Until finally, it recurred.
It had morphed from persistent, heated opposition into smouldering, silent acknowledgment of divergent perspectives.
Indeed, over time the divergence had become almost completely ideological, as even Cross himself had not for many years violated the membrane that Billings had insisted since they'd first begun working together fundamentally must never be...
Violated.
That membrane was the thin and fragile division that must at all costs, according to Billings, exist between journalistic objectivity and penetration of the subjective rendering of reality...
The story.
The debate had receded in recent years...
Until that is, the night before...
When it recurred.
The two old friends had converged at Rzeszow, in Poland.
They had sat down together at the bar in the Bristol Hotel, and were sipping whisky, wondering at the world.
"How had everything come full circle," a child or a young student might have asked.
But these two men had already seen so much...
Too much...
And any sense of wonder was really more having to do with wondering how much longer people would be able to coexist...
How much longer would any of us be able to stave off the inevitable end to which we seem to have consigned ourselves in dire and distant antiquity?
The evening had started well enough.
They embraced fondly and spent a few minutes catching up on recent travel, and the stories they had each recently contributed to their collaborative journal, "Penetration."
They hadn't seen one another in many months, but when Putin could no longer contain his urge the attention of the world fell upon Ukraine...
And so too, did journalists descend upon the region like a swarm of locusts, as Billings always liked to describe the phenomenon...
That soft, well-intended seeming grasp after the place, the time, and the space within which to work words that can somehow characterise the pestilence of humankind in all its glory...
For the writer's own glory...
For the whirring wheels and winds of war...
For whichever journal, newspaper, podcast, or bathroom wall they serve...
Ad infinitum...
Ad nauseam...
"We are the cheapest whores of all, my boy," Billings always used to say.
He always used to say that...
When they had first worked together...
Thirty some years ago...
In Bosnia.
He said it again...
The night before.
Cross smiled and drank his glass dry.
The pretty young woman who was attending them was quick to come and refill his glass with warm smile.
It was cold outside.
It was the world.
There was a palpable electricity about the place.
People had come from all over the world to be as close to the front as they could reasonably get, whilst still having access to a five-star hotel.
It was disgusting, Cross had thought to himself.
It was human.
Everyone was alive and abuzz, talking about the war.
Everyone was quickened to some extent or other by the prospect of impending doom or diminishment of structure...
By the misery of others.
Cross said to Billings, without taking his eyes away from the woman behind the bar, "It's almost like we wanted and willed this into manifestation... into being."
The latter nodded and took a sip of his whisky.
Just then, a drunk actor whom everyone recognised bumped into Billings and spilled his drink.
He blanched and began to apologise, but Billings cut him off and said, "Just keep going."
The man turned abruptly and continued on.
Cross chided his friend.
"You could have at least let him apologise," he said, as the woman refilled Billings' glass.
"What, and deprive myself the view of his ass walking away?"
Cross laughed.
"You're shameless."
They both laughed.
They drank.
The woman behind the bar attended them.
And then Billings had to mention Bosnia...
And the fine line between journalistic objectivity and the frivolous penetration of the subjective rendering of reality...
And he'd just had to ask whether Cross would lose himself, and his objectivity...
Yet again...
Whether his "romantic realisation humanity role," as Billings liked to call it...
Would recur.
Clear recollection of what followed receded in Cross' mind like a tired debate.
Alcohol had clouded whatever followed, and he was as glad of that fact as he was of the sensation between his legs.
He was lying in a bed.
His eyes remained closed...
Until he opened them.
He saw the woman from behind the bar...
Attending him.
He stopped her.
He brought her close to him and he kissed her.
Then he put her on her back and with closed eyes invoked a violent lament at what the world is...
At what people...
Are.
He took her again and again...
Until the sun finally came...
Calling faintly...
Against the icy...
Window panes.
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