Blue Rings and Golden Handcuffs

SENSITIVE CONTENT

Suicide, substance abuse, mental health

Christopher Leon had been waiting in his manager’s office at Blue Ring Media for over an hour by the time his manager finally burst through the door at 8pm. The man was frantically moving some artist or other’s tour date around for the 3^rd time this week over the phone. “…and tell him that’s the last fucking move he’s getting!” he blasted into the phone, slamming his finger on the end call button so hard it was audible when he hit the screen. Christopher hadn’t even turned around. He stayed slumped in his chair. His manager, having taken a deep breath and quickly fixing his hair, walked behind the desk in front of Christopher and all too calmly took a seat. He was dressed in a peculiar suit, patterned like an Australian Blue Ringed Octopus, and still wearing his blue, circle lens sunglasses.

               “Chris!” the manager declared excitedly with the smile and his hands in the air “What can I do for you today? You’re looking a little beat my friend; you want some coffee?” “Um, well, I” began Chris, who was immediately interrupted by a piercing call for coffee. “So! What’s got you here so late, Chris?” Chris slowly sat up and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed. After a moment, he looked into the eyes behind the glasses, took a deep breath, and choked out the words “You gotta take this tour off the books, Felix. I, I, I, I I I can’t do it.” Tears began rolling through the dark blue rings beneath his eyes, catching in the wrinkles on his face that were appearing far too early in his life. Wrinkles he’d never let anyone but his manager and his family see without makeup.

               Felix tensed and interlaced his fingers under his nose, revealing the two gold watches on his wrists. To Christopher, this was a good sign that Felix was once again too occupied with his work to really take care of himself. With barely suppressed fury, Felix replied “You knew this was coming Chris. Don’t do this to me Chris.” Now he shot up and loomed over the desk and Chris. “We’ve been doing this for 20 years, Chris! We go through this every time!” Fury leaked out more and more with each word. Chris was now leaning back in his seat, overwhelmed by Felix’s onslaught. “Chris, you wanted me to make you famous! You wanna be at the top of that fucking billboard?! You gotta make some GOD DAMN SACRIFICES!” His last words pushed all the veins in his neck, head, and hands to the surface. He stormed around the desk and shoved his hand right in front of Chris’s face, displaying a golden ring lined all the way around with sapphires. “WE DIDN’T GET THESE BY SITTING ON OUR ASSES AND BITCHING WHEN GOOD WORK COMES OUR WAY!”

               Chris, drenched in terror, tears, Felix’s spit, and even a little sweat, remained silent, not knowing where to look. Felix huffed, put his hands in his pockets, and slowly walked to the window. Some moments of silence passed between them before Chris worked up the courage to speak. He stood as confidently as he could and, stammering, told Felix “I’ve never seen my dog for more than 3 months at a time, Felix.” The tears came rushing out now, but Chris stuck to his pose. “She’s 16 now, you know. She’s blind. She ain’t dead yet but she’s old, you know?” Felix hung his head and took off his sunglasses, sighing. He wearily walked back to his desk opened one of the drawers, rifling through the files inside. Deciding this wasn’t the drawer he was looking for, he opened another and pulled out a stack of papers that as almost a foot thick. It was full of tabs and clips and damaged edges. He dropped it on the center of the desk and pulled a lighter and pack of cigarettes out of the desk drawer.

               After his first drag of the cigarette, he looked Chris straight in the eyes with his menacing blue ones and calmly stated “This is the contract for the tour. You know how many agreements are in it?” Chris looked at the stack and as he was about to reply was cut off by Felix, who said “That was rhetorical. You don’t know. Neither do fucking I. We made a lot of promises, Chris. Promises we have to keep.” Chris turned the stack towards himself and inspected the first page. In about 20 seconds, he was chuckling, wiping away his tears. He then looked at Felix in grim amusement and asked him “You show this prop to anyone who comes into your office looking to talk about terms?” Felix froze. Chris, knowing he was right, continued “Couldn’t even put the right band name in the blanks, huh? I’d bet you know what the band’s called, but I’d bet you don’t know my dog’s name even though you see her every year at Christmas. You know what?” Chris took the ring off his finger, a perfect match for the one Felix wore, and set it atop the contract “Fuck the contract. Not like I got any money left to take anyway” and walked out of the office. Felix stood in silence, wondering what had just happened.

               When it finally hit him, he rushed out, calling after Chris, who had already made it out the front door and was climbing into an extremely ugly convertible. “Wait!” cried Felix. “My hands are tied on this, Chris. Please! Don’t do this!” Chris started the car and breathed a heavy sigh. Looking over at Felix, he said, “Her name’s Annabell” and pulled away from the building. Felix watched the car turn at the light down the street. He stayed frozen there for a few minutes after. Discarded wrappers and dirty napkins rolled past him in the breeze. “Fuck” he whispered sharply, and he went back inside. As he walked through the door, he was stunned to find his receptionist wasn’t there, and his following search for coffee turned up nothing. Then it hit him: his receptionist always went home at 7:30. There was never anyone to bring him and Christopher coffee in the first place.

               Felix made himself a cup of coffee, returned to his office, and pulled out a well-used inflatable mattress from one of the cabinets. Once his bed for the night was set up, he started planning how to manage the eventual fallout that the numerous breaches of contract would bring about. It was no use though. His thoughts continuously swirled back to Christopher. Every time he tried to bring himself back on task, something in his mind dragged him back to some feeling he couldn’t make sense of. Before long, he had tears running down his stoic face as he wrote. Finding he couldn’t keep working like this, he looked at the planner on his phone to see what he’d originally planned to do that night. All he found was more work. “Of course,” he chuckled to himself “it’s Friday, why would I have anything else going on?”

