He stood outside the window, briefcase in hand, giving me that newly hatched alligator look, that tiny smile at the corners of his mouth, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, as if we had just seen each other the day before, as if this was the typical way someone came to visit, knocking on your bedroom window in the middle of the night. I asked him where he’d been. He shook his hand in the air and explained that he’d had to untangle himself from his real estate problems, meaning his penthouse patio and the zoning board, and jump through what he described as a series of hoops before he could again pursue what it was he had been called upon to pursue. Hoops, his words, specifically arranged to prevent any kind of original thought or action on the part of the individual. He was lucky to have the practical knowledge, he called it, to be able to navigate all of the hoops, else he wouldn’t be standing outside my window but rather rotting away in a cell somewhere while the human race expired from its own stupidity.
