THE RING
Each stride covers one-and-a-third paving slabs. There are 906 paving slabs between the station and my apartment on West 56th Street. Although I’m not one to show off, my apartment is very expensive: lavishly furnished with chairs and tables tailor- made by Charles Eames and Philippe Starck, it far eclipses the apartments of my colleagues. As I walk, my English patent Oxfords click on the sidewalk like a ticking metronome, each step precisely as long and fast as the last; not quite a strut or saunter, yet neither a trudge nor a traipse. Indeed, the pavement is duly traversed with an unperturbed air of dominance, the cracks in the paving negotiated with an elegance only a sagacious few dare undertake, with dominance reminiscent of that of the Founding Fathers who first colonized this great land.The click- clack of my almost celestially gleaming shoes against the dull grey concrete of the sidewalk inspires a commanding sense of superiority over my peers that I find helps galvanize my intense aurora of perplexity. * I’m a man of efficiency, really. As the great Bertrand Russell (a logician I find myself particularly partial to) once said: punctuality has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned; it is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. One would be surprised to find a saint getting drunk, but one would not be surprised to find him late for an engagement and yet in the ordinary business of life punctuality is absolutely necessary. Fortunately, I’m no saint; I’m a businessman. Well, a dealer of sorts, dealing in the everyday commodities of life. In a profession
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