We meet with the management in the boardroom of clumsy portraits, raising our smiles and concealing our blades, grievance rising to the surface like a long-forgotten password, with all its capitals, numbers, and special characters. Everyone demands calm, but we each envision our own definition thereof, which can be anything from clear waves licking sand, to needles in the scalp before an iron sky falls. Beyond plate glass, passers-by hesitate to divide eggs into a multitude of baskets, each wrapped in worn blankets or warm banknotes. There’s no budget for even breathing, but no one will budge, because money talks in a volley of autocue, and we are all payees or pussycats in a pop-up shooting gallery, poised for a fall. It’s an innocent enough massacre, and the mascara of weeping widows will barely run in the aftermath. When all, as it must be, is said and done, we’ll just have to manage our expectations, and bury our differences in unmarked graves.
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Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
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