Opposite to me sits this man of Eastern European descent whose BMI hovers around or above 35, visibly intoxicated, his torso uncomfortably squeezed into his bespoke suit. Two girls whose faces I don't recognize sit to his sides. These girls, young and properly educated, politely nod and smile as he recounts the tale of him nonchalantly recovering a three million loss in P/L and saving the asses of everybody. I lose interest in their unilateral dialogue and turn to this girl from Cameroon whose hair is finely braided into a ponytail. We make small talks about the cities in which we'd rather be. She exudes a genuine air that is rare to come by; I find her intelligence nonthreatening.
A squeal coming from my opposite direction cuts short our exchange. I look over to the new girls, both of them have their shoulders wrapped tight by the man's sizable arms. They awkwardly giggle and make half-hearted attempts to break free as he taunts them to wiggle harder.
"Be gentle with the ladies why don't you -"
As these words roll out of my tongue, the man slowly retreats his arms. The girls break free and scramble to insert personal space between him and themselves.
"Do you know who I am?" He sets his gaze on me and articulates the rhetorical question in a heavy Slavic accent.
I stare back blankly, going through in my head all the possible scenarios of how this should end.
The Corsican takes the cue and strolls over with a bottle of exotic spirit in hand.
"Aw what's the matter now?"
She grabs a shot glass from the coffee table next to the man, fills it with her bottle and offers it to him.
The man, now red with rage, or perhaps just the alcohol, ignores the Corsican and extends one of his sausage fingers at my direction.
"You, your bonus, gone - you hear me? Your career, dead."
I till my head a little, trying to register each and every feature of his unremarkable being. The Corsican gives me a stern look and a subtle shake of head. She proceeds to sit on his lap and teasingly runs her hand on his chest, "oh c'mon now you're scaring me -". The man, with his attention flow diverted to the beautiful brunette, regains his composure and eventually his humour.
I look on as the Cameroonian girl and this Indian-Canadian girl I've worked with before escort me to the other side of the apartment. The Corsican turns and gives me a "I got it" wink.
They corner me in the kitchen. I look down to my virtually untouched glass of beer I have been clinging onto since the start of the evening and contemplate the scenes unfolded just now. The Indian-Canadian leans on the wall next to me and sighs with a mix of empathy and disbelief; she reaches for a cigarette from a gunmetal case on the kitchen counter. Before she lights it up, "bitch you need to learn how to suck dicks," she says. I snicker at her choice of vocabulary but applaud the callous honesty. The Cameroonian, who looks also somewhat deep in her own thoughts, tells me to let it pass. "We have to be on the right side of history", she says. A cold determination in her voice. I'm about 60% certain that she is talking to herself. A Polish girl with long platinum blonde hair, touches up on her makeup in a full length mirror not far from us, murmurs "somebody gives this panienka a joint so she can mellow the fuck out." On the other end of the living room, this Swiss girl with a PhD in semiotics is probably giving an unsolicited mini lecture on the meaning of a thing to a Caucasian male in a grey wool jumper and chinos, I can only make out something along the lines "persona non grata" and "c'est du latin". I check my wrist and realize I don't have my watch with me.
The Corsican approaches us with a tired smile, "he's like that - he won't remember a thing tomorrow morning."
"Let's make sure of that," is all I've got left to say this evening.
*****
