Witz

IV

A miasma of gray puff and cloud congestion, an exhaustion overhanging the water, which is ice…everything that’s not burning has already burnt. Ash has fled the air under the headcovering of night.

It’s earliest morning, and through its darkness waning an apparition comes forward, anomalous because it’s dark itself amid dawn; it comes starkly, with unrelenting drive, with pitiless force, as if the blackest god in the sky; it pierces the cloudbank, a ray of negative light, then screeches sideways, hisses, honks, comes to rest at Ben’s feet. It’s a limousine, a new one or the Joysey old repaired. Frank Gelt emerges from the gloom, holding open its door. Hamm lumbers from behind, bows for Ben His head and stumbles Him inside, choking, barely breathing from the fume. He’s veiled, still; He can’t use His eyes, His lids give only black. Again with the veil, it’s precautionary, not that it doesn’t also make for laudable mystery, suspenseful. A thing. Doors shut, lock. And then the limo, a refitted chariot charred with sunrise’s flame gone out, wheels around, heads to return in the direction of its arrival: straight ahead, star-bound, fading at a falling skid out over the ice without yield, hurtling offIsland, unstoppably fast, deathbringing, leadenfooted out over the sand over the ice then over the slick skin of tar.

Ben presses His veil up against the window tinted with weather, which passes for air thickly viscid, the limo passing through clouds, muscled intestines giving way to the cranial gray, bloodied iron, lifecold steel, metal limbs this rusted meat…the city once dead just now being reborn, hulking in the effort of its breaths ever higher above the grossest of streets: glaring heights of lipidic marrow, vertical artery, glassy and gelatinous organs peeking through insatiable tumult; fogflecked the digestive din, pulsing penetralia oozing light…the neon clot of billboard and sign; the mucilaginous asphalt, the strut, truss, and trestle; millions of links to the chain around Manhattan, binding this island of the Island in coils of burbling, gurgling cloud the limo bursts into air, as mere puffery, nothing.

Welcome, Ben. New York, it’s about time. This is what you’ve been missing, what you’re missing still, blind to all this, witless. The city of the windows of the house, the city of dreams and day, the world He’s been waiting for through glass and air for days and nights, and still denied Him, the city incarnated previously only through glimpsed Garden views and bunkbedded gossip, the memories of surviving FBs then dying, now dead; this city the repository of all dreams, and of dream itself, a holy of holies, a blessed covenantal ark of two of every kind and more, too many — each, though, an unknowable island unto itself, floating purl in the air on the sea on the earth itself floating within an emptiness, an Island alone in the universe as cause of its own belief, belied, its wisdom shrouded in distance, remove, exile, cloudbank, smoke and ice: each one of us is an Island, nothing too original about that, but each of one us is an Island with a city atop, building a city atop; a mensch building his city ever higher and forever, a huge high world of a city in the head of every one of us, shored in with skin and wharved with bone. All the lanes and towers and scrapers and panes, their scale’s been known, has been registered, at least suspected, of nights and days immemorial and insomniac through the windows of the bedroom of His parents — O but the people, Other people, their lives, that doing going life, that’s what’s worth it, that’s what would’ve riveted: people wanting and needing and loving and losing; it’s noble, this wanton heedless loss; it’s incredible, this loveless need. Though they seem not people but animals, hopeful beasts, hoofing and snouting out their crude existences, stuck in the mud of their own minds, their mindlessness, seeking only to satisfy the barest, the basest — survival: the awareness that they are, they recognize that, and that they must be — that, too; and then, that their purpose is that they must keep on being until, and in the face of it All, which is a thousandeyed, a millionmouthed, with too many ears to pierce into servitude, and too many feet to knowingly toe. It’s amazing to some, how humbling, debasing, destructive if one isn’t strong; others think it grand, life in this bestial city, that it’s exciting, ennobling, inspirational even. God bless them, God save them and keep them — they know not what they do; they know not who they are, only if. For them, for now, that’s enough.

Animals, mewling punching kicking beasts and curs. Animals, but animals with beards, suddenly with sidelocks, animals adorned in fringes, clothed in black, in new boots and hats and wigs, which are black, too, and even laundered; their hides the purest snow. Without, everything’s slushy, sullied, trashed. Horse dropping desecration. Old oil on the quivering gelled surface of the eye. Lenses smudged in ember, whorled fingerprints of ash. Gray burrows into drifts of boot and cart. Filling letter slots, mailboxes, even mouths to stut and spit, silence, then, as if in a renewed language, an attempt to expound again. Arguments batter every corner. These animals never relent. As the limousine takes turns, rights lefts, makes drastic swerves, turnarounds, Us and loopdloops, it passes packs of seething envy, parts resentful mobs to leave them in its wake exhaust to breathe on — the window cracks, a stone’s been thrown, or has fallen as hail, be charitable. The city has chosen, it’s changing: bodies dumped to bump drifts of fall long cleared; apartments have been repainted, appliances replaced on warranty usurped. Restoration’s in the air, He’s sensing even without a face…Ben’s limousine swerving as if driven by the quick pitiful flicks of His searching head, His form, Him an entrapped wounded mammal attempting only to window a view through the veil. They hurl into embankments, stagger around in skid to seek a throughstreet, a shoveled path, a route alternate if wild: maps are useless, fit for kindling, to stuff into shoes for warmth. Understand, there have been casualties, with service down if not delayed: the numbers have been unordered, readdressed, the grid has come undone. Junk juts up from pilings midstreet, mounds of sooty clump, dark humps of tar macled with ice in glittery brilliance. The limo takes a wide turn, cuts across meaningless lanes to curve into a straightaway, pacing itself against the Parkside sprawl, lined with streetlamps that’ve wilted from the crooks of bishops into logs obstructing, laid frozen across Fifth Avenue from sidewalk to the sewer. The Park’s overgrown in icicle fang, a flank of clods and butts bearded in white, rising to overflow the walls that stand to stop the spill from threatening the lane: walls of fieldstone, filthed, themselves walled with heaps of trash. Ben hauls over to the window facing, collapses against its blind: Uptown, the arching arctic crests and crowns, the dusted trails with the Reservoir rinked; low gusts winding frost along the floor of the Park, through tunnels, over bridges, then across its lawns, their bushes and shrubs snowed as if to cool and blameless monuments, freshly flush with light. Untrafficked, it’s this pure polarity by day, a golden pale suffused by latter dusk — with a strange and utterly clear crystal coddled deep and cold within.

Through the mist, this hulking ice preserve — a sudden spurt of metal, then the estrangingly sunsanded stones of Jerusalem: here, a towering assemblage of brute rock arrayed in courtyards, gated in blocks of ice never to melt, everlasting, or so it’s said. This, the once and future Temple, to be risen Solo-monaic in its particular design, Scriptural in its general layout, and updated to modernity in every other amenity known to mensch and God alike. At the foot of its stairs and their twin plinths makeshifted with fiberglass fronds, twin lions prowl starving, guarding only their own skeletons: they’re joined to the stairhead by links of ice in a chain of ice, frozen around their manes. From this ascent, an upward airing — spires to lance the sky, to thrust their wound and drag the heavens down: banks of clouds fallen, dispersed into the Temple’s wings to be nested on all sides in courtyards of their snow, circling ever more sacred, to be centered evermore holy, ringing around the steaming freeze of the altars and lavers. All here, within, however, is of this other substance, this openness divinely synthetic whether of glass or weather, this material that is both of them at once, and neither — in that the inmost walls of the Temple are not walls but screens or scrims of this wondrous transparency; a thoughtless clarity, though as solid as study, and as thick as its books; walls through which any supplicant — speeding to the site, His limo heading into the Park on the sole access road to park itself wide at the very foot of the edifice, unfinished — could gaze his or her prayer directly into the middle of the structure, through each circumambulating courtyard, tripping, slipping, past every barrier of the sacred and then, beyond; walls, though, through which only the one true supplicant, it’s been said, Ben, could find His way beyond all mist, the mystifying freeze, straight into its generative core, the coldest inner sanctum: a block or cube of this icy substance; some say hollow, others say not, but a block nonetheless — the barren womb of the Temple’s heart, the seed to this total husk. As Mada comes quickly official down the stairs to greet, a mass of surrounding workers in their blue reflectored hardhats and whiteblue parkas drop their picks and shovels and make to restrain the raving lions, which lunge weakly to take nips and nibbles, only to soon tire, quiet, and muzzle themselves with nuzzles of the limo’s tires smoking, sniffing, licking, then lying down against the heated hull asleep.

The Park — a world Hanna had freshly laundered, laid upon the table of Manhattan, a cloth usually reserved for festive use, for company, now here without guests for the glorification of its centerpiece, the Temple. A towering worship of Babeling chutzpah. Ben’s escorted up its steps, almost slips, regains the landing, a mustering for workers and supply, stands small before the freeze. A threat to melt with the rise of any morning’s sun: GrecoRoman pediments topped with gilded domes, minarets held up by columns their canopies heaped hectic with frozen fruit; styles melting into the style of styles, into a pure if meaningless grand, nonsensical, less complex than merely complicated, more interests, many inputs: hundreds of commentaries have been going into its construction, are still, and there are even more designs to come; melting into each other, into themselves, and away, in a pomposity of rubble, alternately modestly plain, and ostentatiously ornate: a construction out of every century, and of none at all, in appearance an albino or transparent roach grown gigantically ancient in the sky; a monster, then, or its fossil, set with unimaginable cubits of inaccessible chamber, gates that give out onto portals, which give out unto walls, its entire phenomenon overwhelming by committee, with apparently infinite seemingly only ornamental pediments and plinths suspending emptiness over trembling void, its buttresses not buttressing but bowing, not flying but falling to porticoes, which are being lined with a statuary that to remain permissible must retain facelessness, as if a gallery of the disappeared, the dispossessed, as if niches and arcades for the unformed and unknown; the structure entire and the hope its unfinished implies a mess of every style that’s ever occurred to money, every style ever evident, possible, and especially attractive, to wealth and associated intimations of posterity potential on the agendum of its legion backers and benefactors, its myriad donors and trustees, whose exalted names — those of revivified Palestein, the Abulafias, illustrious above the others — would have been carved in fiery gold upon the cornerstone, had anyone thought to lay one.

Ben’s escorted up, through the excessive doors, which have to be edged open by the harnessed tug of a unionized team who pause every exertion or so to mob Him and His massing twelve bodyguards unveiled, Ben’s rebuffing lookalikes accompanying, for autographs they won’t grant, and miracles He can’t. His breath comes short and private. Up a flare, as if a tongue on fire, a redcarpet leading into the outermost courtyard that feels as if it might melt under His stride — is already melting, squishing underneath with each step, a seepage; the entire space behind Him, in front, under and above, hewn of that outlandishly modified ice that seems as if it, too, must return to a form of water, of air, to nothingness, forgotten, only to pour out new histories to be decided upon the next hardening, the cycle coming — a world destroyed with its faithful then flowing only to solidify all over again, reformed. Ben’s led with His hands out in front of Him, to touch, to feel, to mold: Him to grope through openings forever made and unmade, perpetually unfixed, past walls hung with the fresh flayed skins of test sacrifices, flapping animal tatters, dampened imageless coverings and curtains in a knotted wash, a fraying whorl: through halls left unfinished in holy negligence, secreting the odd ornament or gingerwork, molding, swirls, whirls and flumes, flows and risen waves, Him flailing past candleboats, votivelike buoys, copper basins, casks and flasks and censers, then at the far reach of an inner courtyard, a tarp-shrouded, twinesecured package resting upon a wooden pallet — the Ark of the Covenant, on permanent loan from the Vatican, courtesy of the Pope, Pius Zeppelini. It feels as if this whole edifice around Him, behind Him, in front, above, below, is about to collapse with His progress, to drain away in His passage, swirling Him filthy as profane, profaning, toward the gutter and the sewers, to gurgle out to ocean. Dizzying. And inspiring of guilt that His presence might signal such disaster. A shofar blast, an avalanche. Three short toots followed by one long moot, a tekiah to sound destruction. Ben tries not to breathe, concentrating Himself on following the carpet. Through another momentary gateway, He’s entering the Innermost Courtyard: full of drift, a vastly unsullied spanse — expansively fictile, a world of snow and flake, of gusting dust, germing in white and clearer, to a bluish glassiness, suffusing…the weather here, as it appears this enclosure has its own, is not fall but the scrim of fall, its skin’s fall, this sheer air paling, and then again vivid, revelatory in changing skies, prismatic but always pellucid, like a piacular rainbow whose only color is light in every shade. Set against the furthest wall, another set of doors, also steel though these significantly smaller than those of His initial entrance, now requiring His stoop slid down a flight of stairs — there, under the ice, Der stands decorous, impeccably impatient, leaning against the arch leading to the Holiest of Holies.

Inside’s laidout like a synagogue, a frozen shul grand and heavened with a divinity of outside light, sun and moon; its arched entranceway a soar, then the stadiumed sanctuary tapering, fluming itself intimately, into a modest front: a raised platform topped with pulpitry twinned at opposite ends, facto-rynew still in their swaddles. Between the pulpits, there’s an iron bank vault with combination lock, coming covered with a veil of its own, the ark of the Ark, the hold of the Law. A ruck of work rattles this holiness; it’s whisperish, hurried — this quick, cool chatter of labor, indistinct, as if a weather holding words inside its womb; such air keeping of secrets, freezing them, stilling Ben’s own tongue, to lick silently at His veil. Der escorts Him down the stairs past tiers of pews presently halfinstalled, their auxiliary aisles filled with scrap, cedarwood planks and troughs of coruscant nails. Upon the walls of the shul, scribes aloft in slings from scaffolds and with picks and hammers are rapping into that forgiving substance the names of the Affiliated dead — those of New York’s greater metropolitan region — to eventually, annularly, wind their way around the space, from floor to limitless sky: a miraculous racket, in that it doesn’t bring the house to fall, and they’re only on the B’s…

A hunch rises from a middle pew, a rare woman, if old and dumpy — she’s a yenta, a matchmaker, don’t hold it against her.

There’s silence, as the offer’s His or Der’s — she’s been kept waiting for over an hour.

It’s about time. Who would say this, if not her?

How long were you going to make me wait? Or this?

Hanna, for one, if she hadn’t been dead, her weight leaned up against the ovenunit, the rangy stove with its four burners crisping curiosity atop while her son, her only son in older age if ever He’d make it He’s in for the weekend, just visiting, doubling up on a family reunion with an amorphous sort of business conference He won’t talk about, He shouldn’t, just sitting at a table in a kitchen in a house that once was His, no longer, at His size sitting around the table, sitting around the house with that laugh even younger than Him by now, grayaged and wrinkled, He’s worlded down, ground meat into a miser, miserable amid the dust, a loser and filthy still, morose and fatter than ever, dissatisfied with even His more rewarding dissatisfactions, His attainment to mediocrity, employment/maritalstatus; until, this sour older barren bitch as thin as a spine He’s too ashamed of her to bring her home who’d guilted Him into a commitment while it’s He who should be committed — into the minimum compatibility of a ring that’ll tarnish her finger upon the morning and a ceremony inviting at least the two of them, a rabbi and then her only friend whom He hates who hates Him worse; entirely unhappy, lifeless though unfortunately still alive, interested in nothing save what He’s forking away at, whatever Hanna’s served Him, leftovers foiled and heated then blown upon cooling, better than anything He could ever make, than even she the new she knows how to, neither can cook, He’ll never get past the microwave, the defrost stage, flashes of 12:00, the toaster and just add milk…

It’s about time, Hanna’s friends would have said that, too, echoes up from the voids crenate between the whitened teeth, a chorus of caloriecounters, carbohydratecharters, when she’d tell them the news, whether over the phone immediately after He’d told her, let it slip, coughed into conversation, confessed or else, if Hanna could contain herself a day or two, probably not, then at their weekly brunch and bookclub, their planningcommittee or schoolboard meeting — tonight at eight, don’t forget.

How long was He going to make us wait? Congratulations. Mazel. Mazl. Mzl.

No, I’m off apples for the time being, it’s the acids and plus they’re a sugar, and no more pumpernickel for me that’s a starch, trying to stay away from them, what were you saying: Edy Koenigsburg, whose own marriage was by her own admission less than Eden.

It’s about time. How old is He now? And she? Ask miscellaneous shop assistants, the secretary to the investment mamzer, even her travelagent, frizzily flushed, in pants of spandex overstretched.

How long was He going to make me wait? Which means, now I can die in peace. Says Hanna to Israel later that night. Israel who might disagree with his son’s choice, but are you crazy not in front of the wife.

Anyway, it’s moot — an opportunity will never arise.

About time, and marriages are all about time, and about flowers and gifts of jewelry, second mortgages for third homes, according to the neverwid-owed, nevermarried Misses Teitelbaum who’s said to know a thing or two about — among other things — enteitelment (who says? she does)…about time to shep, time to wish a Mazel Tov to His betrothed whomever she may be and to Ben, the ungroomed groom, the unkempt to be kept for perpetuity. Idea is to arrange Him a virgin, a pure Sarah, Rebecca, or Rachel, a Leah but without that veiled business under the canopy, not for her, and anyway it’s called a chuppah. To procure for Him a woman negligibly eligible, a girl ingathered as of late, a convert as recent as any converted; to arrange for Him a mate, for His soul or not, an intended, better be Beshert: a moll for the paparazzi, a face mouthing a name for the press, an escort for the just selected, custompatterned carpet soon to unfurl its purchase eighteen million inheritances per square foot and far beyond the bulbs and smoke, to fundraisers, to rededicated synagogues, here to the Temple Itself three floors up and growing higher by the prayer, the Donor’s Kaddish: the wiring’s to be installed tomorrow; the sconces (ner tamid) on order to illuminate eternal; the pulpits are having their plaques screwed on, one says Rabbi, the other, Cantor…an Eve in the kitchen and a Lilith everywhere else, is what, and whenever it’s needed, demanded, pleased or begged, no matter what Ben might want, who cares. Those becoming converted frown on His sort of dalliance, His perceived inability to obliterate options, desire, lust, send Eros all to hell and just settle — settle down, Ben; earthbound, without choice. His own handlers fan the flames. To be single is to be a scandal. A shame named Shanda after Wanda. Though the Marys will stay, they’ll assure Him, that a mensch needs His occasional leisure, a permanency at least outwardly proper’s required. Then to get her, the press never wants for speculation, the PR’ll be sure to imply, to get whichever her as long as it’s Her as pregnant as Him, soon expecting kinder, those halfbastard quarterbreeds, mutts, intermingled whatevers, some something to propagate the line. Furtherance, the ideal. And a line is a line is a line, though it be weak, adulterated — anything as far as the public’s concerned.

What’s my line? Not to be.

As for this matchmaker, on second look she’s even older but well made up enough, rouged, blushbeaten, mascaramassacred, and lipsmacked haphazardly so that her smile ends just below the hang of her ears, their earrings. A woman of lived years some with love others with less, lately though things not too bad, you know, holding up, nothing bothering save the same old varicosity, not much to complain about, ultimately, not with this recent fame of hers, if maybe she overdoes it a little you can’t hold it against her what with her health and life — her secondcareer celebrity; her premature renown on the renewed West Side of Manhattan, that narrow stretch of upperpark Broadway bordered by liverspotted delis set to reopen, savorystores just under new management, only waiting for their certifications to come through, soon invigorated synagogues about to embark themselves on energetic membership drives and dynamic accounts of outreach initiative; neighborhood, also, of monumental apartments to be rented again above Riverside Drive, columned Classic Sixes furnished with a piano in every fireplace set in walls of more books than could be bound by any tongue; hers a reputation as a shadchaness, a shidducher such as you wouldn’t believe, with references glowing like a superficial venereal disease, a great yenta preceding her, though the impression’s to be honest a bissel mitigated as she goes to pick at any nostril, fivefingered without embarrassment, flicks her snot to the floor while with her other hand extracts six photographs from a shoe under her sock, damp, and slightly mal-odorous, then holds them out of sight atop her swollen knee, a bruised if not chipped patella she don’t whine, thumbs the faces away, as if hoping to rub off the undesirable, you never know, whatever kills a deal: a lazy eye, a limp, a limp hand, she shakes while she limps, a pimpled forehead or cheek lipped with such kiss of death, a chin doubling triple, even flaws invisible, the unexamined, too: money troubles, pending audits, alcoholic uncles, the suspicion of incest, ongoing arson investigations, mild schizophrenia though thought recessive on the mother’s side, these days who can tell, who wants to. Her, prior to her present occupation she’d done the life of the wife herself, having been married for golden years and a night deep enough into the fiftyfirst that she’d rather forget to a developer magnate, an obese slumlord in later years an amateur Luna Park memorabilist and professional stripmaller, who’d owned seven of them statewide long and tall across the suckedin gut of the umpteenth borough, Joysey, who’d died abed with his mistress who she was also his secretary half his age, half her size — if this space hadn’t been so sanctuaried, the Holy of Holiest ground if untenanted as yet, pardon our appearances this inpreparation, she’d hock on its floor, a guttural of phlegm for the undedicated pews. Forgive her the maybe exaggerated gesticulations, forget the tics and bats of eyes a whole teeming winking blinking nation of them she’s just getting used to, trying them out — accessories much like the necklace, stranded fingerthick with pearls like black caviar, the earrings, heavy as her tush and amber as if preservative of an ancient seed, and the glasses, mosquitolidded shockwhiteframing plastic, to match her newfangled Affiliation.

I’ve always loved Them, she says with that tendency to spit.

She glances at Ben, so bashful.

After what happened, I got depressed, I got lonely, couldn’t sleep, that and the business with Bob (that’s the husband), after he died, I moved into a more manageable place…I began studying up on Them, bought a few books, took a class. It all seemed so exotic, They seemed so — happy, you know…and so — she makes with her hands a silent ta-da — this present occupation, the dedication of her retiring years to perpetuating that happiness in an assumed incarnation, a usurped personality; she to her friends a whole new person, always tending to the Other Half, door-to-door making matches, by appointment only matching makers, with machers — and all of it money always aside maybe to compensate, as if to overatone, but for what, spite your curiosity, bite tongue.

And I’d love to be able to help you, she says then settles back in her pew, you especially.

Young and in love, is there anything more…nu, maybe not love just yet, but these days, you can understand. It takes time and wooing effort.

She quiets, lifts the glasses around her neck to her face, glasses without glass, so just those insectual frames she squints through — into the sanctuary, in its incompleteness less sacralizing than unsettling, a making awkward; her less awed by the filigree gilded overhead, by the imposing bulkhead of the, how do they call it…bima, that’s it with its pulpits plaqued and the ark’s vault installed deep between, behind the door of which the scrolls of the Law are said to be stored, rolled around their tablets, then crowned with a mappa, the wing of a wimple, than it’s her unwillingness to begin with their bargaining, to initialize an offer, though she knows she’s expected to, and yet further that she’s also expected to stall, to postpone and grossly mislead; that’s why, she has to suspect, they’re meeting here, privacy aside: how can you profane the House of God with such a risky business?

Aren’t we paying you by the hour? Der asks, and she sighs and with fingers plumped with smoker’s bruise though veined in delicate bone lays the virginal photo on the seat of her pew, facing down, pretends to refresh herself with the information obtainable on the reverse, then flips and keeping her thumb over the face turns with two breasts so imposing they’re cleaved into one to the lip of the pew behind her to hand the photo over.

Who’s she? Der asks.

The One, says the matchmaker.

Why her?

For you, only the finest…she retracts her thumb slowly, leaving a print swirled in shvitz over the blondish blue of the prospect.

Her name?

Now she goes by Frumie, wiping her hands of it on her skirts.

But listen: she’s bright, and beautiful, like you wouldn’t believe — altogether a fabulous young woman, an excellent match…you couldn’t do better even if I’d had a daughter — even if He’d be marrying me.

Which is an option — I look better in my photos than what you see in person.

I was asking her name, and Der tattoos the pew with a hand gloved in pigskin.

Did I mention beautiful and bright…a great catch, if you’ll excuse me — she happens to be the daughter of your monger, Fischelson the Fish King; I don’t need to tell you he’s offering generous.

A pity we’re not offering him.

Though I’d like to hear from the future groom, at least see Him…and she turns to face Ben seated alongside Der; it’s praiseworthy, how committed she is to even the inconvenience of her pose; her straining across a shoulder, she’s rubbernecking to ask, what are you looking for, Mister Israelien, who and why? what qualities are important? tell me about your mother…

Down the center aisle, a team of workers barrow in the Menorah, set it up on the pulpit right, are fored over a little to the left, that’s right and leave it lie with one of them remaining, who takes from a pocket of his parka a rag and tin and begins in with the polish. Casks of oil are being rolled step-by-step, for its illumination. The woman snorts all the waged patience in the world, begs a sigh out of herself it sounds bad like a cancer of convenience, frowns, then flips again through the stack arthritic or only stiffly. Fine, she’s saying, not Fein, no, flips, forward, back, and nextward, and this while bending and otherwise creasing her shots in a system so private as to be inscrutable maybe even to herself, then cuts, shuffles, finally deals; peeling the first from the top of the stack, then slapping it down over her shoulder, not bothering to turn around. Hymn, so how about Hanna? she asks, your mother’s name…a match already made, if not in heaven then at least in Joysey, she’s upstate, firstrate, no kidding — Hanna now Geffen-Weinstein née Heather Vinelli.

Father’s a senator, as you know, recently aligned himself with the faith — for the votes I’m sure you’d say and you might be right, but still, who wouldn’t.

Her grandfather’s the wine magnate, owns and operates Seedlessence, Inc., exclusive importer of table grapes from Palestein.

The wife’s father’s the big baker, I only pinch his loaves — the lightest around, but crusty enough on the outside…they’re just perfect together, you know?

Der waits until she’s finished to finish himself with this shaking his head, begins again the tap with his fingers.

She reaches exasperated into folds of her garments, onion layers disclosing babushka couture, the flap of her burlap camisole unearthing all manner of lapse and widowed slob: halfzware tobacco, dust of paprika, peppermint, a flask of mashke and the lintily mothballed else, exertions exposing, too, the handle of her dead husband’s revolver, its trigger webbed in reassuring spiderwork; it’s usually kept under the pillow, only brought along on risky consultation — her cleaving a cleft deep into her mammary now, to rise the boozy yeast of those two breasts from one, to produce in fits of fingers and rings of sparkling fauxgold this rolled, tattered photograph she attempts to smooth flat with palm and wrist on the reverse of the facing pew.

Pass it along, Der’s almost had it. Ben sits trying to peek under His veil, over the pew and her at the shot she has, bowed by her nails manicured in rainbows. Let’s see it, Der demands again and she says, her, let’s see Her…and she hands the photo over facedown to him greedy, grousing, who holds her image bent near his eyes, then squints to crease his forehead.

Is this who I think it is?

If not, then her mother’s got some explaining.

How recently did they embrace it All? Don’t tell me they’ve gone ger! I was down to meet with him last week and…long enough ago, it’s her turn to interrupt, for it not to cast aspersions — it’s only been a day or two but kosher, real legit. He had his own people officiating. I spoke with him just this morning, he’s keeping it quiet for now, asks that you respect his wishes, knows you will…she dangles her empty frames from a ringfinger, touches her tongue to a wart on her nose understood to be her nose until her sniffly tonguing of it explains the flesh behind it, massed in its support.

Der’s expression as if to say, you were holding out.

What can I say? she asks and says, complain me no complaint, bitch me no bitch, I just wanted to make you shvitz…. what’s that they say, kvetch, whine your misered heart out.

Plus, a boy like yours needs options. Do we have a deal or no? She grabs up the photograph from his hands, flips it over to the reverse’s scrawl, smudged dark in stricken zeroes.

I’m the one laying down the dowry here, is that it? Der nods disappointment. This the price, then? resignation, and he forces a whistle that ends in a kiss, his moustache smeary, pinching.

Insistent, she nods her wig shifty atop the snowdandruffed, icehump of her head to hang over her one good ear as if she doesn’t hear a thing. And not a shekel more or less, she says then shifts her weight, with her feet asleep; finally, gives up humoring the pretense to obeisance, spits a wad to the floor, worriedover mucus.

Our schmuck sure has a pair on him, I’ll tell you, two pairs, but tell me this — why didn’t he come direct? We work together. We talk. I know his wife by name. We have what you’d call a relationship.

You know, she says, I have the impression this used to be easy.

And then saying to Him, at least your future inlaw respects his tradition.

Tradition schma — and Der gathers his uniform pants as he rises from the pew, stands over her with his epaulets raising his shoulders above his head as if altars converted to highflown burden; he’s hunched and raging with his medals clinking as if his station’s brassy tongues; they’re shrieking, he is, flapping out the threats: incarceration, outerborough deportation, worse, assaulting even with his hands her ears and their jewelry, low at the lobes, drooping to the knees…ridiculous, this is extortion, pure and simple, you know it, I know it and, as you say, nu — the President knows it; he thinks this’ll help him at the polls, is that it, but do I have news for him: there are no more polls. I mean kaput. No longer exist. Not soon. Schmuck wants his way with posterity, goes about it like he’s doing me the favor…she’s impassive, as if unimpressed at his fume, takes from a pocket of her skinned she lived with fifty always sick and dying cats housecoat an appointment diary, and tries to go through it inconspicuously, holding it upsidedown between the pleats of her skirts. Still, he’s quieting amid the reverberations of his voice, their repercussions, her flipping — distancing, harmful to the greater cause, what he’d wanted originally come knocking too early to wake him from the surety of his slumbering plans, entombed for private worship in this, his icebound Temple — if that’s how he wants to deal…

Rising to full height herself, all of her five nothing, putting the Tit in Petite as if to remind that though laughably small as if prepackaged for parody she’s also endowed, still indescribably intimidating, a woman of valor, as goes the translation, of valorous proportions, too, and experience (and this despite having had no kinder of her own)…it’s time, she says bookmarking with a cigarette, replacing the diary, I get my onceover. And so Der orders Ben to stand, too, in the pew too narrow, barely accommodating His girth and perhaps the earliest tingle of a tumescent shed. That and with the height, the stadium’s pitch and the air of its arc He feels but can’t glimpse veiled, He’s dizzied. Der straightens that out as he uncrooks all, pulling the slacks’ bunch up and over Ben’s waist almost to His pits, then tucking in His shirt to tail around it feels at toes, a happy wag.

Pardoning around the site’s sparescaffold lumber, steel, meshnets, and paintcans to waddle into their pew, the yenta comes close and feels Him, at His hardening, tugs and twists, she slaps tush, prods gut, handles the excesses of flesh that we call love, squats then rests at her knees padded by the hang of her breasts like two hotwaterbottles with protrusive nipple nozzles, and on the floor makes to examine the generous spread of His pelvis, takes with the calipers of her many thicklywrapped necklaces the circumferences of His lowerlegs and thighs, knocks with a fist at His kneestrength, their spring, that of His youth as she slightly rises without having had the pleasure of the toes, their nails, to scrutinize His hands, His fingers and their nails, sniffing at Him, even unfurling a length of desiccated, keeping her regular prunelike tongue, though instead of licking a wrinkle she says to Der: I want the face, too, the teeth, examine the gums maybe, healthy or not — then to Him…bear with me, Ben, I have to know you’re you.

Impossible, and Der’s unshakable on this, respect it, please, the limits set, the access — it’s nothing personal, know that: it’s for your own protection, ours…I’m sure you understand, what with your confidentials claused: can’t gaze upon the countenance and still expect to live is what we’re going with, our line.

That’s what you’re selling, but that I won’t buy…no way I can, it’s part of the deal — you know, I’m not that foolish…and I’m not that old, still attractive (she’s arranging her poor, demidyed wig in the reflection of the face of her watch, her husband’s dead, the watch, too), at least gentle, and very seasoned, savvy: I have testimonials, I’ve only ever gotten good reviews…maybe even leaving Him alone with me, for the night, no extra fee, just one night, that’s all I ask. Charity. Tell you what, you can deduct it from what I’m owed. Name His price. Soak me on the rates — I’m wet already. Then to Him, in a gassy guttered whisper, with unwashed maxillary denture, you’re interested, aren’t you, Ben…how can you not, tzedakah?

Enough, says Der with a sneer that gives much wingspan to his errant stache, breaking down, initially, this crumble, though its sharding only the sign of a sour impulse to escape…I want you to listen: we’ve got a pending deal to clone one of Them, to make ourselves a female, 100 % straight bloodline, how we want her, what we want her, when, and this you can tell the President since you two, you’re such close friends. Now that’s an expensive proposition, you’d say, and risky, and you’d be right, not to mention unsound — (an echo, Shade would agree: forbidden according to law both secular, and the newest sacred) — though it’s an option, keep that in mind in its long and tall, don’t sell us short, genug. He should remember that we’re the only ones with the resources to do it, the money and the skill. Don’t underestimate how determined we are to protect our investment, His and ours, I mean — Him, He’s in agreement. Aren’t you, Ben. Say yes. There, you have it from the mouth. We’re invested too heavily is what, He is, what with the hanging sacs, the shed — don’t think we haven’t thought. Explored. Experimented. We’ve parsed and planned and dreamed. Der thrusts out a gloved numbed hand like put it there, so long…so drop this, won’t you, no hysterics, don’t even try; as if to say, I know all the ruse and female. Do we have a deal or am I milking samples?

You’d never. No one would. They’d be unkosher, inbred.

As if they always weren’t.

Don’t give me that mishegas…giving a sigh perfumed with the odious must of routine, coughed by a wink that rouses her, pumps blood back to feet; her stepping out of the aisle as if to make room, to usher in the close — even though I’ll take it, that’s what you pay me for…and you will pay me today, now, and their money in a week, cash, I get ten percent commission. But just so you know, her family won’t take it; and neither will she, who would: if He’s to be a husband, He has to be a husband, not a Company, a Corporate what have you malfeasance snooze or fake…not the Messiah and no, not a God. No cloning, and no veils, Ben — that thing has to come off sooner or later; I’ll tell you what, we’ll put that in the contract.

Agreed, and Der heads after her up the steps as if to make to shake her down, and maybe her price along with her, how in shaking everything’s negotiable — grubs up her hands into a hug unintended, she presumes, she has to, now keeping near, coming on with shimmy…she suddenly holds him tightly, to nuzzle, as he with elbows and shoulders makes to pry her off with hands engloved shoves her away, back down into the topmost pew. Wonderful, he says straightening himself, patting himself down to find if he’s lost anything, a pocket’s medal or ribbon picked. If you kiss for business you should later count your teeth. Your bridge and crowns. That and his moustache should deter, and hers, peroxide fuzz. Now, if you please, I’ll direct you to deal with my associate, Doctor Abuya — you two have much to discuss, lives to plan…a wedding, too, she says, as she rises and turns to walk through that first pew’s row to the last remnant of the slippery aisle and up it, shuffling — lucky for you my brother’s a caterer, he’ll deal…sidestepping pallets, planks, and moundings of plastic trashed out to the archway and its escort waiting of Abuya, Gelt, Hamm, and Mada, who too gingerly geriatrically arm her out through the courtyards back to the entrance and its lionized stairs, as she harangues them with inquiries, shtepping about their own questionable statuses with regard to love, kinder, how much they make and yadda.

It’s been decided, then: His decisions are theirs, are ours, His life all our lives to do with what we will — whatever we want Him to be, He is, we’re saying: we prick Him, He’s a prick; we bleed Him and He’s bled; we want Him hitched, and abra my aleph a star appears — out of nowhere. To become betrothed, Ben’s affianced, quite possibly refinanced into the bargain, reassured, reinsured, underwritten. A beautiful bride, the matchmaker’s saying while picking through her linner later that evening, off the clocking into a dunch with Doctor Abuya whose price plus tip will be deducted from her commission, in a manner professionally famished at the hottest Midtown couscouserie whose best silver’s been hidden in anticipation of her arrival: a Queen, she’d said, you should be so lucky, and a pianist, too, concert quality or was it the clarinet, and modest, how she’s so modest she no longer thinks her modesty’s a virtue, that and have I mentioned, how she knows from epic poetry and how to select the best cuts of meat and freshest produce, that that will be ripe tomorrow, whenever you want her breads baked presliced, crusts cut and drooly, O the head on her, looks she got and grace, musing graces, a real manner, with not a flaw on her or in her, until Him, maybe, that putz…the best I’ve had to deal with, ever — and I don’t have to tell you about her family.

You have to understand, the Nachmachen’s saying dark later from under the shadow of a modeled hood, the latest sent sample of the Temple’s onorder ecclesiastical robes, these for nominal Levites: talking to the Doctors Tweiss, asking them to get the idea, to delve with him and explore the depths, knowing they won’t but God in Heaven do they ever follow orders (it’s like those scissor-dashes on the flesh they cut by, the particular focus of the eyes, up or down, by which their pads and pens prescribe: happy, or sad, here or there, ready or not, now/then), I want you to make sure He never reproduces, that He’s unaware. And so, another a deceit, like ever, there’s nothing new under that slight of sun, the moon: changing, undressing to underwear, bare pale and sickly skinny in sockless feet and flagpole legs, the Nachmachen standing discourse in the doorway of one of their offices presently slipping into the priests’ holiday vestments to be custom chalked for the tailoring (the tailor, he’s already an hour late; his apologies, though, they’ll leave everyone in stitches), it’s just not a legacy we want to leave, he says…the priestly breatsplate thumped and clanking, urim and thumming, the oracle’s settings left unjeweled as if to keep down the overhead in humble; this interest’s not about posterity, about what we want to leave behind: all returns are in the present, the here and now, today…who knows how long this’ll last, how long we want it to last, you know. The Last One, the right real God’s honest Last One is what makes money, so we’ve heard, we’ve seen — people want what people want. If they know another One’s in the works, then is He still that special, I don’t think so (no one else will either). Doctor Abuya’s collapsed on the analysand’s couch, exhausted from his meeting, its negotiations, subsequent argumentation over an appropriate tip. Nurse de Presser enters with an accentuated bust that’s only a tray of mugs, but then never brings the tea or coffee. Plus, the Nachmachen asks himself or them or who, questions, questions, questions — what’re the ramifications of descendants? How long are we really going to be around? We’re not in this racket forever, especially not with all these recent Affiliations going on. Conversion, it’ll be the death of us. No, we make what we make, then we get out. No need to speculate on kin, they’re just more problems…and of problems they already have enough.

You want we should tie the tubes? the psychoanalyst Tweiss is dying to know.

Knot Him up before He knocks her up? adds Tweiss the mad plastician.

Wouldn’t want any mongrels or mutts running around, stray halfholies, those partichosen bastards…the Nachmachen removing the High Priest’s shading miknefet to bare his bald, gauntgraved face — the line would be muddled along with the Image, he says, the blood and the buck stop here, are we understood? Or, if not, like will you go ahead and blur the balking points, dust away the processes particular, the impetus impotent, and just do your job, what you’re paid and more than you’re worth to get us done: anesthetize, sanitize, sharpen what needs sharpening then slice right in. Make us the Messiah we so terribly deserve: a machermensch, an exilarch — a king who can issue no prince, a God That can manifest no son.

It takes a full lunation to recover from the procedure, from the subsequent infection, then from the infection of the infection, unto health again — which is, at heart diseased and failing, only the ideal of health, its hope and so consoling until the advent of what calamity dawns next — the wound yawning the distance between Ben and His body, its perfection, its willingness to go on; His mind or a mere tremulous semblance of recouped from the croup of medications, side effectual shvitzes and aches and languorous lolls, the lifting of the masked and measured fog, the recuperation of regret after this period of an occupation less fruitful, a surgical measure of selfpity recurring more virulently than ever through a moon of stay, inhome. For recovery, He’s housed in a northeasterly turret of the Great Hall, a towering growth from which you’d rescue a princess, clambering up the cascade of her hair, the platinum ash hung down as a shade from the sills of the windows of the height’s lone room, set with four small Oriental slits allowing incomparable views when the shutters aren’t on; a stay fully insured, it’s assured, Garden’s coverage complete to put His mind at what’ll have to pass with doping drug for ease, and then — once returned to the flush of youth, and it won’t be soon enough, once the ramifications of this operation have been explained, contextualized, psychologically massaged away as vital component of His therapy, then apologized for with sympathy and toys — license is His to shtup with impunity, they’ve promised, without much reservation: something to look forward to, they’ll tell Him something like that, another mutilation, sell Him a new life, just wait, sold, you’ll love what we’ve gone and done — the slice, the peel, the cut and its cauterization, the sutures, then the swelling, the numb dissipating from His waist on down, the extremity’s tingle, His feet, His toes, needling life in resistance to such ascetic anesthetic.

