They were men, very serious business men. They had business length hair and sometimes they would keep people on hold for hours, overnight even, they didn’t care. They were businessmen.

They were there to negotiate. Not out of need, but rather out of need to negotiate. The first thing one would do when he arrived was to take out his false teeth and bounce them off the filing cabinet. Then with just his gums, he would bite off the receptionists ear, spit it out and announce “I have an appointment. I’m here to negotiate. I’m a business man.”

When the other business man emerged they commenced ‘the handshake’. The handshake alone can take up to seven hours. They just clench and grin, trying to see who’s handshake is the firmest? Is the wyliest? Seeing who would break first? And how?

Once inside the ‘office’ the true strategies begin. First, one may assume a fetal position, and cry and grunt for coffee, and while the other got it, get up and barrel head first smashing the fax machine muttering “nothing personal, you understand it’s business.” Or stop and shit on the other’s desk and say “look what the economy is doing to my big fat white ass.” “Don’t worry,” the other would reply, inserting a letter opener into his own head, “my secretary will clean it up.

They maintain a civility while opening the other’s shirt and gouging into the other’s white flesh. Slowly pushing past the yellow fat that lined the entire inside of the body. The fat that just yesterday had been a clubhouse sandwich and “more cream for my coffee, please.”

Then while taking an important call from Europe, one would push past the spewing blood, that wretched from the other’s over worked liver, and find that beneath their pudgy little hand lay the heat from the heart. Each holding the other’s heart, eye locked to eye, smile locked to smile, they would face off. Each maintaining a perfectly normal conversation, punctuated by the occasional spasm from white knuckles on a blue-red-blood heart.