Entertaining

Five varieties of heirloom zucchini were used in the preparation of what the chef refrained from referring to as a variant of peasant ratatouille. The guests were advised by courier that no one was permitted to speak during the meal and to arrive on time and leave as soon as they were finished eating. The journalist who had been invited to document the very rare appearance of the host in what might guardedly be called public society kept quiet only by keeping leafy greens in the mouth at all times. Every guest was seated by a personal waiter in an adjustable-height wing-backed armchair so that even the view of the other guests in the dimly lit dining hall was made difficult. This was a relief to the journalist who liked to eat with gusto even at the risk of offending the host with poor table manners. The journalist ate heartily and washed every mouthful down with wine from a glass that was perpetually replenished so unobtrusively by a personal waiter that after the fifth portion the journalist began to imagine the glass was in fact a cornucopia of wine and its operation was entirely the result of highly sophisticated magic.

Due to this indulgence and other factors, the host had already thanked all the other guests when the journalist staggered to a standing stop.

"That was delicious."
"Thank you. I used to have these dinner parties more often but talk was more interesting then."
"We weren't allowed to speak, how do you know we'd have been boring?"

The journalist could imbibe any quantity and still sound sober and yet, the question was entirely the product of drunk reasoning. There was no possible way any conversation tonight could have been interesting. The entire table had been made up of personages too august to ever let someone into their unguarded, hence interesting, thoughts. The journalist had been at dinner parties elsewhere with this entourage. All they had discussed were topical issues of the present state of the world, the lost biodiversity and the heated climate. Serious topics worthy of serious action, hence boring to the extreme. No, there would not have been better than that tonight. All those reputations who'd sat at this table had persona's to conjure and maintain in glamorous glittering brittle affected perfection. The journalist knew the truth of course, not that any editor would publish the truth. The truth was that none of the people who ate the ratatouille tonight were still living their lives. They had long ago surrendered to a public performance of living.

All except the host.

"I knew the talk would have been boring because I have been bored by talk for a long time. No one has said anything in my presence with any real effort behind the words. There is a word in french, do you know it? Gaspiller. It means to waste although it doesn't really capture the ache of the sentiment. I often find the word on my lips. Still, I wanted a dinner party, I wanted the world to remember me but at the same time I wanted the world to leave me alone."

"So you forbade talking."
"Only during the meal."
"We were told to leave as soon as we finished."
"You were."
"I didn't."
"I am never bored you see? Alone, I am never bored, I like the company of others but they make me tired and when I am tired I am irritable and when they talk they make me tired faster. I wish it were otherwise but I can't help myself."
"Why tell me? I was just leaving."
"I cannot burden my family with my troubles. You are a nobody."
"I'm a journalist."
"I deny everything. What I said was for your ears alone."
"Are you so weary of life?"
"Not in the least, I personally prepared your meal tonight."

The journalist's eyes widen reflexively.

"I don't believe you."
"Neither will anyone believe you."
"I am surely not the best person to unload your weariness on."
"Why did I take the trouble to arrange this dinner after so long out of the public eye?"
"Why take the trouble to cook the meal yourself?"
"I needed to care and I needed you to care."
"To be honest, I don't."
"I know."
"The meal was delicious and the wine and the service..." the journalist trailed off.
"superlative, yes. I did it all for myself. I am in the curious position of being the writer, producer, director, distributor and audience of my own micro-cultural content. Entertainment one-to-one."
"I think that's a sad way to go through life."
"My life is rich and full beyond words, I have everything."
"So why are you so unhappy?"
"Am I?"
"Happy people are banal, they don't do things like full-service silent dinner parties in purpose-built settings."
"The chairs? I wanted everyone to be exactly the same height."
"Yet in lighting so dim at a table so wide with wings on the chairs that we were literally isolated?"
"When you've tried everything within reason, the only options remaining are unreasonable."

The journalist turned without a further word and walked to the hall where a porter handed over a coat.
"A car is waiting to take you home," said a porter.

The journalist was too full, too drunk, too tired, to refuse the car. There was no backward glance. The host was clearly on a track too personal to make any sense of.

The night had certainly been entertaining.

Suspects

"Why are you here?"

"I had to come."

"After so long?"

"I didn't want to but since I'm here, I thought I'd look you up."

