The Occidental

2013 was a year of firsts for David. He retired, took up drinking in earnest and shot someone dead. There wasn’t much to retiring. He merely wound up the business in January, sending a blind CC email to all of his customers stating his intentions. One or two indicated their regret and wished him well. Most didn’t find it necessary to reply. When his wife, Audrey asked him what he would do with himself, he said he had a number of irons in the fire. He didn’t, although he had an unresolved notion he might visit the Grampians. They sat in the living room. He had the newspaper laid out on his lap and his glasses were perched on his forehead. She was reaching for the remote.

“But first, why don’t we travel, I’d rather like to go to Italy,” he said.

“Oh…I haven’t thought about that at all,” Audrey said, her index finger hovering over the red button.

“Greece, how does that sound?”

“You know what, I have thought about it, I don’t think I want to go overseas,” she said. She put down the remote.

“Why on earth not?” David said.

“Well, if you must know David, I am a bit fed up with you. I suspect I will become murderous if I am obliged to travel with you,” she said.

“I see,” he turned away from her, staring at the void of the television screen. He felt deflated. “Please don’t hold anything back on my account, be frank by all means,” he was attempting irony but it sounded like petulance.

“Don’t you think it might be nicer for you if you went without me?” she said.

“I’m going out,” he said. When he had put his coat on at the door, he wiped two unexpected tears away from his cheeks with the back of his hand. He had for some time understood he had not provided enough time to the relationship and, too late, he was now left without one. If he had given it much thought at all during the years, he would have concluded he was banking his emotional involvement, until he had time to draw on the account at a more propitious time.

He returned home drunk. Audrey had gone to bed and he slept in the guest bedroom. From that day forward an icy pall fell over the household. Audrey appeared to be completely indifferent to him. He was beginning to realize she had been this way for years and he hadn’t noticed. Of course in retrospect, he also realized how utterly appalling it was. He was saddened by the errors of judgement he had made.

A week later, he asked Audrey whether they should talk about the situation but she said no. She said there was nothing more to say, but she said something regardless.
“You are only questioning the situation now because you appear to have awoken from a long sleep. You’ve acknowledged something’s wrong, so now there is an expectation for me to provide answers. I don’t see why I should, I’m not your parent,” she said. She was irritated; ‘Antique Roadshow’ was on.

He bought bottles of whiskey home and drank them in the guest bedroom and when Audrey was out, in the bedroom they previously shared, making him feel masochistically morbid. He was careful to leave the room as he found it. The more he drank, the better he felt. He considered his hangover’s relatively mild. His friend Frank, a seasoned drinker, was impressed.

“You are a lot more fun these days, Dave. What happened? Tell me the secret so I can tell my ex-wife she can return. Frank was always drunk and didn’t make any more sense, now David was a drunk as well.

“Tell me Frank, did you love your wife?” David said.

“No.”

He thought he did loved Audrey regardless of her pronouncements. He began to think about other conversations they had had and which he had put out of his mind for fear of them spreading like an infection. Once, perhaps six months before they had been reading in bed and when he asked Audrey to turn out the light so he could sleep, she launched into a precise critical analysis of their relationship. Her voice was even and pedagogic; she had been a high school principal, after all.

“When I want to read, you want to sleep; when you are cold, I am too hot; I suffer from dry mouth, and you slobber like a child on your pillow at night,” She paused, he was turned away from her but he felt her eyes on him. “When I want to listen to Dvorak, you want David Bowie on; when I suggest we ring the children, you say leave them be,” there was another long pause, he felt her slide down, as if to sleep, but she kept the light on.

“So we are different; of course we are, we are two different people,” David said.

“That is so logical and austere, as to be ridiculous. We are not desperate animals surviving on the edge of existence David. It is more than that; over the years our similarities have receded, and our disparity has hardened into an unforgiving thing. You have not noticed this divergence and it has now become the nucleus of our relationship,” she said. He thought about what she had said, but the wine he had drunk with dinner had made him drowsy.

“Your right, I have taken my eye off the ball,” he said.

“You know when you try to push two magnets together, that’s us David,” she said and turned off the light. He failed to grasp it was in fact, game, set and match.
David read a number of books about Italy. He liked the sound of Naples and it became the focus of his planned visit to the country. He had a propensity for organization and did a great deal of research, studying the topography in particular. He had been a consulting Geologist for mining interests, before resources became the bet-noir of the stock market. He poured over maps and train timetables. He purchased a pair of expensive shoes for walking, a good backpack and a decent collapsible umbrella. He intended going in November when the weather will be less predictable but there would also be fewer tourists.

When he arrived at the airport with three hours to spare, he checked his suitcase and made for the club bar, ordering a double Dewars, and then two more. He was 65, had hypertension, an oesophageal hernia, dodgey prostate and several questions of an esoteric nature he thought he may never have the answers for. He had been to Portugal, Scotland, Azerbaijan, New Zealand and the US. He had sat at this bar several times in the past and took a long time to drink a single beer and eat nuts. The bartender pretended to recognize him.

“A Warstein, Mister Flieden,” the bartender said with a winning smile. It was in the bartenders and the airlines best interest to know, with whom they dealt. When David ordered Dewars and left the nuts untouched, the bartender, whose name, according to the name-tag, was Henry, made a notation on the digital register about his customer’s current drinking preference, ‘capricious’ he typed. David picked up his carry-on bag and left the airport in a taxi. He wondered what would happen to his checked suitcase momentarily, and then decided he didn’t care.

“Take me to a hotel in the city, a decent one uptown,” he said to the cab driver

“Sure, what about the Sheraton?” the driver said.”

“The Occidental,” he said.

“You sure? The cabbie squinted at him through the rear vision mirror.

“Yes.”

“It’s not what it used to be mate.”

“It’s fine,” David said. He knew this route. From here to the city centre the landscape would be uninterrupted industrial. He closed his eyes and wondered what he was doing. The urge to travel had left him as quickly as it had come, and this drive past the non-descript rows of factories verified his misgivings. He was put off, not only by the phony bartender, but by a commitment to providing experiences, already available in his own living room. Even the cabin of an airliner or the state-room of a cruise ship was an iteration of homely comforts. It was glaringly obvious the attractions of travel were fundamentally similar to the mundanity of one’s own existence. Hoteliers, with their suites and sea-view rooms attempted an approximation of what a traveller had left behind. David saw the implicit absurdity of this, but then he himself had no clear idea of his own intentions, so who was he to judge.

“How was the trip? The cabbie said.

“I didn’t like the barmen.”

The cabbie was right about The Occidental. At the very least the art deco exterior needed a serious scrub.