               Felix walked over to the window and stared out of it for a long while. He wondered to himself why he couldn’t stop thinking about Christopher, why he felt a tension and energy he’d normally need a few lines of coke to get, why his thoughts seemed to crash and bounce against inside of his skull. His head, hands, and legs began to twitch as the speed of his thoughts outpaced his ability to think about them. His teeth squeaked as he ground them together. Now at last his face began to twitch uncontrollably. He dropped to his hands and knees and wept in agony. He didn’t know how long he cried, or how loudly he screamed. When he finally did stop, he slowly rose to his feet, his mind absolutely blank. A feeling of being a passenger in his body overcame him and his body began to move on its own. His thoughts cried out for him to stay and finish his work, but his body would not listen. Instead, his body walked out to his car and drove him home, having only worked for him 11 hours that day before his meeting with Christopher.

               His body entered his house like a man on the brink of death. Its slow, shuffling gait took him to a brief stop at his liquor cabinet to select a companion for the night, where he watched it pick a rather nasty Tequila. After a long climb up the stairs, it sat down on his immaculately made and ever empty bed. His hands opened the bottle, and his mouth began to drink from it. His throat protested but was overruled. His eyes and hands worked together to find some sad music for his ears to enjoy and, when they were done, picked up the tequila again, which was the cue for his legs to get him up and pace him around the room. Every once in a while, his hands and mouth would bully his throat with the Tequila. After the 3^rd or 4^th bullying in well under an hour, his throat stopped resisting.

               A few drinks later the alcohol brought a fog over Felix’s mind and body, and with the fog came a modicum of control. He stopped pacing. He sat a took a deep breath with another drink.  A desperation he had not known in years started to boil to the surface. He needed to speak to someone. Someone who cared. But who would fit the bill? Being as drunk as he was, he could not tell. So he started texting anyone he could think of. Some of the messages were coherent, along the lines of “Hey, I know it’s been a while, but I need to talk to you. I’m in a tough spot.” Others were fertile ground for dreaded tabloid rumors, like “He LEFT ME! What do I live for now? He was the only one I’ve ever felt close to. We’ve been doing this since our 20s and now he’s gonnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeee. What do I do???” Still others were incomprehensible jumbles of emojis, letters, and tangential conspiracies. Worse yet, everyone he had messaged was a work colleague of some kind or another. Those were the only contacts he had in his phone outside of his parents, who were rotting in some retirement home in New Hampshire.

               He would not have known what they said or thought anyway, though. He was seeing doubles and triples by the time anyone texted him back. There was no way he could read. During one of his desperate attempts to make sense of a message, his phone began to vibrate. With a little luck, he guessed which of the 3 green circles he needed to swipe to answer the call. “Heyyyy” began Felix “I’m super fucked right now.”

               “Yeah,” the voice on the phone sighed “some days be like that. What’s going on?” Over the phone Felix could hear the thumping base from a nightclub and no small amount of excited yelling.

               With some slurring and crying he did not expect, Felix explained “I just lost my oldest client. 20ish years? I think I’ve been working with him? Like, he was my FIRST CLIENT EVER. We GOT STARTED TOGETHER. And it FUCKED, like, a REALLY big contract. Like…” Felix heard the yelling get louder. Chanting for shots blared from his phone, so he took another drink in solidarity. He then heard over the phone “Come on Ben! Do another line with us!” The voice responded “Hell yeah! Just give me, like, 60 seconds! Ok Felix?

“Yeah?”

“Look, losing a big client is tough, but it happens to the best of us. It doesn’t matter how much work you put in, at some point you’re gonna fuck up and lose a few. Remember, our clients are just customers, not friends alright?”

Felix hesitated a moment before responding “Yeah, uh, alright.”

“So look, Felix, take one of those Oxies I gave you and I’ll call you tomorrow night, alright?”

“You promise?” Felix asked feebly.

“Yeah, yeah, now go take care of it, alright? Talk to you tomorrow!”

The call ended. Felix did as he was bid, being more or less in control of his body now. He laid down on his bed and his phone remained silent. As he waited for the oxy to kick in, he thought about all the other clients he’d lost. Things weren’t good in the early days. He worked a lot more back then because of that; 16 hours a day instead of his now usual 12. Most of his early clients left. There were times where Christopher was the last client he had, and at times like that Christopher would take him out to sushi. Felix realized he had never known the joy of a beer with a caterpillar roll before he’d met Christopher. In fact, it was always Christopher who he had called when times got bad. All the other relationships in his life were strictly business. The relationship between client and manager, manager and manager, manager and company, were strictly about the flow of cash and favors.

Felix ragdolled himself into standing up and made a short list of resolutions to himself.

1: He would call Christopher when he was sober and apologize.

2: He would release Christopher as a client and take him on as a friend.

3: He’d think about releasing himself from this line of work. After all, even if the contract fell through, he’d have plenty of money to fall back on if he just sold this home he never really used.

Content with his resolutions, he took off his blue ringed suit and set his prized ring down on his nightstand before taking one last drink and passing out. 3 days later, paramedics found him dead, wearing only his underwear and his 2 gold watches. His funeral was well populated, but only one set of eyes had any tears: Christophers’. Everyone else was consumed with hollow laments and angles on negotiations with reclusive millionaires. In the coroners’ report, they had noted that when they removed his watches, they had tarnished a pair of blue rings around his wrists.