AFTER

The first thing you think, is that you don't belong here. Your eyes inexcusably falling on the gaudy clothes and jewelry; name brands you recognize only from looking through windows of stores you’d be embarrassed to set foot in. If only things had broken differently for you; gotten the promotion, bought the crypto, started the business, you would be comfortable here. An unlikely supposition meant to combat your instinct that’s burning for you to leave. To return when you're ready. When your luck changes. But you can't. You briefly glance at the marble laden hallway that leads you to the elevator, which could take you down and back outside. But you know there's nothing left for you out there. Nothing on the opposite side of the large brass doors you entered through. Nothing but the cold, and you alone with your feelings; with your pain. This was sanctuary now. Your chance at sanity. It’s not productive lying to yourself. You see no other hope but to force your way in here.

You ready yourself, donning your façade like a knight’s armor. Your superficial projections overtly on display, equipped with a vigor and vim that only comes from having no other choice. Realistically, you have all the proper connections to this world. You even have the right zip code now. You've helped the likes of them get rich for over a decade. Your sweat paid for the extravaganza playing out in front of you, complete with rolling caviar carts and champagne served by voiceless goddesses whose eyes have lost their spark long before you arrived. Who were now merely decoration; entertainment for men twenty years their senior.

You search desperately for an in. Eventually, you strike up a conversation in a promising group. You lie purely as reaction. Such a big lie as well, that you question If you should have told it two inches from your mouth. But no one asked a follow up and you quickly change the subject. You catch the eye of the red-head and she smiles, a dual-purpose discovery but you soon realize she’s not the one you want. She's just like you, pushing her way in, though admittedly she’s gotten farther than you have. However, you can’t use each other, so in this world you amicably part ways.

Your instinct again screams out for your exit, enlisting your discomfort as a cohort. But for once your instinct doesn’t matter. All the things you thought you had figured out, add them together, and they bring you here. The sum of your choices. You gaze upon them, in their ascots and twenty-thousand-dollar watches. You see the women that could make you spit in the face of your gods. You concede to your fate. To accept failure, would be to accept they are better than you at life, and you’ve done enough of that as of late. You understand why the plebes protest against them; you would too if you were raised different. But to you, being annoyed at the winning team because they're winning doesn't seem very sporting. The celebrities and IG royalties were hated by the masses because the masses are not them. You've infiltrated worse and would need to again. You needed the type of money and access that the people in this room had. You needed to be accepted by this room if you were going to outrun yourself.

A familiar face in the sea of indifference. The host of this affair. He remembers you and makes a show of you finally coming after all this time. The tiny anomaly of your presence infects the room with intrigue. These people feel they should know everyone worth knowing. The unknown, in a place like this, was rare. The room operates like a society. And even though the actions of all are naturally individual, the intent of the room moves like a singular creature. A predator that senses unfamiliarity and employs an assimilate or desecrate tactic that would have made their colonizing ancestors proud. Soon you’re engrossed in it, as the animal that is the room swirls around you. Nipping and tucking at your edges. Prodding, analyzing, testing. From here, you clearly see the other outsiders, others that came with the same thoughts that you did. Others who weren't being included and would soon slink off in defeat. You pity them, ironically enough. Funny how easily you can forget; how intoxicated you become by the status. Status is your only refuge now. The last place you can hide.

Until she left you had something over all these people, you were greater than them. You had her, a value far exceeding all of their money. You were more powerful than the president when she smiled at you. Now? Now you only had you and a tiny shoebox in a zip code in which everyone was doing better. Without her had no choice, you had to be a part of the creature to be here. Your lot in life was now among the 1%. Here, where happiness was a punchline, the butt of a joke. It makes sense. It was the only place you felt you could be safe from her memory. The only place you wouldn't miss her was in the midst of an elitist room that was the antithesis of her. A place where nothing would remind you of her. A place she would never want to be and would never be welcomed, because she was too pure. But you? They welcome with open arms. They sense you’re a special kind of bad guy, a unique evil that is coveted by the ex-criminals and crooked politicians, while romanticized by the generational wealth who want to claim connection to the everyday people that they've never known. This is where you belong now, among the heartless; among the power-mongers. You start to feel oddly at peace. You don't have to pretend not to be a piece of shit. You don't need to be a good person here. Here you're just another carnivorous beast in the thick of the jungle, exactly where you belong. For what other than an animal could lose a woman like her.

The wild always accepts its own, and if the thousand-dollar bottles of imported wine could help them forget how obviously decrepit they were on the inside, then it should help you forget the failed marriage proposal of a several nights prior. At the very least, dull the looping recollection of you pathetically begging her to stay as she left her keys and walked out. You imagined no one here had ever begged for anything.

Families that bore the last names of the people in this room, had been rich since the city was powered by whale oil and coal. Perhaps that's why, upon the group’s casual greeting of a peck on the mouth that had irrationally been accepted as norm within these walls, their lips tasted bitter. The years of decadence had curdled and turned right on their faces. Not like the sweet silk of hers. You shake the thought. This was your home now. Where you would be able to forget, amid the thirty-foot wide chandeliers that dangled from the cathedral ceiling at repeating intervals. Floating just above the smell Maison Francis Kurkdjian that polluted the air at every step. You wonder if everyone here was missing something or someone. If that's what drove them all here, pushed them to rise to these heights, as it does you. From this far up the city looked almost calm below. Whatever holes your new associates had in them were some thirty floors below. Down there with her.

The dying wish of the last piece of good in you, wants to be down there with her somewhere. Down there, looking up here, and imagining walking in this room with her on your arm. Even though you never would bring her here. The sad clichéd absurdity is: you aren't good enough to be down there, your soul is too depraved. That’s why she’s gone. Why you’re here. The blonde in three-thousand-dollar heels breezes against your shoulder, reminding you: this was home now.

In the morning you wake to the smell of nothing. Surprising to you. You expected the butler to have coffee brewed by now. You can't teach work ethic you assume, but the clock reminds you that you don’t sleep anymore. It would be hours before anyone else was awake. You try to remember which of the seven guest rooms you were assigned to last night, as you push the Egyptian cotton away and tip toe across the room and down the hall. The tip toe was instinctual of course, the two-inch thick alpaca carpet would have never made a sound. Never betray the privileged that walk across its surface.

Outside you survey the predawn sky. Trying to discern the fresh hue of blue it would surely become. But it looks the same now, just lighter or darker gray. The haggard driver offers a ride. Apparently, he sleeps in the car until released and he’s been designated to you. Of course, you'd rather walk. Process this new world you’d been folded into. It was a world that most foolishly dreamed of.

“Excuse me sir, but the weather seems to be temperamental this morning.” The drivers says, having no intention of disappointing his employer. He looked fatigued. Like a man that wanted to go home and hug his kids before they left for school. Perhaps steal some sleep before he was summoned again.

You get in the car anyway. That's what one does after all. Sinking into the supple, leather, heated seats of your new life. A life among the elite, a life of privilege. A life far from her smile. It’s the only ambition left for you after her.