My Last Dinner At The Chrysalis

         You are as cold as ice.  Not that it is anything personal on your part, of course.  How you could be personable at all remains a mystery to me.  And I have to wonder if you ever had any true feelings at all.
         It all started back there at the Chrysalis.  If there ever was a place to hang, the Chrysalis was it.  Good wine, outstanding music, dancing, dark corners; what more could one ask for?  Black ties ought to be required, even though they weren’t.
         Carla Pitman brought me there the first time.  I was young, and my head was easily turned by anyone who showed me that kind of favor.  Carla turned out to be a slug, and that kind doesn’t last long at the Chrysails.  But by that time I’d become a regular.  And you were waiting, like a spider hiding in the darkness watching a carefully spun web for prey.
         For all her faults, Carla did have a certain sense of pizzaz.  She always was a good looker who knew all the right music, all the right books, all the right names to drop.  She knew how to wheedle the extra Euro out of an unsuspecting man.  It took me almost a year to figure out that I was the one being taken for a ride.  She did know how to have a good time, but she could only maintain that illusion for so long before moving on.  She had the bad grace to drop me at your feet.
         At first I had to wonder what it was you saw in me.  Where Carla had been attractive, your allure was hidden.  Your marked favor and kindly words were but barbed hooks.  I should have left, but for some reason your web held me.
         I suppose it was the money.  After all, you introduced me to Carlos Ramon.  We made it big, but you knew we would.  Hundreds of thousands of Euros, all ripe for the plucking.  He was good at that business, if a bit shady at times.  We did nothing illegal at that time, just working the edges.  He warned me, told me to leave you.  I still thought of you as a good luck charm.  Frustrated with you, he left me just before certain ‘business dealings’ caught up with him.  I always wondered if you had a hand in that.
         It might have been the intrigue.  Conrad Joseph definitely drew me into that.  He seemed so harmless at first.  He had a mind, let me tell you.  Einstein had nothing on him.  His medical research, all the things he was into doing, they all seemed so noble, so good for humanity.  Genetic cures for diabetes, and cancer, and the possibilities beyond that seemed endless.  There were obstacles to his work, of course.  I knew people, and he seemed so genuine in his pursuits.  There was money to be made in genetic cures, and I could see no harm in being in on the ground floor.  Then the men from MI6 came calling.  Conrad had conveniently disappeared.  He left a trail, one anyone could follow, and as I wasn’t generally in his path the MI6 people passed me by.  That time, anyway.  I should have realized then what your connection with all of this was.  But I was scared, and you were reassuring, and when those things come that close it was comforting to have room to fly under their radar.
         It might have been the fear.  I’d dodged the bullet with MI6 where Conrad was concerned.  But they were watching.  I’m not really certain why at the time.  So I laid low, keeping my nose as clean as I possibly could.  The straight and narrow, and all that.  But the Chrysalis was an unbreakable habit, and I was hooked.  And there you were; unassuming, seemingly sympathetic, relatively benign.  There were others, caught in your webs.  I could have left then.  I should have left then.  But my past was coming back, slowly, piece by piece to haunt me.  In the end, it was you who gently nudged me to where I ought not to have been.  I can still remember the trace of a smile on your face when you sent me into that trap.  I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen you smile before.  I thought nothing of it, but it should have been a warning.  I should have recognized it, and turned and run the other way.
         Now the MI6 guys hang all too close.  It seems that there’s precious little I can do except change my underwear that they don’t in some way observe in greater detail than I wish.  So I have come clean; I told them everything, all the sordid details, all the snags and snarls of your web in which I’d been caught.  Needless to say, they weren’t as sympathetic as I wished they would have been.
         Now they are on to you.  And the Chrysalis.  I hear it’s being shut down next month.  Perhaps I should not have told you, lest you escape when they draw in their webs tight.  Personally, I’ll miss the place.  I’d miss you as well, but the last gentleman you sent my way really showed me your true nature.  Fortunately for me he wasn’t a good shot.  My MI6 shadow got to him first.
         I see now your intricate web, the poison in your stinger, the intrigue behind your deceptive smile, and the ice in your veins.  I have to wonder at how easily I was blinded to you.  But Killing me won’t change that.  If you’re lucky, they might even beat you to the task.  That’s how little they love me.  But the noose isn’t completely tight; not yet anyway.  I am guessing that they want me to come after you, to kill you.  But I don’t think I’m going to do that.  They’re big boys.  They should be made to clean up their own messes.

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