Lap of Luxury

A harried looking man crouches on a bench on the bustling Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Mr. Scorgel. He almost looks like a cartoon; face drawn tight in a horrific mask, eyes red and puffy, his blond hair pushed straight up off a high forehead. He looks as though he’s on a drug binge or a four day drunk, but he’s dressed impeccably, which is so incongruous that you realize his struggle is of a different nature. Perhaps he sees ghosts streaming down the crowded mall, or hears banshees screaming in the alleys. It is everything he can do from springing out of the bench and running for his life. He has been told none of it is real. He begins to doubt this explanation, however, as the specters crowd around him. Lucky he has a small fortune in the bank account and personal assistants that get him dressed in the morning, push him out of the rooms of his penthouse condo on Loring Green, or else he would likely fall into a Hughsesque hibernation, cloistered behind his wealth.

Really, his help just want him out of the house so they can kick back in his luxury and enjoy the high life. The butler gets drunk on cognac in the library, and the maid dresses up in the dead wife’s evening gowns and parades about the chandeliered dining hall, entertaining an imaginary party of society’s elite. Maybe she sees the same specters as our Mr. Scorgel, only her specters laugh shrilly at the maid’s banter, and the ghost-gentlemen toast her elegance and beauty. Down in the private garage, the driver entertains the latest runaways he has transported from Loring Park in Mr. Sorgel’s Bentley. Cries and struggles muted by cinder block walls, the driver does his best to deflect the arterial spray from the tan leather seats. It doesn’t really matter. Any stains are answered for with an annoyed roll of his eyes; “Looks like Master Scorgel has spilled his cognac again.”

Now as we look upon Mr. Scorgel crouched on his bench near a bus stop, surrounded by shopping bags from Ralph Lauren, William Sonoma, Neiman Marcus, we interpret this look of utter horror in his eyes perhaps not from schizophrenic visions, but just maybe the harsh light of awareness. Maybe he knows exactly what happens back in his high-rise of iniquity.