Though as for that heedlessly promissory promiscuity, that happiness is still weeks off, a moon away. An entire lunation spent in rolling moaning wake and dream and sleep, selenitically wasteful in flattened fit atop this luxurious bed commandeered from Long Island’s Hospital Under the Sign of Everything, last belief ’s Health Care Facility of the Year, lyingin state of the art this unit wired for comfort, programmed for calm, a multiadjustable slab, a posteurpedic grave. Demonically idle with the hands not allowed to stray below the navel’s hairy scar…Ben thinking just thinking like, what’s it all worth: with the branch bowed, its line ending with Him, familytree hacked to trunk; when He’ll rise weak in the knees and needs His testes hanging between His stumps like seedless fruit — He opens the shutters west and gazes out the window at the appletrees barren, chopped and stacked, the hollow knot, the cicatrix, barkveined cores, their wither a wrinkle past a sill…Stammbaum reduced to Stammsprout, hacked, hatcheted, axed, downsized to kneehigh and nothing after, uprooted, never to grow again; no, despite the dreaming, despite the time to dream, the opportunity to forget the day as night sleeps through the day only to reveal, if inspired by luck, an inner light, an intuit, a glimmer — He isn’t able to work up any image of a kid; any apparition of any offspring’s of Him, as His own immutable self, pure ego, an infantility incarnated as walking and talking already, fully formed as He was, is Him this taking after Him, showing Him the sand ropes, demonsrative, immersive; initiating Him the Other Him in the most deeply shushed rituals of Sloth, the most lazily hermetic initiatives of Waste, imparting the secret formulæ, the incantations and hidden practice: that Schlemielundshlimazelkeit (Ben’s Ben as an updated Faust, younger, impressionable, irreparably Semitic, handling poorly, making a fool’s trade: Himself for another, an even schlumpier heir of Schelumiel son of Simeon, Numbers II, loser of wars, mensch of schlimm Mazel), that whole brand of pathos, that copywrit inheritance of guilt — managerial, patriarchal, Godlike; after all, what else’s a father for…how would I know?

O Israel, where art thou, hast thou forsaken me and why, what was your price, verily might we splitteth the difference? Was I to become you, if only to becalm you — your soul? Israel, he told me stories at night then sang to me, he would have danced at my wedding, offered a toast, napkined my bride, lipstick from her cheeks, the cake topped with the marzipan coupled, how I loved him, so very much…just answer the question — I loved him. Then why do I still have such guilt? A statement’s given — only to be itself deposed, disposed of; everything we have forsaken has been preliminarily notarized, its memory duly filed. It’s not Israel here, though, not now, not anymore: nu, it’s another lawyer, a mockey just begging to be disbarred for the work he’s doing, about to do and the way he’s billing them for it, a clock’s hand futzed up the tush; it’s a Goldenberg who’s survived, a most senior partner of Israel’s, maybe, who must’ve just been passing for him to still be breathing, walking, talking dictation, briefing and billing, charging to the fullest extent of whichever law might govern both personal comfort and his mortgage. Most of our sages agree…hymn, thanks so much, he’s just thoughtful enough to drop in on Ben, pay a visit paid; I was just in the neigh or no, it’s that there’re still a few matters to deal with, he says with face blurred bright from out of his opened mouth, a goldtoothed aureole, issues outstanding, you understand, little things for Him to sign, a handful…O nothing too important, certainly bubkissoff, nothing much to get worked up about or over, remain calm I’ll collect, it’s just standard stuff, these disclaimers of disclaimer, waiver forms in duplicate, powers of don’t want to hassle you with the details, the small mint unread he’s making uninitialed…Article 136, for example, the riders, the fine party of the first print, the penultimate clause, sanity, with fire and water he sticks it to me, acts of Gee-O-Dee, better not to think, best about it or anything at all, shouldn’t really in your condition, doctors’ orders, no double buts or jeopardize your second chances; like put your faith in ad hock, and just sign here here and here, an X and it’s terminal, the black blip, a flatline dotted: a sheaf of soggy papers rained out of a puffy scuffed pleather valise otherwise empty, save for an apple, halfeaten allrotten. Goldenberg’s borrowed a pen from a guard, he’ll forget to give it back.

Once he’s guided his client’s hand over those lines flatly dotted and straight, crooked and contiguous and both, made limp passes at blanks and bubbles and fields, this Goldenberg takes a seat, makes himself comfortable as if to prove his concern: a heavy groaning settle of unpressed pants and rumpled sportsjacket, in for the long haul on crows’ feet winged with balding elbowpads, his wet fedora hunched down low over his eyes, a black borsalino its brim just a nervous tic too bent, its bow of headband torn to flap in the smudge of gust through the windows; all as if to say however long it takes, I’m here for you, Ben, hineni, chaver, another allnighter, a week, a month; how you’re not just the client, Mister — you’re the boss in charge; he falls asleep, is soon snoring fungus off the walls, the mold and mottled hoar, is woken up only upon termination of visiting hours, never official save that beyond their interruption he begins to make time and a half.

Goldenberg snorts, goes to straighten his tie, then remembers he isn’t wearing one, that his collar’s soiled with the blood of yesterday’s shave. A sleep and its assuring visit interrupted by the disturbance of Ben’s nurse, the livein Mary arrived, costumed in crisp clean whites like a sanitary skin, her stockings in candy stripes an alarming red, with a stethoscope nestled snakelike between the fruit of her breasts juiced forbiddingly within a thin peel of laundry’s starch — though He never catches on, won’t, refuses to, why should He, even when she brings Him a smoky bowl of soup ostensibly medicinal (pale chicken, with halved matzahballs not sinking but bobbing), which tastes to His tongue numbed with narc exactly like Hanna’s, though He’d only had that once, too hot. She’d realized the recipe, thanks, about time, how…His mother His nurse, then — after Goldenberg’s slap to her bended knee, prayered to diaper Him at bedside — to leave with him, His lawyer, arm-in-arm the two of them kissing up to each other, abandoning Him to His soup without bread, not even a slice, without even the crust called an endearment left behind to mark; the sun sets, the clock clocks.

Finally, it’s the morning of the first day of the month known as Iyar, which in Babylonian says blossom and means bloom, don’t ask — used to be May, once named for the Greek goddess Maia, the eldest daughter of the seven Pleiades, protectoress of few remember now and no one cares, believes: a season and its star without worship, made subordinate to a maiden moon. Enough to know that today, feeling strong enough, Ben rises, and stands skyward, throws from His face His veil, throws open the shutters to the windows, too, four of them, one to each direction of the earth. He’s shaky, aching; He feels like Adam, mud-wrought and missing rib. To overlook His newest inheritance, God’s contract become flesh and geographic wild, notarized by Goldenberg or by dream…the cold bay with its skaters, lutzbundled into layers of fur and down, with their flippant taps and twirls, slicing into the ice passages of the Law amid intricate glosses, tripleaxles of responsa ending with a flourish in wondrously interpretive figureseight; cutahole fishers perched atop soapboxes, their wives baiting their hooks, kinder baiting their mothers with fishy words and leers and augers; the remains of swans halffrozen, stilled in a momentary flee; a motorcade of sleighs their runners greased with the fat of premium lambs; frozen hard scows and skiffs upended into igloos, beached upon the driftless ice amid barges stuck to hump the freeze as mountains, abandoned tows peaking high and white over tugs as hills overgrown in frost; a glimpse from the other window of industrial Joysey in rigs and joints and scaffold struts, its warehouses propbridged, their elevators imprisoned by the skeletal char of fireescapes, unhinged; fallen powerlines strangling cranes collapsed atop the light rail spurs, across the transit tracks, the Northeast Corridor and the Gladstone Branch, their signs unlooted symbolic of only rust, and the hissing wind, prophetically monaural: this is a local train, this is not the Long Branch train, forget Hackettstown damn it we’re bound for Trenton…past lots of lost freight, graveyards of boxcar giving way to a forest’s wisps, the far scrub pine; and then, another window, the madness that Manhattans the skyline: the assjawbone’s teethview, the keyedge view, the serrated knifehorizon, hugely brute and crude, and then — occulted within its midst, jutting up from between the rises of scrapers left abandoned, to reap a whirlwind tenanted only by the sky, with their lights off, their sleek sides wounded with panes shattered or just missing…there’s a glint of dome as if a head risen from the depths, unbowed, unbroken, vaulting as gold as a sun is said to be gold, as silver as the moon can be said to be silver, and iced in fulgent light — the highest hunch of the Temple topped with its rude spire, finished with a star left unfinished with three points only to shine themselves above the Park and the island that spills from its winter.

The House of His Father just north of Israel’s old office stooped in its shadow, along with His house, too, in its mirroring — and Ben, He’s enraptured: by it, and by Himself…His first unveiled glimpse of the dwelling within which He’s been fathered to history and now, to air; leaning out over the sill to the Temple’s great reflecting eye, to behold Himself captured in that dome’s lone sloping facet that is the dome, its reflection of an unguarded face…a moment of silence passing for peace, only of Him made relation to the city beyond, married, mated, Him as Himself the city beyond, and then — the door’s knocked into a flood, watery light like gauze, a rippling welter. A front of journalists with cold cameras porting tripods, pens and pads, microphones and lights, fresnels and pars: they’re here for their publicity shots the less posed the more they’ll appeal to the growing ranks of the righteous, it’s supposed; here, too, for His comments, for any, the hurried documentation of a life lived on the record — then, for analysis and observation, scrutinized on slow; Ben an idol stood upon the Record Itself, or if not on it then altared by it, changed from burn to smoke to air; here for their quotes, their content and bracketfiller; for their whiplashed quips, their bytes off more than an earth would swallow down to molten chew. As if punishment for public living even the famous are given graves, and often those they dig themselves with the sharpness of their tongues. As shallow as the rest.

Sit still, they say in one mouth, within one mouth, massed amid its dim…that’s it, hold it, oneeyed — right there, you blinked, you’re beautiful, you’re perfect.

Maybe He should hold some lilies? Or contemplate some busts? Say AlleGory! emPHAsis on the last sylLAble!

Q. do you really think you’re ready for marriage? don’t slouch — do dodge, evade, and lie: a little to the left, to the right, your other right, I mean, that’s right, now suck it up and in, say Dairy!

What do you think of the policies of your future father-inlaw, the President; with your impending marriage to his daughter, do you think you’ll assume a greater role in the decisions of this Administration? Ben, how much involved, how little — depends on what they say; any names, what about the kinder…over here, over there, chins up, chins down, just be yourself, kid, hold it, that’s it, good — and don’t forget to smile!

And so Introit the fuss, the sinuous us! snaredrum rolllllllllll out the rolodex, flog the flak, riff and stretch, sell your soul for a bowl of lentil’s suppering sung, brassbumbudumbudum…krank up the PR machine, will you, and take a propagander at this: ladies and gentilemen, boychicks and goyls, seniors, and the disabled putupon, unborn kinder of all ages, it’s just about that time again, that’s right, so step right up and claim your place in line, in time, your plotzing platz, no spots will be saved, no reservations will be accepted — aliyah yourselves up off those pews and get your tickets early, Operators are standing by. Or they’re sitting, nevermind.

Why, it’s the wet ’n’ wild millenniawide revival of the Wandering Tour, the Eternal Return Tour eternally wandering return to a town near you, close by, your local dorf or major shtetl, picklebarreling through fifty states’ worth of this here contiguous nowhere, pulling legs for a mere ten handfuls of, nu, maybe not so exclusive engagements, onenight standing room to run only: a packed Radio City Musik Hall, two soldout shows at the Spelt Palace, a near riot at the Fillmore, a melee at the Fill Less, oddstastemachers prophesizing serious profits, prime revenue from merchandising tieins, licensing, subsidiary rights, and subsubsidiary yadda, deals bubbling like the gassiest of concessions, available for purchase in the lobby.

O to be on the road…once He gets through rehearsal, that is, if He gets through it — not until the trainer’s totally satisfied He’s making the effort, meeting Him halfway to trusting. As of now — so rumors Page Six and all those other pages, those before it and those after — Ben’s too afraid of the lions, management’s said to be renegotiating the Ring of Fire; insurance adjusters haven’t yet evaluated the locusts; fine the promoters, have them trot their damn riders out to the territory to graze them down to glue, staples, bound at a papering’s clip: one (1) room for Mr. Israelien. This room should comfortably hold twelve (12) people. It should contain the following: two (2) lined trash containers, and room and tables for drinks/catering. This room must also have a clean bathroom and shower facilities with hot and cold running water. Must have four (4) 120 volt AC electrical outlets, if possible (Artist Hospitality Room must be kept kosher at all times — NO OUTSIDE FOOD ALLOWED!); a tour opening upon the anniversary of the giving of the Law, Shavuot’s the name hereafter trademarked, not to be shortened or abbreviated, always spelled and capitalized accordingly and appended with the appropriate copywritten mark (any questions, please refer to our Permissions & Trademark Guidelines for Third Party License, Usage, & Reference): Shavuot™ or Shavuot® we’re still not sure, our lawyers are going over it, a holiday to be observed in session atop the everdistant mountain, its binding contract so long and involved it’s been secretaried onto two tablets, to be signed over in fire, eventually, heldover to when — and scheduled to end upon the eve of the Day of Atonement, with what’s being billed, mannadewly newsed as a Gala Spectacular, morning edition rolled and tossed, rubberbanded at the stoop of the Midtown Temple, which by then, pray, should be up and slaughtering.

In preparation, with per diem schlock slung over one shoulder (the change of costume, the false beard, the spare pair of propprescriptive glasses), Ben’s slungshot around the city, necessary to keep His steps ahead of any pursuit, whether terrestrial or Other: the paparazzi imported from overseas and kept salaried by whom, the Pope, President Shade, Der himself, each of them credentialflashed, carded paranoiac without the knowledge of the others…the hebraized hebephrenia of being followed, too, by assigned hangerson, wholigans, boosters and Bens, Bennies or Bennys, whatever they’re called in whatever rag you’ve been wiping with of late at early toilet, midnight snack, decoys, nearlookalikes (because who could be that huge, normally’s, the suspect), always lumbering near, tripping Him up, stepping on His toes. If He’s a False Messiah, then they’re false False Messiahs, saviors twiceremoved, Redeemers-inlaw shadowing Him from event to affair, from symposium to party, from fundraised to lower underground — in the tunnels of the abandoned subway and there in their own private cars, boroughing irresistibly, until an emergence upon the dawning platform of the El: following Ben shikerred on bronfn, minibar mashke, puffing bummed cigarettes they’re slurry; themselves tailed frayed and splayed in a hot seething animal mass by an assorted host of actresses, latest models and miscellaneous It-maydels, behind whom shade yet another thirtysix, these not standins, nor stunted doubles, but His bodyguards, protection — making their ways down the street of heldover, hungover, morning oneway, at the Downtownmost and further deadend of whichever there’s, finally, shush, inexorable shtum: schlafing it off in whichever luxury hotelroom shining huge under the recommendation of five stars, in whatever glittery metropolis these afternoons early of sleep might hallow Him undead — bedbugged deserts of dream, turneddown oases of however relative ease.

Things, always scheduled as Things unspecificed due to security, being so busy, so crazily scheduled, so hectic and profitable, too, Ben’s being worked now on the Sabbath, hard and kept moving — not that it would matter to Him to desecrate the day we’re reminded to keep holy above six others, just that He doesn’t want to work period, never did whenever, and with who He is, why should He’s the liberating thought. There’s no secret it’s a day of rest. My public takes a holiday, why shouldn’t I? More should be expected of me? Please, no thanks your toil. I’ve paid my dues, completed covenants. Garden, Inc., though, maintains again it’s all for His own safety — believe me, Der’s saying to Him in the limo motorcaded a stretch up the West Side, all this Law merely hampers my ability to protect you, son, ties the old hands. Sidelocks and beard knots and tassle fringe come off it. I don’t understand, it’s ridiculous, especially whatwith…but what weight do I have, what say in the matter. Make light His mission, make money their humorless goal. And not just your mundane kept moving, the gossipy run of the gristmill — He’s On the schmoove: a salty slip of His misspoken live to the networks, duly resurrected as slang for immediate release to the press; Ben baumming around: a newest nature holed up in a tree is the image they’re getting, Parkside if imaginary, Edenic, highswaying above enormity, Him casting down left leaves to float slowly, widening out into headlines grained in green envy, ribs into folds, veins a slopping of copy — His wedding announcement, Israelien — Shade, the cancellation of next baseball season, the rising price of pork — going soggy toward the gutter, the sewering Hudson.

And, too, like any nature, His presence is everywhere, if not the ideal itself then its imaginable made: numinous as omni, the nimious divine — appearances whether in person or name cutting with the dullest rustiest knife to commercial again and again, on the eye of the teevee and over the mouth of the radio, also, Ben borne flaky and weightless upon their flurrying waves; interview the morning after gunkeyed, skunkmouthed, junketed night, this having to put up with: lumpy, lumpensaggy beds just upgraded cots, the patronizingly perky wakeup calls, impertinently polite alarms, and drecky, limited menu roomservice — without privacy to redeem any downtime allotted save that afforded Him by mother and sisters Mary, dizzying, revolving-doored, them following in the livery of a private minivan, metallic pink. Advance family, it’s theirs to prep His suite, pretrash it: filling it with His variegated mementos, babylore, and cheapskate keepsakes, His parent’s tchotchke inheritance already synchronized atop foreign shelves and alien mantels by His delayed ETA: the Messiah has landed; in every stop at nowhere, in every accommodation, they recreate His old room, which is contractually bound through the adjoining to an executive suite, to host Der footing the tab at the head of a hierarchy connective: down the halls doors opening onto doors, into the rooms of His minders Gelt, Mada, Hamm, theirs communicating ever further toward the obstructed, parkinggarage, parkinglot view with those of His others, His entourage whose disciples Ben pretends He doesn’t know, or wouldn’t — like when they dropin plausibly to borrow His bucket for ice or remotecontrol, then try to make professional acquaintance how He just grunts under the eyemask worn over His mouth, ignores them into the womb of the pillow (though it’s not snobbery, it’s just being bored with Himself, with His selves); altogether them a stagparty of shvitzy, hairy fat taking up an entire floor of even the most generous of hotels, bulging the atriums, which are sky-glassed, bursting through the fernfestooned, goldappointed lobbies…

No matter, Der says to Him in the limo up the highway, passing the docks disused, the empty slips and their warehouses warehousing only the inferiorly talmudic, mishnaic, and midrashic effects of the Torahfact dead (that’s where the excess haggadahs went, that’s where the surplus megillot are stored); the asphalt lots surrounding still fenced if lain fallow, for now, cracking, they’re breaking apart from within, furrowed for the lasting plant of the weather — the Sabbath’s always a traveling day, we’ve booked no engagements; you’ll notice, all our Saturday shows begin after sundown.

You’ve booked no engagements because nobody’s going to pay for a show on the Shabbos, haven’t you noticed?

The world’s lost its mind. Everyone wants to be me, except me.

Wait, Der says as the limo drags the slushed and scaled trashy wake of its wide, fishtailing turn into West 72nd, it’s more a question of you than of them…I’m sorry, he has to insist: I’m doing this for you, son. You’ve made, or you have through no fault of your own, plenty of enemies — Ishmael’s, Esau’s, Amalek’s more personal if you want it like that. Offhand — as the limo slips to a stop, with Der sitting scratching what itches, greasing his own palm while averting his eyes to the window, tinted, which he can prophesize out of without anyone peering in: a glimpse of an animally upholstered soul; the beasts who feed on redcarpets, that scopophiliac swarm — I can think of up to eighteen acronyms that want you…quieting as he’s let out from the limo to wait at sidewalk for Ben to be escorted out by the expediter on loan from Secret Service, then all the way around the limo’s trunk to meet him with His pose. Tightlidded, lipped — eighteen why who want me what? Ben’s thinking. Dead, an outsized flicker. Away…under a breath, circumspect one step down the walkway to the revived, relocated Undisclosed Avenue Deli, it’s called: Broadway, Amsterdamned, who knows, the unaddressed location of this recently opened ratnering dive, a katzified joint so premiere and exclusively new it like their refound God doesn’t yet have a name, or a phone, doesn’t take reservations, might never; this a Scripturally themed media insiders party organized by the office of Doctor Abuya, like bring your own Bible and He’ll autograph it for you no problem is the thinking. A Torah torah torah. Reassessed…in another step, hatting His face from the produce and eggs of the salaried protests, then disappearing — the flashes clouding Ben in heavens, the mortal stuff of stars. Redirected, pose, clickclack, who are you wearing, myself, my own wearing skin, Reinterpreted again yet again, with yet another slow step as journalists from the Times, Die Zeit, Le Monde, Il Corriere della Sera, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Pravda among incomprehensible others scribble down that term in our language, soon superseded — with a last step to the door-mensch, Der with an arm around a pole sustaining the sag of the rabinically velvet ropes offers repurposed, rethought…and I would think, Silenced; he smiles flack, crosses the threshold, then and only once inside and safe amid the rank air wafting from the imported grove of ulcerous Jaffa citrus turns a heel to whisper: what would happen — just putting an idea out there, oblige me — what would happen if you God forbid died, Ben…and then what — the ingathered demand refunds, out of my pocket? and he pinches out from the pants of his uniform his own, to air their immaculate linings, softbellied without coin…and in no time it’s a style, a trend, everyone’s doing it, that and those pants of theirs are more and more being bought secondhand, sold door-to-door.

Tonight’s the eve of the eve of Shavuout, also known as the Feast of the Tabernacles, even as we speak being doneup by Properties in granite — the last night of any success to simcha, before tomorrow’s opening at Radio City, for three nights of previews then the road, hitting the stix. And after the well-wishing, the Mazeling gut luck hugs and doubling kisses from the lips of the famous, which never meet veil but always wing at the air at both cheeks, Ben’s returned not to the limousine that’s never left curbside only idled and burnt, at the appointed hour swerving out from the front in its motorcade of ten police up front with ten more down behind and then fire, in the middle the limo warding only a paddedly paid Mexicano double of His, a ruse down Broadway south and into Midtown with a solo helicopter’s whirring moon providing searchlight assistance above — but now out the backdoor, Him through the service entrance and from there crowded through the trash alley and out to the stairwell at corner; its wet descent into the warmer mouth of a metallic smoke snake, the train buried steps below the icy crust of the earth; Heber to limo on, Ben and His minders to travel underground, depths deeper toward down there, Ben suspects where: gehenna, Hell Itself in these the latter days of the subway’s use, His own private transit always express, stopskipping without transfer, no hops to opposite tracks, He’s routed direct even through the outermost boroughs, bridge & tunneling ways toward the ends of the line, terminal termini — the domains of resistance, at Far Rockaway and Ozone Park, is the rumor, at Flushing, Coney Island, and Van Cortlandt, last stops with everyone off the settlements of the unredeemed the gossip goes; or else others hold it’s all a hopeful hoax, that the fix is in if broken, collapsing, and that Der’s just using a threat preexistent, capitalizing on it, creating fear from whatever incentive around; or, he’s been slandered to have set an entire counterrevolutionary consciousness onto the fasttrack, having been behind a Resistance from the very beginning — with his nose to the last cold car with his hands and arms straining, legs taut, and teeth set, to have the system all to his own miscellaneous purposes, once they’ve become clear…don’t mind us, we’ll wait.

Ben riding sitting but jittered, His minders forced to stand, straphanging, leanedup against doors derelict, slouching asleep; them alone together in the frontcar coming down so fanatically fast, snaking the tracks that swallow themselves in an engorgedly warm worming of tunnel, a rodentlike, every-tailed scurry this rush of Him and train like a roach upon the rail of its own vomit…one lone latemodel hurtle if unnumbered, unlettered — now that one train’s givenover to all, every route — turned expressly loose and dullheaded, shrieking senseless on the system entire with everything else stilled, its others last warehoused in a yard boroughed so far Downtown it’s in Brooklyn, which don’t even think about it, too far and dimly imagined, how it only gives a headache to further squint or suspect: the glumsmogged recesses, through the windows — the catacombs; Ben passing here in the tunnels the snuffed candle shadows of saints without cults, the brave without canon, the homeless more beaten than beatified, without legend or enough money to afford for themselves miracles; ragged almost naked, they’re freezing and skeletalstarved, some kneeling to their Savior’s shattered statues, with orders of the secular others disheartened, huddling around their fires, sternoing for themselves icicles, a potable Hudson, taking turns to guard their encampments from the recent patrols — until, a gasp for air upon the Path tracks in Joysey, Exchange Place the stop with Ben’s train surfacing to spit from its rusted mouth a new Caddy, a towncar blackened without motorcade or support from the air, which takes on its own the alternate route ice homeward to the Garden; Heber and the limo to return to the Garden alone, with the escorting police and fire sirening the night with whirlingly guttural flashes, leaving behind a hundred utility vehicles leased on plans as various as they’ve been complicatedly voided: jealousy green bugs and extended sedans, and the yellow thinning ice fear of taxistani cabs both medallion and gypsy honking a sheepish bleat to the edge of the freeze that’ll never hold their gas; exhaust fills the sky; after a time, they turn wide around and skid home, hazards on, empty.

Shalom aleichem or something like that, says the Radio City stage manager who’s gladhanding, gelthandling to haggle around too early the next morning and this, when everything’s long been set out and signed…and how’s everything by you?

Me, it’s like having a heart attack.

We have an hour left to rehearse, Mada says while ignoring the mensch’s shaking all over to root around for his pocketwatch where, in his pocket — and then the press conference, an hour to rest, shower, and eat; we’re back here for soundcheck at — winding it, noon.

Interviews throughout the afternoon, at the sponsoring hotel the Midtown One Season, demoted by three thanks to frost.

Then to Ben, remember, let us do the talking.

All set?

Gelt puts a goy on the boxoffice, why not.

A phalanx of security shall fill the frontrow tonight, retired police and fire will arise to keepsafe the wings. As for the hall without, its lobby’s been hastily whitewashed, overnight, moonlit by unions: a stretch of wall that used to host a vast verdant mural, famous for its artistry forgotten, redone into this pure snowlike swath, obliterating its representation, made to reflect virtuously above the marmoreal floors, polished and shining. The short agitable stage manager spits a mucose hock of morning chaw to the cuspidor at the side of the stagedoor, retreats from his briefing by Mada and Gelt, heading backstage to overlord the Rockettes’ lastminute refittings for long shapeless skirts, modest wigs frayed to frump, setting hems, renegotiating necklines with what he calls upper management that’s probably only his conscience. A rumbling wells, quakes the theater’s vault, diapasonic, shakes draped forms on flutes, flakes goldleaf, rattles mirrorglass foxed in smoke and framed in chrome and cracking: statuesque Eve dropping her marble apple to roll to a doorstop, let in a draft; the sounding not of His stomach, nor that of the grumbling of those waiting out in the weather for their tickets reserved, a kvetch over price, it’s the warmingup of the organ, swelling initially a pillowlike softness, then rising into a dignified pad of a devotional nature, underscoring the fumbling of a handful of His lookalikes, Ben’s bit players, A Pharisee, Sadducee #3…these understudies curtain up and stumbling through staging, which like the streets connecting crosstown and the avenues north and south has been amateurishly blocked, made safe for the public — them klutzy with smashing their irreplaceable props, and persisting, too, in mispronounciating their lines if they don’t just forget them entire.

A night spent on bed’s edge, rawthroated on the lip of the toilet — Ben bowed to gut up what’d been ordered to be the most settling of catering — after a debut that went, He’ll admit, maybe just an encore short of wellreceived, nu, thank you very much despite; and this despite the encouragement, the kudos, kisses and hugs XO again, VSOP the cartons of cigarettes and the chocolate balloons and the flowers they’d brought Him, that bouquet of bouquets composed only of the flowers to which He’s allergic, He thinks though they’re artificial, silled in every shade known to mortification, disaster: yellow, red, pink, deathwhite, paling petals; the clutch of them Mada, Gelt, Hamm, and Him crowded into His turret atop the Great Hall to wait for the morning editions, the mediated response, the silent radio, imageless teevee, any pitch or delivery, for the earliest word of the cheaping bird; Mada calling downstairs to Garden Control every ten minutes with Gelt, too, listening in on the line from the hallway, after any indication, any news breaking late the already broken. Insecure, maybe, hungry for feedback, thirsty for praise. Under the veil, His face an open book: page Doctor Tweiss, then take cover. As wide as any newspaper spread, the next magazine feature or foldout. His ears “are marks of quotation.” His mouth an indiscretion, if still forgivably young.

What are they saying, Ben’s asking, like tell me, what Are they saying, as if they’re saying nothing at all…what are They saying, as if to say who are they to say anything to me, what are they Saying, as if to ask they’re saying That and why — you want they should stick to the script, repeat after me…and the answer Mada gives to Him’s what, don’t worry, no cause for alarm, the baseless threat of your fret — always a hundred different if equally ridiculous things, Ben, listen up, what they’re saying, it’s still much too early to tell…then, with efficient, neat hands Hamm straightens His false hair, elasticized, once pasted, bearded over His bite: Ben’s never changed out of costume. They’ve got a thousand different agendas, is what Mada’s saying, all demanding the same thing in a million different ways, Ben, bear with us; the door opens and Gelt comes in cloudy in the face and says, though he doesn’t quite seem to believe it, what it really is, Ben, is an issue of popular response, we’re talking appeal. Wide, cutting across like a knife disemboweling. To hell with the critics, the role of the public’s to criticize them…their responsibility, that’s what they do: our polling, our surveys, demographics, you name it — there are methods, there are ways, Ben, take it from me, we’ve got it under control.

It’s all in the packaging (Hamm): we’re poring over the research, the data (Mada), samples, testmarkets (Gelt)…that’s what this tour’s about, after all — the Messiah opening in selected wherevers this summer, or this season passing for…but, goes the Garden’s latest questionaire, how do they want their salvation, with hot beverage, maybe, and their choice of dessert; and so there’s optimization, specialization, brandjobs supercustom. A question, another, half of what’d been asked to last session: should Ben conform to them, or them conform to Ben — asked to eighteen different groups of eighteen different adolescents selected at the holy and holying random, railroaded at Times Square, pennedin ten floors up — a focusgroup, with attention operating at deficit. Them giddy excitement and performance anxiety at the prospect of giving any right answer at their individual rolltop desks in this space luxurious with panes formerly used as a screen studio lit over the foot traffic and growing pools of manure; quills in hand, ink welling, the surveyed stare at parchment scraps; asked their names, ages, purchasing habits, the usual blah and then

Q. A Messiah should be ____:

A.) Male

B.) Female

C.) All of the Above

D.) None of the Above

E.) All & None of the Above

(Circle One)

Q. A Messiah should look ____:

A.) Good

B.) Eh

C.) Feh

D.) Down upon us all

(Circle One)

Q. Match the following words with their definitions, and then use one in a sentence:

1. Kvetch

A. To take pride in pathy.

2. Kvell

B. Me

3. Mitzvah

C. To bitch, complain, or whine

4. Goy

D. A good deed, or, better—commandment

Sentence:

I am a goy.

Fun Fillins:

My mother is a

______.

Your mother is a

______ ______.

I hope you

______ ______ ______.

On a scale of one to five, one to a thousand and a millionfigured unto innominate more please rate your satisfaction with the salvation of your soul in the fields preparest the green pastures provided, then list in the space designated nowhere what your Savior’s name should be, ideally: Benjamin Israelien, how does that sound, strike you closefisted, the beaten goat drum of the ear; those seven sialogogic syllables — the tongue to the roof of the mouth on the assenting Ja of the vorname, how’s that feel, a good tolling roll: Benjamin — or so they’re informed, who to confirm or deny — from the Hebrew Binyamin, meaning A son of the right, or Of the tribal south, alternately, wandering, the kingdom of them and of Judah, there’s no time to get into that now; though others hold it to be a corruption of A son of days, born to His father Jacob’s old age, Israel’s, Him like the first Benjamin, a Ben-oni, A son born of sorrow, of pain, or according to such an authority as the Rambam Of mourning—no relation to the tour’s opener, shortlived, the Amazing Benoni, a fleacircus veteran who had to pull out of his contract when the union impounded his wand for you don’t want to know what; his opening patter: Ram-bam, thank-you-ma’am, I’m just saying…

How about “Ben,” then, they ask the daily assembled: or is that too familiar, sounds too much like a kid, a household pet that died once? Whatever comes to your mind, first thought best, no thought at all. How about Benny, or is that much too familiar? Or Bennie? Schlemielsounding, maybe, loserish — like a goy who’s owed you money for moons, who’d trust in a Savior named that, all wrong.

Because the whole packaging thing’s about as dead as dead, and Gelt knows from what he’s talking — or only acts the part — done with his pacing around Ben’s towered room he’s just standing by a window like sitting down’s bad for his image. Nowadays, he says, it’s interface we’re dealing with, no options save those supplied by dream, information so instant it becomes knowledge, raw access, then faith, the here and now, am I making sense: give them what They want, They suddenly want it. BetaBen. Abrasurprise. Instantly transferable, remoldable, no, forget the mold, authenticity’s what it’s about, verisimilitude…and then the magic, the ability to fashion from pure idea, or from nothing at all, golem, am I right, Ben, am I right — anyone want to pucker on a moustache, I’ll get the boss. At any rate, and they’re so high lately (you know what I’m paying in property taxes alone? scrawls one of the respondents in the space left wilderness wasted, labeled Comments & Complaints — on what my wife calls our beach house and it’s not even on the beach, it’s in Gainesville?), adaptability’s the thing, evolution. To be protean. Choice. Any change. The mundane scratched out in itch, a rash erasure copied from the person desked one over, to either side, a bubble snub of the unsharpened tip. On a scale of one to infinity, rate how much you’d fork over to be saved in the space provided by your nonexistence, the void. All spoonfed, except exactly what to copy, what to write if not just to crumple, snowball let it rip — to tear out the eyes with the tongue; to tap the temple with pencils, which are sidelocks dipped in ink — what to answer, then, having an inkling or lead that the best answer’s only a question in return. Most correct.

The tagline’s BEN: BELIEVE (they’ve spent a hundred grand on that alone, in cigartongued copywriters, tricolor billboards, airwave campaigns on the hour), and it flits through the mind, in one ear never out the other, stuck in the middle as if a malignant lump, to further dull the gray to submission. Why, because one day the world will end, and you’ll need Him, says taskmaster of ceremonies John Johannine, a tall, straight, imperturbable corpse or undertakermaterial he’s bald with strong jaws, whom you might remember from such programming as — announcing an overly processed approximation of divinity into the microphone, his chazzano profundo echoing specially effected with much reverb superadded to age the voice deep into the gaping mouth of the miraculous past, to fill with its bass and one true faith conviction Madison Square Garden, at capacity crowded two to a seat then ten across the aisles soldout. He’s introducing Ben cued off the cards a nubile intern holds aloft in the interest of career advancement. There’ll be others, Johannine stalling, stretching, raising the pitch as Ben Himself rises: slowly up from below the stage on a horned altartype platform pistoned amid the hiss of whitedry ice, flashpot pop, and the dazzle of strobes…others upon others, smothers schmothering forever, Johannine contorted breathless to a grimace as if he’s had one too many whiffs of the sour breath of his own business, but know this: they’re only pretenders to thrones, intoning impostors, the fakiry fake; don’t be fooled, don’t be led astray sheepish, there’s only one, there’s only one Him…who else are you going to turn to when the going gets tough, he gets the nod from Mada in the wings:

Abas & Imas, applause, allages kinder, I give you — Benjamin Israelien. Violins verklempt in unison. Just lunaticker as His head peeks over the stage then above the audience as if a heavenly what, not a sun, not a moonstar, just a — thing, outlined round and piffpuffily inflated, even if only shadowed from behind an illuminated screen, an exteriorized veil, this stark antependium. Good evening, New York. God Bless You, New York, and God Bless the United States of Affiliation, gevalt. And throughout all this intro — a drumroll, please, the house lights dimming down; brass roaring up, a throb of late German Romanticism; its seven trumpet fanfare executed by a snatch of Local 802 Satchmos, uniformed in smoky tuxes and tented satin yarmulkes kinked to hold, numblipped, shakyfingered on the valves. A screen, it’s smoked over our eyes…it’s been said: the screen is the eye of God and we are all looking upon Him and seeing only us, then soon listening and hearing us, too, our last reassuring murmur, roundly smattered applause — it’s a movie, a moving walkie talkie. An explosion, and can’t you almost feel it how loud and how huge. Rapidly cut scenes of the holy insaned, sootrobed forms in mad escape from the falling height of skyscrapers, flame and ash and the swandive of window glass, the whirr of sirens surmounting the whiz of fighter aeroplanes above; firefighters below, cradling newborns suckling thumbs, swaddled saved in the folds of the new twotone flag (black & white or blue & white, it’s both the same without color; He can’t be sure of anything; it’s dark, it’s the veil), a standard being raised everywhere lately, in this stadium, above this lesser Garden. Hatikvah’s sounded in a new arrangement, solemnly heavy on the schmaltz. An anthem without a country to call its tune, saccharine and slow. That’s the Q. for the pan out. It all pans out in the end, nu — to shatter the fourth wall, which is the brick blindfold tied over the eyes and ears of the audience, the veil of our own disbelief…as a knighted actor, Sir what’s his face, was also in what’s its name, with her you know the one I’m talking the redhead and, between me and you now doing hackwork, nude mostly and with outlandish accents for free money the whore the prostitutka, her exhusband’s exboyfriend playing Israel Israelien doneup in a doublebreasted beige suit with undone silk tie patterned with the two stripes and a star straight off the rack of the last casualwear warehouse left in the Empire State, he’s staring hard summoning his method, descending into the depths of his own loss, divorce, disappointment, addictions R_x, why, and zee to gaze forlornly into the void of his son’s, his only son’s bedroom and

Take 1…ACTION!

I am your father.

Cut.

Take 2

I am your—

Cut.

Take 3

I am—

Cut.

Take 4

I am your fat—almost had it that time…

Cut.

Take 5

I—

Cut.

Take 6

Cut.

Take 7

And cut! megaphones Schlomo “Slo-Mo” Spielgrob, a director touted as The Next Schlomo Spielgrob, even though he’s the one and only — recently rehabilitated enough to be making movies under such an assumed name — he sits down in his foldup chair, strokes his oneday, halfmooned beard, pokes his fingers anxiously through his glasses without lens, then takes from his head that bent brim Yankels or maybe it’s the Metz cap a popular model with the sidelocks attached, stuffs it on the bell of the megaphone he sets atop a cooler between seated Ben and Johannine — His hired and handgreased mouthpiece, His spokesperson recontextualized to spokesmensch, a misrepresentation of public face this graceless humbly mumbly, alldenying interpreter and press secretary, this shuffler of jobs, positions, titles and sheafs of chaff, former Chief of Staff to President Shade, whom you might remember as Ben’s future father-inlaw, here played by a respectably graying, growlingly jowled paunch of an actor whose name might’ve been Oscar itself, who’d done the president in ten previous projects. Ben desultory in His own chair foldedout, its sixpointed star decal peeling from the backing, He’s gnawing at the lip of His foamcup, complimentary with its water or what He’s shvitzed under the studiolights; His script wilting on Johannine’s knees as the latter with quickdraw of the wrist passes highlighter through the lines, for any they want to censor, delete. Security twitchy at their holsters, which are empty when not loaded down with props. A cast of hundreds shivering, coming down with a light fever’s headcold, incipient flu, from yesterday’s hours spent in summery shorts and themed tshirts out on a forlorn frozen stretch of Brooklyn beach, Seagate, was it, the board-walk’s breakdown that’s standing in for Joysey. He walks on water, He steps in dreck. He turns water to spoiled wine, fish into moldy loaves. Around, a mustering of extras for the next scene set earlier, thousands of them and their years bundledup in garb, into centurial gabardine, silken caftans topped with pointy turbans trimmed brilliantly in fur as if in the religious return of the sumptuary and its lex as yellow as fear; others who only look and sound and dress and act like them, or as they were, or as they’re being cast and played, except they’re not getting paid (though neither were the dead)…

They teem in the streets, cordonedoff, starentranceside to the world; everywhere they’re rejoicing, horaing amid the shir: Oy vey can you see…no, I can’t, to tell you the truth, this veil, not over their hats, down in front, stay low; their mouths open wide to the niggun of a new day, they’re dancing in odd hobbled circles, closing in, tripwidening out again, wielding weapons of banners and bunting, beating their sandwichboards into placards, signs ’n’ wonders, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, their krazy kinderlach enjoying their appetitespoiling, dentitiondestructive kosher treats vended only in extendo familysize, lining around the impromptu stands and kiosks and carts and booths to purchase their merchandise, gleaning swag (not only the Gardengenuine, not merely the Islandapproved, but everything, the illicit imitation, the violate, knockoffs themselves knocked off the block, curbside vendors hocking the bogus, get your chimeric, the false of the false); purchases later they’re ready to wearing their own, above it souvenir yarmulkes, under it souvenir scapulars, which are tzitzit, phylacteries, too, tefilin, false noses and flossy beards, and so who knows if it even is Him up there waving and smiling and with arms held far out in front of Him with palms flat deficiently applauding their fizzy applause, and shvitzing, too, in this bare chill — how much they pay for His shvitz, who’s the seller, let’s have his papers: Metro Gestapo standing immovably at the sidelines, simcha security leaning up against the shuttered storefronts that line the parade routes, the limits of audience muster, standing sentry, as well, atop the 42nd Street mound, the makeshift Tel of paraphernalia profane now purposed into barricades and cordons crosstown (a spontaneous mountain, every lick of height lacked by Sinai this heap of treyf pots and pans, crucifixi strangled with the snakes of the rosary, value leather barcaloungers, kneelers and falds, robes and stoles); portapotties runnethover, traffic is stalled to the tushes of tunnels, constipated, congested; the streets are paved a hazard with papers crushed, crumpled: snowballs, the windfall of potholes; there aren’t enough trashcans, any there are have been like the courts overturned, without street sense or order. Dogs are hanged from the clotheslines, pinned above alleys that echo their barks with the gusts. Media personalities pass mics around headed in filter with frothing black clouds; flashes pop off like suns then fall through the night, smoky doves. As more and more people they keep crowding into Midtown though Mitteltown’s now what they’re saying, having bypassed the avenue gridlock by forsaking the tar for the ice without lane: touring carts, chartered, not quite climatecontrolled, they keep on with their arriving in caravans, hitched streamlined in lines, queues without end — from the Oranges East and West and from Hoboken, Hackensack, Ho-Ho-Kus, and Parsippany, from Conshohocken, Philadelphia, PA, and the Main Line, Levittown, and the Five Towns, from Garden City Herself of the island Long off the island off the Island that’s His, or that was; older people lately membered into newly formed, duesed and approved Affiliated groups and otherly miscellaneous benevolent associations bylawed friendly to the cause of the revivified Semitic, with don’t doubt special interests and hidden agendas of their own, too numerous to countenance before a good hot plate of fleisch and a schlaf, piling off that drecky, fleshsplintered hay and into the frost of the streets, veins swollen to burst with their life, a lively arterial clog; and the beggars, O how it seems that all the schnorrers in die ganze welt are just showing up, having gotten drunk upon the grapevine and pooled the dribble of their remaining resources to hitch and hire rides from points near, far, and enough, genug, each with a shaky withered hand out, each wanting no nicht demanding their own pinched piece of the action, a shtickel, a schmeck, the bell’s end of the salami, the warty tip of the pickle’s nose, the pleasure of your company and of your bed with you on the floor, and your mother, your sister, she single, or if not is she kind — this being the first stop of their individual fiftyfour city tours, one city for each Shabbos, it’s scheduled, one rest apportioned for each portion of the weekly read Torah, in each city by someone else, then in another city by that someone’s brother, to board for only a meager parsha of pity, the rachmones of an emotional miser, stunted in a grunted begrudge; receiving as it’s called home hospitality, a cold breakingfast don’t worry about me, and then — pulling out, moving on; two arguing: one wanting to trade his next Genesis weekend in Oconomowoc for a Leviticusly Deuteronomous stay in another’s Rome, Syracuse, Troy, or Utica, what’s not to like about the deal, have a heart, have mine and my bad back while you’re at it; I’ve got to be Upstate next week for a Kasha Festival, to make a few inquiries about a horse, the funeral of my father-inlaw, alright, so he’s just sick if ailing and, not getting any better you should tell me what to say, whatever you want to hear.

