The Ring

His coffee had gone cold on adjacent surface. Her love had rendered it pure and the half conscious deal was fulfilled, both parties warmed in hazy memories of morning coffee delivered, smiles. She would return and he would stumble out of bed, later, having forgotten his coffee, having remembered. He slept for hours.

Light remained hanging in the air. Shards of broken glass, refracted by mathematics; the damp windowpanes through burnt out curtains loosely drawn in haste, the apprehension of carnality. You too would sleep happy. You too would dream, and let the odours hang if you could. Better this gentle surrender than shards of broken glass, refracting across a ruined bedscape.

As winter has been forgotten in the joyous embrace of all things seasonal, soleil and magick incarnate, it would return slowly with frost. A decline as tempting and nauseous as hints from a cold lover not yet yours: you would remember and fall into her arms, into the bitter winds of winter and embrace them, dancing barefoot in the storm crying impassioned and making games in the snow with your beautiful friends. Soon you will hurt, stumble on some isolated forebodence, and the blood would run cold with fever. Like ravenous crows of winter suffering, the colds will lash at your very existence and behave like guilt. You will hurt.

The evening had passed off well. It had been six months since the last business trip the company had organised. They were in Albany, staying in a modern but by no means luxury hotel. All expenses had been accounted for, and at the downstairs bar, a tab had been reserved to the sum of two thousand dollars. The company knew how to take care of its staff, and adhered to the old capitalist adage (which if truth be told, was but a prettified and somewhat whimsical means of dissecting a master / slave dichotomy, but no means toward overcoming it). Still, these two were in Albany, attending an annual conference on ethical corporate investment that would start in the city's proud civic centre the day after tomorrow. They had arrived the evening previous to the morning of the present, after a long, uncomfortable drive, sharing the responsibilities of driving the hired car taken out in his name. Upon checking in, they had unpacked their suitcases precisely and made their way downstairs, exploring the smoky luxury of the Crowne Plaza Hotel’s bar area. There they remained all evening, making noble attempt at exhausting the company’s pre paid bar tab. They did not discuss any aspect of the debates surrounding responsible capitalist behaviour in free markets nor did their minds once express loose or unconscious suggestion of grafted interest in domestic economies.

Their affair had stretched four years now and survived alongside their respective marriages and children (whom were genuinely loved), their state-considered partners were considered by each of them as responsibilities in the same way as their work for the company, and regarded retrospectively by each of them in no different light. Their infidelity was a matter of necessity, some poetic and casual occupational therapy for the arduous and selfless jobs they had, one way or the other, by state marital ceremony or traditional job interview, become completely and irrevocably entangled with. Their sex, when it happened, was furious and came to them like an impoverished sigh of relief or one’s last tumbled gasp for air, drowning in each other. They were, and had always been, perfectly professional. Moreover, their consciences were clear. Entirely. There is no single essence to anyone, we have learned to work so that we may play. This is the understated ethos of a model capitalist and these two had succumbed so sweetly to the practise they had hardly noticed and barely cared. We learn and forget and this is the making of our characters. I have learnt that dizzy dreaming holds no valid romanticism in its acquiescence.

Their drunken, messy fucking had dishevelled the hotel apartment to its remits. Sheets lay tangled on the floor, cupboard doors lay open, three empty wine bottles were strewn across the room, red stains from even the smallest spillage would frustrate and dismay an already annoyed and exploited member of the cleaning staff, made so redundant by culture as to feel manifestly liminal here in Albany. The light hung across the room, Buddhist prayer flags removed of the knowledge that makes anything sacred, like shards of glass broken by such knowledgeable arrogance, covering his naked body. They too had forgotten the power of the ritual and the importance of poetry and love. The light dimmed slightly, a cloud passing over a towering omniscient star. They too have learned that there is no essence to anyone. His drowning thoughts linger in dreams, caught between the thin pools of the room, changing colour of their own accord, sudden like shards of broken glass, again again. They have forgotten themselves in work and practise. Sin is a lack of conviction. The light moves.

