Chapter 11 - Roles

The soft lounge music penetrated his consciousness, seeping through the dream he was having, a strangely coherent story, filled with people and activities, strange mostly because its prosaic content was a dull person’s recounting of the trivial details of his life. 

Through this uninspiring story, the music reverberated, faint and very far away, and then started growing louder, like an approaching train, until its brashness startled him awake. 

In the first confused moments, he couldn’t orient himself as he looked past the contours of the black leather chairs for the source of the noise.

“Someone turned the music up,” he reasoned, annoyed the unwelcome change in his current environment, which he hadn’t chosen either, was not up to him.

The racket seemed to emerge from the kitchen, towards which he headed, determined to give the offending party a piece of his mind. 

Inconsiderate b******s!

There was nobody there, just a ridiculously large boom box, straight out of the seventies, blaring away, its sounds amplified by the metallic resonance of the pots and pans hanging around it. 

He turned the music off, irked, and grabbed a beer from the closest refrigerator.

He returned to the bar to drink it at leisure, wondering when the lounge was going to force him through one of those panels again, tired of this rat maze and exasperated by the lack of personal space, privacy and choice.

His dream replayed itself with great clarity, or maybe it was his real life, and this here the dream, there was no way of knowing, of course, in a true Buddhist mindset, which was which. What depressed him, really, was those interactive dreams were equally pathetic. Who dreams of processing paperwork? 

How boring was he, the real Helmuth who asserted himself from behind his gaze? Stupid Helmuth. Dull Helmuth. Helmuth who apparently couldn’t be free even in his dreams.

He hit himself over the head, hard, in the hope it would help him awaken, and all he accomplished was to augment his beer induced headache. 

“I need something stronger,” he mumbled, staggering around the bar to pick a bottle of liquor. “I didn’t drink that much, did I?” he pondered, surprised by his shaky balance.

He felt spacey and numb, and he had to make an effort to turn his hands upwards and look at them. Had he been drugged? And if so, by whom, and why? He remembered his business partner, Inclusion 35B, and the fact he’d never bothered to learn what it was about. Nobody signs papers without reading them, no competent grown-up, anyway. Not even one whose days were dealt discretely.

His confusion deepened as he stumbled towards the closest chair in which he fell at the same time his legs gave way. He panicked, wondering if he was experiencing a medical emergency, and then a mild euphoria took over, followed by a deep sleep.

He woke up with a monster hangover and his business partner staring at him. The surroundings had changed too. He was still in the lounge, but the room was now littered with ashtrays, glasses and empty bottles, and its furniture was in disarray.

“You’re growing old,” his partner laughed. “You used to hold your liquor.”

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, possessed by the will to stop playing out this ridiculous charade. What was the guy going to do, take him to the psych ward? By the end of the day, any broom closet door there would probably take him back to this fated lounge. 

“Ok,” the guy sighed, resigned, “Come on, get up, we’re going to walk this off. Come on up! Here! Drink this!” he pushed a sour and bitter liquid to his lips.

“What is this?” he spit it out, disgusted. The vile liquid must have been coffee at some point, but now it tasted sour and salty and it made his stomach turn. He barely had time to make it to the bathroom before his body returned the unwanted substance.

“Best hangover remedy I know,” his partner retorted, scrutinizing him. “Are you feeling better?”

He was surprised to notice that he was.

“Good. I need to get you looking respectable. We’re having a construction review. The inspectors are going to be here any moment now.”

“You set up a meeting in here?” he couldn’t help his reaction as he glanced over the tossed room and wondered who would pick a party house as an appropriate venue for business interactions. 

He remembered his dream and reviled getting dragged into fake reality again, and acting towards it as if it was real. And even if it was real, he wasn’t Helmuth, and he didn’t know what Inclusion 35B was about. He didn’t choose any of this. Why was he playing along?

“I’m not Helmuth,” he declared.

