Business Trips

The taxi driver groans.
"Ah, look, there's a head." Dick's voice is cheery. I don't look; I keep my eyes lowered to the dashboard, but I can't help notice, lit up by our headlights, the mangled bicycle being carried across the dark highway by a policeman. How would it feel if my teeth were smashed by a truck? I feel it happening to me: my teeth and skull being creamed. I shudder. It doesn't take more than a minute before we're on our way again.

Soon open highway becomes clogged city thoroughfare; the driver stops and starts and hoots and swears all the way to the entrance of our hotel tower.

The first time I stood at the base of this black claw, I stretched my head back and stared up at the top disappearing into the sky and I felt my legs become weak. But that small thrill wore off fast. Now I only look at my feet as they take me into the entrance and into the elevator, and then down the passage of a thousand identical doors into the room assigned to me. I dump my bag from my shoulder and sit on the edge of my bed.

My head buzzes. Otherwise, nothing happens.

And so I get up and leave.

Dick is already at the bar; his glass is half empty. I walk across the lounge area to his waiting smirk. He tells me I look ragged. It's the same thing he told me when he walked into the breakfast room this morning and he was and remains right. But apart from his stupid smile, he looks worse than me. I don't tell him that.

Golden beer flows in and out of glasses while I listen to Dick complaining about work, about the people at work, the incompetent idiots, the oh-so-stupid fools. Every single one of them gets a mention, just like every night. I'd get mine too if I weren't sitting here. If I weren't sitting here...

Far below, on the other side of those sheets of glass, lies the city; stretching to the horizon are countless points of light against the black (a substitute for the starry sky long ago greyed out by smog?).

As the evening wears on, and things flow faster than I can follow, Tequila gets its turn. It too is golden, but it burns my throat when I force it down. And it continues to burn. I douse the flames with a constant stream of cold beer.

Dick complains on, but his words are slurred and I stopped listening days ago. This is business travel. A hotel bar with waitresses to flirt with when I've got the energy. Otherwise, a coworker to drink with, to complain with. And then back to the room that looks the same as every other hotel room. And then the piercing scream of an alarm clock, and off to work: a day of meetings in which I sit and bark at the others, hiding my hangover behind gruffness. And then the hotel bar.

I'm on the way to my room and the floor won't keep still - it rocks and sways and tries to throw me over the flimsy glass railings that keep me safe from the lobby lounge more than twenty stories below. And now that it's too late, I remember how I felt this morning as I walked head down into the office building, numb from painkillers. I opened my eyes just enough to see where I was going, and just enough to notice, as I walked along the passage, the patch of dried vomit on the toe of my left shoe. It will be there again tomorrow - not the vomit, but the feeling: despair softened by a buzzing haze. Tomorrow will be the same.

That sensation is with me again, I can't shake it: the sensation of my teeth being smashed straight through my face and I know now that it's the only thing stopping me from taking a running jump and throwing myself head first over the fucking railing and down, down, down onto the hard floor so far below.