Waking up early, a few hours after I usually go to bed, gives me an odd moment of deja vu — I’m awake, it’s dark and quiet, I should be writing.
But I can’t, because I’m meant to be getting on an airplane. That doesn’t stop my mind from working as I drive through the darkened city, passing empty office buildings lit from within like empty stages waiting for their actors to come on.
It occurs the me that ghosts must be on a different schedule than the rest of us. They must like the quiet an solitude of the late night hours, the early morning when they can wander through the empty offices and, for just a little while, pretend.
I see then sitting at desks, pretending to answer phone calls or file reports… Or wander into the kitchen an open the fridge, just to stand and stare for a while…
I know how that feels.
***
Last week I asked my wife “What do you think ghosts do more, watch the living have sex or watch us eat?”
Neither of us had the answer. But I expect we’ll find out, eventually.
***
In the security line, twenty young men stand and chat together in identical black suits. Each wears a different colored shirt, open at the color. They are cheerful and businesslike.
One of them is wearing headphones shaped like pandas, bobbing his head. I don’t think he’s going to last in this job, whatever it is.
***
We land in the midst of what I can only assume is a tropical storm clearing its throat, getting ready to speak its mind.
My room is on the 27th floor. I can feel the hotel sway under my feet as I unpack.
I discover that the sliding glass door actually opens. I’ve got free access to the wind and rain and, if I were so inclined, gravity as well. This surprises me.
There is a Gideon Bible and a Book of Mormon in the nightstand. Above, my copy of The Hermetic Museum sits next to the alarm clock.
I brought it along to research a possible project for NaNoWriMo. This will turn out to be an empty gesture, as I will get nothing done while I am here.
***
Up early the next morning for a day full of meetings followed by a night out with my colleagues and clients.
They ply me with rum — it is Florida, after all — but I demur. “If I’m going to fall of the wagon, it’s going to be for Irish whiskey.”
Other people in our party are drinking watermelon mojitos. I rest my fucking case.
Fortunately, a bartender that looks uncommonly like Ray Stevenson is more than happy to provide me with Bushmills. He does not sneer when I ask for soda.
One drink in and I find that I’m explaining to a high-priced and pretty-damn-smart consultant that all modern brands are merely an extension of celebrity which is, in turn, nothing more than a modern manifestation of the shift from the Pantheon to demigods and, as a marketer, he’s a modern acolyte or (since he bills at a higher rate than I) quite possibly a priest.
“All culture derives from cult,” I say, quoting Alan Moore — and not for the first time, neither.
The consultant nods and looks away, entirely uninterested in my metaphysical plagiarism.
I sip my drink and think about how much I missed whiskey and didn’t even know it. Until now.
Dinner is delicious. Living in the midwest for the past fifteen years or so, I’d forgotten how clean and fresh seafood and shellfish could be when you were on the coast — that is, when I lived on the coast . . . the west coast. A long time ago.
I’m meant to be contacting family in Florida and connecting up. But my schedule with clients is proving unsympathetic to those plans. Even the social times are turning out to be important conversations with clients. In fact, the most important one I have during the whole trip takes place in the upstairs of a nightclub. We shout back and forth while, down below, women stand on the bar and dance to live salsa music.
***
The rest of my time is spent in my hotel room, looking out the window and waiting to go home.