Another fanfare, this of trombones and unison tubas laying down chords under the cantorial wash, an invocation to tears: the Nachmachen’s introduction, open to both misinterpretation and appropriate sponsorship…a prayer for winter, to begin with: Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who Commands us to Wear Layers; a prayer for the lights: Blessed Art Thy Filaments and Thy Circuitry; then a prayer for the camera: May Thou Bless and Keep the Power On, the Reels Rolling, and then can I get a final Amen for that of the action, applause: Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who hath Given us Hands and, too, the Bad Taste to Clap Them Together…Der ladders slowly up to the podium, summated upon an ambo just below the rung stars; its platform teetering precariously atop that seconding mountain, Lawleeward above the square, its triangulating grid — this gutterhuddled hosting of trash spirituality, junk religion, bum cosmology, and the markets that minister them all; he squints down over this mass, this web of streets ensnared by and ensnaring, a swarming of inscrutable flies, gnats, fleas, lice, jumbles of hairy limbs in a fractious grab and grub shot through with sudden beards, the juts of chins, the opened mouths of the trampled faithful; eruptions of shoulder and elbow and knee, begging only the breath of a glimpse. Upon that skyscraping summit, Der’s flanked by the presences of President Shade, Mayor Meir Meyer, along with his local machine, notables of the state and national electorate, pluralistic ethnic dignitaries, indiscriminate influentials, luminaries and eminences (camera depending), seated aside all five borough presidents with the Joysey governor kept standing, Attorneys and Soygens General, the City’s Comptroller, Parks Commissioner, and the Chief O’Police, starry generals, recently kashered senators, feinschmecking as fat as pockets moneystuffed, huskily cigarboned, no longer under investigation they’re holding hands (their greasy fingers, pinkies inclusive, festooned with jeweled rings) with their own personal heroes of the week, whether righteous police, fire, or emergency medical, sponsored and subsequently publicized different from last: who tried to save which Affiliated, which synagogue or school from looting, or destruction; madeup and fabulously manicured widows to the left, to the right, and on their laps, too, those who’d once upon a time intermarried the famous Affiliated, you might remember, only to survive them for fortune and infamous scandal (actresses, singers, and a memoirist of singular importance), gathered here to present Ben on this the second, firstfruited day of Shavuot, with the key to the city, which as this city lacks gates and even doors repressed within what walls surrounding and tunneldark hearts must unlock nothing much, and so its keychain, too, a plastic hunk of kitsch logomached with I Heart New York, of all things. Awaiting Ben’s keynote address: a speech vetted by both the Nachmachen and Doctor Abuya to be full of sundry thanks, appreciation and honors, distinct pleasures, acknowledgements less salutary than the undecided Shalom of a rhetoric as empty, still, as the desert — spiritual, real — is wasting: gavaged Gospel prepared especially for Him by a team of overworked speechwriters, wordwranglers, hands hired away from patronage of diversivolent political prominence, priced from the favors of Middle Eastern dictators and kings whose highflown had always been spoken plain, scripted low, then toned in a grave delivery derived from an Apocalypse whose threat these inky ghosts have spent their lives perfecting for profit, and so mocking, why not, while they’re at it; a message without a message, a platform with no leg to stand on, death by impalement upon the dull of a talkingpoint, say.

Ben shuffles endearingly slowly, kloymershtily klutzy manner up to the microphone of the podium atop the dais and shadowing there as if the one hand left of a clock, unbound, shading the face entire of this Timeless Square, this mess of Mitteltown recently redeemed from business, freed from the oppressive glare and din of commerce, lately rededicated to the holy — to the faith of these newest menschs and their womenfolk and kinder of thousands, these million they seem welling tears to flood the avenues east and west then ten street blocks north and further to spill out like blood spurted from the vein of the lane to stain the ice of the Park, to taint the pure and coldly bright earth surrounding the Temple, its reflection of the sanctuary’s dome, skymutual. With His veil lifted, Ben about to lift His voice — an echo comes from the crowd, a yelp that pierces air, its spittle a bullet, stray of flesh, He falls…a frenzied screech, its tongue the clapper of an urgent bell — then Tongues, speaking in or of them…

We need a witness! a witness over here! is what’s said, such nasally stop-tongued fortition made in response to a miracle wholly engineered, perhaps, or, nu, possibly even imagined, in the midst of the assembled…whaddya want: women faint, menschs overwhelmed themselves; they bawl like the babies they’re having; an accent failing: Hamm’s wing strikes quickly to hand out forms, passing them into the crowd from hand to fist, no longer questionnaires or surveys, but disclaimers, nondisclosure agreements. Is anybody hurt, I repeat, is anybody hoooooyt? Broadway’s sewers shrieking rhotic, lid their throats, go futz em. Officers get reared up into the air, go thrown from spooked mounts, geyn galloping under — slipping on prankish lots, lost marbles, trampled in the fracas ensuing. Shots rain up to snow stars. Nightsticks rap skull. Out with the hoses. Tonight, the glass will burn, the fire will shatter. No commandments will be broken, but who’ll vouch for their stones? Ben’s snatched; the rostra, evacuated. A helicopter rises, hoisting an overload, an underslung calf crying out…Ich bin the goddamned German Ambassador! The other guests of honor have disappeared, your honor. Ben’s dispersed into His doubles, lettered through the exhaustion of any alphabet, then numbered, alien Israeliens, the Garden’s gang of gängers…who is who, they want to know, how should I, they look the same to me; kicking, punching their ways through the home teem — enough of whom are happy to ape His likeness for no pay at all, not even for the admiration of neighbors, family friends. I’m me, Ben whimpers from His knees, cowered, who else — over here, you, nu, I’m talking to you, He’s saying at Union Square where they’re (unionized, but “for entertainment purposes only”) picketing each other, when that afternoon Bowery downed to the idol that is ye olde Battery amid a mob founded atop the altared ruins of its fort, they’re grossly salival kissing His feet and hugging His legs; pecking and petting a lovein, how they’re begging, beseeching, anyone but Him, His others…but it’s me you want, He says, me. Not who else, who better. Unconscionable, futzed — how they grovel like that, humble themselves at the feet of impostors. Ben grabs at His head, then His gut, the ego’s fat, turns it around in His hand. Me, this is me. Roots out His hair. Makes me sick. How they’ll prostrate themselves before any beard. Throng a finger risen in scorn. Asphalt gives poor reflection, tar no mirror at all — can’t tell how ridiculous we’ve become, so blackened, so changed. Hamm has Him facedown in the street in the freeze. Mada crackles the radio, over. A siren late through the Square airs His name. Another hand grubbing, not His own — it fists hairy paunch, digs nails, drags Him into the rear of a limo. Get in, Heber’s grunting over the seat, and stay in; be a good boychick for once, shut your door for yourself. They head west without light and against a oneway, turning onto Tenth Avenue parting the waters that are not water but oy lachrymose people, wave after wave of them unapplauding, widemouthed and raging and now coming to crack across the fender and hood, leaving behind them a staggering wake tipped sharply with spittle, a tide thick with gobhocked curses and blood. A squeal, then a left onto the West Side Highway, Downtown then a swerve off its edge — from a pier, there’s a crash to the flume, ice giving them way upon the riverine remains of the bay.

At a bivouac set up in the Park just south of the Temple, a tentcity of pilgrims with no further plans, having thought through nothing beyond this coming to town: arrival, mere showing, setting up camp then awaiting the blessing — Johannine among them, being inquisitioned by both presscorps and the public dismayed. Even given this utzy ruckus, there are still questions to ask, half as serious as sky, the other lightweight, to be dismissed in a manner professional, hand to mouth disarming and quick, a small laugh given out of the recline of the lips, a yuk humoring chuckle; the reporters love him and their cameras, they’re jealous…asking him what: boxers or briefs; nu, what’s His opinion of the Temple, or the new Sabbath legislation; really ready for marriage, are we finally saved? That was Him, the pilgrims gathering around, they’re asking, indubitable dupes; He was here, wasn’t He, what every arrived acolyte wants to know, I didn’t miss Him, did I, hope not, God bless, we came all this way just for this. Always late. It’s your fault, says husband to wife, though it’s his, always is.

How it’s been said — openflap whispers, in sleepingbag beddowns, this strawstuffed, stickstuck, muddying campfirelore — that Ben, though others hold it’d only been one of His Hims, you never know which, had healed a cripple, attempted to heal…Him attempting, then failing; this reportedly outside the Laz-R-Us department store, its location franchised, however, a borough away, Brooklyn’s King Plaza, or the Queens Boulevard Center — according to reports if not reliable then official — at precisely the moment He’s being evacuated from Times Square amid the progress of a riot still not contained and fast coming east. Martial law declared from the mouth of a gun. Don’t tread on me tanks through the tunnels. A pyramid of canteens without water. A command post nested with gulls.

It’s told: how Ben or another Ben finds Him or himself confronted, according to only the most salaried of our witnesses, that is, coincidentally the most memorious, too, He’s cornered, no choice or the alternative; how the goy rolls himself up to Him or him, demands an audience, airing grievance, entitlement, the lonely disgruntled, and how Ben or another just grabs him, lifts the babbling form from his wheelchair, dangles him in the air from his pits, then lets go; the goy geshrays a menschlike Oy, falls down to the sidewalk fronting the mall, a writhing heap of howl, still crippled, now worse.

It’s been asked: who tried to cure you? that’s what a lateshift nurse wants to know, later that Shavuout at the hospital (it’s related, too, named after Mount Sinai) to which the cripple’s been transferred for examination by a specialist who’s courting his daughter…God, she says, what a schmuck, but still the following day this nurse — who the night previous leaks to the press this particular story (and’s also a mother to twins), having been invited by agents of the Garden and with the flatter of media exposure for her and her easy-eyed, promising kinder, the promise of reward if not financial then that of the spirit, of hope — how she takes her older than previously reported daughters the two of them dressed alike out of their kindergarten early, schleps them but privately sleighed from island Staten to island Long and its Five Towns, which are not so much less than or equal to five than they are, factitiously, the same — in one of which Ben’s said to be dedicating a new synagogue, Beth Israelien its name, a shul, it’s preferred, and how she stands with them there, huggingly bundled babes they’re smiling gapped and waving at the wrist, their mother making her revisionary rounds through three hours, four, five of hard interview snow in the line that’s been designated for kisses.

From Newark out to Westchester, from White Plains on down to Wishniak Hill, from synagogue rededications to fundraisers for yeshivas and day schools, from mikveh grand openings to sales spectaculars at hat and haberdashery outlets and superstores for discounted furs, Ben lately in promotional mode’s been doing a lot of this, or His standins have, this smooching of infants, the laying of brunch, the breath of only, upon a profusion of cheeks both upper and lower, on foreheads then even on lips, the face of all flesh. The Bens, they’ve been coached as if birthing, coddled through the criteria: righthand handshake with the mother or father, lefthand holding the head of the infant, without any pressure applied, minding the softspots, the give of the skull not yet fused; then, the lean in for the kiss, under the veil, this the scariest aspect for the infant, the approach of this hairy toothed monster, him looming, descending Him, beard brushing skin not to tickle a giggle but to irritate, chafe, while he, she, clutches at curls; how they shriek then soil themselves as they pucker a suckle at lips His or theirs, twirl hairs around their littlest fingers, tugging and how He or they just has to laugh it off, at the same time applying enough, pressure; not enough to smash hands, crush tiny bones, just enough to make them let go; fingers leaving a honey’s stick or other icky substance behind for a Mary to shampoo, condition, comb out; rinse and repeat. Imageconsultants, brandmanagers, remind: never let them tear at the veil, God forbid; revelation’s disallowed, verboten, no peeking.

And then, this, just what the I’s need: a woman at that retirement home gala linner out in Mass., He thinks come Connecticut…a woman He’s never known before, never known in any sense how she stands up for herself to announce, to the press and the hysterical rest: Ben Israelien the Messiah is the father of my daughter! and then, hymn, what do you know (from want, from accusation, from the hurt of denial), another woman from inside the receiving line in the parkinglot she stands just outside it, removed, holds her kid if it even is hers up in the air under the weather as if praying for lightning to strike them both down how she booms…mine, too! He’s the father of mine, just as much! Mister Israelien has never had relations with that woman, Gelt says. Sadly, He thinks. Unfortunately no, is maintained. You’re goddamned right you’ve never slept with me, she says into a mic, proferring — pardon. As if I would sleep with a God poo poo poo — the mothers hock at once, spit to ice. This kid’s immaculate, she goes on…as a wad of photographers press in to shoot her; for the sake of circulations (panting), she’s milking the kid at a scandalous teat, deviatorily distended, bared. And so the paternity suits begin pouring in, allegations of daughters, too, but predominantly of heirs, sons alleged prodigal, their birthrights assumed: their papers always served late at the partner hotel, after roomservice brunch or lunkfast but before its dessert, as if cream for His coffee, a sapping stir. A third woman big with His issue datelined the opposite coast, then an oviferous fourth from overseas where Ben’s never yet been; a fifth with issues with a sixth with problems and more, seeking a degree of enablement, and that materially as much as of the soul we should hope; some alleging two kinder by Him, others three, though even if these offspring would be acknowledged, and let’s be clear, none of them are, “none would be Affiliated, as such transference must be maternal,” reads in part the Garden’s statement — which doesn’t mean these women won’t be bought off. Envelope stomachs, a womb flush with coin. A Maggie Dalene, 26, of Mittel Albany who’s swollen with daughter; a Christiana Eleison, 18, of Kfar Echo Lake, she’s worrying twins; an A. Leah Capitolina, age and whereabouts withheld or unknown, who she’d suffered a miscarriage of triplets she claims had been His; an Agnes Day stunned at the virgin birth of her son one David Stern last name and the eyes of her husband now ex; one Polly Esther suing Miss Day for partial custody of the boy, willing to let judgment decide, seeking a severance Solomonstyle, perhaps; even and for the ennobling edification of none a Bea Titude of Kiryas Joe alleging rape, a night spent in the stairwell of a motel outside of what’d been Goshen, violent and apologetic and altogether pathetic (the pleading, the please) while the lobby hordes were kept waiting for moments; though rumors of a legitimate son will prove unfounded, what won’t, and even amid the handling of this issue misplaced deftly in how furious, fierce, they manage never to make public His, how to say — operation: His procedure’s never leaked is what, and Miss Shade is overtimes reassured of the purity of her bridegroom-to-be.

Another offday, downtime of sorts and this despite its appearance worked only in public defense: up in Cambridge, Ben’s squeezed into a suit of tweed the kind with the leather spleenshaped patches on the elbows to protect Him in His wriggling grovel. A deserved sabbatical upon a Monday spent pent within the ivy walls and ivory towers of this university turned kollel of late, He’s here to accept an honorary diploma, an nth degree in theology, it’s decided, demanded, its presentation followed by a turn at hightable, leading Kiddush at a private faculty oneg — the intelligentsia supporting Him more for what He represents, less for who He is, suspecting such when this dean promoted to Rosh hands Him His sheepskin unframed and unsigned. Campuseswide, lectures have been forsaken in favor of sermons. Higher homiletics; the week following newspapers carry columns Ben signs, never reads. Maui offers Him a pulpit. Nome counters to name Him Chief Rabbi. Elite me nothing, snub me no snob: He’s both pop and not, His cult a movement of mass and a stilling of One…the namebrand, the Name.

The ninetynine of them then one more of God, names a hundred allpardoning, undeniable and ineffable, inextinguishable and, as much, allnegating — they’re going sloganeered on traffic signs, stickered and stenciled, on the walls of public telephones and information kiosks, taxistands, bus and cartstops, nomens recently registered trademarks of Garden, Inc. (violations are being cataloged, with vandals charged only if they’re not billed). NEB! in kabbalistically diffuse red, white, & blue becoming sprayed in tunnels of the subway said to be held by any revolution convenient for comment, a loose though they’re said to be organizing group of shirkers, skeptics, and the libertarian available that might anyway be paranoid fearmongering, or just another Garden interest, disinformation as entertainment, misdirection as the only way forward, nothing new there. With the Nachmachen tasked to image maintenance with Doctor Abuya assisting, advising in matters of Law in a capacity interpretive, say — a consultancy of divination palms opened, thumbly their fumbling prestidigitation — while Gelt and Hamm have been remanded to merchandising, remaindered to the bargaining bin of this campaign for hearts and minds, wallets and purses, pocketsouls snapped, moderation getting caught in the zipper; supervising the PR initiatives, and administrating, too, the official production facilities of the Garden (and don’t ask as to an acronym — lately there’re just enough around to forget), which night through to day are spitting out every species of kitsch; barracks repurposed to manufacture, light industry, areas of lading and loading, property dezoned and downzoned out on the ice of Joysey eminently domained; the two of them standing on the floor of a factory fit for Kings, Queens, or Hudson counties, hardhattted and soft of face witnessing as Ben’s own squeezes cheeks lumpy and pasty, extruded out of every metallic orifice at once, laudably shiny, all wrapped up in Himself: here a line of gastrointestinal aids, there a regimen of heartburn pills, associated powders and tinctures reactive, inventions of the dead FBs, pharmaceutical patents shylocked for a promise, the prescription of a rare grave. Icons of Israelien inflatable to totter sandfooted, alongside plaster Bens to stand on ceremony, its columns; pressuremolded and plastic Hims even for inclement weather outdoor use on stoops and lawns (1 foot, 36 inches, & 50), said to be sainted, for a nominal supplementary fee, that is, Benblessed miraclegranting, that’s extra, it’s told — fear not, they’re faceless, to circumvent the prohibition of the second commandment; name it what it is, the newest rabbis say, an idol at fabulous savings. Furnishings for the garden and home, and a line of luggage, also, just perfect for your next refugee flee. All products bearing Ben’s stamp of approval, that cartoonishly capital almost bubbly B in their olden language facing opposite and intertwined with a Gothically fonted by way of the sofer’s stam Bet, is how it begins in another; that unmistakable B/ emblazoned in iridescent hologram across the obverse of the packaging — with a worldly dagesh or dot floating to blot their bind at middle — being the same seal that identifies the new currency, Israelien shekels entitling the bearer to His visage laurely ovaled though veiled, and in eighteen denominations, minted across the country and, soon, if the Garden gets its way, the world, under the auspicies of the Treasury, which, along with dissimulation, was Der’s old department.

Though the new isn’t even the half of it, as the relic market soars, through the roof — a chimney’s black puff: locks of hair said to be His go for a mint, wrapped for the shipping in mismatched to no matter white tubesocks, retrieved from the laundry, dirtied fetching more than clean, veils and vials of sacral saliva and if impotent seminal fluid are prized if always faked and known to be, too, forged receipts, counterfeit clippings of nail from finger and toe, bogus foreskins and eyelashes as questionable, and as unquestioned, as the proliferating public and publicized records of miscellaneous deeds done, of good works goodly worked upon billboards and within the webs of neon campaigns — Bens private and public assimilated into a bland middle, made pareve, approachable, relatable’s the term through the given mundane (gnawed nighttable pencils and pens, knives and forks stolen from roomservice carts and their dishes that chafe, yarmulkes blown from His head and from there — directly into the hands of the deserving, a blessing fallen from the steal of the wind), these artifacts of His lapsed divinity, these failures made object of abject, His. Witness the fervor for such relics culled and cleaned from the fleshified strata of this monumentally walkingtalking dig, this instantaneous forefather Ur; an involuntary authority just one appeal short of repealing Himself, it’s been said — meaning God…what tsuris, what terror!

And how He’s imperishable like divinity, too, managing to recover from any scandal, emerging ever stronger, with an authority that can’t even admit No Comment, that can’t even be questioned without asking back: the latest DNA tests performed manage to identify the Jnome, or its lack (though only the results are reported, the exact science hushed up), setting the issue of a son right once and for all. With the depths of scandal being translated to the heights of authority, an inviolable mandate atop its heightening mountain with the desert impending — He’s near teflon omni, a bulletproof golden cow without tarnish; a bush behind which hides the ram that is His fear, never to be burnt for a lark. A Moses’ Moses, which is as a lay God or lap dog, a stoolpigeon trained to fetch the new tablets: debut legislation, fall season’s ad copy, the invite list’s advance benevolence. At pattering parties, Ben going from being token to a coin, as currency musthave, to be booked long on advance notice only: as a straightmensch, or color commentary, as a guest host or rabbi-to-the-stars, engaging in scripted debates with Doctor Abuya and others for gabs fested on rushhour FM and late night teevee nationwide — though there’s only one network revived. He makes for pleasant filler; not too difficult, always engaging, toeing the Garden’s line in slippers orthopedic: a product of Benwear©, His own label of big & tall clothing. Ben weeknights hocking whatever product He’s been informed of His support of (Cistern Bottled Water®), personal predilection for (He-brew™, now available in eighteenpacks), scissoring ribbons at kosher food outlets all over the nation, opening libraries at minimum security prisons out of state, inaugurating kennels, speechifying at rallies and public gatherings for worthwhile cause (Late Onset Tay Sachs research) or catastrophe (COP, COnvert the Poor); opening matzahball and gefiltefish canneries, delivering keynote addresses at sales seminars for women’s undergarments, motivational speaking for headache survivors, and Friends of the Uncircumcised. The Orphan Bride Fund. CPA’s for Charity. Ben all day all around your dial, turn as you, the introspectively disaffected, might (though afraid as any are nowadays of being denounced), hocking insoles, insteps, solutions, too, and solvents, it’s amazing, Ben, it really works, and just wait, He says, till you take a sit down in one of these recliners, phenomenal, tell me about those hypoallergenic pillows, will you, hymn, Ben, they’re specially designed to service your cervical curve, wow, I can’t believe it, can you: grillers and smokers and knives, life’s never been so easy, the wife’s never had it this good; Ben embracing the neologic of the infomerical, smiling from behind every pulpit, smarming from atop any platform — name the price, He’s your mensch. Marketing loves it, they’ll die for His grins — or so the Garden assures its investors with data to prove, the Kings Ben plugs for, endorses on behalf of from late at night monologues through the walkover, hosted into morningshowed tomorrows that guest the same as todays, the total program. How’s life? Holiday plans? Primetime beckoning, a call in the wilderness of poolside, the lure of the highestpaying slots, their jangling ring: Ben’s mouth behind the tamtam diet, the herringflavored proteinsupplement, touting its kashrut, the benefits to your health; then, only a spot later He’s on again giving weepy testimonial for Praying Off The Pounds©, I’ve never been more excited, He says, than about this simpering-ly a-may-zing evangelical weightloss movement in a spate of commercials for which He’s backed by a vintaged folksinger who with guitar in hand jingles himself out the nose. Though to be fair to His handlers, and to keep up His image, that selflessness shtick, Ben’s out there publicservicing, too, paid per the platitude to engage with the kinder, announce: Stay in drugs, Don’t do School. Take two. Yeshiva, voiceover. Ben, nothing much matters, that He botches most of this if not all: in His overdubs, occasionally awkward, a stutter; comfortless and clumsy in photographs; in printspots in both how He’s imaged and quoted, nearly repellent in intentschmearing spreads: a pitchmensch grabbingly girthed, overflowing His waistline, foldout…Ben’s pants pinched in two, while pitching a tent in His fly (styling credits: WHose by Israelien, $59.99/1080 IS): an encampment pilgrimaged by everyone who’s, producers and their advancemenschs, their behindmenschs, faddists and setters and models and magnates, crossover heiresses and crosseyed tycoons; their congregation itself beset with the heated pants and ferocious howlings of autograph hounds, salivating and fearsomely scratching at an elusive itch perked by the ears or the tail — they need His signature, it’s His name or death: just kick it into the sand, will you, at the edge of our purpose, of Ben’s or of Judah’s or…legible only to the gaze of the sun, let the wind efface it on the morrow: it’ll be gone, but may that gust carry your fame far and wide. He has to memorize how to sign His name in the holy tongue, entailing Nachmachen instruction under Abuya supervision — it’s a popular request. He grips the pen fullfist, as if the tongue of His tongue concentratedly nibbed. Then, to make His mark upon their clammy, heaving flanks: a singular initial fanged across the ribs, with a hesitant flourish. He shakes hands if hands hounds have, and then’s gone, leaving behind Him a disappointed pack of fierce fandom, cursiveshaped jackals howling at the moon.

O pity this Kitschenmensch fallen, semioticized Semitically exotic, hermeneutered to death! It might be better, the Garden thinks, if all had their own individual Bens, then, a personal savior to call each their own, or Ishmael — that would make more sense than such overscheduling, these lookalikes who themselves have to be minded night and day to keep sober and kind. A figure, a figurine, poseable, plastic without soul. An animal stuffed with dream, stitched up with silvery linings. Scarred. Expressionless. Name it again what it is, not an idol but an idol’s idol, a God’s imaged god shelved Aisle Ten, opposite the mirrorlike void. Too bad you can’t massproduce stars. Stay with us, it’s part of and parceled with research, that’s it, at least that’s how R & D’d try to sell it to Him: trying to find out if Ben, both the concept and human, the menschboy, the boychick, would be more viable as what, a woman — with a pair of those, Doctor Tweiss snickers, the other Tweiss sniggers, and a you know, giggle, snort, tsk, tsk, down there, with baby chromozoans helixed just right, nice and neat to further the line. Twistingly turned. Have Him mate with Himself. Cloning, no buts. Stroke a schlong. I need more. Lightning and thunder. Frank & Stein, a firm whose services He’d be smart to retain. Idea is, nu, how Der and his inner tisch they don’t say what it is as much as it’s implicit in whatever they the doctors are allowed to be told: to make Him as versatile as possible, opened up to the widest possible appeal; though only after identification of the maximum number of permutations to be had from among xdemographed incarnations and yadda y furthered through z. Basically, as it’s lately explained, once the value proposition’s been defined in committee, to go right ahead and, synergistically proactivate the deepest spiritual desires of, fill in the blank — what was the budget of Babel, how high overhead? Forecasts, predictions, a waste of time, resources, money money money say the angels up in Accounting; it’s that we have to tap into dreams, sample only the tenth or so of the stuff that’s represented as prophecy, according to our Sages, their entitled fraction, the terumah…let them make their beds to lie in them, we’ll be the richer for it; let them grope for amelioration all they want upon waking, it’s not going to change anything soon. It’s too late to toss, turn, rollover, around; it’s going to be that they can’t tell when one dream ends and another begins, and what’s best is that they’re not going to care — as long as we’re always a delusion ahead.

Awake, Ben’s lying in bed. His room, a hotel, motel, don’t ask, He doesn’t, not anymore where. Bottles of butts with the teevee on weather, He’s on in an hour. To be due in Makeup & Wardrobe, stat, doubletime. He sits up, takes in the carpet, the cabinet and dresser and the grain of the desk, the rack and the luggage, its guts sliced open to air; His crib, too, never used, they always bring with to hold ice. He’s wrecked, doesn’t know what time it is, light or dark. And so He goes to the window to up the shades and stands there over the west laidout below Him — unable to remember how He got out here this far: parkinglot A, parkinglot B, parkinglot C…asphalt sanding away to the highways, the open America, nothingness deserted, disused; downstairs floors below the hotel complex a horde of extras going through a round of rushed alterations — the unionized seamstresses hemming and hawing; the animal wrangler’s bathing the goats, lions and lambs, as his assistant’s hosing the rank wet from their cages; the properties master’s inspecting the sets—Egypt, Venice, Poland, and Tenement: East Side—redoing the Yiddish on a sign set to be the frontage of a butcher’s; the harpist’s getting herself tuned in the pit to the strains of an anthem different, made minor. Outside, lit in the gloriole of the three letter marquee — there’s a kid, standing at attention, a pole, hoisting up the new flag. Its lone star shines lonely. Its six points, spiting. Martyring the sky surrounding — the pitiless desert, its insomniac pulse.

O the eve of the Fourth, the erev of the fourth day of Ju-ly — and there’s no better shrine at which to celebrate, nu, To observe, than this here: a city only recently risen a bright hump from out of the bleakness of dunes, the newest capital of what was once known as the West, not sure if you’re familiar…no more wondering around enough wandering hotel hallways, then down any that might seem, if just for a moment, a frayed thread of rug, a gilded mirror glint, auspicious in their direction, their winding, portentous of eventual give; begging bribing answers off porters uniformed and not, offduty, dishwatery waiters and wrungfaced nightdesk personnel; through the window left open, go forth and sin with your eyes: the globes revolving dizzily, above the fountains spewing radioactive — an empyrean stripped, fallen to its tar knees, openmouthed, sucking freonated air and noising urgent. Cut the crapola, the decks and deal, we’re talking the glittery take them off tits, the sparkly cunt graven deep between the dunes, then beyond…trudging heavied, pockets emptied of everything but sand: O the skulls and the crossed bones, the brittle cacti, the desert. And then — so much — the fade of these sounds…the bringing bling, the rubby, grubby coin ching, die’s deathrattle weighted for snake eyes — it can only be none other, fellowtraveled good friends. Knowest thou the whirlwound where of this Sodom? Givest thou the proverbial futz as to the hidden name of that there forbidding Gomorrah? He asks, fregn, farlangen, or environs. Welcome to Los Siegeles, baby, a cocktail maydel whispers in His ear, then quotes Him the price for an hour.

O Siegeles! Bugsy’s burg, Lansky’s kinda town, I’m leaving you to-ni-ight…its name, hymn, how it might be derived from the German word Siegel, implying as some scholars hold the King’s Seal of approval, that infamously rhinestoned monarch whose memory lords it over these strange, illicit festivities: thank you, thank you very much…or else, other sages have said, how it might be a benign corruption from the Sephard, its Siega, though the word’s shyly feminine, with the meaning of Harvest, out southernly in this desert due west where nothing grew in the olden heat let alone in this freeze, you get used to it. Here in this garish desert Egypt, Mitzraim’s what the locals know it as, gone Goshen — give yourself another season.

Verily in the course of the buffetline that we call the land of our forefathers they came upon a famine. And so we generations stay enslaved even now, which exile’s to be redeemed with appropriate voucher. The Al-Cohol Hotel & Q’asino…try your luck, try your, try, three wishniaks pitted, rotsweet, it looks like we got a winner, close your eyes, stick out your tongue, here comes a manna of dimes. Tonight and tomorrow, it’s independence from independence we’re observing for the final, last call and closing time and all, though only a handful of the stubborn still wave in the manner of Old Glory. Onearmed bandits: the veteran homeless crutched at the crossroads, as stiffnecked as poles barren, BAR BAR BAR the stripes reeling, slowing, fading…oldtimey jingoes sleeping the day away standing upright, with their thumbs still out, their lids at halfmast, with their hands out, too, begging alms with false palms by the oases motelfront — and that’s it so far out to Mesquite, on the road north toward the border, its barricade, the purdured purdah of the holdouts, Mormondom.

Not to worry, though, there’ll be fireworks enough by tomorrow, the Fourth that isn’t the fourth, the false fourth, the day of the Israelien — Shade wedding, newly autoordained Rabbi Travis Travisky of the drivethru shul to preside: the halls of this Q’asino Hotel coagulating into veins mined for congrats; guests shaking hands, handing around envelopes enclosing checks and tables’ chips, addressed with advice in bright blood: senselessness, don’t spend yourself all in one place. Ben brought low in a seat that both rises and swivels around, costumed already, rouged, perfumed, and powdered: the faygele doing Makeup’s — secretly the partner of the one doing Wardrobe, don’t doubt — gone maybe a little too hard on the coverup, and now the tall, lashthin, lonely stoop goes tweezering again at His eyebrows.

Are you excited for tomorrow? he asks…and what can He say with his knee in His crotch.

O I do love weddings, he goes on, who doesn’t: she’ll walk around you seven times, and then shtum, He doesn’t want to think about it, thinking: where’s my coffee, I take it black but by now you should know that, what about my water, my invincible pills…anyway, why all this makeup if I’m married to the veil — which matches the white jumpsuit, too tight and tawdryjeweled?

Tomorrow, He’s to be married into the family of the President of the country that loves Him, which God blesses with each bountiful lapse of His will: the woman a girl He’s never even met, soon to be converted from daughter to wife. Her name, wait, give me a moment…Lillian Israelien, it has a ring to it, nu, and hope Gelt’s got the ring, sixstitched to his pillow. Then, the chuppah that’s been made in the image of a bedsheet upon which a son will be spilled — the weather holding its sky, which is a canopy greater, a next night’s clouding of the sleepless new moon, tomorrow’s redeye to Newark. Tonight, however, Ben’s been forbidden from mothers and sisters, urged to save up His strength, avoid such risky indulgence: though there’ve been allegations, ahem, situations, hymn, little embarrassments, random indignities…a measure of Schaden done, but nothing the glad hand of Publicity won’t wipe from the face of the earth.

And though there’s no rehearsal tisch, there’s still a rehearsal, which is always the same — whether religion or revue, and no matter the variety, the show must always go on.

Onstage in the main showroom, the Tut-ankh-a-men Ampitheather its name is, the paraplegic, extapdancer who’s also the second asst. director he’s not quite kickstepping, knocking, screaming out the kinks still left in the openers. Mada sits in the emptiness middlerowed, taking quick blacksmeared notes on a legalpad and shouting, too, as the small balding wheelchairbound mensch rolls himself into the sets in a dissatisfied fit, exhorting emphysemic through the hole in his throat, its metallic electrolarynx, the performers assembled: lefthand, and he means it in his emphatic tinny wheeze, the fingers must flutter, you with me, righthand now, right, and soon enough they’re arguing…Mada disagreeing with him through his own hands cupped to bell yell, you’re getting it wrong, then him demanding of Mada — tell me, who’s the professional, he’s asking voicelessly though, without apparatus, unable to manipulate sound as with his hands he’s frantically wheeling toward the lip of the stage, who’s the goddamned professional, rearing himself up almost vertically, this spooked tilt, as Mada throws back, who’s paying the professional…he’s leaning in a smoked hoarse, throatily impotent rage to fall back and out of his chair, which spits out from under him to fly up and into the frontrow, then snaring on a seat just spinning its wheels, him thrown to squirm worm atop the floorboards stageright. Houselights dim, with the spotlight on him; the operator’s been finally woken. He struggles to sit up against a tree prop, redfaced, and tearing, on elbows across the stage foundering before making an attempt with swipes of his fist to lisp pitifully through the gasp of his puncture.

What do you want from me, he asks, what are you asking of us, he pauses for the strain of next speech — that we scrap an entire moon of work, he’s wriggling his insensitive spine against the sloppily paintcaked wooden tree wheeled, which falls over its waxwork fruit: that we should just stop trying, he tries again to sit up, and trust success to what, bribery, coercion, providence, God or His headlining angels? then slumps, to be proppedup by the twelve principal Benettes, who fan him with their wings.

Am I on yet? is Ben’s voice from above — heightened amid the wisps of the walks and there even patiently, too, just hanging around: from the ceiling, stretching the rubberized cords wrapped around waist and stropped to a strut overhead, dangling Him limply over the pit and its floodlights, and sagging, halo drooping, toes weighted nearly to stagefloor — without drama, not enough tension, not much to spectacle at when it comes to suspension.

Save your voice! the crumpled choreographer gasps, a direction taken up slowly in whispers, vouches, and oaths staged by all in unionized unison: Ben. Benja. Benjamin, the stagehands intoning His name in this newly popular propitiatory formula; not as much hoping to save their star from falling than a ritual of pep, invoked in a style baldly copped from the profuse, profaning neon, flashing outside passersby, their yarmulked kith chauffeuring laden, bluefrozen kine. Along the Strip, marquees advertise attractions both former and upcoming in small print (all your past favorites: comic & corpseimpersonator Reggie Feldsein his name is, whom you might remember from his only appearance on Late Night with, forget it; next week: Eleven Intepretations of the Ten Plagues in Lasers & Lights—“Two Thumbs, Guess Where?” says the Siegeles Sun), but the large print’s always for Him: B-E-N it flashes, ten tall, BEN, and then BEN…B-E-N, BEN, B—a pause—N—and a member of the maintenance staff ’s chosen by lots, tephramancy: by the interpretation of ashes, the reflection of helium, argon, krypton, or xenon in puddles of gutter manure — cast out into the wilderness to screw in a new bulb.

An hour later, it’s opening, what with the toetap and the slapclap, and the booing, we want the show, we want the show — how there’s no time for reflection, Ben, you’re on and we’re off, a blinding flash out there, a whole cast of what can go wrong always will, acting up under the batting of brights: a heavy velour tugged up by a cord braided and fringed, sandbagged hoisted the flag, the desert’s skypennant, backed only by a dustily footlit diaphanous veil; this musty, fouled curtain rising on a risqué oneliner, then lowering itself back down only to be risen again as another: the entire spiel here a setup (plus admission fees, the prices of food, drinks, and unmemorabilia), and all this funnily staged business with the curtains in their second coming and third only to be followed by blah, merely a punchline we didn’t think funny the first time, and you didn’t either…such tuggy yuks as delivered by a mensch they’d taken on take your pick — scrapedup from under a rock Upstate or so, from which bungalowcolony or kuchaleyn his first wife dead always said — think it up for yourself ’s what it means (that and his older birthdate, which he’s had falsified with a stolen certificate, and which are his daughters and which are his second and third wives, each of whom’s said to own land in Joysey where they’d graze their trick Arabian horses): an oldhand expert at Katz skills, he’s short, fat, and borschtbelted, a former tummler and the purplehearted, white-livered veteran of a million hundredshekel Kutsher’s gigs, at least according to his official bio supplemented with headshot ten years and twenty pounds out of date — the immediate past president of Congregation Beth Supporting Actor, too, this snubby stub of a forgotten, unrecognized, underrecognized, genius in a weathered suit and a pair of dark, plastic, feltfooted slippers he thinks passes for dress shoes, how his bunions have corns, his tongue’s lost its gift is its gift in the telling, how he tells the same lame old jokes while holding in one hand a microphone and in the other an assortment of props, nightly, depending: whether a ringmaster’s whip or a conductor’s baton, often an unstrung violin he didn’t play if he could or a feather, which is artificial of plastic itself, pink and illegally sharp; then — according to the program that costs only a shekel or two extra if you care to follow along with us at home — there’ll be a juggler on stilts, to be followed up by a stilted who juggles, stay tuned; upstaged by a mime, the juggler’s brother-inlaw who he’s just doing a favor for he’ll regret (is he climbing a rope, or milking a cow, I’m not sure, ask him yourself, he’ll flip you a finger in answer); four and five respectively illfed, parasiteriddled albino lions and tigers turning lazy, tired, halftushed loops through flaming hoops, schnorring on their other sides, stageright, for scraps of meat rebarbatively raw — though only once all have passed safe and sounding in growl through such hazards are the hazards, then, magically transformed, alchemized, from having been hoops into triangles superimposed as to form a familiar star still afire.