“Aah, yeah…” his partner assessed him with a critical eye. “Maybe you should sit this one out, my friend. You don’t look so hot.”

“Aren’t you going to take me to the hospital?” he asked, with a shrewd gleam in his eye.

“Not on your life!” his partner didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t know what you took, but I hope it doesn’t kill you. This is too important to muck up. I trust you’ll get your act together soon and start behaving like a grown-up. I can’t keep making excuses for you, you’re fifty years old, for God’s sake!”

“Finally, some information that’s not useless! So, I’m fifty then! That would make my birth year…”

Of course he didn’t know what year they were in. Not what year, not what place, not even what reality. Back to start.

“This is hopeless,” he wobbled out of his chair; the inspectors walked through the kitchen door just as his partner was trying to get him out of their sight. His unsteady balance met a beautifully ornate inlay panel and made it swing open.

“Might as well,” his partner made an instant decision to push him through it and the panel snapped closed behind him. 

A series of expressions not worth mentioning graced Helmuth’s lips, followed by copious applause.

“That was great,” a diminutive man with glasses and a clipboard pursed his lips, thinking. “Maybe you can add hand gestures. The scene is too static.”

“What?”

“Hand gestures,” the director replied. “You know…” he demonstrated, with profane gestures that could make a sailor blush. “Can somebody adjust that light?” he pointed. “It’s too bright and too cold. Who’s the set manager? I said warm light, not daylight. Daylight is always too cold!”

“That would be Jason,” one of the AV techs replied.

“Jason!” the director raised his voice, stirring a shuffling of feet and dropped objects from the adjacent room.

The Helmuth who wasn’t just stared in disbelief and voided of emotions at this theater of the absurd, and decided, just for kicks, to mix things up.

“What about Inclusion 35B?” he grabbed the arm of the technician who had rushed to the scene and now fussed about, changing light bulbs and trying to make himself invisible.

“We taped it last week,” the youth mumbled, confused. “Why? Was there something wrong with it? Please tell me we don’t have to do it over. My girlfriend is going to kill me if I postpone our date again!”

“Your girlfriend, huh?” Helmuth’s blood pressure rose instantly at the thought everybody in this nightmarish farce had a life, a name, and a home. Everybody but him. “Give me your phone. I’ll explain it to her!”

The tech glared at him sideways and made himself scarce, resentful of this and all the other entitled prima donnas who behaved as if they owned reality.

“Today, if possible?” the director snapped. The lights flared back on, warmer indeed, and more intense than the sun’s core. He squinted instinctively, feeling as if he was being cooked alive, and realized he didn’t know his lines.

“Just improvise!” the director replied, visibly displeased. “We’re already over budget.”

Helmuth stood there, intimidated by the sea of lights, cameras and microphones pointed at him, unable, despite this prolific imagination, to put together the harmonious mix of profane words and obscene gestures the scene demanded.

“Alright!” the director jumped out of the chair, outraged. “We’re done for today. When you’re ready to give a damn about your work, let me know.”

As he said that he walked out the doors of the set, followed by a small army of technicians carrying various pieces of equipment and furniture, and Helmuth was left alone in their abandoned chaos, standing like an idiot in the middle of an empty room. 

He shrugged and followed them out the door, welcomed by the soft sounds of lounge music.

“That’s it! I’m done!” he grabbed the closest glass off a side table and threw it at the wall. The tumbler was half filled with brandy, which splattered all over the wall, creating its own free-form motifs.

“You are done!? YOU!?” his partner rushed towards him, enraged. “You negotiated Inclusion 35B without me, you deceitful scoundrel?”

“What’s Inclusion 35B?” he asked, unfazed.

His partner blasted out the kitchen door, articulating a symphony of curses that would have earned him unequivocal appreciation from the director. 

Helmuth watched him leave, wondering how did people get in and out of here. There must have been a passageway in the kitchen, the one through which the inspectors came through. He followed his partner into the kitchen and spent the next four hours feeling the walls for drafts.