"I wish you didn't"

"You're right, I should go."
"Wait, since you've come we might try and have a talk."
"Thank you."
"So, how have you been?"
"Good, and you?"
"You don't know?"
"I wish we'd done this sooner."
"Maybe this was a mistake."
"No, please, let's just sit here across from each other for a while."
"Alright."
"I wanted to tell you I'm doing well and I wanted to be sure you are too."
"Still the same old same-old. What about what I wanted?"
"You wanted to be left alone."
"You're damn right."
"So we're strangers with familiar faces?"
"And?"
"I suspect that's all. What do you think?"
"I'm happy with how things are."
"I'm glad you say so. I don't think we'll admit anything else, you're right, we're too strange."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't, I guess it doesn't have to be said."
"Well, I've got to be running."
"For what it's worth coming from me, I'm proud of you and wish you every success."
"Thanks."
"I just wanted you to know that, I suppose."
"It's not true, what I said about being happy, but I am content, lots of satisfaction."
"You look happy."
"So do you."
"See you."
"Yes, sure."

THE END

Lying in and about hotel beds alone in the dark.

Welcome, out of the cold. Our only guest. That's right, step right this way. Follow me closely please, our lights are low. Our guests are photosensitive. This suite here, thank you but no, we cannot accept gratuities. Enjoy staying with us.

The door closes with a reassuring click. The air pressure changes as the seal of a well mitred door frame with insulation cuts off all outside sound. The room is carpeted in a heavy shag so clean it seems a shame to walk on it in shoes.

Lying on top of the sheets in outdoor clothes in the dark.

Dreams come. A previously owned car. An underground parking garage with exhorbitant towing fees. A late night meal in the only open business. Light spilling from windows onto pavement. Familiar places well worn with memory and living.

No point going there. Nothing remains. The old ugly makes way for the new ugly.

Breaking glass. A long fall. A dream but not for some.

Wanting nights to last forever in silence and darkness and peace and absolute quiet.

Peeling off outdoor clothes and folding them neatly. A Hollywood shower. Full pajamas, a sleeping cap, night mask and security with sheets tucked under the feet and no extremities dangling over the edge.

A hot cheese sandwich would go right but it is too late to eat without risking very intense and vivid dreams that involve some terrible loss that cannot be consoled by living longer. This loss just leaches all the vitality and energy and pleasure away leaving remains that walk and talk and pay for hotel rooms.

Lying in the dark under the sheets with all devices on mute and the phone unplugged is the pleasure of anhedonia: being unreachable.

Not even talking to people who are not there but just spending time with them in silence. Old people sitting on benches and watching pigeons doing their mating dances in spring. Old people watching the pigeons and imagining the pigeons are people. Not random people but familiar and younger people. Some dead and some living. Total raunch if people did what pigeons do. Old men, usually men, watching.

Reading in bed until the pigeons fly away and take the invisible people with them. Filling the day in units and increments because ever moment is tolerable if you isolate it. Segment the moments into eternities where whatever is done is all that has ever been done. Lying there in the same position all night, maximally relaxed muscles, forehead and shoulders dropped. Teeth brushed and flossed and minty.

Neither awake nor asleep. Night.

The moon rises. Venus rises. They can be seen from the window appearing to cross from one block of flats to the other. They could be lovers leaping from one balcony to another except Venus is very small. A lady starving herself guiltless. The moon is fat. Indolent with redolence in splendiferousness.

Talking never works. Listening doesn't work either. There is always the asynchronicity and asymmetry between the two participants. Talking from B to A is not heard but talking from A to B is listened to. Meanwhile A doesn't know B is listening and B knows A is not.

So much for modern talking.

Friends are disappointing. Except when they are really smart or funny or dead or all three.
Family cannot be disappointing even when disappointment is what is called for. There are reasons for this but lying on the bed is more interesting than exploring the reasons beyond the idea that friends are themselves while family is closer than that.

Anxiety is boring, frustration is boring, tiredness, fatigue and exhaustion are boring. Especially when that exhaustion is mental and it's all mental. Even the physical debilitations that flesh is heir to. Like neurasthenia in the legs and arthritis in the thumb and heartburn from having eaten too late after all.

Even Shakespeare ended sentences with prepositions at least once. Meanwhile the sheets remain cool and the silence remains deep and the moon continues to rise and the hotel and the planet it rests on spins with an ever-so-slowly decelarating motion. No point in trying to arrive anywhere, just pass the time.

As the absence of bordom is surprise and age brings fewer surprises because of the commensurate knowledge that each experience grants and among those true novelties that do come, increasingly they are unwelcome as most of the pleasant ones have already been invoked, then the point seems to be that rather than trying to finish anything, trying to find a way to spend time in a way that has any completeness to it is the point to lying in and about hotel beds alone in the dark.