worse things

You step off the plane into the sweltering Arabian heat, your fingers already loosening your tie, a bead of sweat already trickling down your spine.  You can feel the heat from the sizzling airport apron through the soles of your Balenciagas, and already you're wondering why you agreed to this trip.  "It'll be good for our profile," they told you.  "We need this right now," they said.  "Public opinion is low."

But you're not sure how much you care anymore.

With each step, striding toward your waiting car, your Clubmasters slide a little further down the slick bridge of your nose.  Even though the effort is futile, every ten feet or so, you reach up and adjust them with a middle finger – and the choice of this finger is no accident.  No.  Nothing you do is without purpose.

The sleek black form of the Bentley Flying Spur is still perched one hundred feet distant when the driver exits the vehicle and circles the car to wait by the rear door.  You wish you were closer to tell the poor sonofabitch to stay in the comfort of the air-conditioned car.  You wish you were closer to wave off these formalities with a casual air. You wish you were closer to tell him that you can open your own goddamned door.  But you're not, so you don't, and you wouldn't anyway, because you understand this is just how things work.

Your back is soaked in sweat, and though you're only fifty feet from the car, you shrug out of your black blazer in an effort to cool down.  You pull your tie completely out of your collar.  Your phone told you it would be 120 degrees here today, but your brain wasn't even able to compute such hell.  And now that you're in it, it still seems unreal.  Your shirt sticks to you, and sweat streams down the crack of your ass.  It takes a Herculean effort, but you put a little more jump in your step, jacket and tie dangling from your hands.

You're a dozen feet from the car when the driver pops open the rear door revealing an interior of black leather and chrome.  A figure lounges on the far side, hands busy with a bottle and glass.  Ice cubes clink.  You hear the dull drone of the Bentley's AC, and your ears catch the welcome pouring of liquid.  Gin, you guess.  The man who readies your favourite drink is not a stranger.  This much you know.  You share an opaque chunk of the past that would be better for each to never surface again.

But to share a a drink in an air-conditioned oasis while you drive through hell, well, there are worse things, you suppose.