maike

This can be either a lunch party, or lunch with the Party, depending on one's political orientation. In my alleged role as lackey of the capitalist dogs, I often float in limbo between the juggernauts of good and evil, in the chilly air between the tombs of Roosevelt and Mao. This day, in a small room often filled with laughter, satisfied from the meal and the apparently endless supply of beer, I can escape the magnetic field which keeps me afloat and drift away to enjoy the tapping of the raindrops on the window of the restaurant. My masters are thousands of miles away in their suburban fortresses, drowsy in the radiant comfort of a plasma screen as Conan does a little dance. They can't see me dancing on the blurry line between ideologies.

The Party representatives relax a little after lunch, to the point where they remove their jackets with the symbolic red emblem on the lapel. I know they want to start selling, to test if I can wrestle from my masters the cold cash for their mandarin dreams. But that would be impolite, and they are gracious and jovial and insistent that I enjoy their hospitality, which is pleasurable to accept. I relax with the knowledge that the selling will not come that day.

Someone asked me the other day, in a typical airport bar conversation between strangers, about my job. I basically said that I fly around the world and kill people's dreams. Fortunately, this had the intended effect of ending the conversation. But there is some truth to that description. The masters, circling above, lounging in the forward cabin of the plane, jump up and pace when they detect the scent of idle workers looking for jobs at any wage. The mandarins smell the comfort and prestige that could be theirs, if only the big airplane would just stop for a moment and let the money simply touch the land. Dreams, and the killer raps upon the door.

The selling begins the next day, as my new friends and I are sitting in a dark lounge at the train station. I keep looking at the huge clock on the wall, then at the ticket, which is silly because the two won't coincide for hours. We talk. I compose 10 word sentences, strip out the idioms, then pause for the interpreter. The project would help people. They are good people. The masters offer their support. The masters are concerned. Just like the movie, the Party representative speaks a paragraph, and all I get from the interpreter is a quick indication of his extreme happiness about my visit. I consider how to convey the idea that although the masters are nice enough people around the dinner table, when it comes to money they can be compared to the beings in Aliens. The group is still ebullient and animated from the excessive drinking at dinner the previous evening, and they often all talk at once in an attempt to have me understand how wonderful it would be for the masters to send the money. We all smile and hug as I put on my black jacket then walk to the train, stopping to smile and wave to them several times. They can keep their dreams for another day.