things move around

Sandra, an accountant, stands in the office kitchen, looking at the array of teas, her shoulders sloping despondently, her lips slightly apart, her hair and skin lustreless and sagging, like old upholstery; she pulls a squeaky polystyrene cup from its clingfilm tube, adds a teabag on a string, and runs the faucet on the hot water tank: all this despite her only being 23.

The reason she’s such a wreck is she’s been up all night, dreaming of Paul. She punishes herself with condensed milk and a sugarlump, and stirs the brew with a toothpick. She can’t stop thinking about Paul’s magnificent inky bouffant, his flashing opalescent eyes, his luxuriant sideburns. Paul.

He wants to see her for lunch today. Why? What does Paul see in me, she thinks, dropping the string into the cup (fuck!) Paul. Why do I feel like I’m on the edge of a black hole, spiralling hopelessly into an oblivion called Paul?

El Presidente is lean, long-necked, and plain. What would you say to him, if you could say anything? He would extend an arm, and a smile, and say “hello”, and it would occur to you that the famed intelligence and acumen, the always-on analytical mind, and the legendary charm, these are just the skin, like the skin of an automaton, a thin frame, and beneath the frame is what? Blank, fathomless calm, a cavernous monochrome room, illuminated thinly by a tiny or very distant flame.

“And how is El Presidente today?” fawns a junior exec. El Presidente smiles and says “Never been better”. Which is true, but equally, he’s never been worse.

“Inscrutable” doesn’t even come close.

Admiral Point twirls his moustache and allows a distant smile to prowl across his chops as he seats himself at the oval boardroom table. He doesn’t give a toss about the agenda, or the other non-execs stretching off to his port and starboard.

This is because Admiral Point has just ridden the elevator with a man who, simply from looking at his exquisite eggshell-blue eyes, he knows is the son he abandoned forty years ago in Guatemala, when he was a lusty young submariner and she bored with her station as diplomat’s wife. Somehow the encounter leaves the Admiral stirred, but not shaken. Rosemary, that was her name. Rosemary Manor. Admiral Point (ret.) slips into a tropical reverie of creamwhite thighs, starlit cuba libres, and stolen moments in the broad shade of a mango tree. ‘65, he thinks. ‘65, my finest year.

Of course there’s no question of saying anything. It’s a ridiculous situation. I don’t need a son now any more than I did then, and I doubt the acquisition of a(nother) father was uppermost in his mind this morning.

Meanwhile, the chairman drones. Or “El Presidente” as he’s called by the more obsequious junior execs.

Logan Villa’s hair is torniqued in a truncated ponytail. His locks have been conditioned so meticulously, and tied so tightly, that the bob shines like an orb of onyx.

Logan’s orb follows him as he parks his car illegally and trots into the office tower with his delivery. His radiant olive complexion illuminates the mirrored elevator in which he ascends to the 15th floor. What kind of a name is Chelsea Square, anyway? Sounds more like a place than a person.

Logan hands the flowers to the girl, whose lips barely flicker as she thanks him and whose eyes are full of a faraway love, but not before failing to make sense of the accompanying message, which is one of the wackier ones he’s seen today:

My love for you is unalloyed
and swells within me like a mantle plume;
but yours for me?
Illusory,
or so I must assume.

Peter Manor grew up on a farm in southern Guatemala, the only child of the British ambassador and his mistress. His father was kind and provident, and wrote frequently after being reassigned when Peter was six. Peter was a naive boy whose nose was full of the humid scents of earth and fungus, whose nights rushed past like bats fluttering against a moonlit window pane, and whose days were idled away in the shade of a spreading mango tree.

Today Peter is debonair in a double-breasted charcoal business suit, a yellow silk tie and tiny yellow cufflinks setting off his pin-bright, watchet eyes. “Peter Manor” he says, “pleased to make your acquaintance”.

He has a crush on Paul Plaza, yet for some reason he feels as though he oughtn’t.

Chelsea is half Chinese, but her features are Western with the exception of an erotic giggle in her eyes. She has a tawny bob and round, smooth, light-freckled cheeks framing lips which barely move when she speaks. She is gangly and inelegant, but she has a reckless rivery laugh which turns your soul to helium and dispatches it deliriously skyward.

Ms Square works upstairs in Media Relations. She drafts press releases for approval and, once approved, releases them. Sometimes she inserts a poetic or otherwise incongruous word into a release, just to see if it will get approved. Recent successes include ‘illusory’, ‘unalloyed’ and ‘plume’.

She has a crush on Paul Plaza, yet for some reason she feels as though she oughtn’t.

The first thing that strikes you about Paul is his extravagant coiffure, billowing out and up from his prominent forehead like a black stormcloud on a prairie. This diverts your attention momentarily from his stoatish, obsidian eyes and slightly effeminate mouth. Paul ought to have luxuriant sideburns, to the extent that your mind’s eye superimposes them onto his cheekbones. His smile is as thick and cloying as a faceful of hydrangeas.

Paul shakes you by the hand and says “Hi, Paul Plaza. How are you?” He has an estranged wife who married an Arab millionaire and two children whom she took with her to Dubai. Paul’s wife had exquisite white teeth and pert breasts.

When night falls, and Paul closes his eyes, his dreams roil in his mind like a tarpit engulfing a sabre-toothed tiger.