In the suite upstairs, they found heavy curtains drawn against the festive town, lamps sparsely distributed in perpetual twilight of tobacco smoke, no cut flowers or potted plants, a silence punctuated only rarely by speech, and that generally telephonic.
* * * * * * * * * *
"curtains drawn against the festive town"
They are shutting out fun and excitement and life. This is a room of dour attitudes and dark machinations. The business of the fair isn't what the tourists' enjoy; whatever the real business of the fair takes place in dark rooms with fat and glaring men who know no joy other than their own boot on somebody else's throat and multiple stacks of currency.
"lamps sparsely distributed"
The kind of business these men are up to would disintegrate in light. I'm not even sure I should be using the term "business." They are surely up to cheating and conniving and gaming the system. Like the use of the word "free" in "free energy" in science, the use of the word "free" in "free enterprise" doesn't mean anything near what common sense would dictate. In business, it means "free to do whatever anybody will allow us to get away with after having given them a reasonable amount of money which is next to nothing compared to the amount of money we'll make by buying all of these people's silence and complicity."
"perpetual twilight of tobacco smoke"
These types all smoke because life holds no real joy for them. They cannot see the point of whimsy and joy. Nicotine is the only thing that ignites any kind of spark in their brain, and then, of course, only for a short time before they're simply addicted without the rush or the high. Smoking tobacco is a fitting metaphor for the type of person who has killed all the joy from life. It's just a rote action of a memory of something that once caused a fleeting feeling of excitement or a brief moment of optimism. Now They just sit in clouds while they grump and glower and play with other people's lives for their own selfish desires.
"no cut flowers or potted plants"
No beauty and no life. It would be sacrilege to introduce either to their depraved idolatry of capitalism.
"a silence punctuated only rarely by speech, and that generally telephonic"
No idle chatter. No friendly discussions. No getting to know anybody else. These are not friendly men. All They need to know must arrive from some other place by telephone. All the knowledge They must convey needs go out via telephone to some business partner or factory or gold rush town in some other far away location. They are simply conduits to keep a dark kind of power flowing, a kind of power that takes away light and imposes darkness and despair.
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