The Show Must Go Own

Originally written during the blackout

The elevator opens directly into the investment company’s lobby. Post-modern black leather furniture lines the interior. Expensive in appearance. Class. Power.

Reflective mirrors wall a conference room overlooking the river. For impression. For show. This was really happening. Without so much as a moment to collect my thoughts the receptionist greets me. We’re out of time.

She offers a smile, a chair, water. She must be silently judging my every reaction.

Our thoughts stand still against time. Outside snow falls quietly to the ground, the world just beyond our reality moves along at its own pace. It is both overwhelming and obviously cause for concern. We are frozen in this moment for what it is.

The floor must be empty at this hour. Like the doorman at the hotel months before, was she part of the recruitment as well? Had the interview begun without my knowing participation? I shift anxiously in my chair. Uncomfortably numb to what was happening inside my head.

My head, still pounding from the depression that had become routine for night before. Nerves forever restless. The collected demeanor fades to black. What is happening to me? You would not understand. This is not who I am. I was always the one in control. I always made the rules that we were to all play by. Once upon a time that was a given. There is something very wrong with me now.

Focus. Who we are and who we are supposed to be. For the last interview we had to perform for over four hours. There was role playing involved. Focus on what must be accomplished today. Business. Finance. Remember your training. You had none here. Remember, you once knew how to get by without it.

Flashes before my eyes and its New Year’s Eve. Tonight there will be plans, tonight there will be adventure. A Lincoln Park apartment, the same people you shared this day with years before. Somewhere across the city, blinded by the lights, among other vices, waking up in strange places with no memory of how you got there. Tonight there would be an adventure, but we have to stop daydreaming, wake up, the main event is about to begin.

If there is a difference between nervous sweat and hangover sweat, I don’t remember anymore. A sad statement of our current affairs that should not be mentioned in the interview today. Our mind slips in and out of this reality, to the night ahead of us, to the nightmare behind us, and they would taunt us with the life just beyond our reach. Where else would they be on this day then, as the ghosts remain attached to every detail.

We’re here to save your life, they would say, as the inquest begins.

My name is James McLaughlin, and I’m an attorney looking to start his career. I used to be called the Big Bad by hundreds of Chinese kids, and I am completely out of control.

Hong Kong was an incredible experience. I hope to apply the education I received there to both my professional development and personal life with a new found appreciation for the unique culture. Every night I dream of the lights of Lan Kwai Fong, and every morning I awake to this soul crushing reality.

We are sitting in an office belonging to a man that lives thirty feet from my parent’s house in Winnetka. Years ago I would cut through his front yard on my way to high school. Explain to me exactly how that is possible.

Hong Kong. Foreign allegiances. Kansas. Nothing there. Law. Masters thereof. Investment. International trade. Wrigleyville. We are finding ourselves closer to home. London. Politics. Sports. The great equalizer. There was a chance still.

A thirty minute interview, stretched into an hour and ten. For each minute into overtime we did our used every page of our playbook to find composure, to stay onboard with the plan. Bottom had come to find us in waves, and it took everything left in that reservoir to keep it together.

In desperation we reached out and said those fateful words, that I am the best at what I do and what I do ain’t pretty. I will earn this job today.

The repentant man will not be forgotten. For every prayer would be answered on this day, and every bit of karma, would come through for us once again. Your prayers are always answered, in exactly the order they are received.

The dawning of a new era. This is something that really happens.

There were dozens of highly qualified applicants. Ten were selected to interview. Three were brought back for a follow up interview. One becomes everything he ever imagined. And that old familiar song begins to play.

Lost in the madness and euphoria of that evening, as the celebration brought us closer to the morning dawn, as reality slid once again into something unexpected and wonderful, that bottle lying empty on the bedroom floor, spinning off the world we were once again. Over and over that breakaway song plays, but we never learned our lesson of what the blackout had meant. Arrogance and treachery remained, and the book says we may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.