He woke up, startled suddenly by the heavy presence of a deep and smoky absence above his crown. He saw into nothing. His eyelids had been fastened tightly together with small metal hooks, ringlets, the kind used for catching fish. They pierced his skin and proved resilient to the natural impulse to open his eyes. The pain made him shoot up in spasms, fully awake, and jerking in a confused terror, knocked over half full wine glasses from the bedside table. In shock, he choked, and fell to the floor untidily. Pain was searing raw and bloody across his face. Tears welled up against the inside of his eyes and seeped through entry and exit wounds, running with crimson down the side of his face, dripping eagerly from the tiny ringlets hooking his eyelids neatly in place. He tore, ripping the skin of his fingers. Slowly the darkness gave way to the horror of a reddish vision. His eyelids had torn through the hooks now lying uncomfortably, small whitish clumps of flesh dangling like feed proud from their claws on the floor where they had fallen. He could see, just, through the smeared blood and water across his open eyes, through the agony of torn skin, shapes loosely fitted with colours, and the madness of the pain. On all fours, face down beside the bed, dripping from his eyes to the carpet floor, to later infuriate already disgruntled members of the cleaning staff. Through the smudged red veneer he recognised a door open and shut, and hearing footsteps from across the bed, slowly ache toward him, He would cry out for this nightmare to be over and for solace in the loving and reassuring arms of whoever but his cries would go unheard and echo in the silence of the room, silence if not for the footsteps, now drawing to a halt. There, feet away from the wrecked cries woven in tongues of agony, she stood over him, letting his insanity settle like a virus in the body, allowing it time to become him. His spluttering would stop and he would question if he had ever heard those footsteps, or if he had dreamt it all. He would look up, and seeing her, she would laugh loudly and directly at him, spitting with pride into the running raw cavities of his face. Joanna? And walking away, leaving him torn and fucked up, lying bloody and broken on the floor, like glass refracted through winter seasons in slow lost memories.

She returned through the hotel lobby, casually using the lift to ascend to their suite, taken out in the company’s name. A polite attendant kindly and professionally operated the lift on her behalf, but she did not return the conversation offered, instead standing silently whilst the most temporary of rooms elevated to floor thirty-six, not making eye contact. As the polished doors wound ajar before her, she projected herself forward by seconds and free of the lift, like a fiction. Turning to face the polite lift attendant, whose uniform did not fit, whom she considered had probably been in that lift for hours, and who would in all likeliness remain there for hours in that most temporary of spaces, she felt herself truly believed in him and, giving him warm and gentle thanks, gave in. Shame had got the better of her, the prospect of a moment of genuine gentility proving a temptation even her working ethic could not refuse. Not only was it harmless, it veered in a whole other direction that she did not give herself to fully, but indulged in nonetheless, if for not entirely unselfish reasons. Their hotel suite door opened, making no sense. The key fitted as perfectly as she remembered it to, and took it no notice. She snuck in quietly, setting her bags on the kitchen table. From the kitchen tableside she could see him.

Footsteps, remembered footsteps. She checked the body which lay face down, and smiled over him. She saw his forgotten coffee, the cold froth sinking into a temperate ring outlining in striking beige the deep ochre inside the cup. The half empty wine bottle. She liked how he slept and quietly went about warming fresh cappuccino and toasting the croissants she had bought just now, by chance, from a discovered faux-Parisien bakery three streets along. It was a beautiful day. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and drank it as breakfast warmed, standing at the feet of the bed, consoling herself and indulging in the idea of the man. The bed they had slept and fucked and fucked and slept in. Again, she smiled, biting her lip in embarrassment to herself. Again, a little indulgence.

She took herself about the room, collecting the empty and abandoned wine bottles and glasses, many (for they had not reused, but made a game in the fun of using all the room’s available glasses), and making upon a clumsy collision of wine bottles in her hand, the resultant shrill tone woke her sleeping lover, who rose slowly from his deep sleep, the deepest and most profound he had been witness and subject to his living memory. He murmured, the remnants of sleep dangling tired still from the corners of his mouth, “What time is it?” She ignored him, facing the grill as she pulled the croissants out and laughed a little to herself “Aren’t you going to wish me good morning? I’ve made you breakfast”.

It was colder than he remembered it being. He looked outside and wanted nothing more than to stay in the warmth of the hotel duvet, like a child in a warm tender womb- it was mournful. He got out of bed, the cold biting at his neck, which remained a sore reminder of the previous night’s infidelity. He looked in the mirror and saw the bruising. “Uh…Thank you.. That was very kind of you. You…didn’t have to” He winced. The aroma of warmed morning fancies floated over and enveloped him. Noticing from the bedside his colleague slicing croissants, her back turned; the smell of morning now fresh, coffee and cigarettes: the day reborn. He imagined his children running through the bathroom door, their school uniforms brightly coloured and neatly ironed, their smiling faces eager for learning; is innocence too much? He watched as they flickered and dissolved, as daydreams do, into the pale and expectant expression of his colleague, her blonde hair tied back, strands wistfully hugging the sides of her narrow face. She smiled, passing him coffee with both hands, her eyes suggesting some hasty gentle excitement, a kind of involvement to which his uncollected subconscious had real trouble processing and acting on. He looked around the room for his clothes and glasses. He got up, putting the coffee aside and next to the other, which had been delivered just as dutifully. And remembered. He got up and she had already imprisoned him with affection. This whole business trip was a charade enclosed distinctly within an elaborate but overproduced performance of his life, a version of events which provoked interesting questions but ultimately was too contrived to be either prfound or realist. He grinned for the first time that morning as he thought of his wife. The beautiful dress that she had worn at the public performance of their marriage. No one would write about it being the seminal moment in the narrative of their individual lives, now intertwined by fate or storytelling, though perhaps it could be seen to have been that way.