An interlude, featuring the Tehranfinanced, Beirutbased rapper Def Führer engaged for juvenile appeal, the edifying fun of the kinder: We’re all infidels now / How / Shut the futz up…followed up by a set from a set of Siamese Twin girlpianists, the necessarily packaged two of them the only ones on this tour not in any way faking it, having been imported from Siam itself if it still exists: they play for our pleasure two different nusachs at twinned grand pianos, though thankfully they don’t sing (aren’t allowed to) — have you heard their accents? asks the dramaturge he’s billed as but he’s really a producer, and a dealer in woolwear, hats, gloves, mittens, and scarves; this seguing into a reprise of the opening theme, initially heard scored softly for winds with flute solo amid that sitting and settling rustle (aux. percussion), now though in an arrangement that can only be described as discoliturgical, even the critics agree it’s way over the top, performed past forte and prestissississimo, keying a change to chorus accompanied by triple winds and brass with bells up from the pit’s hellacious darkness, courtesy of the mephistic Maestro and his orchestra, besamimaddled spice addicts all, doing their improvisatorily riffing best to keep those deaf, dumb, startlishly molting feathered and sequined things onstage in the vaguest semblance of together: they couldn’t take a cue if it took them, audiences have said, and it won’t — Management will…these the openers that’ve been contracted tonight like a bad virus that stills the showstopper, keeps the stars in bed and without their shiny understudies for company, makes a boy have to step in to play a girl in drag what with the blond wig and the fainting; the last cast for the last date Ben’ll do in Siegeles, baby, and ever, wherever, the end of one engagement, that is, before the eternalizing commitment that marks the end of another, tomorrow, remember, whose wedding of Him to her and the day with posterity, too, is to be private, then its own reprise the day after that for the masses, the media, with their honeymoon scheduled to rise back in the east to close the tour at the Temple — which event’s to be the culmination of Ben’s public wander: the end to this six nights a week, with two hits per at 1900 and 2200 with only Fridays off, then two shows after Shabbos, the risen black chuppah curtain of night with its three tinsel stars, and then — showtime; He’s been scheduled like this for a moon.

And the tour entire from its opening night to this one time only it’s said, Very special engagement upon the eve of the fourth of the olden July the first of another month, also — the night of the newest moon of the month known as Tammuz, named for the God of Babylon, who’d been the lover of Ishtar and the bane of our prophet Ezekiel — has, admit it, proved nothing less than a disaster of proportions most Scriptural, whatsoever were its intentions: to begin with, the animals had been rented sick, the dye wouldn’t take, or poisoned — six sheep done dark, mortally leaded, and one heifer dripping in a puddle of its own red; the mocked up horn of the unicorn kept falling off when it wasn’t stolen and sold by the crew; then and as if that’s not enough in Indiana the unions went striking left and leftist forever, following this Marxist stuntmensch and his pyrotechnic associate who specialized in making smoke without fire turned political for the emancipation of the Hoosier proletariat; at Des Moines, Iowa, the Emezin Persky, he of “His Equally Emezin Magic Trunk (which he would always say might also refer to a more intimate organ, then wink)” refused to tour further without yet another plump plumer, a busty clovenhoofer and aspiring puppeteer he’d met then impregnated one night while on line for the motel’s ice machines and maybe she’s twelve on a good day; members of the audience throughout the Rockies, “The Very Difficult And Often Uneven” region down to the even ostensibly intelligent, aware, and worldlier denizens of Denver proper, proved reluctant to volunteer to sit in the schmuck’s trunk, take a lay, a load off — then poof out again Affiliated, afraid maybe of getting sawed in Solomonhalf, perhaps of disappearing forever; though the press would hold that their resistance was, instead, an issue of respect, finding the trick with the trunk not merely sacrilegious but unrepentant, also, of the unforgivably boring, that old outcast estate of outdated, superannuated shticky, which is to be punished by yawn, a tip of the old hat lacking a rabbit to pull for. According to our sages whose bylines buy love and whose praise is often greater purchase than money, Terrible, Unwatchable, Unlistenable, Unthinkable, too, nostalgically nonsensical — who would have thought, what with the mind that’s gone into it all: the script’s desertstale, the lighting and f/x despite the budget come off as amateur to be generous, production values pitched so low you could trip over them, a snare, a stumblingblock. A rimshot, a cymbal, a crash. And then Ben, what’s His deal, His dinging thing, what’s with it. A mensch walks into a talent agent, ouch, a mensch walks into a talent agency, ouch, next time he should use the door. No, seriously folks, a mensch walks into the office of a talent agent and sits down and says, nu, listen up, I have this fantabulous new act: it’s jokes like this, acrobatics, juggling, magic, how I’m doing all of them just by living. Here and now, that’s the act, I’m it, that’s the joke, me…whaddya think, this talking to Himself, Ben upstaging the stab of backstaging patter. Existence, now that’s entertainment. You’ll go far in this town, so far that you’ll leave town, and then you’re in the desert and futzed.

He flies high and lone up there, only to be lowered down onto a throne set atop a pillar footstooled amid property plastic fronds and hunks of foamquarried marble, from that vantage to offer His answers to questions that’d been earlier offered to select audience members, memorized by them preshow (questions asked to themselves in their minds throughout the performance, just as He’s been practicing answers, silently rememorizing what’s anyway always fed to His mouth by a device spooned into His ear) only to be offered back up to Him as if so much sacrifice, too turned and false to be accepted by even the cheap seats and their miserly gods. What did the yadda say to the blah, Ben? Knock knock, who’s there, Jaffa orange you happy I didn’t say Eden’s apple? That, and how many chickens does it take to cross what. Are sons responsible for the sins of their fathers, another goes, and its answer is yes, or no, contingent, of course, on the humors of any sins in the question, on which fathers and sons. How many crickets can outsound a heckle. Though often the answers and questions are reversed for effect, as if He’s telling the joke of a fortune: don’t bother, the audience would say all as one, or half the house that and the other, I’ll just sit in the dark, and then how He’d have to ask, humiliatingly, and with a smile that turns His glossy teeth to mirrors of the audience’s yawning and sleep, how many mothers does it take to screw in a lightbulb; and then, how the houselights would abruptly die or be killed in a fizzle, and how there’d be murmuring, too, bleats and more booing less and less sheepish — the Maestro would pad. A hook might become crooked from the wings. This is how a shepherd loses His flock.

In the early days, the initial run to fleeing sense and proportion to say nothing of dignity, respect, or the holy, the profaning previews, the underrehearsed, the yetunfinished, not quite there — they’d tried to class it up a bit with witty bits, highbrowraising oneoffs that failed (they being the first three of the spectacle’s by now twelve directors fired, or quit, or else disappeared both), such as progressive readings of the Law by prominent voiceover talent, Talmudic debates accompanied by interpretive dance performed on one leg; disputations of the type once held between popes, papabili, priests, and the rabbinate, or with the sacredly simple, devolving into mere roundtable discussions in which no position’s untenable, arguments without consequence, nothing at stake at which any will burn and so, worthless; in which every opinion’s welcomed, countenanced and considered, given an air, suffusued by the pedalheavy, flatfingered pianist Siamese plunking selections from the opera of the Second Viennese — intermezzi between the acts of this revue initially abriged, then outright freely adapted (destroyed, copyright wronged, misprinted corrupt like the program notes crumpled by the showrooms’ shined exit doors); as scenes from The Tempest became interpolated with others of The Merchant of Venice under a entire script of provisionary titles, including Don’t Be Shy, Live Long & Prospero, A Few Pounds of Wet Flesh, and Such A Big Storm As You Wouldn’t Believe; in which, we’ll be quick and synopsize the summary, Ben as the Shylock sells the King of Sicily who he’s surprisingly Aryan, well-mannered and handsome as if, a dinghy secondhand known as the S.S. Putz, which founders then sinks, stranding the King and his entourage on an Island named Coney off the coast of south Brooklyn where they can’t speak the language, are forced to dress heavily, eat oversalted foods, and pay retail; an Island lorded over by the Shylock’s business associate and, as it happens, His brother-inlaw, widely known as the Third Assistant Rabbi of Besonhurst. In the final scene, the Shylock, the Rabbi’s onemensch agency, rubs His hands, as greedily stagedirected, then offers the King, in a memorable soliloquy, safe passage off the Island He’s saying,

SHYLOCK:

I’ll deliver all,

and promise you calm seas and auspicious gales,

and sail so expeditious, that shall catch

your royal fleet far off

for a hundred shekels

a head…audiences suffering this and other such Narrisch,

Mishegas (such as vocabulary tutorials: Nonsense, Insanity…a blackboarded, graybearded explanation of the Theory of Relativity as interpreted by a professor recently sabbaticaled from Cal State, the selection of an audience member for a stint upon the stage’s analysandical pleather, a Doctor Tweiss impersonator attending; regional stock actors and actresses reading drastically edited excerpts of poetry and prose in up to and including onehundred languages: the corpora of many, from that of Modernity’s most exalted — persecuted, the truth is — names to that of Moses’ God, Who’ll be theirs by curtain; to be followed by a Mary or two as a ventriloquistic Hanna & Daughter as featured in a potboiler of a cooking segment, before the mime’s hauled out yet again to demonstrate appropriate application of tallis and tefillin upon an attractive, intelligent, altogether responsive volunteer, preselected only after being pre-screened); husbands woken up by wives woken up by kinder eyes and ears unhanded throughout for the good stuff it’s called, though a majority of them’ve left before the encore to beat traffic, make the midnight buffet.

And so the pretense is dropped like a name: Israelien, I got blessed by Him once live and I got a stub here to prove it; the extravaganza more like the injoke — the extrava-ganze, the allinclusive, oneprice, oneticket, oneshow one-nighttime only now with more musaf…upcurtains reworked after the opening acts, and then the overture anthem, upon an expensive display of lasering lights along with the introduction of that comely couple known as Smoke & Mirrors, overlaid with Der’s recorded exhortative in a voiceover the quality of which’s hoarsed worse by the night, scratchier, worn to a hiss, welcoming everybody, introducing and thanking, mentioning merchandise, setting the tone. Segue to a set featuring the pit orchestra again with a sleight’s fast, slut-tier than flirty cut to the dancinggirls, the Benettes — chubby virgins, but intelligent, as it’s claimed in the playbill, whose looseleafed content makeshifts the program, crying that they’re kind at least, sensitively single, amazingly over-achieving; quoting praise lifted from the sag of their mothers: she’s a good girl, you’d do well to applaud — for a number that’s presented in two tableaux one of secular succubi the other of lilin; then, another set from the pit, this with an exciting lead shofar feature that culminates on an expert High C, the girls out again in change of costume, now with a little stretching (too tight, they’ve put on weight, it’s the roomservice): Benettes as peacocks doing a routine of sequined sequences, the whole rathskeller gig, the burlesk and the topless, bottomless, ever refillable cancan, them up in gildgirded birdcages, feathered nests and upskirty swings, behind a quartet drawn from their ranks referred to in not one review as the Four Whores of the Apocalypse tonight doing a few USOstyle girlgroup numbers if only for the Fourth’s hell of it, the last sake less of patriotism than of their nostalgia — anything, then, in the public domain: this a starry spangly requiem, without bigbeat, without backbeat, the tin not panned anymore but made silvery threnody, the beguine once begun now elegiacally ended, the trot become outfoxed to a dirge: don’t sit under the appletree / (with anyone else but me), anyone else but me, anyone else but me, no, no, no, then the orchestra again in a medley of your favorite zmirot you love to hate, harmonized alongside many of your least favorite nigunim you hate to love but have to own anyway and now made conveniently available to the public in one (1) boxed set between the banter, accompanying a candled ceremonial, roasttoasting memoryfest, a participatorily projected montage of “This Is Your Life…” a drum solo under the death of the Affiliated edited together out of stock Army footage and scraps schnorred off the remains of the networks; then, a hazy fading out on the anthem again, exitmusic for intermission, a pause for refreshments — an opportunity made the most of to hock them schlock in the lobby.

On the flipside, there’s Johannine or his stunted double out in full ringlingbros regalia, bespoke besuited, tophatted and twirling a cane, to intone a script intolerably wordy with the pseudomystic, this hagiographic, heteroglossolalic Babel he comes on with a delivery polished as impeccably as his necklaced and braceleted and tiepinned and cufflinkedup gems: and now, the star of the show stuff, highshowbiz an antedated American dialect perfected orally only in the century past…the moment, don’t you know, you’ve been waiting for, haven’t you; each to translate this to their own disbelief. Huge womanly hourglasses are suspended from the rigging above; glitterspattered topiary’s rolled in wobbly from the wings, under which a raggedy, shopworn wreck of a lioness outcast from her species’ central casting reposes, alongside a lamb shorn due to health regulations. From a trapdoor, the platform ascends topped with that throne — the aspy hiss of hydraulics — as a screen’s lowered between it and the audience, ten cubits premium silk cut shatnes with nylon to separate the marks from the marked, to keep sanctuaried the paying public from the headlining holy: whosoever would gaze upon Ben’s countenance shall die, they’ll remember, they’ve been warned this prior to curtain in an announcement too serious to be taken for truth (and please: no recording devices, or flash photography), with the screen itself only a makeshift of lastminute, as Him suspended with bungees just hasn’t worked this last week, not what with the late weight or what all the new firms and their highpantsed, lowforeheaded adjusters want to rob Garden, Inc. of for the privilege of their insuring (this worrying, then that trouble with the unions, too, the forecastedly unfavorable reformation of Siegeles’ gaming control board), one of a God’s names’ worth of concerns and then that of marriage you won’t forget, all sagging Ben forlornly no matter what strength of cord they’d use: that of the umbilicus, rattling chains, binding ties. Up out of nowhere, it’s hoped, His shadow appears, an outline: screened, He staggers…the lights falling Him, the trussed stars. He’s deafened, with no sightlines His own. Another drumroll, this triple forte taken down to piano, a muffled muddle to ring in His head with the debut show’s organ’s last rill. Sparks fall from the roof of the sky. As He hikes up His pants and examines His zipper, the audience’s gasp rings out, enormously (a claqued human laughtrack whose mob of mobile organizers extort their commission), with the slots sounding loudly just outside the doors to the showroom — then silence, the toothy glint of a titter: He’s been rehearsed to milk it here honeyed, directed to exploit the silence to when murmur would set in, loosemouthed whispers, and vexations expectant; only now, with a deep dolent smelling breath into the microphone clipped inside the paper carnation of His lapel, to begin.

Line! — Call me Ben…’s prompted, delivered up to applause — God they hope, how they’ve already paid, how a handful of them have already been paid, grown menschs, womenfolk, and their kinder altogether wetting themselves, O Lord please and thank you, you’ve been a wonderful audience; to ensure a happy house for the prenuptial night, the entire frontrow has been comped. To take a bow to any smashed idol, a hundredthousandmouthed, open to sleeping, napping or nodding, and drool, then there on your knees to beg for approval, acceptance; lose the tie, loosen the collar — Ben, a little respect. It’s that you have to feel a right to be here, among the fleers, exiting still — the chutzpah, once was known as confidence, to be asking of them their money, earned time: not of them but its, though, is how you have to think — the undifferentiated, unindividuated public out there still in the dark; even as its yawningly sparse shadows emerge, at intermission, at close curtain, as individuals, as differently their own as the lights are dimmed up to air their embarrassment, shudders and stretches, watchconsulations then coat and bag checks, seatsearches of shame — a house is what it’s called, He’s thinking, as in a halfhouse, an empty house…as long as it lasts, it’s never a home.

Glitzy and glamaramorous come on come on, unrepentant sleaze, flimflam, hokum, hucksterism, and the slipping of audience finns, the whole razzle dazzle spiel whatever claptrap’s your brand — this scene has it all; and so, they’re always telling Him, it’s hard to believe the reviews, they’re more miss than hit: Ben Bombs, Israel Fails, He Puts The “Mess” In Messiah…fedorad newspapermenschs flock to designate pay telephones, fist the slot for coins returned for putting through their calls, telegraph machines stitched deep into their pockets’ linings, O so that’s what they’re always doing down there: line, dash, line, stop…Spectacle? Check Your Wallet & Watch! Shtunk @ The Shore!! The Whore Babbles On (find out what’s eden our critics, cont. Aleph 2)!!! Though despite the headlines, the sour ledes, the bitterest grafs, the tour’s still been blockbusting (reports have it, unconfirmed except in their unreliable capacity); apparently, there’ve been near riots at the boxoffice, and hahaha not demanding refunds: apparently, there’s just nothing else to do at night, these holying days, and anyway many have been freebied, and in not a few locales actually forced to attend, filed from their homes by police with yarmulked vigilantes assisting in lockstep to the gate, why not, thinking, might as well show up, get their blessing, as promised, which He bestows upon all at the end of every performance. And if you’re following the press on the press, the media always selfmortifying, selfcensorious, its coverage that beats breasts, fills space and kills time, there’s an easy explanation, a one size fits simple interpretation of an interpretation if you will for why the critics especially with their minds and columns and books, too — who needs them, not Him, a mensch of the people — have seemed so hostile lately, still are: it’s not Him they’re disappointed in, as we’re assured in Sabbath eve editorials referencing the weekday review — it’s just in the way He’s presented, profane.

And though He’s been hamming it up as kosher as possible, everything’s just east of being on tonight, say Utah latterly known as Mormondom that’s how far off, make you happy…as if the audience will notice — and how are our notices? Has the backlash backlashed into slavishness, yet? What’s wrong with me, what’s my problem: matrimonial jitters…having these eighteenth thoughts, that prenup this Goldenberg had Him sign this morning too early, how maybe it favored her too much, though she has her own money; after all, she’s the President’s kid, The First Daughter, foisted da Foist, they said da Pope sent a gift, Pius Zeppelini…how to get a disengagement, what are the divorce laws in the state of Kinfusion, how to go about getting a Get, or else — how to avoid such thoughts, and the aufruf; how to put an end to any Genesis before it can gestate into what?

Questions: do you Ben Israelien take you this stranger whomoever to be your fill in the blank, to have, hold, better and worsen, for richer, poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do you — who even knows how His own tradition does this, or did…they’re perusing the video arcana, the archival photographic, the imaging and audio lore; albums are pillaged, the reels are raided as tombs. And soon, begging off the bachelor afterparty, which the stagehands had been planning to host in the Forum, a vomitoriumlike via of Rome annexed incongruously to this unit of Egypt, Ben’s returned to His suite, penthoused atop the pyramid of the Hotel & Q’asino. No apologies to their disappointment. Frozen vodka and warm mashke just sit. The strippers had anyway canceled due to conversion. Hiding high above this iniquitous Whoredom, He’s beyond the reach of radiance, the sizzling of light a dull throb. Registered under any odd surname malaproposed then appended Pharaohnic with number — Jacobson I — Ben’s the lone guest of the alight capstone of this monument memorializing only its own wasted expense, roomed in the glowing glassed pyramid set atop the larger stucco pyramid sloping below. He sits exhausted on a luggagerack under a sconce, an oillamp illuminating the suite, then the desert, the sprawl hazily endless, as if emanating from the very rubble landscaped at the feet of the faces of this gently widening gold, at the very least gilded, edifice, which is set here as it is there or was, Egypt, b’shana haba, alongside the lie of a great riddling Sphinx, in this lockdowned keeping appearing almost domesticated, with its nose again attached in a laudable feat of archaeological rhinoplasty, its paws splayed out in front astride a stretch of statuary, enthroned Ramseses arrayed in factory ruin, wired for light and sound. Ben’s left the bow untied around His neck as if His head’s an opened gift, snifter in hand and a smoke, slippers and a robe — miracle of miracles, He’s left all alone.

Let my person go…Him of shvitz and of sadness, walled inside this tomb, however tastelessly appointed, not that He’ll notice, being nervous, anxious, humiliated by His image, His presentation, how He’s been packaged — O to be bound within the circumference of a ring…God, everything and the show, too, tonight’s disaster He’d rather not go into — the closet’s mirror, or that above the bed, in which to relive the worst in the face of relief — not with what He has to do to evade tomorrow, its tight new tux hanging plasticshrouded behind that closetglass (to be laidout on the bed in morning’s reflection), for the ceremony’s seven circles and…Ben almost thinks to stand in line for a refund at the boxoffice Himself, but no, think again — to do the drastic, that’s what’s called for, the coming voice, not as much gesture as deed, less prayer-whine, more more. Let my people, get up already and go! Gegangen! Napkins have been fitted into their holders. As for the rings, those two golden globes hollowed for vow, as if emptiness is its symbol (one of which’s been named the most capacious yet made, possibly ever, in the whole upper 40s, Mitteltown’s reformed Diamond District; who keeps records of such things, you might ask, but how they whisper!), they lie surgically stitched to a pillow on a bed in a room, which is Gelt’s, three quadrelating floors below, between two macaroons compliments of turndown. Ben takes steps to the window opposite the deck, dashes His eyes down upon the slope ensuing, its desert landscaped: a combedover tangle of briar, withered scrub and shrub giving way to flats; the far terrain littered not with treasures of papyrus, scarab, or hieroglyph shard, but with paper, plastic, the metal promise of lottery scratchoffs, the greasy shrouds that mummify burgers…Hathor the cow goddess slaughtered out in the wilderness and then carved for buffet, the four sons of Horus gone bust as the birds then flown home with the Sun God finally set, Amen-Ra; Osiris’ Isis secured for the night in her maximum security vault. Transportation to any netherworld’s just a short ride away, though, a straight shot from a lot of parked golfcarts that opposites the horizon.

From the glass atop the sharp rise of His accommodation, Ben’s stepping past the kingsized serviced with two macaroons of His own, served up each to a pillow, how thoughtful; their grease as if leeching His shadow across the eggshell carpet, deckward: the open and wide desert just a fall past volition, a gust flings open the door to screen midnight’s sky. The stars have been annulled in favor of the lights burning below, downed to the lampposts in deference, due respect dimmed to the blinking cold and the signs. Enumerate that lower stellular, then its sands gardened, too, and may that number be the wondrous sum of thy kinder — no way, you got the wrong me. Why should He marry her, how could He, why would He, know what a decent reception for onethousand maybe friends and no family costs you these days — it’s His money, not that it’s His to spend, but…emotionally, He means; know what kind of expectations are involved, what failures might lie in wait under every placarded table, what curses can be writ in the cards? Ben steps over the threshold, through the air, into sky. And there, at the greediest, pyramidal pitch of His occupancy: His head itself a greenish eye appraising, allseeing, seeking value unlidded, unlashed atop worth…Exile — the desert endless and endlessly unforgiving; utterly foreign, yet if only in its ideal, an inheritance, too: this desert the wilder younger brother of an easterly nowhere, the desert that formed Affiliation, years before civilization, ages before culture — an unpromised land; and, at its furthest western edge, another ocean, which promises to be purer than that that lapped us over here those generations dead long ago. Arise, then go down. Don’t let the wind hit you on the way out. Deserts have this way of turning people to prophets, sheep into shepherds, making rules into exceptions that then grow bushes of fiery beard and strike miracles from the faces of rocks.

Here and now, though, there’s no indication. And so what is it, exactly, precisely, stonily spring forth with what because we all have that thirst: what force, that tactless trust to what or in Whom that has Ben out on that deck, atop the pyramid atop the pyramid from which He rules every and none, then has Him ledge out a leg over the rail…the hair of His head, tangling with breezes and cirrus — to knock unscrewed the burnt bulb of the moon…on the rail, His crotch becomes stuck, what a drop — don’t look down? don’t look up! and then the other leg overs, as well, and Ben’s holding onto life with only the cruciate nails of His fingers, trembling, numbed. A handful of our scholars once schmucked low enough to suggest this as an attempt at suicide and for this they’ve been thrown from the topmost window of the House of Study, which if not merely metaphor is risen higher than any pyramid and with windows that don’t open ever whether in or out — then to become scholars of only their own demise, of their own failure, its interpreting loss; and yet neither is this a martyrdom, not even a selfmartyrdom, as other of our sages once heretically proposed — what mamzers semantic, forget them: may they be excommunicated by their own consciences, exiled out to the margins, the verso darkened by recto of the page being turned. No, it’s at its most secular an escape, as some of our more moderates have allowed, an exodus if you want, but, as they insist, an exodus redivivus reversed — an exile accomplished in rewind, a history never accomplished in doublearrowing rewind: into the desert, the Law, and only then may we wander it was, but now it’s just wandering from the very 1:1 first verse, perpetually — an eternal lightingout for a territory that can only be civilized in its Promise, it’s said. To think that who or what promised the Promised and why’s not to be known, and how that promise doesn’t indicate intention either, whether it be good or evil or neither and mystically both, only fulfillment, as faithed…hymn hymn hymn, is this the particular kind of promise best left unfulfilled, like the one of the One Messiah — who knows if not Him; better to think less, fail better, fall more. Unminded, mindless, to step along the outermost lip of the deck and then, lean. Ben’s foreskin freshly shed before the show thanks to His own ministrations, it’s calming; His Batya, the Marys, are off — and so He has nothing to slow Him, to float Him on down on the wind of its flap. He lowers His tush, holding the railing to air His weight as long as He can and the deck can support. And then breathe, Ben — He just lets Himself go, with a great loosening of everything inside Him gives way, and He slides…down the western face of the pyramid, Him slipping hundreds of widening stories down the slope widening fast and faster forever, what with His weight and its force, the extensive weather that is gravity behind Him, slingshotting this now yellowy butterballed, dirtysnowballing Ben down the incline headfirst, feetfirst, everythingfirst and tumbly nothing, His tush on His roundness that’s all tush getting hot, rubbing hotter and burning, bumping Him up in small moguls on ducts, chaffing until — just as Ben’s sure His robe will spark His roll into flame, a rearside, frontside, inferno, He hits, solidly, and splays open wide, landed in the sand, not quite that of the desert proper though made in its image: an unsparing, unstintingly dusky perimeter perhaps once marked for plantings, but presently barren because frozen, fringing toward the edge of the sidewalk then around at a squared turn to the face of the pyramidal Main Entrance.

Promise. Save that very vague promissory notion He hasn’t fully thought through, though who has — destiny or fate, reward or punishment, step right up, step right up — Ben has no thoughts whatsoever as to just where exactly what territory He’s lighting out for is, if lit, if anywhere and not just more of that proverbial prophetic dimness or dumb…God’s talking to me in my voice; God’s talking to me, and I’m God — whether in metaphor or image. Confused, who’s not, but out, just out’s enough — He rolls from the sand, half-somersaults then gets up onto feet, stumbles toward the front. And there, to His right, signed at the turn of the sidewalk, a black letterboard bulleted with letters in white: Shalom, it says, Welcome to II: Israelien Impersonators. Then an incongruous Philistine arrow, pointing this’a’way and Ben — despite any freedom a slave still to ego, like a dog sniffling for terrorist bombs, or a God responding to an invocation of names — has to follow, dripping sand and shvitz. Through the door, He’s swung into the lobby crowded but vast, then through the Q’asino floor and its tangle of topiary of Him, celebrity cacti kept decorative up against the glaring edges of wallmounted display cases said to contain: Ben’s wardrobe from His babyclothes up to His wear from the show, then His shoes — bronzed booties that just have to be faked; accompanying other Israelienish treasures and trinkets and charms, making Him blush if not galling: His family Kiddush set, or a model thereof, their silver box for besamim perhaps a reproduction, too, alongside an intricately upbraided — in its labeled, libelous description — Havdalah candle of His mother’s she’d never used because it was too beautiful, she’d always say, how to burn it, whose birthday present it’d been from relatives, hers, flown in from Safed once of Palestein (and then stored underground, inside the vault, an ironclad canopic containment of models purposemade to accompany us to the afterlife, a midgetized Eden of the temporal above: minivaults stuffed with miniaturized gelt, dimunitive chip and coin, minigolfcarts and minislots, minibuffet tables smally laden with tiny roasts and flecks of sushi, little harlot idols with claybound breasts laid atop the minibeds, the minipillows, the miniminibars, minipayperview available in every room, maybe) — then, deep into the innermost sanctum of the pyramid, a room known as the King’s Tomb: a limitless capacity ballroom doneup in a lively approximation of rastered sepia, with bunting and crepe streamers hung in black & white, to host the suitably bannered, what’s it again…1st Annual Meeting of Israelien Impersonators, held this inaugural year, amazing — O what a Cohencidence! such cohenesthesia! smack dab in the middle here of this frozen desert, amongst the holdings of displaced Ibn Ezra and Ha Levi’s latterdays. Maybe it’s the prospect of the wedding, or just that of the group rates that would follow it in a discounted procession, veiled in clipped coupons and diaphanous deals, trained to please, but all are in attendance, Bennies from every continent converting. He hadn’t been briefed — untold many of Him working the room, networking below and they hadn’t; futz the Garden’s Pharaohlording, their locklipped secrets, their pokerfaced withhold or hit, just His luck, but maybe there’s a why this’s been hushed. He’s folding, we’ll call. There’s no better place to lose your self than among yourselves, as who would find Him, Him as Him, here, amongst all these Hims, who’d even think it to look. How could anyone tell the real deal’s the spiel, only God knows, only God cares, and maybe that’s it — to let the world stand your security, to stay safe by exposing everyone else to the danger you’re in; and then, to convince them they’re every one of them doing it for themselves, now that’s business.

An ingathering of seemingly every freak who’d ever stuffed a pillow down his pants, then gave that pantsed pillow a secret name they’d tell anyone who’d never ask after only one lchaim of schnapps too many and so perhaps those many names or that Name aren’t so secret, it’s usually Help: windchapped and undermoisturized faces listing toward eczema; dark dangles of meshmade ties lazily shadowing immense purchases of paunch, belts of leather thongs braided hidden around girth, under gut — dressed for this westerly freeze just like their easterly mothers would’ve insisted, in multiple layers and, hymn, maybe that’s all they are, all there’s to it: people draped fat in infinite layers for warmth, layer after layer nylon to woolen and yadda on down to their stained cotton briefs; at night in their own rooms to peel downily away to the unnamable kept hot and heart with within — a molten unknowable nothingness, a core boiling barren of Him — sleeping in beds tossed by the blue light of screens, to become their very own nobodies themselves. This being the very first annual meeting of any orientation Ben would ever attend, and He’ll attend it all wrong, unofficially, uninvited, no blame. His parents, or so He’s gathered from an albumed stash of official linnerdance portraitphotographs, from the trove of souvenir programs, kept from going starrily yellow by the careful preservation of experts lately involved with a forthcoming museum to be housed in His house at the Garden (its projected opening date, this upcoming Rosh Hashana — the first week of the newest New Year), had been much more proficient in attending such meetings and gatherings, pitchstrategy sessions and infotainment plenaries to be focused on PR message discipline and trial technique, training camps and miscellaneous congress: as laymembers, they were never caught lying down; as board members, never bored, always attentive, and in good standing: during speeches, they’d sleep on their feet; they were even officers, at least Israel had been, Hanna maybe just a Hadassah or Sisterhood corresponding secretary or else, with Edy an event cochair, her husband presiding over an immemorial annualization of bar association brunches, inns of court functions, and other purposeless conferences held toward the winter what with Joysey’s Teachers’ Convention break flown south to greater Orlando (though in relative youth, with their portfolio barren earth, how the family would install its members in a chain hotel fanned above the swamp that is neighboring Kissimmee). And so this feeling for meetings maybe isn’t so genetic. Still, how hard can it be to be Ben-as-yourself, especially if it’s just long enough to help your feigned to food and drink for what’s gratis. Not to be Himself, only one of His selves, a mere tear oozed to this ocean, the giddy, overheated shvitz of the five, sixthousand strong here who if not Him or even of Him then have at least all been doneup alike, padded to pop, aping devolved His every mannerism, making an attempt to be accurate even to Him and His mortification to the last mindless gesture holding as public reaction (Him made mindful and foremost, aware, withholding that that’s being manifested by all) — this summit of gesticulators signifying familiarly similar, simianly familial, as Ben enters the room disappointment in disastrous unison.

A sigh, a roll of the eye, a forefinger shrugged. As this meeting’s inaugural, first annual, indulge them, this reactionary rudeness is the only organization obtaining: a total insanity prevails over disorder, two to a room if not to a bed. A shtus of klutz, a pure riddling mess, through which al-Cohol, Q’asino proprietor and seventh son of the newly elected though others hold Shadeappointed Palesteinian president, makes his buying rounds, pressing impersonated flesh, and comping next Shabbos packages, gladhanding anyone rolling high and hard down the pyramid’s loss, leaving the house with their gain; this as tomorrow’s wedding guests — friends and family of the Shades, associates and the internationally owed — enjoy the spectacle, joking amongst themselves they hope the rabbi gets the right groom, hahaha.

Ben makes His way to the rows of the buffet, the tables bent over backward with everything He’s ever liked, with anything He might like, too, if He’d ever had it: varenikis stuffed with pierogies themselves stuffed with you never know what as a foretaste of Messianic eternity; platters of everything you could ever possibly do to a fish before eating it: smoked over fires of rainforest woods rare and endangered, cauldrons of thick stews of lamb and beef whose names noodle out to eighteen letters long, in consonants as chewy as fat. Pre-warmed plate in hand, He lines behind innumerable Bens as two old women, they’re old to Him at least, they’d take offense, tsking drag Him as yet unidentified out toward Registration — to the table unsteadily folded out alongside the frontdesk — and stand Him there His fingers twitchy on the mammillate clangor of bell. To be singled out here, Jesus. Two women, both of them convinced of a singular estrangement from His strangeness: minimumwaged to be consecrated to the act of its identification, intent on an official acknowledgement of their how perceptive they are to be followed by a rectification of His own unrecognizable estate. Maybe it’s His sense of humor that isn’t in the Schedule, maybe it’s because He’s all the while smashing the table with the empty plate that is His head, shrieking along the lines of you’re not understanding this, lady, I’m Him, I’m really Him, the emes mamash, I mean for real. As they leave to He hopes get the Manager who, hoping further, might fittingly as if a creation made manifest of this very convention be imaged as God: a Ben as everything more than such Bens, taller and wider and with infinitely more eyes and ears and noses and mouths, and beards and chutzpah, desked in perpetuity and promoted imperiously, allpowerful, and yet always seeming to be off for the night — a crowd of lesser Bens crowd around Ben, minatorily minor Benjaminites shaking heads, stomping tribal trouble, whispering amongst themselves, giggling: is my squeal, He’s thinking, all that highish, no, can’t be, I don’t believe…and no, I don’t have an impediment! but the retort’s enunciated clearly: not yet you don’t, you’re too Young Ben — I’m supposed to be doing an impression of Him when He’s old.

The real Ben doesn’t point, one Benny’s insisting, a Teofils flown in from Warsaw it was, especially for the event. What He does is He squeezes His hands into fists, like so, then shakes them out loose, while stomping His feet.

And another, he’s New Orleans I think it was called, now Bet Mississippi…that’s rage, you with me? Entitlement, follow? I know a faker when I see one.

Me, too.

And yet another, from Angels, you know it. I know Him and, let me tell you, friend, you’re no Him.

And you are?

I don’t know you, Ben says, who are you to me, who in God’s name? I just wanted freedom for free, an offnight out, what I needed, one measly miserly gulp of unsupervised air — and now this. I’ve never seen you before in my life. I don’t know you to hate you as much as I do, just leave me alone, I’m sick of this hearing…then waves His arms above His head as if the unangeled wings of His ears, brings them to clap Himself down on His forehead like Oy — as if applauding His own perplexity, I’m not sure.

Can I get a gevalt? Better make it to go.

And, nu, ease up on the gimp, will you, says another Bennie or Benny, whatever they’re calling themselves nowadays, for use in propagating any calling into which they’re being coopted: the name’s impersonation, another jibes, not assassination…remember, you’re trying to be Him, not kill Him.

You, you’re so funny, you do standup, too, how much you make, maybe I can break into it, seems like a good racket, you know anyone I can call — gimme a number, a letter behalfed, the coin of a name…

Hymn, yet another Benny says, that’s not how you do it…He stomps His left foot, right, then His right lags a little behind, adds maybe another Bennie, and really, come off it, says why not yet another of them — you think He’d ever be caught dead in a shmatte like that, a house robe, think again, keep yourself dreaming.

The women return, hotflashing, moodswung, and with faces severely refreshed, flushed with sample kit makeup, looking like overflowed bathrooms begging for maids: they turn Him around, the only one of them unnamed, the One — hauling Ben called to the carpet brand new, one with a slip of tag, the other wielding a pen.

Why’d you drag me away from the buffet? He wants to know. The carving-station just got a new roast.

You left your nametag in your room, maybe, one woman says (her name’s Elaine), no need to run up and fetch it, says the other (Explain), we just wanted to get you another…you know, Elaine says as Explain picks up as if dust from her unfashionable, also unironed, lapel, before you forgot who you were, Elaine laughs, then Explain, and then the both of them together and how — one would laugh just a giggle longer than the other and so all the timing would be off and the effect would be ruined; it’s terrible: they’d get separate motelrooms to stay in and wouldn’t talk to each other for days.

No problem, He says. Me, I want to forget.

It’s an act, if still in development — until they can afford to quit this job, then their Mondays and Wednesdays dayshifting a diner opened to service the eating days of a local yeshiva: Elaine would say, I feel bloated, and Explain would say, this is how it must look to feel bloated. Explain would say, I have cramps, I feel terrible, and then, get this — Elaine would say, you look great, never been better…

Nu? says Elaine, meaning name, and guess who explains. Ben says what it is, Ben, and how everyone laughs altogether, doubles now doubledover, folded for the packing or stack like napkins or sheets, amused He thinks at mine this amateur impersonation, my rank this hobbyhack, sad. They’re slapping knees, drizzling tears like shpritzes of lemonlime squeezed, a pinch sprinkling salt over the shoulder. Bin Eden, known to most though as Fats, Head of Q’asino Food & Beverage, he approaches to ask if everything’s alright, Mister…in a capacity competently official, solicitous in its sincere swiftness, with his silent bows and craft of cunning obeisance in lipspittle, nosedrool, and swallow, and how the Bens gathered together shriek His Israelien name, then laugh even harder, heaving their tongues against teeth, a howl massed from their mouths almost vomiting up on the floor and its latterly vacuumed carpet a morningafter cholent, of sorts, slowly warmed in the gut, bussed from buffets, earlybirded especially greasy, but just as He begins to serve voice and register protest, bin Eden’s already moved on to his next guest: got to pass on the love — hand to crossed fingers, them old meet ’n’ greets — at least a false sense of feely importance, clapping impersonators on the back, hugging them and cheekily kissing and saying incredulously I almost didn’t recognize you, hahaha his sharpie brows and his slitty eyes and the scrawny, bent humble hunch of his frame on his way zigzagging down the welcome-line only of Hims, how’ve you been doing, baruch hashem, the wife and the kinder, enjoying yourself, have a great stay.

Their nametags, also, say obviously enough Benjamin Israelien, but underneath that writ expected are their real first olden names they’re given over to slowly forgetting, from which they’re changing, converting; what used to be referred to as their appelations Xtian, Unaffiliated, and then the names of their goyish hometowns; example: Harry, Mizpah, Larry, Shiloh, Gary, Lodi, here with his lovely wife, Vicki, doneup in drag.

My name, He says, is Jacobson, hymn, Jacobson, Esq., why not, from where or, more perfectly, from whom He gets it and what else (name, life — nomen est roaming, perhaps), He doesn’t know — and then there’s the touchy issue of quote His accreditation end quote; Jacobson, Esq. just once overheard and now, underspoken — the name, it’s been said, of His father the lawyer’s old lawyer of his own according to the will Israel’d left they’ve since scrapped. Elaine falls for it, asks Him to spell it all out for her: and He tries, capital-J-AC-O-B-S-O-N comma space capital-E-S-Q period.

And where am I from — Wishniak Hill, maybe you’ve heard of it, it’s in Joysey, where else should it be? and Explain shrugs, goes and pens it onto His tag.

Hello, My Name Is: and yadda, she pins it to His lapel, its spike sticking through His bathrobe, His breast (later observers would describe Him, Him as Him — as if they’d known, or could’ve told the difference if only to tell it again well after the fact — as the height of inappropriateness, here in a house robe piped in pink, over His mother’s own robe trimmed in purple, both rattytatty, and holed), pricking Him to weep, His sacred heart. To pump Himself, then, from this nick of a question, Ben asking, what’s in a name — whether an inoculation against self, or a sanguinary palm smeared to mark the forehead in confusion, disbelief…blood, Ben thinks: maybe mine aren’t just impersonators; Jesus, do you think so they’re clones? Could be, could be worse. Holding Himself against the pain, the pains of both wound and thought, He tongues lips, sets teeth. Elaine hands Him a program. Explain blows a kiss to His booboo, is what she says from lips swollen with enhancement, botulinum, collagenital. He opens the paper to read right to left. How late tonight there’re still two midnight sessions to choose from: Doctor Tweiss’ scheduled to talk in the Shishak Suite about minimally invasive surgical options to, and He’s quoting: Get The Most Out Of Your Sinuses; competing with his brother Doctor Tweiss who he’s up late doing the Ramses Room in a discussion of the Metametymparapsychologyality of (Im)personational (Im)personation: An Excursus in Pretty Pictures & Lite Muzak; please pick up your vouchers from Registration, it’s urged.

Fat, frizzy almost menschs swarm Him away with them into an elevator then upstairs to either or both sessions included (How To Be Two Places At The Same Time: A Seminar for Expectant Mothers; a prerequisite for How To Do Two Things At Once II: A CrashCourse, kneepads not provided), but the food — it’s back down on the floor below buttoned the lobby’s L. Ben jiggles a flabby wriggle from their frazzled, cuticlebitten grasp, attempts to take the elevators again and this direction down, but the doors’ve already shut, fallen. He rests Himself against the buttons to summon the lights, God forbid walk a floor. Suddenly, the hallway’s hobbled through with Bens halting with walkers and quadcanes, disabled to wheelchairs (electric and wheeled by Himself, by His own best companions both in drag and in friendship, and in the spirit of charitable help), incarnations of any fate that might be His, forever robbed of their futures — with their constant flowmasks or nasal cannulas hooked up as if by strands of saliva to little, wienerlike oxygen tanks tubing attendance, and, too, them lying their spacesaving, moneysaving accommodation in the Q’asino’s sprawled ballrooms and hallways and even in the elevators He’s waiting for still atop a host of rental and stolen stretchers hauled, gurneys rolled on casters that squeak to suspect an infestation of mice from function to food again and again.

