July 18 Codex IV: A New Circle of Hell
Invited into the opulent world of Manhattan's elite, a young man's sense of alienation curdles into a furious, drunken rage, leading to a spectacular confrontation and an exile into the cold midnight. A new fragment from July 18.
This next fragment is a raw nerve. It's a deep dive into the mind of my protagonist, Oliver Battolo, as he navigates a world he no longer belongs to. It is a story about the private rage that builds in the heart of a man who holds a truth he cannot speak.
“This is it,” Daniela said, pointing to the grand four-story townhouse at 45 West 84th Street.
“Which floor?” Oliver asked.
“They own the whole thing, silly,” she laughed.
Oliver stared, a wave of alienation washing over him before he even stepped inside. A whole townhouse here, a stone’s throw from Central Park, felt like a different category of existence, a level of wealth so profound it was practically a different nationality.
“Theater money,” Daniela smiled. “They bought it in the 90s when the neighborhood was rough.”
Oliver stepped into a space so grand it felt less like a home and more like a statement. A thirty-foot ceiling, a massive chandelier, and a dozen impeccably dressed guests already performing the intricate ballet of a high-society party. A tuxedoed man played a pop tune on a grand piano, but the sound felt thin, swallowed by the sheer volume of the room. It’s not even 9 p.m., Oliver thought. The anesthesia hasn’t kicked in yet. Give them a few drinks and they’ll be belting out the tunes, pretending to feel something.
Suddenly, a booming voice: “My dear, dear Daniela! My most favorite student of all time!”
A flamboyantly dressed man emerged, a peacock in a purple blazer and sequined trousers. This must be Steve, Oliver thought, observing him with the detached curiosity of an anthropologist.
“So glad you could make it, darling!” Steve gushed, rattling off details about a celebrity chef – Jean-Pierre Papin – with a breathless excitement that felt utterly exhausting to Oliver. It was all performance, every word a polished stone in the edifice of the evening.
“That’s incredible, Steve!” Daniela said. “I want you to meet my boyfriend, Oliver.”
Steve turned, his smile contracting slightly. He pushed his glasses down his nose and looked Oliver up and down, a clinical inspection that took in the button-down shirt Oliver had worn under protest. It was a uniform for a world he didn't belong to, and Steve’s cold, limp handshake was the official stamp on his passport to nowhere.
As Steve led them to the bar and vanished, Oliver felt a familiar, pressing need. He scanned the wine selection and his gaze fell on a 2006 Château Margaux. He felt a flash of grim satisfaction. He might be an imposter here, but at least he could recognize their expensive props. He accepted a generous pour, but before he could turn to Daniela, she was gone, pulled away by the party's gravity toward a friend.
He was alone. He wandered through the room, the exquisite wine a temporary shield. He felt like a ghost, a spy from another reality, observing the natives in their natural habitat. He spotted another ghost, a gaunt man in casual clothes, his face a mask of profound boredom. A kindred spirit. Oliver nudged his way toward him.
“Hi there, I’m Oliver.”
The man introduced himself as Reza and shook his hand with a weak smile. “I live here, or so I’m told.”
“Thanks for having us,” Oliver said.
“I’m not having anyone,” Reza sneered. “I fucking hate all these people. Society parasites.” The bluntness was a relief, a blast of cold, clean air in the suffocatingly polite room. “You seem fine, though,” Reza added, a mischievous grin cutting through his gloom. “Of course, you’ll probably prove me wrong any minute.”
Oliver felt a strange, intuitive flash – a former idealist wrapped in a shell of cynicism. The insight came from nowhere, another one of those mental fractures he’d been experiencing lately. “Daniela told me you acted in the 90s,” he said, deciding to follow the thread.
Reza’s eyes brightened for a moment, a brief flicker of a past self. “Ah yes, those were good times. I’d just arrived here as a student from Iran, and I got a lucky break being cast as Bloom in an alternative adaptation of Ulysses.” He drifted off for a moment, the memory feeling more real and vital than anything else in this opulent house. “An off-off-off-off Broadway play,” he laughed softly. “In an abandoned warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen, back when you had to step over junkies on the way in. It became a cult hit, and my career took off…” His voice trailed away, the light in his eyes going out as he returned to the present.