He took her hands from around his waist, and with a slight frustration knocked her back. She paid him no heed as she moved back to her cigarette, for she had studied the perils of emotion and knew to avoid familiarity and kindness: these things would brew in anyone seeds of contempt like shards of broken glass.

He drank his coffee quickly, and washed it down with the other, disregarded, remembered coffee. He scoured himself to be awake and in this belatedly risen morning find awareness and Zen. They heard children playing outside. Riding bicycles as the sun dipped behind a cloud. It would not be seen again for days. The storms that were hiding behind the mountains, creeping with every moment closer would rain hard on the delegates attending this year’s conference on ethical corporate investment, hosted proudly, if with some anonymity, by the city of Albany. The second coffee was difficult and cold. He reached for the bedside table instinctively, and drawing a cigarette from his packet, acknowledged the effort and tenderness to which she had allowed herself whilst he had slept, his mind elsewhere, dwelling on remembrance, and indeed remembering. Like seasons changing, his mind remained true and elsewhere, away from the smoking of cigarettes and the residue of cold cappuccino lurking at the back of his mouth, far apart from the turned back of the woman he misrecognised, smoking herself. The room remained silent for several minutes as he rested the cigarette in a nearby ashtray, the glass kind, and buttoned his shirt, tightening a blue tie casually around his neck.

Outside, in what was beginning to be rain, in what the kids would admirably call 'drizzle', and stop and wonder at the sudden and ridiculous beauty of that word, repeating it in jest: our visionary and inspired children did play on their bicycles. They knew the risk all too well, built on familiarity and routine. This was safe territory, and in and around this learned knowledge they were free. As the rain would later begin to pour, their mothers would open doors and look in disbelief at their games, now soaked in the ecstasy of the storm. Their mothers would yell at them in voices so shrill as to break the beautified noise of the torrential downpour, and call to their rusting bikes in tongues of angered disbelief. Their desperate adventure would run short and they now, playing amiably in what would later be stunning and torrential downpour, knew this all to be the case, and accepted it in all its fleeting torment. There was poetry in the colds they would catch and they had not yet learned what regret was.

His trousers were on, socks had found their way to his feet. He had by this point eased the tension of the room with amiable smiles and knowing hugs, though kisses were neglected upon his colleague. He returned to the bedside table, his manner in order and at once missing, an automated morning sickness brought forth by the coffee. His knowing intention. His mind was elsewhere, on seasons changing and drawn to the sound of the children playing outside. She drew the curtains. And though a member of the cleaning staff would have some trouble rendering the carpets clean, they would be grateful in some small forgotten way not to be outside in torrential downpour, which had hidden so sweetly behind the mountain, and given Albany days of basking in now muted defiance of seasons changing.

The display on his silver watch read the mid-afternoon. Hands fastened its straps and he noticed the time at a glance, in the same motion becoming most acutely aware of some very present absence. The bruises around his neck were smoothed brashly by an intruding gust of fresh and biting air, and he shivered, putting his hands to his neck, acknowledging at once the presence of her sex emblazoned on his neck and the sheer and chasm-like lack he had become so inherently and subtly attached to. The absence lay there, in his hand on his neck: the absent wedding ring. He shot up, shouting panicked pleas to an indifferent lover. He flung his arms wildly, knocking the ashtray over, sending falling embers artfully across the floor. After repeated complaints from the unfortunate cleaning staff of an altogether different narrative, the Crowne Plaza Hotel would charge the Company what would later be considered extortionate and insulting amounts for the replacement of the ruined carpet and torn bedsheets.

Things were remembered and forgotten and missed forever. She stood silently against the fridge of the room, her heels raised in defiance of the situation, her lips drawn around her second cigarette. He paced the room, turning up bedsheets, not really even looking anymore: the fear had set in. The remnants of some forgotten memory, blocked with coffee and the life composed thereof and in that room, with that woman, and those children playing outside, their voices dying.

The Conference held at the Civic Centre on responsible corporate investment, amongst other things, passed neatly and auspiciously for the executives involved in ethical decision making on behalf of the Company. Indeed, the Company’s decisions in the past could even be seen in retrospect to have been carried out in accordance with their now universal and uniform policy measures, outlined succinctly later that year in pamphlets and websites, and followed precisely without regret. This was the nature of responsible corporate investment, amongst other things, such as ethic capitalist behaviour in free markets, global or domestic. That decisions had always been made on a basis of ethical and social responsibility was, in all its construction, an implicit acknowledgement of the Company’s raison d'etre. And would be judged accordingly to its own ideas of ethics and responsibility, which would have been outlined in their stylishly printed pamphlets and skilfully crafted websites published accordance to what was learned at the conference on responsible corporate investment, held kindly in Albany, at the Civic Centre.