A ding, the elevator doors open with Him about to step inside but instead He’s crowded back and out by more Bens piling out, too many, too much even for Him who’s been Himself all His life — what little of life there’s been, both personally with regard to fulfillment and, also, speaking of time. Huffpuff Ben goes to find the door to a stairwell in case of divinely intercessory fire and there in the hall tries at the handles and finds one unlocked and so opens it, He’s sorry: inside the room and sitting on a twinbed’s a mensch, a nearmensch, an almost there, close but not quite, who he looks though — superficially, the suspicion’s only a feeling — just like what His twin would’ve been in reflection, in a mirror hutched on the opposite desk; he’s naked from a hotwaterwasting, fogmirrored shower now drying and draping himself for modesty’s sake with a pair of tzitzit that barely hides the wound of a circumcision that just has to be recent. To this particular Benjaminite’s credit, even his squeal retails real — Him fleeing from the sound of His own voice, through the hall down to its end trying all the doors along the way, locked jimmies locked, then tries the last, the one whose name is Stairs lettered in the holy tongue, too, across its window in red, shoulders into its give to tumble down a flight to a landing whose door opens back into the lobby. But it’s an emergency exit, rigged, wired, and so above there’s an alarm ringing like slots ping in zeros of sound, an openmouthed, untongued everymensch for Himself, no one gets out of the desert alive — people flinging aside even panic, fleeing themselves as one self that is Himself, too, to lobby exits lit and conspicuous, blatant and yet too narrow to accommodate such padded passage as if the very openings, the needle’s eye gateway, to Heaven Itself, which is bright and cold and pavedover with tar…Ben approaches the desk and without really asking Himself what He’s doing asks for a vehicle, demands as if with all the credit in the world behind Him anything with wheels and like now.

And what’s your name, sir? the ancient, fisticfaced hop wants to know.

And the mensch laughs a scar until Ben gives up Jacobson, Esq., with what room I forget…no, #108, the number of the room from which He’d just been evicted by ululant force. The hop sobers professional as the sprinklers rain down on his head and the water gathers in the cistern bowled between his prognathic lower lip and his gums. He nods Him out with a you’ll have to speak with the valet through the revolving doors through which He spins planetarily, revolting around and around, then finally outside and dizzied, lit and alarmed into night, its vastness human and waged: starryvested valets at their stands, amid intricately stranding constellations of velvet, webs suspended fine and strong between tarnished poles. Police arrive as wolves, with the tails of scorpions and the disgruntled foreheads of fathers at the siren of fivetrumpet alarm. He rips His nametag from His robes, throws it to the sidewalk, stands out unacknowledged. Then, bends His knee to pick up that nametag, walks over to the trashcan aside the entrance, throws it properly away — Hanna would be proud, would’ve been.

Ben outside and alone takes in the Strip, the hotels with the velouring plush of their high, brightchandeliered halls; their checkeredpast gaming-floors, their chipped pools, sexually voluble fountains; the honeymoon suites up above, where Moloch beds down with Mammon, their minted offspring incubated in vaults, coins awaiting their sacrifice within dimly fluoresced lairs underground. He mingles amid this jingle and jang, tourists the spume and the flash and the flicker. We Buy Your Old Currency, a lit billboard speculates then squelches to urrency, urgent. Gold accepted, in lieu of jewels. Whores solicit the favors of unpatrolled corners and curbs halfextorted; who knows what sex they are or might think to be, they’re heaped in His clothes and hijacked tablecloths over what’s hoped are shapelier bodies. Firemenschs loiter among them getting paid by the hour, standing around like hoses stopped up, with their tainted dalmatians like swollen hydrants to be tapped for their foam. Despite the panic, impersonators fleeing, others are still just arriving, Bens perpetually coming and going — from their sad vans and paneled sedans, station wagons lonely with only the driver’s seat ever occupied; they’re uniformly falling apart, upholstered in delusion, but mufflered in dream — if not evacuating or hauling the wrinkles of their luggage to and from porters no longer waiting around for their tips, they’re honkskronking a nap on their horns on their ways waiting to pull in and out of the horseshoe blocked, too, by tethered and poorly shod horses and donkeys and mules with their bales of haphazard hay, their sirens of whinnies and brays. Ben whispers to a slot attendant who just now lucky for one of them happens to be on break who whispers Him, then, to a cage cashier with illegibly tattooed knuckles just punching in with a particular valet, caped and capped, who whispers Him to negotiate: two shekels large in His own denomination a no go, three shekels, I can’t hear you, what else, you drive a hard — nu, I’ll see what I can do…how much they’re talking for a pickup, what’s spare at the moment, a dumb, lumbering truck, a paleotechnic Henry Ford model the only vehicle he can part with at this hour, tonight with its alarm and for any price (part of which he has to kick up to the goy he’d punched in), deal or no steal; last week its owner had run up a tab, having jumped bail after being euphemistically too energetic in the way he’d talked to the officer; then, skipped out on his bill with a creditline you couldn’t use to pick up your mother, without a kidney, short sperm, and two pints of blood; he used to be a priest or a preacher’s the word, they have it tough nowadays, you know how it is…

And so to begin in with the handling, kicking the tires of a transient deal: they ding around birthrights, fling wrongs, sly lentils, a large bowl of His lot taken with doubly dipped doses of salt. The valet doesn’t believe who Ben is and so He tells him He doesn’t either, then backs the goy into a corner and opens His robe. A circumcision convinces — especially of the one actually doing the severance. Touch it, He tells him, tug it, shift it and tear: it doesn’t hurt, the emes, no fooling — it’s just skin, it flakes off, yours to keep.

Through glint and glit, Heber’s swerving the limo around and He realizes upon dodging its hood then the sweep of its lights that Hamm’s probably even now up in the pentpyramid, attempting to evacuate His person downstairs. Bombsquad shows up only to fill out their insurance paperwork on the dash of their truck; anyone got a pen, we’ll take turns. And so Ben hides as much of Himself as possible behind the hollow of an ivylocked column, which is maybe unnecessary and what’s more thirty bits of silver neurotic what with the other Bens betraying around — how hiding’ll just make Him all the more findable, found…emerging only when the valet’s gotten the truck out of hock to the headwaiter and lot then waves Him from the cab over to the edge of the sidewalk, the further curb where they idle at the head of a motorcade of who gets to be first response. A vehicle not usually recommended for the Affiliated, furthest thing from, but it works; one maladroit emission on wheels, mobile death. Ben gets up into the cab, the truck sags, belches exhaust on its chassis. It’s cancerously blueblack, with a filthy, fatty white interior, lipoid pleather that’s not quite fake as it’s not quite trying for real. A custom job, coming to ruin: the eagle once fossilized upon the face of its hood has flown, its nest left to the weather, peeling piscine finish in rusty scales, even the scabrous metal itself flaking away, gloss to dross; the rims churning chromed: lick my mudflaps, they say in flashy roman — without honor. At least there’s a full tank of gas.

The valet leaves Him honored, happy to be of help and with a wish of good mazel, no thanks he’s pleased only a thumb held up in front of a wink (and so, obscuring his recently hirsute face from surveillance). Proudly, the goy struts back to his stand engrossed in Ben’s outermost robe, hotelcomplimentary, and daubed in His blood, its left pocket hanging fully low past its purfle, heavy with the skin of His shed. Once unobserved, how it’s humiliating, though: Ben gets the hulk out of park, takes a moment to realize the emergency’s on, releases it, stiff footwork on the pedals, starts and spurts, stalls, starts and stalls on — trying to remember Heber’s lightly natural routine, that mechanical ritual as unconsciously observed too many mornings in transit, if most of them dreamed halfway to sleep (an inheritance, this techincal debility: like everyone else in their Development, His parents only ever drove automatics: the vans and the minivans, too, the rovers and even Israel’s promotional sportscar that he’d had out on lease for all of a month before being rearended by a towtruck out on the GWB, then trading it in on Hanna’s insistence for a practical coupe with no soul, prone to every complaint ever insured by the responsible, to be handeddown to Rubina, Simone, and Liv in their turns right and left — a fray amid the wires of veins, it must be, this disconnect deep in the blood); He manages how to have it going, to keep it going, soon gone…to turn it around the drive’s short learningcurve; then eventually — heading out.

Ben without chauffeur, though it can’t be too hard, just follow the nose of the road, hound it out. On the wing of a prayer: check mirrors, burn maps. He’s got a ways to go nowhere, both pursued and pursuing…Him to be forktrailed, coattailed by drones, Bens not created by God but recreated by the science of fame: His replica becoming their replican’t, willingly, with each of them lapsed, failed failures, messes and wouldaBes, Messiahs-in-training untamed without name. Wandering throughout the whole of the desert, New Mexico, Arizona, south by southwest, until — ultimately, a landmark’s required: the West Pole, a totemic redwood, a giant sequoia flagged with a flag; having been driven out from the buffet, denied the breaking of the fast the evening next (says the Law, the groom must go without on the day He’s to be married), which reminds: driven, too, from Lillian Shade, almost, not quite, Israelien, which would’ve been real Schade, who tomorrow early would’ve made her arrival on Aeroforce Aleph, its descent better classified, into the semaphored lights: their message, stay away, go back from whence you came, but then the glide to a stop, the gangway would be hauled up and who’s going to be there to greet her and her First Family once this gets out, makes wire and with it, stifles, strangles — an understudy public, a lesser name fallen from the agenda’s marquee? Off the strip, they’re waiting with new letters to hang. Meaning, runawayed. The wind, blowing colder than ever, winds its way into the loosest slots in town, as they’re sold — all proceeds going to the charity of a blind eye, the moon’s. The syncope, the tone: a howl with the windows darked down. Finger a shekel — call your mother goodbye one of these nevers. Tell her you’re not coming home.

To set out through tunnels, over the underpasses, loop around then turn without signal. To drive through the night — no, not to drive but to truck…that’s what the goyim say, what they once said and fast, virilely hard and long, Unaffiliated with the caution required: due westward ho, and once nowhere then deeper, ever further into its myth, its fantastical lore — sandshifts…Sabra prickly pears, Mesozoic lizards, cacti, and the threat of wily coyotes, existential roadrunning past repeating scenery repeating and repeating again, deanimate and so no longer funny but wasting — O the barren Midbar, the gulag that borders Siburbia; the whole contiguous country out there, how it’s one enormous golfcourse…neglected, defiled, destroyed — one hole let’s say three par of a course that breadths the universe entire, it might; or, our earth’s the ball, and it lays foul, from where it must be hit, again…a west to which the sun’s set to putter around in darkness, to waste its waning years paying bills by memory to waking, making increasingly conservative investments in day. Here, where everyone retires — Ben trucks, and Ben lives.

At the outskirts, the ramshackle gird of the grid, of failures and fallings, car carapaces, dungbeetlelike burnt like scarabs, swaying palms trunked in plaster, splintered rust…Ben pulls into the lot of a roadhouse being converted into a synagogue to turn Himself around after He misses a turn, and prays, if just for a moment. May my memory in this town be for a whammy, for any who might so deserve It — unto a double, what’s to lose by being so generous, no jackpots, no wins shalt ye merit. Then, behind Him, once pulled back onto the road prominently marked to give itself unto the altar of highway, as if a secular offering to the earth: there’s the call and the echo of fire…lighting up the desert in the rearview mirror and reflected, the same, in the windshield in front and there in His face, it’s a fireworks show; the night before the night, but still, a display almost divine in how violable, without distance. Huge trinities dazzling, they’re banging, they’re bursting, such warming, nostalgic salute — not ending but beginning again, not a covenant new or liturgical levin but a reminder that rainbows can be made by us, too, here and now. Not the engine backfiring, Ben — it’s the rocket’s reddening glary that’s sparkling blue, which once fired to fizzle is white, the ash of their promises made: another whiz, yet another big bang…halos exploding, a sundering of air and a coming together again, both at once: dumped clumps of gunpowder lit hissily to pop, poking holes in even the most spacious of skies, holes that are the skies in the sky — heavens, Heaven, that most blessed of the firmaments known, and the only. O’er amber wanes of grave.

An apparition above, a starry conjunction, a convergence of smokes: the lights fade into darkness, total, leaving only tracework, a serpentine sigh…a gray wispiness, a winding sinuousness, then — space, the emptiness ensuing punctuated only by the twinkle of a planet. Mars, if He had to war with guess, a mote of lava in the eye. In its entirety, though, this smoke’s a known form: half of infinity, a feminine slither — it’s a questionmark that’s up there, and who are we not to oblige? Who’s He not to make manifest any portent above? And so, what’s Ben doing, where’s He headed and why? Hazy, still, hidden in wind…you don’t think you’ll get away that easy, do you? simply disappear into ranks, the hierarchy, no? any route, which way high or free, which interstate of hundreds, of thousands? what about the symbolizing signs, the thisway thataway arrows, ten miles always to the next, ask directions, shun pride. You don’t think you’re your own keeper now, do you? Haven’t you perused at any length the books they’re called Exodus, Leviticus? Numbers, when your own is up, cataloged under As good as…check the topmost drawer of the nightstand at any schlumpy motel. Don’t you know from the desert, the boiltongued, locustlidded suffering before the Law — though that’s all a moon ago, and the suffering, it goes on, forget unabated, we’re talking redoubled the stronger. He has sand in His mouth, rolls up the windows and the windshield is fogged. More importantly, is He headed for a mountain? Paramount as Sinai. If so, then why and for what? Where’d all those years go just like that and a whole generation dead in demerit? Anyway, what Law is there left to receive, and who are you to receive it? No offense. None taken. The smoky tail of the snake that’s only tail puffs, anguiform purls away, but the planet that gave period to its mark still remains. Punctuates void.

Enough silence, Ben thinks, enough thinking, turn on the radio, turn it up, the one station tonight not playing, not replaying Him: this noname, no-lettered signal up on numbers exiled way off the dial then around it again, sixsixsix point six probably broadcast out of the basement of a longsuffering mother; jackalcrackle, croupy static, and — Shalom Shalom — we’re givingout a sermon by the new Rabbi of Albuquerque, the Albuquerquer Rebbe is what they’re calling him nowadays, alternating his remarks, which what with late and its liquor tend to stray incoherently (the tone that of Father Coughlin with a bad cough, only the hatred’s reversed), then station identification, you’re listening to the time and the weather, life fiddling away in a frail style, coming to you live from the Circle-K Ranch.

Frank Gelt’s tuned to this station himself — the immaterial waves that, like the horizons, bind through spacetime, but in invisible, insensible gusts—Summertime, it sings and it’s airy, and the living’s queasy, from the album Dolly “Tziporah Ruth” Parton Sings The Liturgy Of The Sabbath & Other Holiday & Western Favorites For Your Listening Pleasure, RCA 47-9928; Gelt driving an oldfashionably crisis convertible, leading Heber in the limo with Der ensconced in the back, belted, boloed, countried in a hat, ten gallons obstructing rearview. Hamm, Mada, and Johannine sit opposite him in a hush. A station identification, again, then, for the Fourth, sort of a responsibility to do something here, anything: wipers squeaking in time to a medley of patriotic parodies, sung by a woman by the name of Mahalia “No Relation To” Jackson; it warbles in the cabs of a thousand trucks abandoned along with their trailers’ pork product, in the wombs of a million cars shouldered as peddlers’ sacks upon Fridays’ dusks for a walk amid the grain, a night’s greeting of the fruited plains, beggared, burdened with only the wares of the soul. But just look outside, will you, what you’re passing, what’re you talking…oy vey, can you see, nothing at all. Snow, radioweather with the signal gone down. Heber kvetching, I can’t see a goddamned thing…out of range. They’re a motorcade in search of a valuable lost, as if of Egypt’s cup, Ben to the brim: famined, their meal ticket, their retirement package — pantsed, then draped with a tallis. Not to wait for a Messiah, a Moshiach salvific, understand, but to go out and proactively search. You want we should head out to Angels, or down south Mexico way? With President Shade and his daughter due in sooner than later as Hanna’d say, does Der have any answers? A fatherly surrogate, an Israeldirection…north south east or lost he says, I don’t know what to tell you, Sam, um, er, Mister President. Maybe you should sit down for this, get comfortable, be prepared. To hop on one foot that’s the tongue. Lillian sobbing her eyes into bloodshot, cracked knuckles, or that’s just the inarticulate planenoise, imagined — an image of the First Lady prostrate in the aisle, headrest’s pillow bunched for a priedieu, upon which she prays pets to her daughter’s indulgence — there, there; there, there…

Understand, lastminute preparations, removed to a secure location, an alarm, bad intelligence, we identified a credible threat; undisclosed, nu, even to you, it’s no use…we’ve lost Him, sir, hymn — but Der keeps his promises like grudges, fistheld: don’t worry, we’ll have Him back in one piece…thinking, even if it’s a bodybag, a loonysuit or tux — bright and early for the ceremony, tomorrow…or, we might have to postpone, take the Temple public without Him — I’ll have to get back to you on that, I’ll check in on the fives. Der with sleeve wipes the receiver, wipes his sleeve on his chaps on his chinos, turns the phone over to Johannine just getting over a hangover, to talk crazy with Shade’s special advisor on conversion: identify eventualities, address the particulars…a call made from a payphone lonely though it’s also a toilet, urinefloored, dreckwalled, boothed in scratch and acidulous pit (scorpions nesting in the neutered slot for coinreturn, and thin, silvertongued snakes winding around the cord of the receiver, subsisting on metal and glass), way out here on the flatland, the unofficially even if Chamber of Commerced Mittel of Nowhere, a Utopia not proverbial but actual, really No Place At All, to be found if ever halfway along the stretch of highway mating Siegeles and Angels in either direction, any of them but south into Mexico, whose border they’ll eventually head to in pursuit: Naco, Nogales, or Sasabe to which they assume He’d flee, one unrepentant of hundreds of thousands seeking asylum from their government and its unelect God at the great Garita, Tijuana to Mexico City to make a plane down to Panama, deeper into the freak, ever further the jungle, anywhere a million nosings and scrapings and outstretched arm reaches away from any horroring signs of the wondrously civil, making lately like barbaric decay — truly nowhere, that’s the only where for Him if He’s to survive: open and free and air and spanse, a land resigned to its nowhereness, accustomed to any element, accommodating any threat of the sky. Nimbi fried deep in whorl, then frozen. The glow of a prevoyant moon. And then, not a rising but another descent: a stodgy spaceship, sausageshaped, an unidentified unsteadily flying object, falling, that’s only later identified as a Descending Object, Plopping Every Second (a Dopes, in the Mamaloshen of your mutter-inlaw), plodding, dropping air over the hump of each dune; then, on a flat flush with giving, sifting, sinking though impenetrable sand how it hovers, wobbly, as if too exhausted to give a flying futz about being blippedout on radar. Underneath, around, everything’s still: the dunes stay in their ergs, the cacti unbent, dreamt unbowed. Slowly, precariously, the ship begins its settle, lands to dig itself vertically into a small sucking valley indented upon the face of the desert by gravity attendant on girth; from this womby depression it towers up rudely, then opens itself, blooms like a flower foreign to sandscape, multivalent petals dusky, verdigrised, and then blossoms, too, wider at base into a beardy mess of exposed, burntout wiring and patchy, pocked atmospheric shielding it seems, a gratuitous shedding of panels grayedover with exhaust — a wreck, not only has it fallen, it’s falling apart; and finally, with a mechanized groan it converts itself into its consummate form, which is an indecent triangulation of rusted strut: two bulging pods surrounding one large shaft that pierces the air with antenna, as if to conduct the spurt of its weather.

Farblondzhet’s the technical term, which is lost, and yet Ben drives this route unmarked in the dark at a speed excessive, totally reckless. And sure as the desert, sure as the Law, He’s stopped, and He’s ticketed. A state trooper, mirrored aviator sunglasses studded in pyrite, prefab arrowhead pierced to hang on a horsehide thong around his thick, sunburnt, windchapped neck — brother-inlaw up for State Dayen, he’s telling everyone lately, who could contest? He puts the ticket under a wiper for luck, from which it flaps as if the overworked tongue of the hood, drives on the pickup truck panting, only to be stopped maybe fivehundred feet or so later to be ticketed again, now by the trooper’s partner, his brother-inlaw-inlaw, who he’s so far gone on moonshine and mycohallucinogens he thinks he’s a dybbuk’s dybbuk (worryingly, with the sidearm to prove). Ben starts the ailing truck up again and — nu, alright already, so you tell it: how He actually hits this trooper, cuts him off passing to nowhere or is hit by, or else just clips Him changing lanes to keep it interesting, Himself awake; anyway, all this stopping and starting, it can’t be good for the engine — before He releases the clutch, He’s ticketed yet again, a preventive measure, this by the trooper’s partner’s partner, yadda. To swerve on slick enforcement, skid into fine. Who has a lawyer. Who could afford. Goldenberg, I’ll pay you with money you made for my father.

I know you, they say, I’ve seen you before. No, you must have me confused. Has anyone ever told you you look just like. I get that all the time. Flattery’s what I mean. For insurance information, ask His Maker, His license and registration, too. Ben goes — slowly now — for them in the glovebox, where they’d probably be; finds in there a lone rubberglove, and expired documents for one Doctor Karl Young, whomever that might’ve handled.

Attend, the speed limit before here’s legally posted, but where at what, though once you enter the reservation’s the reservation, Injun territory with the Navajo police lying in wait if not sleeping on horseback, sidesaddled on the backs of billboards layered six times over in the service of seven interests imported, mockedup boulders on loan from Holywood appropriately cragged for ambush and overgrown with crabby flora, the limit, here definitely unmarked, drops in half and they’ll ticket you for anything even a thought over remote, bet your tuchus, believe it: this drop in speed going into force in maybe a matter of a foot, that fast, an honest living — with the penalty for infraction almost the only justification for such reservations still to exist, revenue taxing the road between Siegeles and Angels their only profit of late, enough to keep the remaining tribal elders in last skins and scalps while their people wander off to Affiliate. By the time Ben’s edged His fender into the reservation, even only dawned it dimly within the arc of His headlights, He, as Jacobson, Esq. now doing a decent Doctor Young, has incurred in fines almost one thousand worth of shekels He doesn’t have even though His own face is on them, all over: tickets and citations and contemptuous slaps on the wrist for well nigh among others reckless driving, out headlight, taillamp, moving and even staying still violations, a parkingticket for when He’d pulled over onto the wrong side of the tracks, guardrail down, to receive a ticket for speeding — owing such serious altarage both to the people of the State of New Mexico, Nevada, or is this Arizona, and don’t forget the Navajo Nation. Is there no Hopi? Tell you what, I’m going to go ahead and give you a point for your loss.

Ahead, there’s a stretch of no police, Injun or otherwise, a no mensch’s land, or alien. And it’s only here Ben notices the lights; either His own lights light them or it’s just a mirage with a solid sense of humorless timing: He’s just run out of gas. All that stopping and starting again for the law, idling the truck while they spit out His tickets, a scribble of spittle, the blot of their chaw; or, it’s that the truck only now gives out, breaksdown, what do you know, nothing much; transmission dropped from lack of stickshift prowess, an expert I’m not, bumper hanging off to one side, He can’t tell; mechanical, technical, the get your hands dirty knowhow, the metal and oil familiar, how could He even presume; if it goes, it goes, if not, I’ll pay. He rolls tardigrade, to a stop on a shoulder, stooped in sand, in its pretense as it doesn’t exist and there’s only desert; an arid splutter, He kills the engine entirely dead then opens the door and goes out to hail down a dream.

The lights revolve and revolve slower and revolve to dimmer upon every revolution — and with them, that sound: this siren roaring the lights dark until the desert’s returned to still, and a pouting lip of hum the only sign left as if the airing of the feminine valley’s imminent swallow, or yawn, just over the unbushed dune and then, the wet ocean itself of sound and of no sound…a mumming filling the deserts above of faith and below of privation and sand without water to parch stuffed the stomach and soul, in a building buzz, a stir in the making: this whirlwind of noise expanding out, enlarging throughout the desert unzoned without echo — unto the houses of 90210, the newly moved into homes amid the Hills that once were called Beverly as if that name were an appropriate descriptor, whether adjective or adverb, an alien form of rich, or freely; Holywood we’re talking, and shaking its own higher Hills, too, trembling them, humbling, filling the western emptiness and the further decks, porches and patios, the stiltpads, Casacrumbles, decrepit mansions missioned with Moorish peaks, Spanish tiles, rattling the glass kept over the idols worshipped as Oscar and Emmy and Grammy and even token Golden Globes how they’re preserved unembarrassed, gildingly imaged godlets not yet hocked out of shame, then shattering them, their faces melting, molten as if a slip of golden sand…a hum that encompasses every July Fourth explosion, almost knocks Him over on His way out across the sand, across sands, a sound He’s seething against, forearm shielding His face from the sky’s frozen pelts and the winded skinnings of dune, the real and sharp hurling of sand in the eyes, in the ears, to mouth away to mud lump, to swallow a golem’s reward — to follow, obey…and then, just as suddenly as it all landed began, it fades, with a sound of poweringdown, as a spring of tongue, almost an aeroplane’s inflatable emergency ramp effusing a refreshing moisture, rolls out the front of the ship, wags itself into wakeless waves, stairs — are they; wroughtiron handrail, which can accurately be dated to an age in which craftsmanship still counted, extends from the sides then fastens into position: two flights up with a landing between is what Ben ascends, how can’t He, pausing on the landing only for breath, then continuing, the stairs givingout sop underneath as if sponges or Hanna’s always in use rag squeezed underfoot by His fisting weight borne down from above, to stand at a wide door that has to be oak to look that good and that sturdy, scratching Himself, spent, stubbly, to ring at the only labeled buzzer—Herr Doktor Professor Froid, DUJ, it says — overtimes and rapidly more than is considered polite by convention.

Haben Sie einen Termin? a voice answers, and it’s maybe a woman’s.

There’s no need to be calling me names.

Moment mal! the same voice nasals, then, in a moment, femininely adds, bitte…the door buzzes shrilly, and Ben shoulders it open in slow trepidation not into a ship as expected, its bridge as imagined in the mind of the culture replete with flagrant blinking, gross boinks, and that whole sound effect, trick lighting life, no — but into the confines of the temporally, terrenely familiar: an office, not quite, more like a lobby or waitingroom for an office, half of one it seems, unfinished, unmade. He stands around still scratching, taking it in. Disappointed, amazed. To explain: this lobby has its totems, its artifacts, the refuse of Sumer, the rubble of Ur, shards, partijugs, hemiamphoræ, amorphous fragments of marble and papyri and whittled rockstone and clay that’s been baked in the sun most ancient and same — an image is becoming complete in His mind, though, assembling unconsciously, the who knew from Other made real, now made whole: these relics, these shards, are — or at least how they appear to be to a mind so entirely worried with itself, its own losses — the missing pieces, the missing halves, quarters and who says so blah blah, of the artifacts whose damage is displayed in the offices of the two Doctors Tweiss; the Tweiss twins have the jug without handle, and this waitingroom — it just has to be a waitingroom — has the handle without the jug; the Tweiss’ office has the leftarm of a fertility goddess in lime, and…nu, you’re so smart, this office has the rest of her, how she’s looking well, too. And so the only question left, or not the only question but the pressingest to Ben whose time it is being wasted, is whose waitingroom is this; rather, He’s waiting here in this room for what and, as His followup, why? To one side, two little green what do you call thems, interstellar merchants of a substance that would preciously translate to diamonds, it seems they’re arguing a sale; to the other, two little greens painting portraits of each other in oils and both on quick glimpse are the same; they’re accompanied by a string quartet played by another alone with eight maybe hectocotylian hands; the music light and quick by a Mendelssohn still unknown as suspected lost or unborn.

Hier entlang, bitte, what has to be a nurse says, a voice identical to that that came through the intercom at door. It leads Ben down a hall whose ceiling’s lined with projections of galactic phenomena, framed images in still then in motion, too, as if screened stuff, skydark and starrily twinkling; their entire effect, though, rather cheap, chintzy, until He realizes they’re portals outside, and this is the launch: a sustained rattling, a shaking then a total uprooting, a snowing of sand, and then a tentative hover. As the nurse it must be, like them all: shellfishy, treyf, sucks and spits forward in odd jets and spurts it’s hard to keep up with, scuttling cuttle how it siphons itself propelled down the hall, she leaves behind her if any sex’s hers this black clammy discharge that slowly, though imperceptibly (He’s staring as the ship evens out in its spin), becomes absorbed, or assimilated, into an ether that soon, without gravity, in all weightlessness, will become hung with little droplets of this ink heavy at bottom but floating, as if an interior of negative night — to avoid them, to duck and dodge as the thrusts do what they do. With a massive exertion the ship rises again, this time warpsped to smash through the atmosphere and into the void, and He’s tumbled by the force of the rumble, its lift down the hall to smack against another solid wood door, which opens to fall Him in welcome.

Ich bin Doktor Froid, also sprachs the apparition meeting Ben over the threshold holding open the door by a muscular and hairy hydrostatic tentacle suckling knob; and either this is the language aliens speak, or the good Doktor’s just flown down from atop Mount Sinaius, affecting the sentimental out one nostril, the nostalgic out the other — two tablets to assuage the adenoidal, with an additional heil from tonsils deep in the glottal to this indescribably guttural Europan language, spoken today in no Europa known; a tongue ethnically tentacular itself as it’s reaching, always louder and damning, both velar and palatal but always emphatic, whatever it is, and from where besides the mouth opened wide in His very own head. Und your acquaintance, it says, or he, ist very gut to finally macht…waddles up from the armchair on four of his or its seasidereal, iridescent appendages, to greet Ben with two suctorial kisses, one for each cheek, which Ben’s then compelled to return unfairly, with four kisses, one for each of the cheeks of the Doktor, or for what He perceives as cheeks, which are really four faces, each slickly bearded and with two cheeks each of their own, sopping with respiration’s expectoration or shvitz.

Mein Akzent, it’s just asking (your what, Ben wants to ask, only in order to say, O your accent!?), do you mind it? Mein research informs me zat you would find it distinguished, oder intelligent, ja…und zat anything sprached in this way would be listened to mit — Achtung, attention. In mein findings, am Ich — ach, how you say…accurate, Herr Israelien?

But instead, He begins to ask that whole what are you going to do with me shtick.

Like, why am I here?

I come in peace. I go to pieces. Be gentle, be kind.

Enough already, says Doktor Froid in a tone it’s now modulating to just east of placeless, here’s the deal…I’ll go ahead and drop the Kraut, if you stop sounding like we’re in a Spielgrob production.

Agreed?

Let’s dispense with the formalities, then…I am, I’m translating myself here, Doktor Froid, extraterrestrial.

From outer space, assigned to Earth.

To you, verstehen?

And where are we? We’re in my ship, presently hovering just above a stateline, what your nation would have referred to as the Arizona/New Mexico border — prior to the chaos to be expected of mass conversion, that is, and its regression attendant into a past that never really existed. Reactionary, actually. Fanaticism as an antidote to the modern, if you want the whole, what’s the word…spiel.

No thanks.

Where are my manners, it begins again — or are they provided for under another program?

It shifts in its seat, then asks, would you like a Schwanz? I’m quite partial to them myself…then waddles chitinous cephalopod across the office to a humidor hovering on a puff of purply pneuma as if the emanation of the very product within and once lit, produces from its perfumed innards four uniformly short and fat penises, gnaws away the leaved foreskins with a set of sharp, horny teeth, spits them with a radula’s huff to the floor, shoves three of them into any faces spare, proceeds to light their glandes with a match struck on the underfaced head from which it’s talking, then does the same for Ben as it drags, exhales slowly, savoring through every siphon.

Now then, it says, exhaling rings of smoke opening into the oblivious obviousness of the vaginal, let’s get down to business, shall we? We are collectors. Preservers. That is our nature. You with me? Ben lips His Schwanz, inhales to the corona, eliciting a fit of hack, wracks. We amass people and objects, Doktor Froid goes on, there’s no stopping it (anyway, it’s all too veiled, alluded to, tenatcularly gestured at, misted away amid the gathering smoke) — we amass things, objects, and people regarded as practically useless, worthless, superannuated, I mean obsolete; we hoard them, they’re our treasures. On our planet, which, so it’s not really a planet…but you don’t want to hear about that, more like an idea, or its orbits — we have the last locomotive, the last slice of ryebread, its last crust and caraway seed, the last sip of wine, which is dregs; the lasts even of things that haven’t yet been invented, we have: the Tushomantic Analysizer, for instance, which predicts futures according to posterior size and topography, you understand, but you wouldn’t, that’s still a long way off, give it time. As I’ve said, not just objects, though, but life as well, bioform, bio-mass, buy it up: plants and animals, endangerment, extinction, how they’re just the beginning; we have the last dodo, the last unicorn, dinosaur, dragon, the Leviathan, too, you name it, it’s ours…Ben considers the offer, then realizes this alien just likes to hear itself talk. Me me me, mine — we have the last postage stamp, the last telephone and the last television, the last atomic weapon, the last drop of oil…the final, the ultimate desinent, eschatological-wise, the caudal conterminous never.

On our planet, just follow me here, and there on permanent display — having been made available for inspection subject of course to a nominal charge, are the last novelty items: glo-in-the-dark vomit and poop, the lapel squirting-flower, the buzzer, the cushion that makes you make whoopee. We have Misses Stahl’s last knish, the last car of the last Q train that once lined from the bottom of the Park down all the way to Coney Island, Seventh Avenue to Stillwell, then the last seltzer nozzle from Canarsie found rusted, its bottle shattered down at the end of the L. What else. The last pocketwatch. The last threepiecesuit, though, admittedly, there are holes in the vest. We don’t do restoration. We don’t do replica. Nor facsimile, neither reproduction. Come to think of it, the list of what we don’t do wouldn’t fit in your universe. Number the stars. Kiss the sand. Ours is the last temptation. An enshrining of kitsch. An ennobling of the fleet, and forgotten. To begin again at the end, the ideal. Doesn’t matter, you don’t want that either. We have most of the last things, and only from your planet’s what. Other planets, other peoples, have other collectors, aggregators of their own, private interests with private capital, their own personal private manias; obsessional, it’s like a madness with them. We have you. It’s our shared fate, as they say. Symbiotic, yadda. And we would have this last of everything, not just to have it, no, but to hold it, preserve — to keep it in its decline, maybe, outside of your destruction, outside of your time.

Preserve what for what, and why’d you want to go and do a thing like that — having finally found His mouth, kept numbed around the smoke: no way there’s much money in the last if all you do is keep it locked up, like sleep with it, why. Seems strange. Icky. Aberrant. Unclean. A thing weird uncles would do.

You’re not understanding. It’s that the lastness of last things taken altogether, it’s not a lastness, it’s more like a nonlastness, a firstness, no, an extraordinary unordinal, you with me?

A whatness for whoness of whyness now?

In our time, which is not your time, which is outside your time much as your Einstein once thought, if you know him, you might, the one with the hair and the mc²…we have the last black & white photograph, listen up, the last phonograph record ever pressed, the Ninth Symphony of Mahler, conducted by your landsmann, sehr langsam; his name was Bernstein, like amber. We have, also, the last book ever published, though its title escapes me, its author unheard of. No one’s read it; we don’t want to break any bindings. Anyway, to explain: these three items, each the last of its kind, these three times together, they’re no longer the last — together, they fill in each other, reconstitute, recreate, repopulate the world that once made them…regeneration, reincarnation, not really, not quite; more like resurrection, that’s right: the last things of any world, at the instant they’re the last, are that world, nicht wahr, a world that, and this I don’t need to tell you, will never Turn turn turn again in the same manner ever.

And so? He wants to know.

And so, your presence is requested.

Me?

Yes, not now, though, soon enough…as if to say, I’m sorry, sir, your incredulity’s no longer good here. All the arrangements have been made. Everything’s paid already. Up front. Posterity’s been booked long in advance. A palace is waiting, like Solomon’s, Herod’s, whichever, a real Temple…that is, if you want it, a manger, a Mecca, a White House, all yours — and in it the last two Philistine women, now I have your attention, aloelipped, myrrhhaired twins both above and below how you wouldn’t believe, luckily enough for you they’ve got the last four perfect mammæ in your universe: they’ll attend to your every need, they’ll wait on you hand and hoof. We have, as well, the last of every species allowed to you, and if and when you finish them, and we’ll allow you to subsist on them, to eat and to drink them — that’s how important you are to us — you can start in on the tablets, which have been clinically proven to successfully simulate among the tastes of many other foodstuffs both that of kosher deli and takeout Chinese.

And why are you, answer me this, indulge me…Ben ashes His Schwantz into an attending green nurse’s He thinks it’s its cleavage, a pulsating bust itself interplanetary — why are you so interested, so obsessed, with this lastness?

An obvious question, Doktor Froid says, which it has all the answers…it’s that we have nothing to lose; nothing of ours ever ages, nothing becomes old and so, nothing dies. And if there’s no death, nothing at the end, indeed, no end at all, then, and follow me here, there’s no possibility of our being exceptional; in other words, of this lastness, of being the last, as you say…sof pasuk: which estate we consider either the highest honor or the lowest punishment in a world such as yours, in which everyone’s punished to one severity or another — to tell you the truth, we’re still not quite sure. Understand me, please, and it stubs out all three of its Schwanzs in the rounds of ashtraying suckers — we’re immortal: for us, there’s no being born, and then again neither is there any being unborn, any life outside or, better, beyond, our cache. We’re the first people, also the last; the two qualities negate each other, commingle in cancellation, if you will, dialectically anull any ambition, hope or faith; and so we’re obsessed with this mortality, not only with yours but more perfectly — we’re fascinated by the end of it All, with what might be called universal mortality, if that makes any sense, deadline, flatlined timeline, catastrophe with all the fixings, Chaos the first God, Apocalypse’s Greek revelation…with the idea that any world can just — end; this quality of lastness, this idea of singularity, of being unique…we’re talking survival. Genug.

Whoever you are, whoever you would’ve been only if, whatever it is you do and whatever it is you would’ve done — you are it. And I mean, It. You, Ben of my Ben. The past and the future are now. Sit straight, make eye contact, bend me an ear…

To name a thing’s to give it life, that’s your tradition, just trust me on this. It’s like Adam, prothoplastus to ultimaplastus, the Roman, the Latin, you follow…then a negative Adam, an antiAdam, the genetic repository of God’s imaged intention and its debasement by you, I mean them. Ben, you have no culture, but to those left behind you are the culture. No matter what you might want out of life, no matter what you might’ve wanted out of it once, or needed, or else what’d been expected of you or by you, you Ben — liebchen, if I may presume — are chosen, and like you, we, too, have no choice…and Doktor Froid stretches out, slowly, expectantly, crossing tentacles to reveal behind them and underneath squishy, an armchair: plush, loosely jointed, and creaky maybe a century old; emitting in its recline a patter of soft flatulent noise He mistakes for the sounds things like this make when they respire, if they respire — ask it.

Bitte, He says, I’ll bite, I’ll even chomp at the bit and He spits out a loose shred of Schwanz…I’m interested, I won’t deny it. Let’s talk particulars — how does it work? the salary, the hours? Vacations? Benefits? What’s your coverage?

To begin with, we beam you up here and ship you to Zion — I know, I know, we’re thinking about changing the name…

And then?

And then what else do you expect, you exist. But you’ll want motivation, incentive, enticement, a little of the what’s in it for me. Shema, hear and then harken: for you, we’ve broken the rules, violated directives, thrown basic principles to the wind that isn’t in space and so we’ve made it ourselves with rain and with snow and then set it blowing on course, that’s how serious. Your happiness means the world to us; what I mean is — we’re really going out of our way. Especially, we’ve acquired not a last, and neither a first, except as she represents for us a departure, and for you, everything, the universe known and, at the same time, not so well…she has her own distinction, I mean. We have for you a woman named Hanna, though we know this isn’t how she was known to you. She was Mother, Ima, Eve and Lilith, think suckle.

You do? He springs from His seat to stand the unsteady thrust of the ship, gags on His Schwanz, begins choking.

And now we need you…not now, though, later—your later.

And then? He asks, getting breath.

And then we’ll have you, that’s it, and we’ll keep you and well, that should be enough. What else do you need: you want we should probe you, perform experiments, polish off the speculum, speculate deep — anything else you secretly hope against fear we’d do because you’d be disappointed if we didn’t, wouldn’t you? Doktor Froid whacks Ben on the back with a tentacle uncrossed, He hurls His Schwantz out of His mouth to fly across the room wildly butt over cherry, as if with tractoring lock to smack this nurse attending in the tush if it’s tushes they have like orbiting moons; a fit of hurt throat, then a calming of cough, a stifle and soon, amid silence, another of the Doktor’s tentacles exploring His lap in a special direction, leaving across His knees damp trails of suction.

Yes, He admits, recovering, I’d probably be disappointed, usually am.

But don’t disappoint us!

One more thing, though. It’s what’s this? Ben’s asking to move the session along from groping to fate, so as not to run this session overtime and on reserve power at that, the emergency beamblinking, winking, lowlight supply or who would’ve thought engines down — and so, owing additional money He doesn’t have to an alien who probably doesn’t have need for it…if I have no say in the matter, I’m thinking, what’s with this abduction?

Only a reminder, a noodge or a nudge. It’s to say hurry up and expire, enough with this already: get your life together and live out your span, your eternity, or only what you perceive as your eternity, and then, we’ll be back…we’ll return for you on our next pass through this quadrant, you should be honored — you’ll be our only stop in the galaxy. Now, and I mean no disrespect, you’re not the only acquisition on our agenda this time.