“And look at me now,” he said, his voice flattening into a monotone of resignation. “Sucked into this pretentious high-society, full of vacuous people whose sole aim in life is to be photographed next to someone famous for Instagram likes.”
The candor was flooring. Oliver quickly finished his wine and flagged a waiter for another. Reza raised his glass in solidarity. Their shared need for an anesthetic was the only real thing connecting them. After Reza delivered a bitter, final monologue on the vacuity of his life, the waiter returned.
“But that’s enough about me,” Reza said. “What do you do, Oliver?”
The question felt like an interrogation. Who was he? He was no longer the sales engineer from BlockWaves. He was the secret heir to a digital ghost, a man with a fortune he couldn't spend and a truth he couldn’t speak. He tried a joke about being a professional wine drinker. Reza’s pointed look told him it didn’t land.
Oliver sighed. “I’m a freelance tech developer.”
“What kind of tech?”
He hesitated, the word feeling dangerous, a piece of a forbidden language. “Bitcoin.”
The conversation that followed was a familiar ritual, an attempt to explain the cathedral to a man who had only ever seen the marketplace. He explained the difference between the pristine, logical architecture of Bitcoin and the grimy, chaotic bazaar of "crypto." He recounted the FTX fiasco, the words feeling rehearsed, a catechism he had recited many times before. He felt a familiar, hollow satisfaction as Reza listened, the feeling of a missionary successfully planting a seed in barren ground.
Just then, Daniela and Steve returned. After Reza made a dry joke and graciously accepted a glass of the Dom Perignon, he announced his departure.
“I’ve had one unexpectedly good conversation tonight,” he said, looking at Oliver. “And I don’t want to risk ruining the rest of my evening.”
After he left, Oliver remarked to Daniela how much Reza reminded him of his father. “The dark sense of humor… Dad wasn’t as jaded, though. He was more uplifting.” The comparison felt true and sad, a recognition of two men who had become exiles in their own lives.
As the night wore on and the wine flowed, Oliver’s sense of alienation curdled into a quiet, simmering rage. Reza was right. These people were NPCs, non-player characters in the grand, meaningless game of society. Their chatter about fashion, sports, and pop culture was just background noise, the ambient hum of the matrix. The Château Margaux roared through his veins as fuel.
By his eighth glass, he was introduced to Arman, an investment banker whose fitted suit and smug certainty represented everything Oliver now despised.
“I’m a bitcoiner,” Oliver said, the words a challenge.
Arman’s face scrunched in disgust. “Isn’t bitcoin dead? Headed to zero. It should, because it has no intrinsic value.”
The condescension, the sheer, unadulterated ignorance of the man, was the final spark. The wine and the rage combined into a volatile, explosive mixture. Oliver’s careful performance of civility shattered.
“You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” he exploded. The room seemed to fall silent around them. “There is no such thing as intrinsic value! All value is intersubjective! But why the fuck would you know that? You work at a bank, sitting right next to the money printer… your entire fucking industry depends on not understanding value!”
He took a staggering step forward, the entire weight of his secret knowledge, his frustration, his grief, pouring out of him in a torrent of furious, drunken truth. “Yeah, laugh now, but your precious fucking US dollar is being printed to zero! You’re parasites! Bitcoin is the only thing that’s worth anything. Absolute. Fucking. Scarcity. It’s rules without rulers. It’s individual liberty. It’s demonetizing war! It’s world peace, and you don’t have a single fucking clue!”
Arman stared back, his smugness replaced by shock. “Dude,” he finally said. “You’re drunk as fuck. You should go home.”
The arrival of the bouncer felt inevitable, a physical manifestation of his excommunication from this world. He felt Daniela’s presence, her horror a cold wave washing over him. He let them lead him out, the fight gone, replaced by a vast, hollow emptiness.
The cold winter air on the street was a slap, a brutal return to a reality he had just spectacularly failed to navigate. He sat on the bottom step, defeated. From inside, he heard a muffled cheer. Midnight. A new year, he thought. A new circle of hell.
Read the previous Fragments here:
July 18 Codex I: The Phantom Limb of Meaning