Vic Socotra

12 December 2008

Hall of Mirrors

(Hall of Mirrors, Versailles)

It was a relief to do a little spook work this morning. It was either that or examine the prospects of General Motors and Chrysler going out of business before New Years, now that those idiots in the Senate have denied them short-term loans. What are they thinking? Do they really want a couple million people out of work before Obama even gets to raise his right hand?

The intellectual exercise helped to focus the mind, which was useful, considering that KeShawn did not stub out the last of my borrowed smokes until close to midnight. He likes twelve-year-old-Scotch, neat, which I happened to have lurking in the back of the liquor cabinet, and we had encouraged him not to flick his cigarette butts from the balcony towards Tony’s place far below.

Iceburg, Death Junior, Sara 2 and Ludmilla all agreed. I told them they could smoke in the place, and I actually had ashtrays, but it is a new world. We have all been trained pretty well by the health Nazis, and they all trooped out to the balcony as the chill rain poured down

We explained that the Ornamental Concrete Workers have most of the ground floor units, and they got positively cranky about finding cigarette butts on their patios. I think we got through to KeShawn. He is a big guy, with a penetrating and disconcerting ice-blue gaze.

“Be nice to the guys. They can make things happen, you know?” I said. “You should be happy that gravity works and things don’t fall up. Then we would have a real problem.”

Everyone else drank what was lying around, after I had the poor judgment to want to show off the new mirrored doors I had installed in Tunnel 8. I wanted to show off, they wanted free drinks and tobacco. It seemed a fair enough trade.

The new look is stunning, and is almost enough to make me contemplate changing the name. The Great Room, which is anything but, now has a parallel room reflected right back, conveying the illusion of space. Ditto for the office, which now does not end at the closet door, but reflects against the glass on the artwork in an endless diminishing tunnel of bright reflections.

If I was a magpie, it would be perfect. Maybe I should call the place Versailles, a sardonic comment on the famous Hall of Mirrors. Or maybe I should take a shower and go to work.

I don’t know. The whole nut-roll started with the Holiday Party, where some conspirators fiercely wished me a Merry Christmas, in direct defiance of the correctness of the season. I was tempted to remind the more intense that it was also Eid-al-Adha, the night of the festival of the sacrifice, the one that commemorates the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God.

Thankfully, God provided a ram to take Ishmael’s place, once the old man demonstrated his submission to the Will, and everything was just fine for years and years afterward.

The lobby of Big Pink was decorated with the stuff that usually is stored in the Porter’s locker in the garage, and it looked great. You could sense the hand of the Designer in all this, and the link to the Shoreham Hotel downtown where Francis Freed lived almost her whole adult life.

This elongated public space was a gesture toward elegance and beauty every bit as much as my mirror-paneled walls in Tunnel Eight.

There are two crowds at the Holiday Party, with some natural overlap. The older folks come at the first possible instant to do an Early Bird Dinner. The younger folks come later, since they are either working or working out after a day at the office. Some clearly did not get the word, and the Punjabi pizza delivery guy smiled and shook his head as he passed he punch-bowl and the display of Shrimp.

“I think some are not getting the word,” he said courteously. “With free food below, why would he call for my fine pie?”

It was indeed a marvelous spread, with those darn meatballs and spicy chicken wings, some sliced beef and ham, and plenty of vegetarian, Kosher and Halal alternatives, since management recognizes the important of diversity in a Holiday Party.

Margaret and Jigs and Tony and Joe and Uncle Bill were all there- first sightings for some of them since the pool closed. The Doc was her bubbly self, always upbeat regardless of the state of crisis. Ludmilla and Sara 2 came in the second wave, along with KeShawn and Iceberg, who were first-time attendees. Death Junior was particularly buoyant, since she was not on call at the funeral home that night and was free to do whatever she damn well pleased.

Mayor Fred and Bridgett were looking exceptionally svelte, so clearly there are some excellent efforts going on in the building that will not be fully revealed until the swimsuits come of in the Spring.

Iceberg was new to it. He is an expansive young man of impressive height, whose hair sweeps up to a peak over a broad brown and ironic gaze. He is renting his place on the eighth floor, way up there, from a buddy who picked it up near the top of the market in ’05, after the woman who lived there passed away.

Iceberg’s pal can’t get rid of it any more than I can, so he has to rent. Iceberg likes the arrangement and takes the antics of the residents of Big Pink with a certain detachment, since he can always just move out.

Freedom is a marvelous thing, I thought. Icebierg works at the Federal Deposit Insurance Company. Those are the people who guarantee the safety of our money at the bank, and naturally he wanted to borrow a pack a smokes. Which in a roundabout way, is how we wound up in Tunnel 8, out on the balcony, with the rain coming down once the caterer’s scowled and through us out.

After KeShawn got rid of the cigarette without flicking it down on the Concrete Workers he followed Iceberg, Death Junior, Sara 2 and Ludmilla down the hall toward new adventures. They were looking for more alcohol, and it seemed like a worthy goal.

I just had run out of energy. There is an awful lot going on that I do not want to deal with. “Merry Christmas,” I said as I closed the door behind them.

I looked in the mirrored door of the closet, at the reflection of the old fellow who gazed back at me. “Ain’t youth grand?" I asked.

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