What, He wants to know who, who’s more important than me?

If I must, and Doktor Froid strokes its moist staches, its beardy clammed thought. Discretion, divulge. It’s the last of the last, this One. Though we would’ve retrieved Him on our last trip, the logistics wouldn’t work — just didn’t make sense to Accounting, wasn’t they said costeffective, even we have to deal with budgets, deadlines, and crunch: we would’ve been backtracking, would’ve spent half an infinity on inventory and restock alone; this One’s at the end reaches; He doesn’t live where He works, doesn’t bring the office home with Him, no mixing business with pleasure. We need Him before you — but you’ll get to meet Him, don’t worry, and you might even like Him. A wonderful addition to our collection. It’s big, I’m talking a raise, might be in for a promotion, Management’s impressed. What I’m saying is that though for your world He’s the last of the last, it’s not that He’s a nothing to us.

Last what? who?

Though there’s a slight problem: it’s that we can’t quite figure out what He eats, if He eats, if He drinks, sleeps or wakes or whatever, we’re not sure, how could we be and Him, it’s not like He’s telling, keeps a lowprofile lately, silent, and hidden; it’s as if, it’s been said — it’s whispering slurpily — He doesn’t even exist, is maybe already dead, or perhaps never did exist…more like He just seems that way, wants to seem that way, out to prove, make a point: at least appears if imageless, resistant, apprehensive about the whole process, I’m sure, irked, jealous, and vengeful…relatively normal response under the circumstances, can’t say I blame Him, don’t hold it against. He’s not used to being bullied, coopted, told what to do. Not Him, not the last of the Gods — and, would you believe it, the Doktor says brightening, and rising from behind it as if they’ve all along padded its sit atop the decline of the armchair a handful of tentacles each banded around with a hundred fancy schmancy watches clocking their times differently though equally and expensively regular — it’s fifty minutes past an hour of yours; my how sessions fly, and how we should, too. It’s been a pleasure; truly, I’m honored, it’s deep. Don’t worry, we’ll deduct the fee for this session from your first week’s allowance. My office won’t be in touch until it’s too late; we don’t call or send cards. Speaking professionally, you’ll forget all about us. But you might want to get a second opinion. Rest assured, Ben — we’ll meet again soon.

A ray of light or shaft, with Him beneath, the disposition terrible. One leg of a ladder missing another leg and then, too, their rungs altogether, with Him beneath and passedout. A pole, and not that of the moustachioed, sausage-tongued nationality, those who once had been known as Poles, and so to be fatter and even taller and immensely hairier and more violent than that of the present species — but a pole like a totem, as in a lamppost, a telephonepole, above Ben, passedout about to cometo.

The mood, horrendous, don’t ask.

A pole just poling out there alone in the middle of the desert — O the West Pole, standing blown to bow in the cold wind of dawn, its shadow so long it reaches all the way to the easterly pole and right back around again, equatorial and such, gone global. As for the loose rag atop, that flappity schmatte: it’s flying the standard of a nation Ben’s never heard of before, a flag for a land He’s never even seen on the maps, a country maybe unconscious.

18, it says, where’s that?

Ask Aba — golf was his thing.

It’s freezing, and His robe’s no help, it’s wet, not fabricate but filth. It’d snowed, then icedover, and all the while the grounds’ sprinklers have been on, shooting their water to harden, to still, their sprays frozen insectlike, or into seacreature tentacles — coldhanging cages of flow, as if capturing air, imprisoning cold.

Ben on a golfcourse, His form a divot of earth.

The shadow is the pole and its shading flutter the poletop flag for the eighteenth hole He’s sprawledout atop, or below: comingto, goingout, Him coming and going again to where He doesn’t know which, nauseous, perplexed — an incalculable time dialed, teed upon the posts of His lie. On the head and the arms, there are wounds, there are scars, and then the shadow’s in a different lie from where He’d last left it, dimming across a hazard with the westerly swing of the sun. The light, His eyes…the kopf of His head. Ben’d been knocked-out: a prick of blood encircled by the red of unconscious scratch on an arm up near the hock of the shoulder…a doctor, it said it was, then there’d been a needle unnursed, its sharp tipped widely and as dark as the night. He’s hit that head, too — on a rung fallen from, knocked a dream. He tosses, numbed, though His numb also aching, and His putz slipping from its shorts, then pajamapants and mothering robe to writhe within the hole lubricious with ice melting from the friction: Ben rubbing up and down against the astroturf, and upon spurting He goes out again and when He comes to He’s shed a skin and soft again and there’s greengrass that’s strangely not God’s Third Day of the beginning creationary grass and the green, it’s a strange bitterherb in His mouth, between His teeth a tongue that’s jealous of wet. He spits to the wind, turf and leaves fallen, flails under the eyes of vultures perched on powerlines neighboring the fairway, aged and blistered buzzards out for fleisch, His or any. It seems, with the long, sharply tipped tufts His hands weed from the course, that the astroturf, regularly watered by weather, has begun growing on it own; it hasn’t been manicured for moons.

To His left, a golfbag lies empty at the verge of what had been a sandtrap. To His right, an iron numbered nine as if in designation of the shadow of its future hour — and then a driver, which is crossed over the iron to form an X, marking what geary spot, amid the dot dot dotting of balls. Ben rubs Himself, rubbing to itching, He has to, to scratching again, to raw. He sits up, stares. The links’ve gone to dreck, which is pretty much par for the course: wind’s up coarsened from the hoard of the traps, whiting out the arroyos, bunkers, and cañons menschmade and those that are merely the obstructions of nature; easterly as far as the wedge of horizon, these pyres of clubs and bags, leisure dolmens, puttered obelisks, jutting up from the snow littered as if in offering with gloves quickly stripped, shed headcovers, upended stands; golfcarts overturned as if abandoned at the score settled on total disaster, imminent threat disrupting all shadows, their teetime; and then, furthest to the west, a forever spanse of evergreen snows, moneyshaded from astroturf leak — the leachate tainting of the real by the fake.

Oy, the back of my knees. Ben rises to survey the lay: as if a landfill in its wastefulness, almost otherworldly as uninhabitable, too cold to breathe…this terra terribilis gone incognito without the usual atmosphere of polyester admixed with plaid. As He rises, He’s scratching still. What is it, it’s horrible. A mold forming around Him, a bushy cloud or monstrous fur, the seeped whitening green of His sleep, staining the robe, sucked onto the skin. He itches, it feels, even unconsciously, in His unconscious, its recognizance in the waters hazarded over with ice: to let fly with nails at your reflection, the burn in your brain — it’s leprosy, Ben, this land lepromatous; you’re going to have to trust us on this, we’re all doctors here, at least we’ve all been to doctors; take off your robe, put on this gown, you’re on holied ground: sit down, let’s answer our questions.

What’s given Him this leprosy, assuming that’s what it is? Los Siegeles, babele, Los Siegeles, the last He remembers. What’s the line, what’re the real odds — on survival; how He’d wandered feverish, dazedly delirious, to here, this golf links, to the south, the west, between them and both, dreamlessly scratching itching and raw, unkempt to His fingernails gnawed, tearing a drip precious of vein? Had He been walking, what, two, three, four days due southwest, half through the iced desert, over freeways newly tolled but who has the nerve to pay, in doing so just denying an inheritance lately received: withhold your right over every head, not chutzpah and yet neither is it cheating per se, only it’s a sin not to bargain, to handle as well as the truck, abandoned and lost — over ticketed ways high and low, banditbound interstates, routes fined, polared to pot…was it a drink and its poison He’d been slipped, comped to conk out, the seizing of shikker — a bartender He’d paid to be serviced by, only to be taken for all and for nothing? Whatever image He might try to mock of Himself gets subsumed in the fame, sublimated, otherwise Affiliated, never at fault. What Ben last remembers: betting the bank on red 18, or, then nothingness: dropping some dry drink, something too ginned, or overly vermouthed, a drink altogether too expensive and refined to ever be indulged upon His own free will and separate check, there’s no way He’d ordered it for Himself, no way He even knew of its existence (Israel drank wine, Hanna had sipped Israel’s), attempting a splurge only to spill the dribble over His robe, soaking His socks, puddling slippers. Bookies to creditors. Dealers untipped. Bellboychicks and cocktailmaydels. Foxtailed waitresses. BunnyBens, and then what. Then abducted, but how, only to wake up here rawly rufescent, with this futzed fuzz on His skin. He holds at the pole for support, then with a sigh lets it go and stands upright alone and unsteady, wavers like the flag veiling His eyes, nearly falls a foot into the hole below, staggers then rights Himself again, tries to breathe deeply.

Fore! is said or only heard. A white shot shrieks through the sky: a whining whiz, this dimpled ionomer incoming, a golfball to hit Him on the head, lay Him out sprawled — His head on the green again, a rising welt to hazard the forehead, His feet chipped in the direction of the penultimate hole, arms strewn to fingers pointing to far groves withered around water frozen at the longest drives of horizon. Ben comes to, then, to hooting, scraping from the treestand that shades the neighboring rough; a riled noise coming closer, the strangling shake of bare boughs, white, and the swinging scurry of fur. Another weather begins, a hail of golfballs bearing down on Him as He stands yet again and staggers dazedly from the flag and its hole to where par three should be, should’ve been if ever landed and ended. He’s dodging this plague of balls like fallingstars or planets, dropped, getting hit in the face, breast, and crotch; stumbling midfairway toward a precipitous rise in the greened snow and there, the protrusion of a coontailed antenna, bent by the wind; to kneel atop that very hunch, prostrate upon the unlandscaped to dig out amid the pelt a golfcart buried, to turn it upright with all His strength, to kick at tires, knock icicles from hood, then rev — to head, is the thought lazy, tired, nauseous, necrotic but also fuzzily numbed in a personal hoar, this private ice of mucoid scaly fungus, across the countryclub restricted no longer, puttering quickly toward the 19th Hole Greenhouse He espies for the refreshment of safety.

Goddamnit no stalling, balls boinking, boinging, every cartoony sound from the roof of His ride. Ben putts ahead at fullspeed, whatever He’ll make if He floors it, He does as if His foot’s accelerating strata down through the ground, a deep dig into earth cleated with skulls still with their caps on. His skin’s on fire, despite a fervorless fear in His veins. All around Him, the astrotruf ’s peeling its planet: ailing, occupied with shedding itself, with shedding the sheds, in an affliction that’s merged a mess into a unified albescence upturned and shot through with green, an alien mold spored out from under the valleyed snow and the sand of the sandtraps and from around the perfectly elliptical extremes of the ponds, left for the disease that shatters ice in removes, their own sheered removals, both epigenous and dermal and further below, the course entire a fluctuant surge: mounds falling from mounds, rises and dips and verges pocked, sopping a sort of freeform verdural, in a scarification fungally frozen, tongued sick with a fever, blown hot and cold; the soured fairways say, Aahhh…despite being a golfcourse, can you believe, there’s not a single physician around.

And so any diagnosis must be a consultation made brief with belief, an experiment of the etiologically theological, what we’re talking is a matter of faith. If, as it’s been said, God is everything, both a maker and a ruler, a judge and a king, then He must be a dermatologist, too, accredited by His own infinite wisdom, insured by His own illimitable might — after all, Who can know the world and its skin and the creatures that infest it as us better than the One Who created them all, only to wrong us with sickness, punish with disease. Mycobacterium leprae might be the verdict, then, Ben’s suspicion confirmed: endemic to this desert, an ailment of the links sinned entire — but if so then leprosy of a divine diagnosis, a leprosy of a Scriptural strength. Metastasized, exteriorized, a blight out of body — retributively, the disease of Miriam, the sister to Moses, the illness that’d pillowed her outside the encampment, delirious under the sun, lately absent.

Ben reaches the Greenhouse if it still has enough walls and enough of a roof to be called or considered any kind of a house, though greener than ever from the slurry of turf: it’s fallen, a skeletal stress of twisted trophies and signage tangles, the remnant of banquet facilities with legless chairs up on splintered tables, locker modules ripped from the setting of their rooms then arranged in the showers, as if metallic megaliths and trilithons intended for the worship of pagans. Inside, which is now its outside, the same, everything’s in a feverish splotch, made lesion, numbly ashen, and flaky. Pusssoaked shammies. Pinkgray flesh flayed loose on clubs and barbarous spikes. Ben parks the cart and wades in in search of food and drink. And the more He stands gleaning through the rubble for any perishables that might’ve preserved, even the alcohol, a light Kiddush from the bar forever closed, the hackedup cherrywood with its bacillarylike rows of bottles not cellared — how He burns more and more, a skinpeel, it’s unbearable, maculamade, that and a flow of blood from the nose, epistaxis the name; inflammation from nodule to plaque, His nostrils impassable, the same with His sinuses, His throat a stack puffing, a blowsy chimney on fire itself.

A crackling barbed rustle, then a prickle of shrubs, a mustering sound…as over a slicking hump He’d driven around once the concrete barrier of the parkinglot fronting the lazaretlike, leprosariumal Greenhouse and all in a tizzy tripping and falling over fallen and tripped parts of themselves, deforming in a partiform peel — the feral caddies klutz in on Him, pariahs in a panicked charge; they’re hurling golfballs at the misered glass the edifice has left as windows, as walls, sharding into stings, to embed amid the loosening of limbs; they the frontline, they’re tearing under their armpits with grownout nails and fisted tees wedged to nest between the knuckles remaining; caddies devolved, grown apelike, primalputsched, silverfurry with the molder of fervent, feverous illness, they’re sharp of tooth and eyed in wild suppuration, overworked yet underpaid, never tipped enough to stave off their eventual, inevitable revenge: some weak ones hanging by the stumps of near trees, wrapping their wounds one by one in the club’s insignified linen napkins so as to be prepared at a moment or signal, for a last assault, a final attempt — to swing for the groin or the throat; others scramble up trees shaggy with snow, drooptrunked, for a better position from which to sling their pocketed balls, smashing even the heads of their fellows, the stronger ones having hopped the lot’s perimeter hedge to swarm through the remains of and tumular over this Greenhouse fallen, its sharp edges of metalmade detritus: counters’, chairs’, tables’, slicing them flanking Him at all ruin’s routes, fall’s momentary escapes, with exits left unilluminated; they’re wielding gripless sand wedges, drivers and irons numbering high into the sixthousands, woods and putters, their bags’ umbrellas, poisonously ferruled, ribs spooked out to corner Him to carcass, to whip Him into submission with gratis towels knotted from the laundrybins of the lockerroom showers, soiled and un, wetted hard then rolled, and then there in the last stall with its spillsticky floor and its soapdish bitten to muffle to punch and kick at Ben, as if to infect their own form, sustaining toward what if not death…their knuckling tees, their fingers and toes only missing, not missed.

Ben makes for an exit, from them and His fear, the scabrous heat piling piteously through the scaly, hairy rubble, the caddies assailing from the rear: His momentum knocking them to impalement on unframed window mullions, lepromatically ferruginous supports, squamous stang and transom, upended foundations studded with infecting nails of just rust, crushed by blocks in cinders; heads through what’d been the club’s kitchen and its service entrance in a vaulting slide over the meridian counter, banging Himself on the hanging pans and pots and skillets, on His way grabbing at the handles and knobs of bins and cabinets and pantries abandoned, looted empty of goods canned, preservativebalmed in case of Apocalypse or Sunday shortage, then out the door to flee the course entire; lunging over the fence at the rough’s rough edge, there falling into a neighboring yard, getting mired in a swimmingpool dry though filled with the pasttime of personal days — innumerable faked sick leaves’ worth of golfballs lost, fouled globes.

Ben’s clambering over the slippery mount, atop, near giving up, balls giving way bumptiously under His effort, the righting rump; then, a last, lumbering thrash, and He emerges to hurl Himself over the pool’s far ledge — on His gut, slit, a fish floundering fluke, the catch of last days to fin up onto dry land upon two legs now to fly through the house (its screendoor, open, its door-door, open); then, as if Friday’s first course belated, through the blessing of a family’s kitchen, around its middle countertop and there parents and kinder gathered in their service of Havdalah, meaning To make distinct, to keep kadosh, or segulah separate the mundanity of tonight and its tomorrow from that or the sanctified of another tonight, that of its sacred today — Havdalah the candled conclusion of the Sabbath with its Elijah arrived as Him, scaring the gehenna out of this newest Affiliate, Ima, Aba, their two point five kinder, upsetting their braid of fire to consume the cabinetry, to tarnish with smoke the cups for Kiddush, its wine inflamingly holy, to incense the box of spices at which we nose at Shabbos’ end, as if to revive ourselves after an illness.

A few clicks up the high dry you bet Jurassic it once was a river — now only a moat without the water or bridging courtesy to freeze, a snowedover safeguard of the turreted monstrosity above: a forbiddingly outlandish stucco manse, pinkening with the dawn though perched resident heavens higher out on that thar mesa, which juts up majestically from the very middle of an enormous cañon sunk around it, a socket of this cold and blinded earth. This the estate of the legendary Lee Sure, a former Holywood actor, producer, director you name it who’d retired his own household name for a new home out here only a moon ago, deserted his career in its recent crisis to zone this plot his own; dedicating the future development of this scenic openness around him as a sanctuary for fellow moviefolk blacklisted for their refusal to convert. He’s a hefty and tanned goy, threechinned, fourbanked, presently a mere two laps and a length or so into his daily routine in his pool dramatically overheated when what do you know the poolside numberless telephone rings. His wife, Lara née Busch of the once prominent militaryindustrial Buschs, maybe you know them or better — she sits alongside the unit ringing without registering any interest, even awareness: a woman sunned to small under artificial lamps, pruned, heated to petite…the morning is, in her words to her Kush of almost every morning when and if the medication takes, perfect, am I right? Above the sun a yolk hidden forever within its cloudy shell, never to crack down upon us its warmth, though as she says she only eats the whites, dear, she reminds again her servant who she’s just sounding him out for the umptillionth time and only today, I only eat the whites…this the first day for her outside in a week: the new agoraphobia drug’s finally spaced her (a tumult, a whirlwind of late the reconstruction of its disaster psychologically requiring a host of special prescriptions and proscriptions both phoned in and forged: how they’d finally cashed out of the city, which’d meant Angels, last moon, headed out to the desert to get away from this next generation of players like Spielgrob, Kinoff, Joshuabaum, P. A. Yuccabaum, all the freest agency of their wives present and ex, to live heightened security and alone in this mansion they’ve been renovating forever, it already seems, what with memory, way back since the beginning of western time, ever since this mesa had been no more than a dunghill, and the immigrants laboring no more than dark scurrying dreams), she’s dulled insensate though perched purty in a freshly oiled chaiselounge under sunlamps set in the shade of the umbrellad highdiving platform facing her darting husband deaf to the telephone again with its insistent rattle, a needy baby cribbed upon an elegantly fineboned wicker cart to her side that also holds, on its topmost shelf, the remains of her brunch: bacon and sausages and slices of contraband ham for the protein, hold the salt, with blood pressure onefortysomething over a hundred causes heart disease served up still beating if slowing apropos a white plate trimmed with three eggs scrambled to the texture of her brains; dear, I only eat the whites (cholesterol)…can’t be bothered to answer the phone, too much trouble, how could she on a day as perfect as this, so stressfree, am I right, and so the Kush obliges — how can’t he and keep his employ, still run his illegal smuggling operation of goyim fleeing, running, swimming, over to Mexico out of the caves of the valley below; he drags Sure in to the concrete shore with a hook used to retrieve cocktail glasses sunk to pool’s bottom.

Telephone for you, sir, the Kush says and, is it important? is what Sure yells strangled, his ears sloshingly full up with scald, I gave specific instructions only to be disturbed if it’s important.

Is it important? the Kush asks into the business end, the receiver black and lost under the lobe of his ear, the glint of its enslaving stud. A moment of bated listening to the breathless way they still talk it back east, which Sure should be able to hear even from where he’s sitting suited, goggled, and waterlogged, at the lip of the pool with his feet dangling in the water it costs him don’t even ask what a fortune to heat. Keep it just at 100º. And then, it’s important, the Kush vouches, tucking the phone under his jaw.

Is it urgent, though? Sure asks as he towels his pecs, kicking up with his toes small waves against the filter.

One moment, sir, the Kush asks, is it urgent? another moment for the Kush to say, it is urgent, sir.

Hokey doke, says Sure, then on a scale of one to five, no, better make it one to ten, how urgent is it? With one being forget about it, and ten being my God is on fire. Ask him that, he says as if in challenge, a coldweather throw-down…tousles dry his hair, jumps in a regimen such as was once recommended to Rabbi Hillel, up on one foot then down on the other to unclog the ears as the Kush he goes and asks what he asks, on a scale of one to ten, sir, exactly how urgent is this?

A moment more of this loudly staccato and the Kush says, it’s urgent, sir, very — the party would have to rank it high in the millions.

Jesus H…. okay, collecting himself, haven’t had one of those before. But one last question, just to be sure: is it more important than urgent, or is it more urgent than, don’t worry, you get it and a raise…and so the Kush asks again, is the matter more urgent, and then he stops with the questioning answers before he’s finished to say, it’s both, sir, equally both, the Kush says the party says, all of them and more’s why he’s calling — consider this serious, a most plus.

Wowzer! in dialogue from roles their names reruns forgotten while their lines, they live on — quit your wasting the dude’s time, says Sure, and give the unit here…and the servant, what does he do, he goes and hangs up the telephone to wheel its cart over to his employer and before he has it rolling, nu, the ring goes ringing again, the Kush answers it and they, hymn, you know, having been conditioned to the rest, the spiel, it’s said, the speak softly but carry a big shtick routine, clocked calendrical almost, the ballagone whole — go through the very same ritual, and then and only then, only after Sure’s once more and for the last fully vetted this interruption following up, his delighting peevishness manifest in the swell of his neck, the tension of his temples, too, and that of his trademark chin bottomed like the tush of a newborn (kid or idea — clefted half his, half whose), does the Kush finally place the receiver this time upended atop the cart, rolls it over with plenty of corddistance, picks up the empty rosette plate that hosts only the residual grease of the meat of the pig and the pareve of the eggwhites and the silverware, which he places atop the plate in a cross, bows slightly to Master and Mistress as he’s paid to address them and heads on inside, through the patio and its glass doors, as Sure picks up the phone, cups with a pruned palm the business while nodding demeaningly to his wife to shuffle off to decorate the interior, to belittle herself with trifles: selfmedication at needlepoint, xword puzzles that’re the hidden study of Scripture (being the clue for 12 Across), mystery that ensures, too, her puckered pout and this, her shriveled slinking — then sits down at the landscaped edge of his mesa, his shivering legs to idle amid the emptiness, air, kicking feet through the sky shot through with cloudbursts: Sure speaking, he says, who’s this, whaddya want?

Lee, says a familiar voice, Billy Brove, STOP, long distance from parts east.

Brove, you old son of a bitch — why didn’t you say it was you? examining his pedicure over the drop, how the hell you doing out there?

Drop the formalities, STOP, the goy he talks like a telegram that refuses to sing, big news on this end, STOP, we found Him, STOP, Ben, STOP, now you want to hear I’m doing just fine, thank you, STOP, how’s the wife?

Israelien? Sure says, if I had a nickel, this is the tenth time today…you with your stops, pull’em out, ain’t no time to push me around: we’re lying low for the summer…anyway, I’ve got a houseful of unemployed producers with their consultant boyfriends telling me they’ve got masseuses with dreams, who’ve received visions, visitations, gotten tips, new information — let’s get down to it, how much you want from me, how much you need?

It’s legit, Lee. STOP. Take your hat off your ears.

Bill, you’re my friend but…

Buttinsky.

Don’t want to hear that talk, least of all from you…listen, Lee says, I heard the one, and Sure he’s heard them most, about the Affiliated, you know, how they’re hiding subterranean, I’m talking deep under the earth like in a hollow hollowedout for them through the agency of this worm, if you can believe it — and there holedup in small, definitely incestuous families, it’s said, and wretches that they were, that they are, they’re eating this worm, I mean like they’re feeding on it, drinking its essence, the blood, I don’t know what you’d call it, whether worms have blood or not, their only source of sustenance, right…STOP yourself, and that they hide there, guess what, plotting their takeover, the Final Days, Bill, the no nonsense End of Ends. I also heard the one in which they went off to settle this other planet, led by this mysterious, get this, Doktor Froid, left us in chariots of heavenly light, I heard fire, Bill, ascension with all the fixins, and — wait for it — that they’re planning to return, just waiting for the right moment, to zap the earth back to the ashes it sprang from. Zip, zilch, okay nada. Goddamn Bill, I heard that, and now you want me to believe this, which’ll be even crazier, won’t it: Israelien walking around in plain day, sunlight Sure as my name’s Lee, with a halo over His head and little yellow stars hung from His tits. Anyway, let’s out with it: you have Him, He’s being held, there’s a price on His head, you’re asking a ransom, He’s already dead…enough, give it up, Bill, what’s your deal?

About time, Brove says, keeping in mind STOP who’s paying for the call.

Is that what this is about? I’ll tell you…I have my suspicions, Bill, you cheapo Marx whatever the schmuck, if that’s how it’s said, I wouldn’t know — how do I know you’re not one of them, too?

He’s S/SW, Lee. STOP. Heading for Angels through desert STOP. Moving slow and in the open STOP. Three eyewitness reports STOP: latest in a burgerjoint just outside Tucson.

Why didn’t you say so before? gushing gosh. Don’t answer, rhetorical, say. Haven’t we done anything yet? Go ahead.

Thing is Der knows. STOP. Already sent — Gelt, Frank, alone.

Gelt? That goy couldn’t find himself even if both stood to profit. I got ten Mex working KP duty down here who could do his job in half the time…

For half the pay, says Brove.

And actually get their mensch, says Sure. Why not Mada?

Not his territory STOP, not his sort of people.

You have a point.

You had a few points there yourself.

Which means I’m winning, Bill, he always is, how Lee’s sure of it.

They’re two menschs, witnesses, any…affirmative; even offcamera, they’re always in pairs. In the paramount waitingroom, flipping through periodicals preposterously just a libration or so out of date: last Shabbos’ Times, recent back issues of the Weekly Affiliated, old Yinglish editions of Der Backvertz (a paper revived, Downtowned once again), anything to pass, riffling their ways upsidedown right to left through subscriptions in two names of a lawyer threenamed, H. Shy Lockermann of Corona, of counsel — they’d expire next moon unless he renews, unless they do in his name, as he’s dead. The two of them who, remind them, they’re waiting for what, a nurse, an assistant, any replacement receptionist, her desked at the door, chained to command in manacles made of bills bound small in denomination, and wadded tightly — anyone since Miss de Presser left her employ for pregnancy, moneygreener pastures, the free range of the oven; she’ll be missed. After smokes stubbed out upon the mediating arms of their twinned recliners, they take the liberty of announcing themselves to whichever Doctor Tweiss’s available.

A Hymie and a Hymie to see you, Doctor, a Hymie says…and Miss de Presser returned’s the sentiment, all nostalgized what with the dust daily rubbed into their gums, tingly — how they aren’t in a state to distinguish; they’ve been burning files for hours, they’ve been shredding documents with their teeth.

Shalom to you, says a Hymie to which one of them, with starring badge in hand him whichever barging like Sabbath’s eve suddenly through the door to the final corridor and its leftmost office after having negotiated the halls and their rooms for an hour, navigating the makeshift, makework waste: flayed paper, document skin, the files purged to stale air, light smoke; the trashcans are smoldering, the watercooler’s too dry to douse.

Upon their entrance, Doctor Tweiss forgets himself to rise, arranging his suit and pants unmatching professional detachment, to lounge up against the shelves of an office wall, uniforming ranks set with volumes of ostensible reference materials, in truth nothing but false spines; he picks at the drip of his nostrils.

We’re from a government agency with such a name as it wouldn’t pay to have an acronym, says one of them to him once they’ve made their marks on initial inspection, but we’ll refer to it as you’ll refer to us, HYMIE…that is, if you want to.

The doctor nods rapidly: no take a seat, no offered drink.

We’ve been led to understand, the Hymie goes on, that you’re in possession of materials necessary to our, let’s go with — project. His head flits around the room all schnozz.

As for his partner, he’s diagnosed as the Strong, Silent Type later that day: he’ll take disability and that’s that.

And what materials as you put it would those be?

We need the foreskin, Doctor, the first of them, the virgin shed if you will — you have it, and you have it here.

Is that what you think, Mister, hymn…Hyman, or Hymen was it — Hymie? Thank God for the nametag, he thinks, belief in a badge. I’m a medical doctor, a respected professional. I wouldn’t turn anything over to you: no patient information, no labwork, no specimens, samples, results, and I don’t have to, that’s privileged, protected — I dropped out of lawschool, I know my rights…I’m just not in the mood.

For once, Doctor, you’re right. I’m afraid, however, that my partner disagrees, he’s disagreeable, also highly illogical, suffers from…nu, as you say, you’re the professional: denkn, trachtn, klern or haltn, oystrachtn maybe, forgive me, I forget…perhaps he should arrange an appointment with your twin?

If that’s your thing…his offices are only down the hall, though I’m afraid he’s out — there’s been a death in the family, my cat ate his mouse, my dog ate his cat, he’s all broken up about it. Though you might want to take a meeting with our employer, have a word — I assume you know who that is.

We know, and we already have — we’ve had a few words, in fact: Shalom was one of them, Shalom the other. We understand he’s exclusively retained your services, and those of your fraternal twin — but your employer and ours, they’ve reached an understanding…I hope you understand, farshteyn.

That’s for Der to say, and when we spoke this morning he said nothing of the sort. He flinches. Didn’t even mention.

It’s all written right here, and the Hymie waves an official document as if it’s gone spoiled, along with a warrant, too, to search your property, to seize anything we might want to seize and then search through on our own time, though it’s no crime to waste yours — whether as faith’s evidence (FED), or, gevalt, just to aggravate you…anything out of the ordinary, our decision, our call, anything suspicious, whatever, vos nor. He squats to the ground to light another smoke, and the leather of his wingtips crackles like burning. From that position, removing his glengarry and scratching around his yarmulke a head that’s been recently buzzed, he asks, tell me, Doctor, do you have anything suspicious on your premises? and he takes a slow drag, exhales with a frown, you think I’m joking, joshing, narring with you, mishing, just witzing around — you want we should garnish your socks?

Nothing I know of, I assure you, and he tries to hide from the Hymie one foot behind the other he’s crossing them again and again, almost falling when he realizes one foot always has to be put forward, the best. This is a medical facility, righting himself. Long Island’s most discreet & expensive inpatient sanctum sanctorum’s our new ad campaign…what do you think, a bit much? No one’s here to take your call right now. If you’d like to leave a message, wait for the…

Hello, this is H.Y.M.I.E. I’m calling with regard to a particular foreskin in your possession, that of a Mister Israelien — actually, we’ve been led to understand you have multiple foreskins, but we only need one. If not that One, then another. Whichever. A futzing flake, a fall — is that too much to ask?

You’re not listening. I’ve handled many foreskins in my day: detaching, re-attaching, redetaching, dereattaching, you name it, and even my own — you might be interested in a procedure yourself, no offense: even with our rates so affordable, we could probably work out a deal…

His foreskin, you schmuck — first off the orla, then the ganze peria, a bissele brisele, His milah mine…the Hymie shrieking every schmeck of decorum lost if, also, messed around in this very referring deferral, passion for his mission refound. Jumping up from his squat, he flicks ash to the carpet, throws his hat bent out of shape atop the flaming as if to drench with his shvitz, then jumps up and down on the smolder; the other Hymie, however, remains impassive, stands still, “hebetudinal” as his partner’ll describe in his report: how he hangs deep in the shadow of the door edged open as wide as his mouth, as tongueless, and dull, no help at all but he’s family, how their sister fright wig and whining, she’d asked a favor, he’d needed a job.

His! the mensch’s shrieking again and again, His! Israelien’s rail, Ben’s bump epimorphic, you putz, you know of what I’m talking…pulling himself together, retrieving his hat thrown into the ring scorched on the floor, punches its dents into dings, then felshes it all into perfect shape brim to crown. Apparently, he goes on, further calming, an interesting specimen, the world’s largest, it’s said: falls off farkakta, grows back yadda and blah, regenerative, blastemal if you want, bornagain miraculous; echt, a neys if there’s ever been one gadol…he coos, it won’t be such a loss. I’ll tell you what, and his eyes shift this way, that, then cross: let’s say we forget search & seizure. Just confirm for me, will you — it’s true what they say; this wondermont to behold, call us curious…does it really live up to the hype?

And the doctor, he holds out his arms, indicative of either the state of dispossession, or the desire to take flight…how Hymie’s debriefing’ll take note of both possibilities: his palms out, facing up, fingers splayed, his wardrobe jacket baring cuffs then humiliate skin — anyone’s guess, the Ascension.

Then any hair samples, the Hymie says — actually, any and all organic materials of His whatsoever; anything that once lived: organs, nails, skin fore or aft, I’m sure something’s lying around somewhere, has to be, filed away no doubt. I hope you’ll see things our way (straightening his own sight, making of contact a bludgeon) — you have a reputation to think of, a future, too, olam haba…has anyone ever told you you have beautiful eyes?

You’ll make another of Him, others, I know it…the doctor thumbing still at his snort, maming nares. But it’s never been done before, don’t you understand — the first one to be cloned, He can’t be Affiliated.

The first one cloned has to be Affiliated…just think for a moment, Doctor — with any mazel, we’ll make Him that way.

But then is He Affiliated? Aha! and Doctor Tweiss jumpsup himself though he’s already standing, pedants over to the blackboard walling the west of the room, grabs a length of chalk to make a chit in its corner, upperrighthand. A point for me!

Doctor, He’s whatever we want Him to be, and the Hymie grabs his dark knit tie, spits to its tip a cusp of congestion to aid in his erasure.

But that’s insane…it’d never work, it’d never live, and the doctor returning dashes back toward the board, tripping on the rug that bunches under him falling, his fingers splayed to grip for the ledge, which gives way with his weight and he ends up on the floor stuck with a stick of white dust up a nostril.

It? Now, Doctor, is that any way to refer to the nearly living, to the in-the-works, the potentially possible, the perfectible Ben, b’ezrat Hashem’s what we’re saying — is that how you’d talk to the imminent Messiah Himself? Moshiach, I mean. Omniscience wouldn’t miss that. Heaven’s all ears, Doctor, old and humungoid, waxedhairy ears…it’s all recorded anyway, and the Hymie adjusts the lily in his lapel, though the mic’s actually clipped to a cufflink.

Even with a slightly smaller nose…which we’re planning on by the beshert, He’d still smell what stank.

God’s plan is His, if you believe in Him — and I don’t very much…but for now, it’s inviolable, and all these new adherents, they’ll do your work anyway, on their own, no questions asked. And no pay. But you, you…a little help here — you’ll blond Him up, you’ll blue up the eyes!

The doctor crumpled on the floor like a paper discarded: a subpoena, a prescription, the script — ripped through the middle with chalk.

Which will see for miles…gazing out from a head ten feet above the earth: a head like of marble, and with skin of such velvet so you’d like to stroke it, baby it, bathe it, sleep with it at night, wake atop it come morning. A nose ever straighter and straighter, teeth white and whiter even — until they’ll rob us of sight like a thief in the night, and we’ll look within. A Messiah who’ll live forever, every day made younger and smarter — making something of Himself, something more, all for us, His fathers and heirs, to have pride in, over which to shep nachas…

You don’t know what you’re doing…(the doctor getting himself up, reading off a script the other Hymie now hands him; before they’d been sharing one copy) — you have no idea of the forces at work…

You won’t make a God, it’s impossible.

But, Doctor, we’re not making a God, we’re duplicating Him: In the beginning there was creation, et ha’shamayim v’et ha’aretz…and it was good, but could always be better; think of it like this: we’re making improvements (the Hymie loses his place in the snark of delivery, the other Hymie points a finger, he finds it again and smirks on)…don’t worry, Doctor, we have our top ravs on this (would he really say that, “top ravs,” he asks, isn’t that a little much, over the top and toohatted — maybe “rabbis,” no, just a suggestion).

Take Two.

Now, if you please, time’s of the essence: we need the Jnome for replication, and we’ll have it no matter the source. Pause. Or the beliefs of those who might attempt to impede or frustrate our efforts.

Doctor Tweiss stands whitefaced not in mortification but makeup, facing them with his hands on his hips, his script flapping behind him like the wings of the angel he’ll never be, or ever merit…and right on cue—In Mitten Drinnen, as it’s been blocked for a wide shot, Int. — OFFICE — Hymie [silent] pulls a pistol from the holster at his shoulder; his partner waves him down.

Just think about it, the first Hymie says: male newborns, newly born without foreskins. We’ll inject the birthright, naturally chosen in utero, in vitro, in whatever we trust: Affiliation to go from strength to strength, hazak l’dor, from generation unto generation, a Messiah engineered for every age…music gimcrack and gilded rises from the vents, along with a gas scentless, colorless, maybe even effectless and so just pumped in for the sheer shorn folly of it, the trebly paranoia: revelation brass muted by cymbals strungup to ethereal harps. Salvation’s proposition is once-in-a-lifetime, Doctor…you’re mad, mishugenahmost! who sent you? PAN OUT. The Acronym, Doctor, the representation, yours, ours, and so why not everyone’s, too, while we’re at it…the idol of Name, of the Name that is all names of the letters that are all letters — the Name, Whose every letter holds its own names inside and then letters inside those, too, Aleph, Bet…get my drift, you got snow on the brain: all that unknowable and inextinguishable stuff, the ineffable Name of Names, as represented in letters of letters, nu — does that answer your question…as either Doctor Tweiss or his stuntdouble (a divorced former camera-mensch with bad knees from years spent stooping to film XXX scenes in and around San Fernando), anyone but his twin Tweiss who can’t be bothered just now, falls through the doorway to the hall, its rug sloppily thrown above the marbleized linoleum, Properties’ salvage, and smacks the soundstaged ground with his knuckles; the agents crack theirs, ask to use the phone, call their agents…it’s almost a wrap; the unions are going restless and tired; all that’s left of the catering bagels are holes; the continuity girl’s gotten pregnant by the boom; there’s no more coffee, but there are planes to make to the coast.

Doctor, the Hymie says out the side of his mouth, cupping the receiver while he’s still on hold to the muzaked tune of three shekels a minute, we’ll have ourselves a Moshiach, with all rights reserved, all patents pending, whether you’ll help us or not. CUT — how the first is by default the deepest, a fade to black and then, the scenic horizon of credits…or is this just a rehearsal for the futureful real? As for the other Doctor Tweiss, whose scenes have been left on the cuttingroom floor, there just wasn’t the interest, he didn’t test well, one Tweiss is enough — he’s been overheard in voiceover (and even once glimpsed matchedcut, amid dust’s dissolve) through their office’s intercom system, surveillance cameras footaged in black & white he’s occupied flushing any samples at hand — semen, and blood, down the toilet he sits on; a wipe, and they wrap.

To the south, which is for why always west, or should be, into illimitable Freedom…mapcalled, flatcolored Fleedom — the House of Bondage, a new essen&M themed leather joint risen at the Mexican border: a place friendly for a rest, an inexact shave and a wash, a sip cerveza and a hot meal on the way outcountry; a bar & grill, a waystation and hideaway, too, made of metal, roofed and walled, of the refuse of repentant bikers that’s piled out back, as well, and, also, in the sandlot up front — riders hunkered down around their flaming wrecks, Harleys smelted to holy. To the north, then, and to the east, which are the same directions, which is — a grayhaired exheavy in a visor and ten cableknit sweaters for the cold stands a soar atop his private, No Trespassing mesa, keeps his head down, his eye balled, swings himself out into the sandtrap we call the desert, a sunset pastel, and then in disgust at his shot and with the weather, throws his driver up to the sky to tangle with a bolt of lightning come down — and from it, the neon…necromantic, illuminating each and every failure, among them one (Emanuel) L. Leeds, the Good and rt. Irreverend L. survived, today the appropriately yarmulked and side-lockladen Rabbi El he’s aliased as (a costumey disguise, though he’s liking it perhaps a lach too much), bedding down in the back of a jeep he’ll hotwire from its unfortunate owner tomorrow, up on the sixth floor of the parkinggarage of the Al-Cohol Hotel & Q’asino, kept warm by a bottle of Vat 613 and a pack’s worth of smokes flavored besamim he’s rolled himself. They’re out for L., and L.’s out for Him, too — can’t stand the memory of that Joysey humiliation…reeling tales as tall as Him about the One that got, gevalt, away to a host of obliging or just pitying unionists: Double Triple Quadruple Pay / We Ain’t Gonna Work on Sa-Tur-Day, them striking out for the picket-line that hazards the tourists’ turquoise rim of the moon; their ostentatiously jewelried rep giving good quote…“we don’t believe in an end to God’s bounty, or in a border to our country, either, America, the world.” Which by an estranging yet commodious rictus brings us westward ho, which is southbound, again, as it’s been said with a smile, and, if given to belief in all the signs that bedevil the toothless, tongueless, gaping beyond, the north and east, too, all of it together and around again if the mystic’s your thing, also if not: silver highways that, if you obey the recommendations of their contingently blinking advisories, if only you would heed their wondrous warnings arcaned in ways symbolized of arrows and stars, promise to take you out as far as the garden of Angels, which is Holywood, the second city that is all cities, but is all other cities perfected, made irreal: apparently, a place of pilgrimage, the developers now sell it as, per the glossed propaganda a mystical shrine, in which dream need not be its own fulfillment, no matter how common its interpretation nor how brute its price. Here there are intersections and there are causeways and byways, there are interchanges and coded connections, known only to the select under hidden numbers, by secret names. To approach this wisdom, it’s said, you must follow the wide wave of the desert, then turn — averting disaster — just before its break, forsaking its spill over the concrete and the meridian there, to abandon its wake that drifts sand as if stars to constellate the further beach, which gives itself over to the Pacific as a grave, the bottommost burial of the world…this is the ocean, the other ocean. A rumbling wave prays in thanks for the sacrifice of the shore, the land, the dry earth. As here, as much as everywhere else, the heavens open: every weather crowded into cloud. It’s Friday already, it’s the Sabbath again, and we tumble into its fissure, timequaked — the void of yet another Shabbos.

