Dead end I/III — Business first
A story in three parts about facing our limits
Leaving the restaurant that evening, she thought that something was going to go wrong. Perhaps it was the disapproving looks of passers-by for this woman dressed in a man’s suit and stilettos, elegant and tattooed, and visibly drunk. Perhaps it was the color of the night, black and shiny in the cold rain of late autumn.
At thirty three, she was at the head of a growing company, crushing most of its competitors in its meteoric rise. After dinner, exchanging warm handshakes, she had left her collaborators at the table, laptops next to their plates, to finalize the presentation of a project which could represent a significant part of the turnover of her company next year. If they won. Winning. Winning was her reason for living, her dope, her orgasm. She saw herself reinvesting half of her earnings in the business, and splashing the other half in luxury hotels in Bali. That was what made her run. Win, play, replay, enjoy. Win and take. She left behind a fully motivated team. They were going to win.
She walked, sometimes determined, sometimes staggering, on the way to her Tesla which she had parked a few hundred meters from the restaurant. But after a few streets, she no longer recognized the neighborhood. At night, the buildings looked old, the frontages decrepit. On some floors, the windows were broken. The further she went, the lighting became dimmer and the the streets more dilapidated.
When she got to the place where she thought she had parked her car, she found herself facing a wall. It was a dead end, where there was neither car nor dwelling. Three walls, the top of which she couldn’t see. However, the only idea that occurred to her was to climb the wall at the end. She couldn’t imagine for a moment backing up, turning around, giving up. It was straight on, or nothing. We do not know if she was obsessed with the idea of recovering her Tesla which was one of the attributes of her status, her image, what she represented for her professional entourage, or if the idea that nothing could resist her imposed itself on her in an extraordinary way, or if alcohol had disturbed her mind.
A tramp who used to sleep in the dead end, discovered her dislocated body, with open wounds, all her broken bones and exploded skull, in a large puddle of blood. The autopsy concluded that there had been a fall of more than four hundred meters. There was no question that it had not been an assault. Under her broken nails, the report mentioned traces of granite and moss, and almost at the top of the five-meter-high wall, the forensic team found traces of blood which corresponded to that of the victim. No one could explain the violence of the fall. It was so inexplicable that, ultimately, the police falsified the forensic report. Anyway, she had no family and, they thought, there are so many dead people every day.
The company was bought by the employees, who won the important project they were working on that evening. Business first, there was no choice.
