The Reincarnation

John woke up with a hangover. His head felt as if someone had poured kerosene in his ears, soaked his brain in it, and taken a blowtorch to it. It was still smoking, and John was determined to douse the flames.

Wrapped in his bed sheets, he stumbled from his bedroom into the kitchen, shielding his eyes from the bright morning sunlight. He had to concentrate just to turn the handle of the tap that hung over the sink like a stiffened serpent and hold a glass underneath it.

He drank the water in gulps and his body rebelled. His jaw muscles froze, his ears rang a high pitched warning, his brain throbbed, threatening to burst from his skull. Undeterred, he poured the rest of the glass down his throat, pinching his nostrils as he did so his stomach wouldn’t betray him. After his brain saturated itself, it sacrificed some of the water to his body so it could function as well.

“What the hell’s wrong with me?” he asked his cat Hannibal. Hannibal ignored his question and continued sinuously draping himself around John’s ankles, demanding some breakfast; his tail pert, the tip of it raised to the level of John’s knees.

Despite the condition of its owner, John’s apartment was immaculate. Every curtain, every appliance, every knickknack – the few that there were, this was a bachelor pad under it all – screamed affluence. His decor, Spartan as it was, revealed the secrets of a young man who had arrived in the world – a man who had found a shovel where others were fumbling with teaspoons. A man with a delirious, humming confidence, an otherworldly magnetism that drew everything he desired his way.

It was only outside its walls that the apartment revealed its true nature; it was like a golden egg nestled in a heap of last week’s rotting compost. John’s father had once told his son something he had never forgotten. “Son,” he had said, looking down at the boy and using his most condescending tone, however unintentionally, “if you want to avoid thieves, live in a place that is common. It doesn’t matter what you put inside the walls, if it looks poor from the outside, thieves will assume it is poor on the inside as well.” It was a rule John’s father had lived by, hoping his son would carry on in the family tradition. He had.

John fed Hannibal, stroking the long silver-gray fur on his back a few times as the cat gulped down his breakfast. At first the cat had only been a prop to attract women – joining John’s remote controlled light dimmer, the ever-present bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, the “sensitive guy” books placed strategically in view of visitors, the extra toothbrush in its package in the medicine cabinet – but John had grown attached to Hannibal. The cat’s vivacious demeanor suited him.

John wandered into the living room, his bed sheets trailing behind him. Sitting on the edge of his couch with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, he went over what he could remember of the night before, beginning his recollection with the office party; that he was sure of.

After all the Friday night penthouse office parties he had endured, all the fatuous compliments he had dropped, and all the times he had grinned widely while suffering yet another coworker’s blatherings about something John held no interest in, he was finally going with all the honor of a dignitary. Twenty-five and a Vice President, he had thought to himself in the elevator all the way up to the penthouse, straightening his tie, patting his short, blond, gel-slickened hair just so, smiling his shark’s grin despite himself, and humming “Pomp and Circumstance,” they’ll probably give me a medal tonight.

The party started out well. There were accolades all around, even from the Board of Directors, whom John didn’t think was fully comfortable with the idea of a snot-nosed twentysomething as a VP. Sure, they looked down their noses at him while simultaneously clapping him on the shoulder – but screw them. John had little patience for his older colleagues, whom he felt hid their obvious incompetencies behind a gilded veil of tenure and seniority. He felt that by showing them too much respect he merely validated their charade and made himself an accomplice to it.

Whatever they secretly thought, they couldn’t argue with the facts. He had made more money for them in his four years there than the other VP’s had made in their last four decades. That’s the beauty of the dollar, he thought, no one can contest it – it’s a black and white gauge of success that doesn’t discriminate.

The formalities and liturgies were to be expected. They always reared their unwholesome heads whenever people paraded themselves in front of one another, pointlessly expecting their meager accomplishments to outshine their human frailties and ungracious habits. John thought they were performed mostly to show tongue-in-cheek deference to an ancient and dying culture, one where gray-haired men put on a self-serving soiree to acknowledge themselves and to pat each other’s backs – indeed, to kiss each other’s asses. One in which rich old men got richer and more powerful by sucking more and more of the life out of a country John might have been proud of if he had been born a century earlier; maybe even if he had been born when these wrinkled old codgers were.

John didn’t like the antiquated, incestuous world he was forced to make his way in, but thought he needed to become fully accepted into this clan in order to extirpate it, so he grinned and bore their archaic rituals for the time being.

He amused himself with his plan to get high enough in the firm to take control away from the frail men who now pulled the levers. He wondered how long it would take to get there, and when he did if he would still feel the anger he felt now at the self-satisfied assholes flaunting before him.

The party was typical of the bloated bureaucracy. It spoke of wallets stuffed fat with more money than anyone could find the time to spend rationally. The penthouse was transformed into a Victorian setting, with gold and scarlet as the predominant colors. A symphony by Michaels & David filled the commodious room. Regardless of the age they appeared to be in, the business at hand was timeless – drinking and gossiping.

It was sometime in the middle of this gala that John felt a profound change. Profound for him because the tickles he had felt over the last few weeks he had simply ignored. The warm blossom in his lower chest that pulled at him – tried to compel him – he saw as an annoyance. John was not a man easily commandeered by distraction, but thinking about it now, he realized that he had been haunted for two weeks with miniature versions of this same phenomenon. Last night, John reasoned, must have been the grand mal.

He had only sipped at two glasses of champagne, but felt like his brain had checked out altogether and was now loosening its tie, ruffling its hair, wiping the shit-eating grin off its face, and humming “Taps” as it rode the elevator down to the lobby. It was taking with it most of John’s ability to reason. John put his champagne glass on the next gold tray that passed him and didn’t drink another drop in the hope of returning to his brilliant and self-assured self. It was a futile attempt.

So it’s midway through the party, John thought as he sat naked on the couch in his golden egg, his bed sheets swaddling his feet, I’m far from drunk but I’m not feeling well. That was where it started getting fuzzy.

He remembered the looks he got from the people around him. Looks of astonishment, looks of disgust. Their pale and frozen expressions of disbelief were on permanent display in the galleries of his mind. A Board member’s wife had actually slapped his face, as far as his picture of the evening would manifest itself. Others gave looks of “What did you expect?” as they chortled and turned back to their circle of conversation. “He’s only been out of diapers for a week now.”

The worst glimpse his memory served him, the one that haunted John all night as he slept under his silk sheets, was a punchline. He remembered telling jokes in an effort to calm himself and appear normal. But what kind of jokes were they? He didn’t even remember hearing them before, let alone telling them. Had he told them before, he surely would have known. It was not unusual for John to be dressed in his best suit on a Saturday night in front of his full-length mirror practicing jokes; getting them just right, getting the body language down, delivering the punchline just so. Building his confidence. Jokes were the grease in the wheels of the corporate world, he had often told himself. There was little John took for granted, especially when it meant developing his aplomb.

But even if he had known jokes like that, he never would have told them at this assemblage, with the Chief Executive Officer and most of the Board of Directors present.

She’s a nose dragger.

Was that the punchline? The part of his brain that governed his memory said yes, indeed, that’s the punchline of the joke you told last night. The joke you told to at least one of the Board members and his wife, and the one I think the Chief Executive Officer might have overheard. He did turn his head in your direction right after you told it. He didn’t look too thrilled with his golden boy then, did he?

The part of his brain that controlled the rest of him screamed “No!”