Here, one line of many, infinite, or, in another interpretation, the one and only line — this leading to the nameless, perhaps stockless, and so just reliant on false word-of-mouth, OffReservation liquorstore (a line that alternates lame hosses and lamer pickup trucks with the odd pulling, motorpuling tractor modified into a snowplow thrown in to keep it interesting, everyone awake, at attention) — snakes through the early evening’s long quiet plaining to holy. A slight past the line’s middle three eligible Injun bachelors in ripped wifebeaters, two of them in meshbacked caps over slick mullets, hurry to replace a gutted tire on their white Silverado, while Kuskuska her name is she sits I’m too pretty, smart, important, and female to deal with ya’ll in a battered bluecollared recliner nailed down to the flatbed and facing exhaust. Atop this poor sprung stuffless throne she’s just singing along; all the radios are on and are loud.

He’ll be comin’ ’round the mountain when He comes

When He comes

O He’ll be comin’ ’round the mountain when He comes

When He comes

O He’ll be comin’ ’round the mountain, He’ll be comin’ ’round the mountain, He’ll be comin’ ’round the mountain when He comes

O when He comes

He’ll be ridin’ six white donkeys when He comes…

As for this mountain she’s singing about, listen up: in our lifetime it’s winding down, eroding, been sanded away…today, it’s just another mesa, if a mesa made special, sacred, not in its appearance under any light whether of night or day or else in any other apparency, but only as it’s a landmark spiritual, a placemarker, as it’s said — the site of an emergence, onto the shores of our world. You following. Stay with me. Now, be you chaver or chazer, this here is the harder world, be ye warned, a dimensioned world, textured, heavy-fingered and greedy of palm, it touches all surfaces, strokes: its topography one of pain, of sorrow and suffering, but it’s also another opportunity, after those of their worlds previously squandered — realize the plan or prepare for yet another destruction. All of you with husks in your ears, with shells over your eyes, you’ve been warned. Ignore at your own peril, gringo, Bahana — you White Mensch from Across the Water whose appearance, it’s said, means the end of this world, marks the beginning of the next, whatsoever it be, they hope good and soon.

In the beginning of it All how they, too, had their own void, believe it, space without form, everyone did, each to their own, the same, equal and endless. Then — we appeared…we appear only in order for the world to have appeared to us, and so it follows — dispersion; their Eden already a diaspora: they emerge from the water onto the land to be robbed. Their womenfolk raped. Their legacy up in unproverbial smoke. A noise comes from behind a star: a siren, civilization’s cry, which destroys, decrees future governance; over the mountains, the bleat of the cavalry’s horn — it’s the voice of the God of the Universe, Nature Itself saying to them, go forth: follow each your own star…and then when that star stops, wheresoever it might end or fall, settle there, this is what I’ve decided. And so they make their migrations, four ways to the wind. That’s their myth, no stranger than any other, admit it. They’re the Hopi, the unchosen chosen. Welcome to their world, dwell in peace. Reservations unnecessary, hunt yourself into a quarter, gather, and settle. Pitch your wander. Make yourself at home.

What you should expect: to begin with, the color of this world is yellowed white, its tree the juniper, its bird the owl as wise as age, perched on its winged laurels; its animal the mountain lion that paces starving and droughted, inexorably tracking its prey elusive if not yet extinct through what are called the pasos, which are the four directional arms of the Great Swastika, north, south, east, and west: these the very routes of the Hopi dispersion, their camp to be centered at this, the apex of the bent cross, the dead middle of this peopled line. Here is the seat of the planet’s rotation, the spiritual magnet that once attracted the New Aging rabbis’ sisters and thinhaired, wireglassesed aunts out from Angels, Desert Hot Springs, Arizona’s rocks Bell and Cathedral, Sedona and its outlied environs, and even parts aged further east — here the intersection of the vibrations of the Twins, the Hopi deities of our fallen equator. From here, the middle of the map that is the Swastika, the migration can be mirrored in two directions: there were the Hopi who’d turned right, the clans of the Bear, the Eagle, Fire and Water, Whatever, That One, Why Not, and Sure; while those who’d turned left provide for the reflection of the form: the clans of the Crow, the Bluebird, the Butterfly, What He Said, Without a Doubt, Definitely, Absolutely, You Got It…others still splintering off from the Swastika, to live apart, in inhuman cities and outerboroughs, in godless Developments scattered to the judgment of every scarcity’s wind. This reflection into four arms symbolizes, too, the quadrants of the worlds, those quadrantworlds destroyed — all of us living despite our wander within the meaning of the last square, its intent the greater, the darkest. Cradled in the bosom of the swastika. Confined by the total wall of this cross.

Among us, her…Kuskuska, otherwise known as Jane. In Hopi, it means Lost: named after the locus of our previous existence, the world from which we’ve just fallen; known, don’t ask why, as Kuskurza. She waits in the line, which is according to many, if you ask them and even if you don’t, the longest, most crowded arm of the swastika, to the liquorstore and from it, impatient for it to open after its enforced Shabbos closing, sitting sidesaddle on the recliner in the flatbed its tire now replaced, her feet surrounded by wildflowers, sienna and sepia dead. She stops her singing only to mock a yodel at Kokuiena, also known as Dick, her kin at the wheel and not going anywhere, idling, wasting gas, exhorts him to just honk the horn, will you, spook the horses, those strawberry roans and pregnant rasps she’s sure are to blame for slowing everything down up ahead; how she won’t turn around, though, and face front to get an idea of what lies in store, or else to envy, to covet those closer: how she only faces the rear and smiles her fortune despite bad dentistry at the poor parching behind her. A noxious wind’s up, waft of el chupacabra’s stank breath, the icy abrego of a season displaced, thick with sand and debris, fear and hate, and, God, when you think about it, the next world isn’t the last of the worlds or her problems, they won’t be…there are more to come, too many, she’s had it already, enough. We’ll never make it, not us. Kokuiena leans out the window and turns to Kuskuska and asks her with his sorrel eyes, pleadingly, like I know all that myth shtick and the government and the wars, hymn, unemployment, privation, martyrology’s ganze geschichte but, nu, sis, how’d we ever end up like this. Worlded. Take a number. Get in line. But Kuskuska’s lost in her own, thinking maybe, just maybe, give me one good why not and she’ll light out for Phoenix: temping receptionist, secretary, maybe get into the hospitality racket, a moon or two getting settled and who knows she might even make waitress or maid, the aboriginal who checks coats; anything to get out of here, far enough away from Hotevilla and environs and, gevalt, she has no idea how to even begin telling her brother a thing like that.

Kokuiena, bareboned, knifecheeked, with sockets shadowing the pale, the rashraised stubbled chin, the shallow chest heaving its fluish sigh, paws his ponytail, then takes it around his neck to his mouth to suck on its tip; it helps him remember the prophecy: how he’d been called, by the Chief over to the public telephone eavesdropped upon by the immortal operator, She of the 0 sunning out over Holbrook, frozenly nooned in the sky a hundred or so unmarked unmade miles away, past Oraibi Old and New and its mesas and their secrets he was told what would happen and then, the extension just died, beep beep beep and please press # for interpretation, a pounding…how a voice he’d never heard before deep and grave, yet un-characteristically white, had told him about a member of a foreign tribe headed this way, and had mentioned a reward, said it would be a formidable service, then described a Bahana named Ben, a Redeemer, a white mensch who, and it’s not like he’s sure how, is not a white mensch: a paleface with a red heart and lips blue from the cold who’d one day arrive in the plaza, who’d show up when one notch knifed into the stick — the last line past the last day, a moon from now with the tribe entire, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters all out to welcome this Messiah, imagined, their arms out laden with greetings, with gifts, here at Yellow Stone, there at Pointed Rock, Where the Ray of the Sun Goes Over the Line to the Place, south of Oraibi proper. He’s been tasked to search for this Ben, He Who Comes In Peace we’ve been waiting for for so long — and so what, to scout around, to ask questions, follow trails, which is futzed: tradition says He’ll come to us, not us to Him…how unexpectedly, He’ll arrive in the Plaza, which one you’ll know on that day when, middance and with the fire tamped down, the Tourist Kachina will remove its mask in front of the uninitiated kinder: a star shining brightly blond, the elders all masked in their finest white rubber, their eyes’ slits rounded and rung in corny plastic, threechinned husky, falsified faces grinning widely to expose an endless imitation ivory dentition, their dark naked torsos below bedecked in photographic and video equipment, bandoliers of film canisters, in their hands they’ll wield rainbow umbrellas while dancing dementedly, opening and closing their thrusts and parries upon thuds of foot raising the dust of the earth — this Kachina an advanced incarnation of their only spiritual future, lately channeled to this world not out of a wanting for myth, or from any metaphysical need, but because that’s what the audiences pay for, that’s what the tourists demand; and then, how there will be no more ceremonies, there’ll be no more faith, and, after a time, the elders say the wheel will renew itself, that it must, and then…how it’ll begin all over again, shakily spoked, the crossed axle of the baldest tire — another emergence, meaning other migrations…and these outlining an even greater swastika, another settling — and yet another death. Would you believe it. Who ever heard.

A white who’s not white, don’t ask Him to explain…He, shtum and on foot, arrives in the axis. Here in the middle of the newest tundra, in the middle of the middle of no money, that’s one thing, no warmer woolen sweater or sweatshirt, fleece or Hanna’d say pullover or anything like that, that’s another, it’s freezing out, the middle of middling nowhere, now what, now nothing. What might be the wind’s Ben complaining. Having wandered through the night, toward the end of the temporal Sabbath, lo He beholds lights in the distance, a twinkling grace saved from perpetual powder, strung out to dim poles a God knows where, and’s not telling. Through the lenses of His glasses, frozen with fog, He makes out a line of vehicles, raggedly running and not, motley: golfcarts registered to corpses, asses liened off neighbordebtors, repod burros, donkeys and horses, ponies and mules, loadfoaled, collapsing beburdened, pickup trucks, sleighs yoked to tractors hitched to their owners and hauling forever, heaps of hide, spring and sprocket who could ever hope to name anything but a mechanical apology, I’m sorry geared to strip down — all given the pallor of exhaustion in three coats of dull finished with wan under the dim lights of the highway that haven’t yet been cut off by the state to discourage such driving on Shabbos. Them waiting, as it’s been handeddown, whispered down the line, for Molly Mashke’s OffReservation Schnapps Emporium to open when the sun’s finally set, and so contrary to the concern’s NonStop reputation, it seems to be a roundabout 24/6 operation. Hoofing it across the gulagish in search of the open, amid all this open, the finding lost amidst the found, only to become blocked, stopped, disallowed: verily it comes to pass that Ben wanders straight into this line lining across His path and forever and pathless; that His line has in the midst of such freedom come to intersect the line of these Injuns, innumerable and thirsty and prepared to pay through the throat for the sanctification of quench, and to intersect it exactly at its midpoint, halfway between the last thirsty Injun (of course, it’s tempting to speculate, as have many of our best and brightest, that these Injuns are linedup in order of thirst, of desire), and the threshold of the elusive, perhaps merely mythic, liquor purveyor; the line winding down the road, or the line is the road, slick sprinkled with cornmeal against skidding, slippage, to keep anyone from tailing them to harm through their wait, their patience this Shabbos, for its three soused stars, the hungover light of the sun. Ben can discern only animals and vehicles and their idling people in both directions: no end of the line and no beginning either, on this disembodied arm of this swastika mirroring all; and further on down the line, Mexicoway, so far as to be certainly foreign: Heber backtracking north with Mada in their limo requisitioned on the moment in Siegeles spurred hard, brakeless, its transmission on the clunk, and behind them Frank Gelt in a rental Hummer (on his way out to check on an Angels tip his convertible unreported stolen outside a Barstow motel, creditcards, too, he left in the glovebox at Needles so he pays all plus extra mileage in cash, saves receipts, prays reimbursement); they’re trafficjammed, fisting their horns thinking instinct they’re back in the city where when you make noise, you make life go; the lights getting greened in jealousy at the very red of impatience, the lanes only what’s made of them, lane; and then behind, far far behind and there unsuspected, almost at the border where they’ve bought with favors forged documents with which to evade recognition, the Marys, in the van in which they’d followed Him on tour (thanks new plates): they’re still costumed though off the clock, most of them lying atop a Hotel & Q’asino mattress gutted of stuffing in the bay in the back, its hubby, orificetight space studded with pillows in the style of an Oriental harem, perfumatory, tented with stolen towels and sheets; like everyone else — and though for them there’s no money involved only guilt in the gut, Hanna’s, them made family to disappointment, in themselves and in Him — they’re determined to find Him, to bring Him on home; forget bounty or bonus, it’s a duty, a love…His mother and sisters to pass the long while holding shiralongs, playing guessinggames, I’m thinking of more than twenty questions with the answer always Him, taking turns sleeping in the rear as Rubina usually or is it, as it’s jammedup and waiting and honking Batya just now, but how she’s too young to drive, idles them out of gas.

Ben holds up his hand to an elder withered to the perfection you’d expect to pay for in these parts, an Injun standing amid the throng, holding up and open his palm. In his other hand, he holds a miniature totem, topped with a scrap of plywood nailed, on which is scrawled an I…which must mean Information, indicative of progress, a palaver, and so Ben bows His head, like let us hold speech.

How, says the elder.

How what? He asks, thinking why not.

Howdy, he says, digging his totem into the ice and the dirt — donations are welcome, deal white with me, will you? He stands silent and straight and in-expressive as if a totem himself.

Ben forces on the elder a laugh, and he loosens up, pities with piety, waves Him over to meet his young squaw: a starved shy but pregnant girl, a refugee from the Navajo who despite their reputation for resistance, for violent survival, have all been already converted, he tells Him; then has Ben help shoe his horse while he — what else to do, not enough food — starts in with the nails on his kinder. If nothing else, he has a sense of humor. Not taking no, he offers Ben the freedom of his camp: lets Him sleep in line that night, the line that doesn’t move, as if anyone’d expected it to, the night that doesn’t move either, only its lights, which sway in the wind, which braid, as if to candle themselves with the powerlines, and then fire — lets Him sleep in the stow of a wagon on a heap of rank hay come loose from its bales, flameready, flecked pestilent with dung, nested infestation, the hatched eggs of vermin and varmint; amid the sleeps of the elder’s family of six with they threaten at least two more on the way, how they tussle in there, maybe even three by the end of the week — until just like tomorrow next Friday arrives, night, and with it as always the beginning of Shabbos again and so they prate at preparing wherever they stand, turning around to face east and now the Blessed art Thou firewater of its holy store are located, if at all, in the exact opposite direction. They’ll turn west again when the sun sets the next night.

You’re not safe here, the elder says preparing Kiddush that eve over what they’ve scooped of the weathering melt steeped with the peels of grapes saved and stored. I know who you are. I’m not just a native, I follow the news. And it’s not just my family, I fear for you, too. He holds aloft a murky tin cup, and there’s silence because none of them have yet memorized the blessing, the bracha. Over the washing, done from the depths of wheelrut puddles and hoofsinks, but before the breaking of bread, two cold loaves of corn, he takes Ben aside and whispers to Him: after we make Shabbos, it’s best you be gone, then returns to his kinder (his shayna shanya kinder), promising them — when we get to the store, I’ll trade up for more wine.

Ben sets out from the axis, walking two days, wandering three days, four, traversing four lines, arms, roads, and their people, kith and kined worlds…ways that might all be the same way, as the days of repetition lead toward the closing: blockade; with the meal spilled upon the ice then the savory salt, and there’s only one road left open…this the hardestrocked road, winding a way past the touristed ruins, originals destroyed whether by earthquake, fire, raid, or by time itself a God and then like Him or it reborn, again resurrected if only for the fast, distracted worship of weekenders ingathered; then, up to the so described, you sold me majestic vale of Third Mesa — how the pamphlets and brochures and catalogs available for a nominal investment of faith say windswept, say mighty with height, the site of the invisible archway by which the spirits of the dead might enter this world, and then exit, taking leave in a deep fall forever into the grandest of cañons. At least it’s not so small that you’d miss it.

To leave the line then, to forsake His personal migration, His own singular path or forgetting — repenting the axis entire, Ben takes off in any direction opposite, out, only out, into the open to wander again within the world of direction, of progress and forward, onward and upward due west. Yea though He walks through the valley of the shadow of death, how it’s worth it, there’s nothing much else to do. He heads toward the tinsel, Him fearless of evil, with only a rod and a staff, which are one and the same and discomforting, by now without an underwear change — out to Angels and its Holywood, passing over playa to plagued, past saltpillars of snow formed to His form and none other: apparitions, Himlike white specters, frozen in their own autochthonous escapes. Don’t look back. Don’t turn around. Every three or so steps, He shambles into a length of railroad track, 4 x 8½ gauge its iron quaking, hot to melt the fall as if a train’s fast approaching, though none ever does: tracks snaking over and under the dunes as if boundaries to invisible countries, borders writhing like worms strewn across the emptiness of the earth; the track rough, battered, barbed, occasionally surfacing, then submerging again, winding veinlike, mained, through the rises and falls of the sand in its dunes. After four exhaustive five exhausted days, fording washes dry turned tundra, sidestepping sidewinders, tumbling weeds and mossy boulders better hazards on a roll, Ben begins finding these longer lengths of track, then descent, and then nothing; hombre, we mean nil. Then, other even longer lengths of track ahead, these at an impossible angle of turning from any section previously found. These discontinuous stretches lie scattering the pale, small stitches on the flesh of the desert, as if holding together the grains below, binding the sand to the fundament, the grounded, down to earthed, wounded in valley — the lengths that once joined these sections made timeline of the discrete, gone, disappeared, maybe quakeswallowed: a punishment if not undeserved, how incurred. He nothing else to do follows the directions these markers might indicate to any mysticism inept; follows them far until they have Him at a loss, turned around on Himself and Ben has to rest and so sits down finally here — around this dim camp coiled in a valley between two risen dunes, one the sun, the other the sacralized moon. Sitting His legs crossed in the native style at a flame fricked of His own creation, sparked by two scraps of track, ties He lies with then falls asleep with in His hands, slitting both wrists with them and so becoming His own brother — to live for Him this life upon a shade’s awake. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow them. Praise be to God.

Upon the morning, a good day to die (Shabbos the holiest of days according to our sages boding well for the disembodied, the living and the thinking and the unknowing, too — all holding expiration within the Sabbath’s bounds to be a wonderful omen, despite the suffer and sorrow of inexistence resultant) — having quit the line, forsaken the truck, his people, the world, and an inheritance of future worlds for himself if not for his own, pelted now in the pocked skin of a buzzard’s coyote tied around his neck, Kokuiena in chalk-bitten whiteface walks feet bared bleeding the day’s way up to the flat of Third Mesa: hours it takes him, moons and their illuminative suns before he ever arrives at this plat above his reserve; he paces himself, he must, it’s required, a mandate to take it slow and go easy, and so making those four stops along tradition’s hard pass, interrupting his ascent each pause to a quadrant, each a gesture to its own direction, its own wind — an acknowledgement or farewell, that’s the ritual; arrives atop the sky only at the time appointed, the hour he’d dreamt had been appointed, after having received visions, overdue bills, and a visit from a collection agency, you don’t want to know them. The higher you get, the greater the heaven, and the more you can find it within you, and within you to believe, too, in even your own shadow — how it gives him this riverrush of power, lording it over his past, as if a lower sky…dreamcatching shades of waving arms and hands, his fingers those dusky dun flocks of them splayed in benediction, a duchen, granting the blessing of death over pueblo and purchase: irrelevance, nothingness, dust to dust, smokestacks of cacti, cinders of scrub, driven snow ashes. Alone, he’s here to receive the arrival: Ben, Bahana…you know Him, me neither — and, too, to welcome the emergence of world the next, at last. Must ready yourself, must make pure, must not must at all. Still, it’s thoughts of her, stealing, his sister: mourn his Kuskuska (parents dead, everything they had, since then his heart as scarce as the earth); he’s lost her to them, his land and his people: she’s far away now in Tucson, newlywed to a notable and working parttime at a mikveh, a kindergarten mornings, at least that’s the word, prophecy without postmark. Blanched by air this cast and rare, shadowed and shadowing he waits, and waits mightily; stands to face down the land: to gaze in all directions, which are none altogether, searching like a bird for its prey, the quarry of redemption, a Savior…a lamed weak Messiah just mincing in from afar, dragging Itself easy diseased, wounded as stationed and bloodily crowned — but for hours, hours then days and then a week of this moon it’s just desert, lack of faith. Must have just missed Him, must. How He’d been in the line, it’s been said, but oriented to the wrong wind, allied with an evil gust, turned around, lived against: they went west He went east, or the other way, too; a revelation denied him. After the death of his people through life they die once again; after faith’s lost, when memory itself goes forgotten, what’s left alone, him. Kokuiena. That and a sharp speck spied in the distance. A mote of the sun, just now rending a rip through a cloud…a push, a peck, then a beak — and suddenly, an eagle tears through the sky, shreds the gray with its wings flapping weather from one’s speed the other’s steer, snow and crests of cloud that swoop to him like snow, too, if not for the sun and its rising glare. Rattily rangy yet grand, despite the distress of its birth, it soars to eclipse even shadow, then hovers those ample and amply ancient wings any angel would kill for a span over and around the jut of the mesa and his standing stone. It holds in its beak a small black nothing, a moon defunct, a lunar rock only the size of an eye — a star lately fallen to dull…to blink, then to calm: it’s a yarmulke, nothing else, that the eagle’s glinting, gutripping talons tear from its beak, a yarmulke the vicious bald bird descends with, in a quickening, meteor’s motion, unforgivingly furious as if the animal’s ultimate plunge: a yarmulke as wide as the sky diving down, and at him, to drop lightly, with a plop, on his head.

A depot, an empty station. Ben waits for the fleck at the end of the sky: expectation, what might be a train might be only a blown speck of dust. He straddles a beaten bench unpainted and missing two legs. It’s been how long, a snow’s ever. Needled to the top of the only cactus here is a clock — a saguaro hosting the demoted if not forgotten station’s timepiece of only one hand, which is the hourhand, to the minute, or else it’s the second, up to whom, don’t think it ticks anymore: lightning struck’s stilled the mechanism; it holds an approximation of halftime. On the other hand, what’s the rush — frozen: that winded aleph from the east He hopes is a train comes no closer, but He’s done complaining for now, has hardened, holds puff and kvetch; think about it — at least there’s a bench, even if all it offers is splinter.

Here has no walls, no platform either, just this bundle of wood where a bunch of tracks, previously sunken, intermittently risen, converge then go on, track track, just metal and straight, far as west. Scattered haphazardly, protruding from the sand as if an alien species of arid growth, prickled in iron, unfinished, are levers and switches He has to rein Himself in from futzing around with, they tempt. His robe’s in tatters, draped around His head then cinched with its belt as kafiyah, to keep Him from sky. There’s no roof either to this, except weather, a snowball of sun beating cold.

What’s most disastrous, though, isn’t this lack of robing warmth, or of room & board, or companion, it’s the lack of a schedule — the affirmation of existence at the discretion of time. Know that in schedule is warmth, and that it is room and board and that it’s companionship, too, their hope. Ben searches for His in the sand, amid this dunedom chilblain and blown, howled and tossed and flungamong, a surface of shifting time and times, a confusion of stops and starts and both at once, at the mercy of unhoured weather. As if each sandgrain contained a number, a time number, a train number, a platform number and track number and the number of a stop, rownumbers and seatnumbers and letters, too, these letters and numbers engraved then effaced by the numb finger of a fiery gust. There are times of arrival and times of departure He sees, and sees prices, in what currencies and where to change to what, then transfers departing when for where, arriving who knows if at all, in a whirl, miragemotion, fluxed, mixed up with each other in the mingle of snows, packedoff, dispossessed, only to flake intercalated by the fix of the quarter, in precipitate wisps, drifted to nothing, the destruction of order, any system’s front passing through. Then, mindsick with dizziness to turn to the depot: thinking, where if you even wanted to would you pay, and who; He’ll be lucky if the thing arrives, the train, if once it arrives it ever leaves, if its cars are all hitched, if He’ll make His connection, where and to what. The sky doesn’t announce the stops anymore. No one is woken. Ben, His face, His nose, the only nail holding together the wood of the bench. A trainwreck, forgive.

The sound’s a hiss, undertongued shrill and then the smoky and fatty metal and meat smells seethed in a single stack, its vibrations opening the throat of the track into a quaking, mouthing fullvoiced, this wantonly gaping geshray. All aboard the morning, the desert. A locomotive comes into view, its single shining eye its headlight hulk and ever nearing as if the rising of the sun itself, illuminating the train of the engine: rusted loops and pulls and hauls soon slowing, now slowed, towing in the wake of its woke what brakes like an entire straightened equator, an endless end of the line, of coaches, passenger, cargo. A big old puffer, its 4-4-0 lead truck replete with snowplowing cowcatcher and towering inverse pyramidal smokestack to pulverize the sparks; Xmas Special classy, though izled aged, worked hard: its once neat forecab a memory of red trimmed in happy brass lately faded. It stops at Him as if for Him, sizzles. Ben tries to climb on and it snakes again, sisses, lurches a length, flings Him off. He gets up, tries again to clamber, another lurch, and again, He’s flung again — each time the stack’s smoke billows in regularly rolling puffs as if in mechanical laughter, tinged black. Making His footing, He finally swings on: rollingstock tumbling, without a ticket, to absquatulate paperless, without any documentation, official or not, neither destination. As for a passport, stamp this.

All pulls out, takes a turn, heads horizonways. Ahead of the train, its urge, far at the horizon — a tong of Orientals laying track out there, sloped amid the icy shimmer…they’re hammering in huff, laying track to the one track all the other tracks wind into, to pass through the tunnels of wind. Clad in silken skyshaded azure pajamas, sporting ponytails under dishpan strawhats don’t ask how they stay on they keep always, miraculously, a length enough ahead, a chug beyond then around the cliffed bend. They labor furiously, shvitzing to freeze a skin above their uniforms as thin as daybreak’s rashers, wielding hammers that might be their own arms distended, outgrown to smack the rails, the stakes and ties due west. All the wheels in a row, linedup on one of the infinitely interlocking, weaving tracks into one track, then past the horizon out again and in, disaster and its aversion, incidents of merging and splitting then merging again, until alone, finally, atop a lone slick track laid a length ahead of progress, laidout solitary through the forests then through the thinned forests and then the trees, who knows what trees, the grass and rubble, ruderal hope; the sadness inspired by trash that will outlive you, that must; to no purpose waste that can’t console…then, more grass in every shade of gray — and then trees again, all of them mere roots of His familytree, its fruit ripened to spoil, and then into the forest, its forests again and again: a landscape of repetition, an enumeration of repetitions enumerated, tradition’s ritual and its counting balm upon the heads of the fingers then kissed…folklore as an aid to sleep, the mythic soporific—the train kills the goyim, the goyim kill the goyim, the goyim kill the goy, the goy then kills the goat with his train, but they both die because the goy he also eats the goat, gevalt, which was ill, had terrible worms…and then, the odd stretch of fence, link or post, a trackfront house, a defunct yard whether for feed or lumber, the lot where better business practice comes to die; animal, that goat, cow, or chick, kinder and then again, emptiness; the iron, the steel, and the wood, the scorified energy, relentless and yet still it’s a miracle that everything works — all of it more dangerous and terrifying in its sheer haphazardness, its stubborn slowness, a technical exhaustion, a mystery mechanized of steam and of smoke.

The faster they go, Ben’s windows become ice and soon, halfsleeping, He has to pry His face away from the frozen. He has the compartment to Himself — the entire car’s His, it seems He’s alone in the train. To rouse, He goes out to the aisle — to explore, to forage for a diningcar, for food & drink, vendors, concessions He’ll compromise, if there is any diningcar, with waiters and a cook and a bartender, too, if there’s even a conductor, nu, if that’s not too much to ask, any official stoking the way and not just ghosts with the train itself a hobo between homeless worlds, condemned to the superstitious itinerant: a train that haunts the tracks desperate, enraged…all on its own, for Him and Him only. And so, to hope for an outside voice, whether it be live from the wilderness booming theology, or only temporally shrill and coming over a ceilinged speaker to tell Him what, where to stop, to get off for and just go. He makes way up the aisle, thrown from seat to empty seat, then enters the next car, one class upgraded from that of His board: it’s labeled on a sign as Levi and empty itself; the class of the car ahead He enters, it’s called Cohen, and is quiet, abandoned: this class the only class outfitted in plush, and there’s a tiny draft of heat, a lick up from the lowermost grill. And then the locomotive — but who knows how far the hierarchy extends in the other direction, eastward past the classless Israelien and further down the track again plunged into the unnamed, the unlabeled if not unmentionable rearcars, stretching to the intent or is it the purpose of forever — they’re packed, sardined to the gills: hymn, they’re the emes sardines there, herrings, also whitefish and sable, mamash salmon smoked and pastramitized, beluga sturgeon and its caviar, too, upward of ten kinds of roe, fish bound for the coast, preserved fresh in their unheated hold; they have to be in Holywood for tomorrow brunch; latterday lox flown in from parts east — the bris plate secreted deep in the dimly skinned hold.

Ben stays way up front in the Cohen car, that of the priestly class, despite His not being deemed worthy by whom: those who could, who would afford the price of such comfort, who are or at least were in a position to upgrade, produce the downpayment, submit to eternal scrutiny, entropic review…and even if He were so inclined, whose wheels would He grease, whose eyes would He have to oil to look other ways — nothing worse than being in a situation with no authority to bribe, you’re only alone if there’s no one to buy off…just those Orientals implacable, working their hammers of arm up down up down, through and past this scenery of movingpictures, Sunday matinee landscape panned over and around, again and yet animated again; enough to make Him nauseous…all this reek and dreck dripping from the train’s netherworkings, from between the cars, their toiletstalls, spraying to puddle with lubricants, those oils and greases underneath, fallen, goddamned the sign says it’s Occupied, as if He’s invading the opposite mirror — it’s Him inside squatting, shivering, hiding from no one save the shadows of His own inner fear, reflecting the outside world, its paranoid guilt how it both disrupts His gut then feels bad about it, apologizes with appetite, hunger, need; the toilet chugs, glugs, rumbles fouled bright blue like the water of the ocean further if ever, then overflows into the aisles, freezes slick to the floor. Around Him, passing overhead, through the poled wires both telegraph and phone, allpointsbulletins for Ben long put out, receiving little real response, only a titter of pranks, a smattering of honest tithepayers scared into visions. Hell, get them whoever they ever are nowadays, the Garden and the government and sum the world’s private capital, the international bountyset, the fortune and glory goys — get them desperate enough, they might even flag down a stretch of these trains, leash a few dogs down the aisles, shepherds sniffling under the seats, between the cars and then up on their roofs…but by that juncture, trackshift, lever pulled, flag up, routed on the wrong oneway past the last un-listed stop, He’ll be gone, hidden by a kindly bearded pointsmensch maybe, told to wait for the next train, for the one after that, in one of those tiny corrugated shacks that’s both the office and quarters, the desk astride the bed — then cradled tight amid the engine’s undercarriage, a shrunken shyly suckedup testis of the locomotive itself; to ride on, a splay of shadowed, perhaps only potential, stops later, further down the ghosted line, and then — another hiss, yet another lurch, a stop frail and still for here and now final, He leaps to the meager platform, makes on, oblivious of the absurdly narrow gauge of His escape, following only the map of that unsettled tum; and oblivious, too, to the workers — miracle migrants to the west’s newest expansion, the unlived but holyheld past — swinging back onto the train, which switches its orientation around to chug in the return direction, its locomotive downed, out of service, the train’s head and heart within towed now in reverse.

Bone voyage, the scowl of the wind. Blind Wiedersehn. It’s terminus, officially at least, and everybody off…for Him, though, there’s never a last stop, no final destination. Ben takes a breath around: the environs of this humpy dump of a depot littered with stakes — a grimed glimmer of gold, and silver, these railroaded claims delineating the hope had for clearing: these stakes pounded then left forlorn to mark nothing but their own abandonment, plots forsaken, the demarcation of a dream abused. Its true appellation, this junction jubilating a former wateringstop the locals that remain have taken to calling Bad Chan: there’s a mensch, the only mensch around, maybe the only mensch left, this letzing marshalik up on the forbidden rung of a stepladder painting in a bluff of choleric red a new name atop an old name and its beaten bandage of sign: Chelm, Hotzeplotz, anyone, Kasrilevke, Shnippishok…though isn’t that Maine, Neue England — tongue out, he hasn’t made up his mind. Open for suggestions. Closed Shabbos. Ben walks up and asks him what there is to do around here and the mensch scuts his way down without deciding on a designation, then disentangles from a tincan tub of signs on the porch of the sloughed slouchy depot one in the shape of an arrow he spikes into the stairside ice at a lean.

It says, Spa.

Why not, He thinks, revivifying, just the thing! To take the waters — where…the purest, repristinating air!

Ben transfers to His feet, following the directions intuited, maybe, mapped on His palms in dirt, in mud and the spew of the axles, shvitzing almost away in giddy excitement. He sets off for the colonnades, the rivering waters, rived, earthily heated and healing, medicinal, hundred percent hydroxygen for whatever might ail. To prescribe Himself a rest, His entire flee given purpose by the sudden prospect of pilgrimage, though the waters would probably be frozen, and the hotels might all be long booked. He walks the arrow, perhaps pointing wrongly or just down and out of light but finds no more signs, no higher, faster track, whether by way of faring or handoff, by night or because they’ve never existed — an indication of how elite this spa actually is — only overgrowth, dense wood without trail: hidden, recessed, a jewel set in a greengolden, lunesilvered valley always beyond; down gulches up gullies, 1 Mile’s what He remembers the sign having said, hymn, that or ten at the most, one for each toe, deep into the forest of petrified palm among which are scattered, protective in passage, a huddling minyan of redwood, displaced sequoias sufficiently withered — to pass through them, their arched hollowed trunks, dragging with Him a piece of baggage claimed at random, Lost & Founded through thickets through thorns, tearing straps and imitation hide, Injun luggage seamed, scraped, zipped with tears to obscure its multihued beaded monogram, CHAI (standing for Chief Had An Idea, though unfortunately for his people the Chief ’s was to pack up the prairie then move out to Palestein, abandoning his wife and nine kinder). Ben comes upon a river soon, a hot burbling brook slicing its way through nature giving way to the kemptness of grounds, winding a valley around, then cleaving a clearing — revealed, beneath the palms’ icicled fronds and shaded by their hang from nothing but the freeze unremitting, we’re talking nestled: the insanitorium, a fallenrates paradise, starting at threehundred shekels a night.

To soak it all in: all the promenading people in retreatmode, retired even from vacation, chazerai of chazerai they’re lolling around in the mud, penned like pigs but ostensibly for their own health, can you believe, the young, kick-shaking spirochetal, the suspected syphilitic, paying homage and offseasonal doubleoccupany, too, to a gerontocracy of the hypochondriac with their own ibberbuttled elders to deal with, with enough of their own about which to kvetch kishkas’ deep: chemodialysis victims, we’re condolencing, poor diverticulitis schmucks become prisoner to their own waste impounded in bags hung heavily from bushes and the branches of trees; munificent municipal parks trailed through with every nature labeled, thoroughly marked, pasture stretches adorned with lifelong, ornately armed benches, inhabited by monuments, defaced these monumental menschs and their womenfolk sitting arteryhardened, encased for plaque’s posterity within the dreck of just visiting pigeons and gulls, waddling off their early feed only flakes of skin and nail peckedup, then passed through and out. And in the distance, on the opposite embankment, those grand colonnades, their columnal pitch and canopies grave and imposing, but ornamentally fragile, delicate in filigree as if of frozen winds, gleaming purely; to reach them, He has to cross the river thiniced over a slippery slip of bridge down a slated, turnedover leaf path littered, too, with souvenir sippingvessels, to shatter them underfoot.

Ben goes and books Himself into what just has to be the most expensive hotel on the boulevard, a wonder they have the room, though they assure anything for Him under the name of one Doctor Karl Young, with a tipped hand in thanks to Herr Portier and a promise to pay when He can — from the proceeds, hopedfor, of what’s to be His dissimulative hocking, schlocking, and petty steals: the claimed unclaimed dummy drummering luggage of a traveling salesmensch He finds here in the hall and wheels away to the hold of a service elevator, lost sprung open to be found stuffed with barters, that and the oddsending wampum of reliquary junk: shrunken skulls, baculumbones of coonschlong preserved in what dipped finger smells and tastes like snake-oil; the black currency of blond scalps; then the Hopi dolls and rattles He’d fingered from his Sabbath Injun host, to sell to an elderly spagoer as charms against death — and to sell, too, His parkingticket debts, He hopes, He’s trying, to the eventual spagoner’s gogetting son for either half or double, He’ll forget which, of what they would have cost Him if He’d pay. To live is to stay open, all weekday, all weeknight, to make the business. Checkout’s at noon. He scribes His name into the register an Xlike halfstar.

The hotel, it’s an enormous collapse of grandeur called the Grand, none other now that all’s kashered under new management, the only Grand they say, halfprice of thievery after the summer rush, two pools, one heated and with brunch included, the whole complex: mention this ad and get up to 10 % off at our over 100 restaurants & shops. The lobby’s gorgeous, you should look it up one of these nevers: everything gilded and what’s not is vaulted if it’s not gilded and vaulted both, redwood and brass and steel, brushed just like the hair of virgins, marble veined like the legs of the old, and glass as fragile as their bones. After showering and toweling, which ministrations are hygienically overturned by Ben’s dressing as all He has for later’s the robe He’s been shrugging forever, He makes downstairs again to scare up a meal, wanders from the Grand lobby into one of the just ask them how many ball or conference rooms hallwayed off, a highly windowed, sequoiafloored, plastered paradise of ornately fruity moldings as the valances for bafflings hung, which serve to both dampen any happenings reverberous within, as well as they’re regional maps sponsored by the local Better Business Bureau — in which room, now, a handful of marks having been existentially Cained only to be soon enough enabled are being sermonized to regarding the seven or so but who’s counting highly effective prophecies of highly effective something or other’s, as will shortly be not quite forthcomingly revealed to such an uniformly out of work, out of time audience of this prepaid seminar in what’s promised to be high histrionic style by this schmuck of a mensch who needs no introduction, doesn’t want one either he doesn’t himself either script or vet, this mucky motivational speaker standing up front in postulant posture, embalmed in a suit on loan from the director of the least prominent area funeralhome his brother-inlaw; him a healer of faith for those who really have none to have become so sick with doubt that its sufferers they’re finding themselves here and in the pudged midsection of a workweek, to be preached down to with pitch amid the sideshow of slideshow (have you ever thought about the amazing opportunities to be found in — click — real-estate, such as — click — second homes — click — ski chalets — click — mountain retreats and — click — Island timeshares; what would you say if I told you that I knew a secret — click — a thousand shekel incentive up front, which is yours to keep — click — all your money down, we’ll halve your investment—), all coming complete with a regimen, a system, act now and receive as our free gift to you a stock of glossy portrait photographs as well as an autographed book he’ll let go for nothing wholesale — squint closely, he’s standing on its copies stacked — vanitypublished by an inexistent imprint of the Texas State Genizah, of which he’s not just a client but also the founder; Ben peeks His head in just as the mensch’s beginning, spitting shvitz into the antiquated mic exhumed from the air’s grave of local radio.

Trouble with your boss? he asks.

Yes!

Need to ask for that raise or vacation, you deserve it?

And verily the whole room shouts, yes!

Hymn…he milks it treyf, I can help.

As it is written in the book of our prophet Daniel: And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate and yadda and blah (he’s skipping, he’s flipping)…I’m about to reveal to you my failsafe method, proven then reproved, which has helped multitudes, I’m talking untold.

Are you ready?

Amen, they shout in response.

Week One: Confirm your Covenants! Those you make with yourself and those you make with others…

Hoping a light snack, those requisite refereshments to be served following, Ben pulls up a chair, gives attention as the mensch, he spits on…on Day One, flicks a slip of imaginary lint from his laminated red powertie, put yourself first! Follow my easy to follow assembly instructions to first identify your Four Beasts then, for the rest of the week, pour your determination out upon the desolate — and nu, take back control of your life!

Amen, they scream spittle to fleck the walls, stain apparitions, visualization techniques…shoes and socks and their crumpled creaseless, and pleatless, foldeddown waistband pants to the elasticized knee as bald as their heads to be soaked in saliva pooled on the floor, before we’re all done here.

Day One, 1st Step: as I’ve said, you must identify your four beasts — do you want an example?

Do we want an example? they answer and mean it.

