The wrathful skies gave no quarter as they opened up their passion at capricious intervals and scattered into disarray the insects below. The lucky ones escaped into the rare unoccupied taxicab, free status beckoning with a familiar, benevolent white light. Those not so fortunate retreated to the shelter of the escalator, rain lashing down onto their Tod's briefcases now used as makeshift umbrellas in a fruitless attempt to spare their tailored shirts from a good soaking. Carefully treading the slippery steps down, down Shelley Street, through the expat ghetto of Soho and into the endless malls of Exchange Square and Chater House the bugs would crawl, crawl, breathing collective sighs of deliverance as they reached the dry interiors of their hives where they plugged into their lives and got to work.
Work. Spreadsheets and agreements and prospectuses and documents, documents, documents and noisy blackberries, awakened by edicts from Up High to return to the base at once! Away from the biennial promotions at Lane Crawford and the set lunch at Zuma, from the noonday crush at 360 and the crisp reislings furtively drank at the Armani Bar - and Back! To! Work! Pace quickens as you pass an uneasily familiar face. Was it her? The breathless, ebullient blonde from Tattersalls who shone in a jet-colored silk kimono dress as she singingly proclaimed her love for Bollinger at Drop last Thursday at three in the morning? The capital markets lawyer, correct? Who moved here, 5 months ago, straight from an in-house job at Big Mining in Brisbane? You avert your eyes. She, while impossible to forget, wouldn't remember you.
It is 12:30. Conference call with the bankers and the other side in T minus 6. No time for Starbucks. You tiredly push the elevator button. A vaguely familiar tune wafts through the air. A familiar melody, harmony, lighthearted common refrain. Manufactured, pretty, plastic, soulless music. The soundtrack of waiting. For the elevator, the MTR, the Airport Express, we need something to occupy our senses so you don't fall dead from lack of stimulus or want of patience. You re-adjust your briefcase as the elevator door opens. Out spills a clutch of black-suited Koreans out for their bi-hourly smoke, and a stirringly hungover trainee solicitor who gives you a weak smile of complicit recognition. You nod back.
What's his name again?
Does it matter?
No.
Not since he erupted a spew of bile and undigested blackcurrant jello shot (a casualty of spending the night at Al's Diner) onto you and your Alain Figaret buttondown on Wednesday. After the races. Before Dragon-I. Well before Drop. The Gauntlet. He's only here for three more months. Let him live the bacchanalian orgasm until he flies back to that dark, shivery moor to marry his tow-headed, horsey, Sloaney rose of a girlfriend, and is spirited away from the local yoga instructor (or is she a buyer?) with whom he became acquainted one Thursday at Prive.
You shake your head, partly in piteous disbelief, partly in friendly envy, as the elevator takes you up, back to your space, your cube, your Home That's Not Really Home. To the windows overlooking the Prince's Building, where you can see the skies darkening and the fresh drops of rain beginning to splat onto the glass. It is time to work. We are not finished. We have just begun to fight. You are not dead yet.
