bathroom to throw up properly.
This deal could have made me. The whole reason I was down there, the result of a year long personal campaign of ass kissing, deception, sacrifice, and genuine hard work had bought me a shot at something truly unique, inspiring. It wasn’t the money, it was the positioning that killed me. People would be coming to me to get things done. People from all over. I’d have a friend in almost every corner of the globe. I could see myself being fed grapes while bumping along through some swarthy tycoon’s private estate on their grandfather’s elephant. That would have been me. I’d be talking with Tokyo and being fed grapes. And it’s not like I would get a second chance. It’s a fluke that I was even allowed to travel, let alone operate in this kind of executive capacity, and Larry, who’s wife I stole and accounts I sabotaged, had figured everything out the minute I got on the plane. I imagined him wooing his wife back with tales of what a rat I truly am. And I offered to pay for the room. And then I thought, clearly, reassuringly, no, I will not fucking pay for this room.