He woke. Pain squinted at the back of his head and a local area of his nose with a tunneling gnawing stab. As he rolled slightly he left a small thick crimson puddle. He undid his eyes, like zippers they peeled back to see DEATH hoving into view. Outlined with roses and thorns, it was set on a gunmetal grey clasp with the words BEFORE DISHONOUR. His focus gripped the belt buckle framed by the bangs of a brunette.
He leaned and pushed himself up, the pain attacked his frontal lobe. He felt pitiless and stupid.
‘You?’ she said.
‘I?’ said Lamar. ‘I must have hit a pole or something.’
She was a mass of hair in striped long-sleeved top under black t-shirt, the figure encased in jeans and boots. He forgot about the blood seeping out of his head ringed by the monotony of centre-stage nose pain, he even forgot who he was. He reached for a name but none came and the city ran in a blur all around him. La - mar … It came from out of nowhere. He didn’t find it easy with his tongue stuck in the corner of his mouth like an embarrassed fourteen-year-old.
She pointed at the pole helpfully and Lamar answered her facetiously, forgetting his manners again and she looked at him like she wanted to knock him over herself but she softened to the fool on the pavement in front of her and framed his head in her hands and imparted her knowledge on head injuries in a broad southern people’s accent that Lamar thought tremendously unique and was given pause again himself as he remembered the jet, in silver and black, like a silent and measured missile flying past the towers on the western ridge. Flew seemed a bit strong – it sneaked through the canyon between the buildings, cutting a path by stealth.
He mopped the blood matting on the back of his head with his tie and she stood up stretching herself before him, pulling her eyes wide to remind him he’d live and inquiring if he thought he could walk.
Lamar nodded because he didn’t know what else to do and then he asked who she was. She flashed her face back and Lamar copped a few frames of hair commercial as she mouthed ‘Terri … Terri Columbine’ and disappeared, sucked inside the glass-fronted hotel. Her sympathy to Lamar now only felt an inference. Columbine? Didn't they make stockings?
He blew his nose. A blood-chunk landed on his pants leg. He rubbed at it. She thought he was an idiot wandering dazed. She didn't know he was going to be a buyer for Gentry Ltd. He’d be every inch the modern corporate animal. Wouldn’t he?
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