Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Dining with Cannibals - Aperitivo


It is in the nature of a thief in a world of money to evaluate all by financial gain

Memo Pad ~ Manish Arora

Alfred Volere’s not-at-all-clandestine rooftop comprises of a penthouse office suite of the low-rent high-risk glass-and-steel variety made possible by the city’s construction and banking syndicates - like-minded men and woman who daily tunnel the mines of influence and bureaucratic mediocrity, there to manipulate their own narrow futures into broad definitions of power and wealth.
Alfred’s PA; loyal to his (and therefore her) continuing success, and with surgery to prove it; would never admit to the possibility that at her centre there beats a heart of gold, her self-imaging tending rather toward platinum blond.
“Tea Alfred?”
“Do what you will: the only law a man needs to know” his distraction dictates to the view across the imbecile city.
“Ah but a woman needs more” she smiles a red stripe punctuated by pure white and expensively perfect teeth.
“And more she shall have” turning, he picks at the gap between his own two front top teeth with a manicured thumbnail, sucking at some exotic morsel.
“Tea? Coffee?”
“Make it... Jasmine honey”
“Coming up in the next bucket” she quotes from the repertoire or pearls inherited from her late father, a shoddy builder of pseudo-red-brick houses.

An admirer once wrote that Alfred Volere could sell you violence as a metaphor for virtue, but, true as that may be, Alfred is no man of action.
A delegator and a facilitator, his violence is restricted to brutal bouts of self-doubt and existential anxiety: a phantom limb, perhaps a lingering, of guilt or humanity, perhaps merely a measure of the insecurity of a rich man.
“Get Numbers up here” he calls after her retreating but perfectly poised back.

All-you-can-eat Capitalism

No comments:

Bookshop

Buy this book on Lulu. Kindle Version
Kindle Version
© Garth Erickson. Powered by Blogger.

Followers

Page Ranking Tool
Creative Commons License