My first beast is—

My second beast is—

My third beast is—

My fourth beast is—

2nd Step up up up the ladder: you’ve got to rank them, first for the least problematic, fourth for the most, hymn…murmuring, this might be too tough for this crowd and so again he asks, do you want an example?

Do we want an example? they answer.

But do you really, truly want an example?

Do we really, truly want an example?

Nu. For example, sayseth the suit…you — and he points prophet his manicure into the fleshmess, as if desperate accusation he asks, what’s your name, friend? Fat mensch in the rear. You, yes you to the right. Your other right. Sorry, didn’t know you were one person. God, you’ve just got to have problems…

Me, He says, hymn, my name’s, uh, er…J-Jacobson.

Take your time, Mister Jacobson…a stutterer, too, slow of speech, a Moses-on-the-make — haven’t I met you before. No? Don’t be so nervous. Where are you from and what is it that you do wherever that is, Mister Jacobson?

I’m from, hymn, a little town called Weissnichtwo, that’ll do, outside Weequahic, back east — and I’m, I’m a successful…

Aren’t we all? And that’s why we’re here.

An attorney, junior partner in a stable, very profitable firm — but I want to have my own practice one day.

I’m sure you will, Mister Jacobson…everyone, say Shalom to Mister Jacobson, and all of them say Shalom to Mister Jacobson. Nu. Mister Jacobson, you’re up, you’re on, your turn — now, your First Beast is…?

My first beast is probably my…um, er, my boss, Goldenberg, he’s founding partner, real senior.

Goldenberg, the mensch frowns, typical, and then your Second Beast, Mister Jacobson?

My second beast has to be my mother-inlaw — yes, that they’d buy…my third beast is my accountant at tax time, and for my fourth I’m going to have to go with an intangible — say, my inability to form lasting relationships.

We’ve all been there before, Mister Jacobson, and the mensch smiles to twinkling glint, trust me, chching. Let’s not underestimate ourselves, chaverim…Mister Jacobson’s beasts are every bit as terrifying as those of Daniel’s dream: The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. Chapter 7, verses 4 through 8—copies not even xeroxed but mimeographed will be made available during the break between sessions.

And so, Mister Jacobson, the 3rd Step, dying to know what that is?

We’re dying, they say, we’re so dying.

Nu, for the remaining five days of the week, deal with one beast a day, in order from first through the fourth — bad to worse, if you will.

On the Second Day, after highlighting your recent work achievements, and I’m sure you have at least one, respectfully ask your boss for a raise, plus an additional week’s paid vacation.

On the Third Day, plan to go into work late if it all, having had brunch after sex in the morning…relations with your wife, I mean, buy her flowers, a shtickel candy, balloons and a card, calmly and coolly outline your reasons for not wanting to take her mother, your mother-inlaw, on your vacation, which, as a direct result of my method, will have been extended by a week that you both can afford.

On the Fourth Day, Mister Jacobson — nu, that was His name — make the decision to switch accountants, and you’ll find one, through the recommendation of a coworker, I’m sure, or try your accountant’s accountant, who’ll subsequently save you a swindle; remember — feel free to deduct the tuition you’re paying today.

On the Fifth Day, Mister Jacobson, make sure to thank your coworker for his recommendation, and you’ll be asked to engage with him in a multitude of racquet sports, followed by a shvitz, let’s say, with him and his friends who’ll soon be your friends, too, perhaps due to the newfound confidence you’ll surely exude.

On the Sixth Day, invite your mother-inlaw over for Shabbos just so that there’re no hard feelings and, never forget, on the Seventh Day, rest — I’m sure you know how to do that, Mister Jacobson; you seem quite capable in that department…hahaha, but seriously.

On Days One through Seven, you, Mister Jacobson, by first identifying your four beasts, ranking them, then dealing with them manageably, one at a time, will be able to get control of your life — and if He can do it, chaverim, then you’d be pitiful not to! Raving applause, Ben palms His forehead with a complimentary towel unrolled from a tabled hot stack. And now, the mensch won’t get held up in inspiration when time, which is five days older than mensch, means money and so much of it, which is far younger and more attractive, more useful, accommodating, understanding and pliant, we’ll break to take questions and refreshment, he says, the carted coffee and coffeecake rolling in to the rear, but make sure to be back in time for Session Two: The Book of Job: How to Be a Friend in the Midst of a Whirlwind, for which I hope you’ve all paid in full. Save your seats. Only six more weeks to go…and thank you, Mister Jacobson, for allowing us to make an example of you. You’ve been good people; have a slice, a sip, take a bow.

In the multipurpose, eminently convertible room opposite, opening up at the western end of the lobby of the Grand, this Ben, often billed as the Fantabulous Neb Disraelien, affectionately known as the Nebbish of Northern Illinois, in high demand at yeshivas, kollels, rabbinic courts, and community fundraisers, lifecycle rituals large, small, formal, semi, hemi, and demi, as Host, M.C., he’ll do your dishes, your windows, or just spend quality time as a reassuring presence, work whatever room you want him to work (Madison Square Garden, hotel, showroom kitchen or broomcloset) as a straightmensch, a narrowmensch, an eyeoftheneedle mensch, even as his own “beautiful assistant,” takes all comers and kinds shaved, waxed, and inordinately plumed, makes appearances at among others the first hopefully annual meeting of the Schnorrer’s Lodge, arriving in from the hallway’s wings on a unicycle and juggling babies and utilitybills mind the vomit and papercuts, then humming while pretending to play on a homemade varnishspattered prop of a Stradivarius violin: discontinuous excerpts from the classical repertoire, two bars each all he knows, interspersed with hot klezmer variants and sung parodies of zmirot, liturgical gems including but not limited to a flatulence/syncopation version of a popular Shabbos niggun, and a strained Arabian arrangement of the Kaddish entitled Muezzin on Up; and maybe just maybe if you asked nicely or took to justify to him a special occasion, a favor or bris milah belated, when he had to stretch or just the gelt did, he’d close with a set of magic, always the same tricks: doing two things at once, doing three things at once, which multitasking is perfected in his signature disappearing act, being in two places at the same time. Old hat, you might say, but the new one’s in the mail, he assures, being blocked. That’s how he makes rent and meets obligations, him and the other impersonators though maybe not all of equal skill; they make do how they make out: some doing alright, fulltimers with talent and good representation even impressively, you’d be jealous, while others limit their incarnations to secondlives, moonlit impersonation, Shabbos night pillowstuffing, deluding themselves backstage, on breaks in whispers to their agents their stagey, smothering mothers: it’s a hobby, it’s only a hobby, don’t take it so seriously, you know, the amatory amateur, I do it for the love…or else, making progress, I’m almost there, the big’s about to break just around the corner — and all of them, despite the dilettantish dereistic, and regardless of income, reported or not, and whether or not their involvement extended or ever will into an investment in a multitude of surgical options, whether loved, respected if not acclaimed, or just pitied or reviled for the fallen stars in their eyes, all are false, counterfeit Bens numbering in the hundreds of thousands (that is, if the original’s even real), each with alimony to think of, and court costs, the price of getting another Get, and, always, there’s the mortgage to make, mouths to feed, life.

Surgically enhanced, Continentally trained in impersonation, the Nebbish’s echt making a decent little living for himself a parnassa, a sizable grubstake of remunerative usurpation here — out in Holywood, the leftmost wing of Angels, having been cordially invited the week prior to open for the Kings, to warm up the room for their now quarterly meeting during which they’ll debate for its entire scheduled duration what the first issue on the agenda should be, with Neb (full disclosure, a minority shareholder in the Mattress Kingdom holding of Laz-R-Us, Inc.) doing his fifteen minutes, his shtick wellhoned, how the Envelope King slips him his pay in an irregular surplus model #1B, and only then do they all sit down to their business. Holywood now finally emptied of its Affiliated directors, producers, the kooky komedy writers, neurotic or not smart or witty enough and so nervous, or endearing, your call or both, polite, dark, and hairy and hairily funny — actors and actresses just sitting around, just like always, waiting for the phone to ring role, memorizing themselves: there’s nothing to do, no runways to stalk, no parties to crash with crass flash, only hitting on the hick rube but already Goldberging interns still making coffee for what.

Around this table are the Kings, the newest elders, the heads of a revived operation: eighteen on one side, eighteen on the other’s how many total, each regal on whatever side makes for their more successful profile as surveyed from the head — the money wing and, also, the mind of the allpowerful, allseeing poultry: this quarter’s mascot, a muscled, possibly steroidal, bespectacled fowl, in honor of the president, newly installed, Plosher, formerly Perdue, the Poultry King, who sits squawkily at foot. Appropriate to the sham it must seem like to those who paid for the Studio Tour, this sitdown takes place on a set so stripped of glamour it just has to be real, which is merely the irredeemably fake truly felt: fans to stream screeching names of God down the Hills into Holywood proper, mobbing for a mere glimpse of the action on a lot on a soundstage once used for the production of oldie tworeelers and talkies, since disused, doneup in its storage capacity in an unintentional style called High Kitsch, it might be, fin de stickler for detail warehousing for shtetl scenery not presently in service — coops, two bits of fence, foam-rubber gravestones rubbing up against withered polyurethane trees that instead of backdropping coached guttural wails and travails must now provide the setting for this, an unprecedented (meaning they’d just never gotten around to it before, couldn’t make the time, schedule it in) meeting of the principal thirtysix, heads or designated representatives from entertainment, goods & services, industry light & heavy, all the big macher big money big idea movers & shakes (nu, hope they don’t move or shake too hard: among the thirtysix how there’re only half that many kidneys and, hymn, a quarter that number of lungs). Moguling takes it all out of you. Wheeze the bowel’s bottomline. Roll’s called, checking names off the blacklist, but that’s only its type: everyone who’s everyone, who’s anyone, too, your invitation must’ve gotten lost in the mail, don’t hold it against them, you don’t want to be schmeared, misdenounced — them throwing gavels, yelling, demanding to make their demands, as Plosher finishes taking names but where to: the Apple King, the Aspirin King, the Bathtub King, the Brassiere King, the Candle King, the Coop King who he’s in tight with Plosher, the Diamond King, the Ear King who for Nose & Throat refers to his uncle, the Envelope King, the Fish King, PopPop’s old Miami neighbor Freddie the Fur King still making a fortune since Feivel, no his name it was Faivish he died with the rest, the Glove King, the Hair Replacement Product King, the Iodine King, the Juice King and his seedmoneyed son-inlaw, Fruchtfleisch, the future Pulp King assisting (along with His brother, the Prince of String just here to learn ropes), the King of Kings at the head of the table (presiding in matters of judgment, which matters never arise and so no one knows what he does, if he does anything — not that they’d question), flanked by an Insky, an Outsky, and their muscle, a goy just in from the Pale, calls himself Caldo “Cold” Sorvino, backingup Shimi Bellarosa from Belorussia, the Kipper King the oathed enemy of the Fish King because who can swear anymore and on what flipflopping around get a grip…the Laundry Detergent King with Fabric Softener Included, the LaughTrack King who he’s always got the best lines, the Mattress King, the Microphone King whispering—present, but no one hears him and so he’s marked absent, the (egg) Noodle King, the (pitted) Olive King, the Pillow King you’d better believe it sitting on his own product, Plosher the Poultry King, again, plucking himself up in his seat as if shocked at his saying of his own name, nominally presiding at least in matters of order, the Queensized Fashions King, the Quinine King THE maker of tonicwater being waited on by three of his top distributors, the Retinal Reattachment Surgery King, the Shoe King with two of his foremost athletic Supporters, the Tea King with sugar held between his teeth to prevent him from making a point, the Utilities Regulation King, the Varicose Vein Removal Kream King, the Wishniak King (purveyor of fine flavor to the tastemaching trade), the Xray Machine King, the Yo Yo King his menschs out walking the dog, then the Zipper King with his heat, the Zealous Kid (AKA Maxx Gross) lounging louche into shadow, demonstratively puffing, inhaling his smoke down to the filter, then exhaling winter out into the studiolights.

To begin with, a few questions; junkets come with the job…what’s the occasion for this assemblage here in the midst of deep white, with flights outbound to anywhere delayed, then cancelled? Their meeting. And what’s their meeting about? The occasion. Okay, okay, alright already, nobody knows, nobody’ll admit to not knowing. Tightlipped. Burnttongued. Closed set. What’s that about? It’s about time, again. About time for what? For this. All under the lettered sign on the hill. Who stole the L, what’s it stand for, how much’s the ransom? It’s not stolen. One night, it just flickered away. Lalala. Plosher pounds his head against a gavel pounding, echoes giving way to talk all at once…everyone gossiping, doing deals, making rain check your bill then snow and then hail, selling, buying, trading, bargaining down and, finally — coming to shtum when the Zipper King, he whips his out and one lone hoarse voice remains:

I’m telling you, we owned New Amsterdam, we took New York, we had the whole island, the inners, the outers, the nation, the entire goddamnit world.

Anything was ours for the taking—

We had all the reservations, all the restaurants and tables in town.

You want a house, you got a house.

You want an election, it’s yours.

Jesus God they named streets after us, can you believe, squares and parks. We had the press, the television and the movies, too, we owned the networks and the theaters, the unions and art.

We wrote the books, then we’d close them on anyone who’d presume to oppose.

And then, nu, you know the rest…this is the Laughtrack King talking and, hahahamutterfutzingha as he’s drinking the Tea King’s wild fruits assortment, he spurts it out his nose then back into the cup and then drinking again, spurting and yadda — how we knew everyone, presidents and senators and actors, how we knew the presidentsenators, the senator-actor-artist-&-athletes, all the way down to the shvartze jazzsingers whose contracts we canceled and wages we prorated, held against their habits (here’s a swell, a whistling Dixie) — we were the sitcoms and Broadway, deli and stocks stacked high on rye, the funds hedge and mutual, medicine and law, the military’s authority, the conservative bombs and all the liberalism in the world with which to apologize when we dropped them…they’re talking at once when the Shoe King takes one of his support’s loafers off, pounds the table with it as a secretary emerges, struck from oblivion to shorthand, the Shoe King takes one of his support’s…

THE MATTRESS KING

How we knew all the titles, their acronyms, the big machers & the contract menschs, the personalities, and the gossipedabout.

How we worked all the angles, had every number, knew every score, played hard on all schemes.

We rose to their equals, then we raised them one more. Our hands were everywhere — even they were in hand.

THE PILLOW KING

What we bought, we sold, and what we sold, we bought back then sold it again, for a profit margin higher, always higher, toward heaven.

Let’s talk rate of return, taking a piece of everything then putting them back together into new wholes: threehalves of any percentage always to parties of our own imaginative accounting, leveraged in the greed that only in America’s known as ambition.

The vig for living free, you just have to deal.

But aside from family immediate and extended, a congregation of maybe arsonhappy brothers-inlaw, it wasn’t a Syndicate, wasn’t a System — it was a loose thing…

That’s what no one ever understood. Family—

And that’s a wrap! says Spielgrob.

Print it! he says to the soundstage, emptied…even he’s not there, anymore.

A promise, though — we’ll patch it up in edits…

Always, there’s post.

All the while all the way back east — being the manger of opinion, straw-thought, dungwonder — the tsking siskeling critics, the talkinghead commentariat, latenite pundits, qrating mongers and their PR meisterminders they’re asking, for once without rhetoric and in unison, from a deck above the reader’s pew…shtumup, where is He?

Benjamin. Ben. Mister Israelien. Give Him over unto us. Produce Him or wither upon an alien vine.

What’s with this journey dorf-to-dorf, this khuter hopping, this zemstvo zip…is it a quote unquote quest for identity, a search for roots, an undertaken Wander not quite though by now almost jahr, a pilgrimage and if so then, to where — who owns the rights? Listeners and viewers at home, by now they’re not even encouraged, they’re urged, to send in their votes, any ideas, tips hot or not, c/o any dark rider headed through the night to the next town, just over the river.

For a moon, though, it’s none of those.

Here’s the spiel, the lashon hara, it’s said: He’s on the sacrificial lam, evading authorities, subpoenas unto even the poenas below the subpoenas, subsubpoenas to appear before, nu, it’s either a Judge Cohen or Coen, it’s forgotten, a Cohn or a Cone maybe, or else, then again, maybe a Koen or Kohen, a Kohn or even a Kone, it’s been said, then again maybe a Cahn or Kagen, a Kahane or a Kahn; hymn, others say she’s a female judge, like Deborah, perhaps, who, it’s said, would hold her court and prophecy under a warm shvitzy palm as if to say, pay me — but this with one of those hyphenated-names, Cohen-Cone or the like, formerly with the firm of Gimme, Loot, & Hasidim, LLC…whatever name the robe elected before taking the bench. Ben’s being sued for damages, is it. Character defamation. Misrepresentation. For Impersonating the Savior. For False Messianism. Fraud. And she’s naming names, the whore-plaintiff: I sold everything I owned expecting the End of Days, the Eschaton. My husband, who he was an Affiliated, May His Memory Be for a Blessing, died for this schmuck. And for nothing. For nodding. The woman, who wouldn’t convert for her husband over my dead body left to depose of — her husband’s family and their plotz (buried up in one of those shoulder cemeteries that are necropolitan northern Joysey, on a strip right by the side of the Turnpike so that when a big rig would come through, eighteen wheels and more how those stones would shake, in their graves the caskets would rumble, rattle like seeds in a shell — like loose teeth in a cheeky mouth, bellied to laugh, that tumult of chattering coffins) — but anyway, long story short did after his death and theirs, convert, now refers everyone who’s interested to her new husband, also her lawyer: they were married on the steps of the courthouse while waiting for their case to be heard.

My client, also my wife, the lawyer says, is seeking compensation for emotional trauma she experienced in being grossly misled by a mensch pretending to be the Messiah. Period. Paragraph.

Manipulation. He less talks than dictates for press; when he raises his voice and an eyebrow, which, that’s a headline in itself, period, paragraph…my client had invested much faith, time, and money in Mister Israelien. And she’s not the only one. No. There’ve been others, too afraid or embarrassed to come forward just now. Their loss has to be worth something. My time. I urge them to contact me directly. And now — a miracle, what a classy action, a tort. We’re asking, he says, for a thousand shekels a day, let’s say each, for every day my clients were under the impression of Mister Israelien’s stated symbolism, and purported power — in addition to half a million each because, don’t blame us, we just want it.

Don’t you think Garden, Inc.’s behind this whole mishegas, the Administration, too — you don’t think Ben’s smart enough for this kind of scam?

Glad you asked.

We’re presently engaged in a separate suit v. Garden, Inc., relating to product failure: the Hanna Wig™ (representation flaps it aloft, a dead thing, this kaporos of the presspool) is responsible for the fatal choking of my client’s beloved parakeet, Duke.

He straightens his toupee held down by his yarmulke.

They were very close — apparently, the bird knew her by name.

The woman’s first husband, an Affiliated by the name of Avram or Avraham, in the one time they ever took a vacation photos allowed release by his widow and her lawyerhusband: an apparently insolvent, incontinent, bonebald mensch who’s standing short even in his orthopedically reformed, Pittsburgh platform shoes and Cincinnatty cap, his frame largely fat, slowmoving, his pugilistically puffy face distinguished most prominently by its soured nose, an embittered, prickly pickled bird’s, it’s described. And soon, the rumor mill’s up and run by a blind, threelegged horse: how he’d been a travelagent, and that that’d been kosher, not a front, though he’d WITHHELD — diversifying his portfolio, selling illegal spices, Eastern Bloc paprika take to American table back in the alte days, his mittelmensch’s name it was that of Laser or Glazer Wolf though that’s probably an alias, also he’d owned & operated a chain of the bathroom’s in the hallway motels up and down the Gulf Coast (storage they functioned as, deaddrops to launder the stain: Szeged’s product being cleared out from Miami and up north through the service entrances, until a bust the year before his death — only a handful of bellboychicks had been caught redhanded; despite whatever deals were pepperdangled, it was all too spicy for anyone to talk). Not that my husband was ever aware, she’s sure of it. Anyway, he’s dead, spit spit spit, isn’t that enough of a punishment — and, nu, so her husband it’s revealed after further investigation, gravedigging into the unmarked files for the worst of the wormiest dirt, had forged bonds, would deliver them to associates bound in prayerbooks, opposite the Mourner’s Kaddish. He’s dead, spit, don’t spite his memory. My wife, also my client, maintains her innocence. Boilerplate. And then a boilerroom scam, hardselling off futures, options, foreign exchange, half the Dead Sea’s salt to every resident of Central Brooklyn, coldcalling at furious heat from a basement wholly unfinished just east of India, the one with the dot. Another rumor awaiting verification between a mouth and an ear has it that his brother, hymn, his widow’s brother-inlaw, also dead, had been a ritual slaughterer for a foreign interest shadily in the black. A former bombmacher with one finger left triggerhappy. Statesponsored assassination, it was. He had terrible gas.

No comment, she says in the line filing up the steps to the courthouse.

What she said, her lawyer says to the microphones, or else she denies, I’ll leave it up to you to decide…turning from the steps down below her grown full of truffled fedoras to trip and fall over this pig wrought if only ironically idolatrous in the form of a pushke, a charitable repository, a box tzedakah, and so stumbling upon even more litigation — sarcastically speaking, though if anyone takes them seriously don’t think they won’t serve: one of an inedible, incredible many of them these porkbarrelled porkbellies lined all the way up the steps in two rows on both sides of the line — little fourlegged piggypink banks soliciting for every cause under the expenditure of the sun.

For the Training of a Mute Cantor

For Tractor Parts Urgently Needed in East Texas

For the Int’l Brotherhood of Shriners to Visit Palestein

For Recently Affiliated Proctologists Wanting to Establish Galician Descent and Needing to Pay This Mensch You Know How It Is to Deal with the Papers

For this Woman Listen Her Name It’s Not So Important Whose Husband the Schmuck He was Affiliated and Died Old Story I Know You’ve Heard it All Before the Long and the Short of It Both but He Really Left Her Without a Shekel in Life Insurance and—the line’s essentially endless, and selfserving, snaking down the most civic of streets from City Hall to the Battery to wall all of lower Manhattan in bitch lately kvetch, advertised large; everyone complaining to bargain whether a plea or a promise, demanding a hearing, a ruling, advice, God the Law, someone asking is this goose kosher yet (it’s been spoiled a week she’s been waiting), another wanting to know if she should immerse her new plates in the sink or like what, you want I should go knock a hole in the ice of the Hudson, my husband won’t grant me a divorce, my son’s possessed by a dybbuk but the dybbuk’s better behaved than Sammy ever was, what should I do? I’m sorry, she goes on talking to an infertile woman seeking interdiction, divine or not, whatever you have, intervention, I’ll have what she’s having, a willing ear, an open coat to cry in, you call that a lining, call that a line — I placed all my trust in Him. He said pray, God I prayed. He said fast, futz me I fasted, right quick. I lost sleep over this. And weight, too, but that I don’t mind. I’m talking a moon of my life getting squared with the shylocks. He said if I call in the next ten minutes He’ll throw in a set of knives at no extra cost. A totebag our gift to you, an umbrella free I could really use now. Winter prevailing. A week later, still in line, her matter unheard by the court, she’s sleeping on the steps along with the other supplicants under the weather, that indivisible democracy the sky and its heaven holding their Law above nature’s, above rules & orders menschmade, tented out in the freeze under the waterproof of the lawyer’s suitjacket, spread over the hang of the higher step and held there in place by the sound sleep of another: his wife she’s moaning in dream, mumbling she’s talking, exposed…no widow, how she was only Abe’s lover, and one of many at that, what’re you talking suspected, we knew all along, his old shiksa receptionist, couldn’t you tell, I mean just take a look at those thighs — booking package cruises out of the Port of Miami by morning, afternooners he’d called them a quick shtup under the desk or in the trash alley adjoining the kurva, the slut, poo poo poo my wife, her lawyer says, notified Him in writing, a letter, notarized, it’s gotten a smudge damp if it’s not just all wet: her pilgrimages detailed, receipts stapled to prayers, itemized her 1.) hopes, & 2.) dreams, waving a sheaf of them under the nose of the press, sniffling, dripping ink to tissue the morning editions…Gottenyu, she’s saved everything.

Menschs in departmentalissue white, laundered daily at a host of area prisons, stream down the steps into morning, keep the supplicants in order with their shepherd crooks, comedy canes.

Ben needs to be found, the woman’s weeping drastic mascara by noon, and the court needs to find Him, hold Him accountable.

Clapboards clap board — we need to do it again.

Slate the docket.

He’ll pay for His sins upon the Day of Judgment, says an old mensch seeking a last name change to a calling surely unpronounceable. Little Timmy Czyczwitz-Szyszkowitz. If that’s still available.

Too late, she says stifling, too late for me.

A finger — which one, unwedded — over a handful of hours earlier for Ben way out on the coast, catching wind of what westerly passes for calamity these days: dirt unearthed to be made verity as scandal, a dungheaped museum or monument, the pile aside the wait of a grave…received ideas convening conventional wisdom, what courtroom’s that in, by closing an adjournment to truth too lazy to check up on or within which to bog down, just the facts.

Having arrived in the realm of Angels, He’ll read the news in the paper this homeless mensch, His benchmate, has folded into a skullcap over his burgeoning fro. His tallis a trashbag ripped through. Womenfolk poodle down the promenade, leashed to their menschs by tzitzit, tefilin, how they’re stalking their shadows, their noses buried a moshl, a nishl, in the middling pages of books. New beards scratch on old chins. An icy gust of skirts. Scarves and nippy mittens and hats.

This trouble out east, and the homeless know, breaks the ice, what a case…the Garden’s trying to put Him back in the news, keep Him in headlines. Here, read my yarmulke, my kippah, my kopfcap you call it, and he takes it off to let Ben unfold it all for Himself. Total conspiranoia, the mensch goes scraping at his scalp. Turn it over. A2. Me, I’m not buying what they’re selling. Listen. My sister’s my sister, and always will be, but I’m not with her on this one: either she’s in on it, or she’s being set up.

Never mind, his sister, Abe’s exlover’s saying on the steps amid the plink of the pushkes. Abe would’ve married me. He couldn’t stand Elaine. Let me explain. Eileen, I mean. Whomever. Of Blessed Memory.

Ask Abe, the homeless says, if he was alive and he’d tell you. He’d be the first one. Abe, my brother-inlaw, okay, so maybe just my sister’s gentlemensch friend, but we’d met, over the phone, he’s good people. My sister, his lover, alright, his receptionist — she’s family but not to be trusted.

My brother? the woman’s spieling to a grand jury after the complaint’s finally cased itself in front of a judge. His health isn’t what it should be. A lawyer, too? If he was he never practiced. He had to quit after what happened happened.

Or, he never passed the bar. The firm that’d hired him to file had gone out of business.

The homeless turns to Ben and says, if you ask me, He’s not a False Messiah, a faked Moshiach, He’s no fraud.

It’s just.

You really want to know who He is?

Suddenly, a mortuarily fat and pale Oma sullen in a skirt three bolts of cloth past her toes tripsup to them then sits down on the bench between them, obstructing. You poor things, she says already tearing, becoming of charity the sight of them two, you’re not well, you have to take better care of yourselves; maybe you should both come back to my place, a shower, a hot meal, a bed for a schlaf.

O, I don’t know, his sister says, he went out west for a while, Los Siegeles, I seem to remember…she holds up admirably under Torque Mada’s inquisition, her lawyerhusband unable to make the session due to an unfortunate accident of the type pathologically reported within marks of quotation.

No, I don’t think so, that was so long ago. Who remembers. I was temporarily exhausted. Shleferik, those were the days.

The Oma goes to embrace the homeless mensch — you’ll make a success of yourself yet, ignoring Ben and His cry as, not to meddle in mazel, she throws a pinch of pocketed salt over her shoulder that sprays Him in the face, an eleemosynary lick at the eyes.

Ben’s stunned, rises from the bench then turns to confront, and there — beyond them, a miracle of decoration as she’s describing to the homeless her house in every amenity (you’ll have your own room, I can cook, I can clean, I can learn how to love), they’ve carpeted even the beach, the outermost world wall-to-sky…O the ocean forever — enough of it to still even the most determined of currents wandered from home and its humbler shore. Off with His shoes, both of them the laces of which He worries into a knot then holds the whole in a hand, He goes out to the sand and its give. A cool and cooling sink amid dunes…and the air, that weighted, saltfraught freedom — it’s always right behind you, a wonder. A bench become shrouded within the mist of the wake. A symbol, a sign, turn around, there’s no more.

Having made it through to the city of Angels — through the protocols of the city of Devils, it’s said, which is every other city in the world not gifted with this peace, such pacific quiet and calm, Ben’s arrived: the deadend, no pass, the end of one end, the other ocean, deeper and vaster than ever what He’d been used to before. He stands on the shore just taking it in, pajamapants under robe rolled to His knees, then over them — a wisedup if not yet wizened American boychick who should’ve been born with rivers in His veins and huckleberries in His eyes, lost once gone wading in a world ever stranger…fixes His self and senses to the waters’ descent from the sky, and with hands on His waist, legs held proudly if embarrassedly wide, soaking, submerging, icing His great Rhodes’ toes, their nails fallenin in the salt and polar suspension, toes then feet and then heels on up to His shriveling scrotum, tittytwisting numb grained with floes of ice atop the whiter sand, wondrous to Him in how naked it is and how placid. He wades to His waist, then stops, drowns no further. A beach behind Him seeming of one long grain, stretched out longingly, beached — a minyan of menschs in waterwings and varicose trunks engaged in prayerful splash; then beyond them, partitioned, screenedoff with cloud over which He can only tiptoe and squint: modest womenfolk, just girls if recently marriagable lazing on their stretch of sand set aside, simple, sallow, though gorgeous, too, though only their insides are tanned, if only with passion, their legs probably toned to perfection under their cabañas and umbrellas of skirt…He’s thinking, what Miami would’ve been without the deathrate. As here it’s open and pure, and all wrong: this is the wrong ocean, it’s false; this ocean has no history, is no revelation. A flock of schnorring seagulls takes flight, an eclipse of their wings, two-by-two pigeons following as Ben steps, without turning around, from the water to sand, one foot in each, nothing’s firm. He can wander no further, He can’t conceive of a further, has reached the edge, the limen littoral — genug, dayeinu, enough is enough. Must limit at the risk of destruction. Help me help myself. Know when to stop. Saideth Hanna, who was Israel’s wet frolic.

We here on land break like the waves, constantly, relentlessly — but to think that each of these private breaks is impermanent, soon assimilated back into the flow, and that all of this breaking, such cleaving, serves only to strengthen the race…at least, that’s what we’re constantly telling ourselves: you want out, you got out; forget, forsake, change your name and your address, your nose and your friends and those pants, see what I care, go and intermarry the winds…a foam of white about the mouth, an angry trickle, a receding life. Ben’s no longer as young as He once was, and spring, it’s forever past. Despondency’s to put it pareve, neither fish nor fowl, nor the milk of the fish, nor the milk of the fowl. Not the land nor the sea now, He’s returned to the middle, the eminent neither, call it the shore: hateful in its indecision, inconvertibly so, willfully unsure, and unsettling. To break or to cleave is the question of any next wave, curled like a questionmark, cupped — which is to ask thusly of its wake, quickly withdrawing: to cleave or to cleave, which will it be, to rend or, to hold fast. Depends how you ask it. What shades you put into your own private gust. Nowhere is next. He is where He is, and is lost.

Ben quits the shore as if leaving the presence of majesty, facelessly, in reverse, having done what He’s done, having had experiences, tales to tell the kinder, the grandkinder, the spiel of stories late at fiery night and, if ever, Shema — and it’s only then, when the ocean’s finally small, then the beach and its promenade bench out of mind, does He turn Himself around, to wander on east again, His nostrils winding fallen feathers from His progress, a weather of that and their gulls’ sullying shpritz to flap down upon His head as reminders, toward the quarter of His arrival. A memory of the first ocean to lap at the shore of His mind. The floor of all creation from whence we arose to beach ourselves back when, the seabedded bodies of His and our kind. Having nowhere else to wander, having exhausted this space in its manifold states, now only to head Himself back…where to head to what though’s the question, another, a last; to wander still and always. Return. A sigh awash with realization, kelpy knowledge. A homecoming, then, an ingathering to prodigal prodigy-hood, say — where I was still young He thinks, when loved and perfect and me…even if that might mean Joysey again. And to show for it all — to exhale the tongue, to save with His breath — only the salt from His tears.

In Holywood, map in hand, I’m being Frank with you Gelt searches out the homes of stars. Ringing bells. Knocking wood. He doesn’t have a hint, starts with an h, Holywood…hasn’t an inkling tip, not a twinkle of a notion of what he’s up against in trying to track Ben down, get Him home wherever that was, back to His intended safe without sound; doesn’t have any idea save that he has to do it, that the duty’s his and his alone, we’re counting on you Frank, get a clue (sold by the friend of a friend who’d fleeced him the golden map without key — doors unanswered; it’s a mezuzah, bulvan’s what they’re saying now, not a clapper!): the price on the oversized Israelien head more than Gelt would’ve earned in an eternity in the service of his nation, whichever it is, if it still exists in any form recognizable to the past’s pledged allegiance — and so to become his only country, this work, and his only governance, too, underworlded, with every liberty, without any law; soon less a nation than a borderless sheol, this labor he’s been condemned to by fifty fires wrangled by prison stripes…to smoke Him out of our hole. At Mittelwest’s what they’re calling it these days the trail’d gone like the weather, burrladen cold, chattering, showing nothing and telling even less: indications syndicate the possibility of Polonia, Chicago, Illinois, the magnetism of a third pole; the wild of the call, the beguiling sirens of the Canadian line — or maybe Kentucky, perhaps Tenessee, the O-hi-o, I don’t know.

Gelt’s made every mistake in the book thrown at Him, if the book is long and its font is small and its covers are to be found beyond the pale, bound only by oceans — without index or other direction, only following instinct, the offhand and onfoot, he’s hauled himself north or so to dwell unnoticed up in Mormondom a spell, old stomping grounds of Heber’s kin and kind, Gelt only guessing Ben’d think to hide it out there, a last preserve of faith against the relentless incursion of the Affiliate; Mormondom’s borders almost totally closed, and if you want to do it legally the paperwork’d take moons no one has, not to mention extravagant expense. And so Mormondom’s just the place for Ben if He could enter, it’s decided: how despite, Gelt should venture, gets the clearance of requisite backing, slips through a border checkpoint unnoticed, on a fake ID and an unmodulated, undifferentiatedly clumsy cowboy drawl on loan from a friend who’d worked with him for a year in Virginia ten floors underground in a room whose door was once stenciled humorously or not who could tell Intelligence, spends a Shabbos pursuing his meat around the salted rim of the lake.

As he could pass, Heber’s been turned loose himself, as a gobetween, a messenger, sent up north to unofficially monitor Mormon HQ, to relay reports from the Quorum of Elders and its High Priesthood lately governing the territory while engaged in seccession talks with D.C.: one generous jowl they are, an entire wifeload of trustworthy deportment — even with a volunteer army and, gevalt, a reenfranchised militia or two massing at the southwesternmost nib of Wyoming. A deal’s offered to turn him doubleagent: Ben for a pardon’s what they’re proposing to Heber, come back to the fold, ingather, deliver your mensch and avert the wrath of your people, your father you escaped for opportunity east — that and just name a sum involving as many zeros as fair and smiley enough that you could drive your limo dead through them and into any future that pleases…Heber — having been uncovered, blown as Gelt’s facilitator, zeroing in on the holes not only in their thinking but those in which Ben might’ve been abandoned for sale in the west (peering in pits, casing the caves) — instead failing the directive to become his own brother-in-arms’ lock-&-keeper, to make sure we’re both in the same interest here, on the same page, which is blank…IA not just the acronym of the home of the recently influential Des Moinesher Rebbe, it’s also the abbreviated shibboleth for paranoia, affairs as internal as they’ll ever get: not trusting your left hand while his right grips the wheel, pulls southerly out, deported with escort through the pearly gates and back through Nevada into Californ-I-A and its Angels on a wink and a prayer, with nothing to declare save further disillusion. Wives are huddled into a single skirt. Splinter factions are formed by the wind like the violent sharps of badlanded cliffs. A blond nation’s laying in supplies for their lattermost days, growing blonder by the night, accounts have it, unto transparency, is what a handful of Mormon defectors report; until you could see right through them, see through the whole state to the other side, eventually, and their intentions, their modus immodest: a nation of light, pure; up there days’ll last forever even in a winter as wintry as this should’ve been summer, and so maybe Ben did have the time — or else, Gelt thinks, maybe ursine He’s due in for an appropriately unseasonal hibernation, Yo Semite National Park, or a low lie in the Dakotas, those Badlands then the worse lands and then the lands that get just evermore progressively terrible up toward the Canadian border, dynamited Rushmore territory and further, Alaska, when Gelt he’s in enough of a rush already, out here alone, payphoning collect to the opposite coast, will you accept the charges back to the Garden and Der, who’s returned to the east himself, to plan for any eventuality, his own and Ben’s both. Not that it’s just hushed, unofficial, that they’re biding their bidden: how it’s public, too, citizenry called to account — they’re told, search Him out under your beds, in your closets, pianos, bathrooms, stuck one leg down your laundrychutes, where. Warrants might even be waived for futz anyone knows, issuance, free license to bounty Ben made implicit; I swear it’s around here somewhere or other, and Gelt pats himself down.

Not alone, Gelt has judgment on his side, though it might be as impetuous as it’s interpretive, perpetually arguable, given down in a stone that can always be smashed in confusion. After all, this needs be held accountable to a Law ever newer, or older, just greater: pursuant to article, nu, who knows which, and which is whose portion, who are we to prosecute or judge (the punishment for the sin of a tiny quill slipped amid margins, the only sign of a letter omitted from record — that’s why this detail, that’s why this depth) — unless, that is, suspect heads for a refuge, one of an ornamentally small but for now holding steady number of participating outlets that still dot the interior, stipulated autonomous; the suspect, the large-at-large, having picked up this useful schmeck of information, follows His own finger pointing due east, makes it inland to the foot of a hill, there stops a mensch and his whinnying, reeling horse, the both of them stuck in the mud.

Know where I could find a haven around here? Ben asks him or the horse, rolling up His sleeves, off the cuff casual, and the mensch points, a hairy stump raised to a sign up the road iced ahead, summitting its hill, a tatter of poster tacked to the flesh of a leaning oak:

Refuge (nearer than you think)

Ben thanks the mensch with involuntary gropes and grabs, hugs, kisses, throws His weight under the horse’s sagging stuck belly, one thrown rider more away from being turned into glue (with which to bind a book, perhaps, whose pages, hymn, let’s only hope they contain a ruling against that that prohibits even the emergency consumption of the species), and the two, peasant and pursued, groaning, with their shoulders, bone bursting under their skins, free the animal, which stomps then kicks wildly a tack of knobby limbs. To quit them then ascend the hill, Ben slips down the slope with the wind, in the direction of His ascent down to the most starved flank of the horse unstuck and the mensch just past tugging always tugging, who kindly points out to Him the sign again with a wave to stay away. And so He goes to ascend again and then again slides down on His haunches, atop His tush, His face forced down against the wind, squinting, a nosebleed…and still behind, the horsemensch heading in an occidental direction. And so to shimmy up on His stomach, to snakewriggle, sidewind atop ice — to top the violently sloped, cloudbound hillside, then right Himself at its summit with nicks at the elbows and knees and stomach scraped red under the useless white of the sun and the shadelessness of the leafless oak.

Incomprehensible walls line the interior of the valley below, obscuring, this delimiting haze regular and yet in motion, rising and falling only to rise again, then fall — lips of mouths, they seem…teeth, they’re masticating furiously, falling and rising on their own, individually, the entire eastern slope of the hill a vertiginous swarm of rusticated, unserviced dentition between the individual ords of which, deep amid their crenatures, hang other people, flayed carcass and spewed corpse, the face of the whole an inconstant, dizzying up down up down that’s impossible to focus on simultaneously and so He shuts His eyes to understand — to chip and chew at an image frozen, this newest memory, a revelation made of shock. Not walls now or teeth, but teething people…or the walls are themselves people, babies crying, wailing, walling. This is a city of people, of maybe thousands of them, a million, who can count, He wouldn’t know where to begin; the valley nests them, holds in their reek, their scum, their noise, and is them, as well. Bebabbled kibble. Heedlessness sustains. Ben sits tushed at the summit, gazing down upon the valley’s munched mass: moving forms, shadows, moving so much now and so fast it’s as if they don’t move at all, tornadolike going nowhere, a stationary whirlwind as if the about to address you presence of God Himself, His vocal wrath. Ben slides in, Pyramidal once again: down He goes down the iceflume, accumulating speed and mass, weather rounding form — to hit the wall, wall’s people, knocking them inside, sliding directly into the dead, exact middle, into its totally trampling rampage, to surface from out of that maw of knees, elbows, shoulders, and palms to air, only to be swarmed, then trampled again to the earth packed hard with the stomping of feet on the frost.

Name? a voice rasps, its hands or another’s tugging one of His ears wide, and of what are you accused?

And none of that I am that I am shtick, says a voice different but the same, whatever name you want, choose your crime, your victim, flatter yourself — you think we’ll know the difference?

I myself was a saint, name’s Kraus or Krauss now, I forget which, how many esses we’re talking…Ben keeps His silence, too scared to talk, a step upon His tongue; the mensch inquiring drops Him to the enormity’s floor, that darkness stomping still. Another leg up to the surface, a grasping gasp.

Not that it matters, yet another voice says. Silence is an alias as good as any other. An alibi lullaby, you put me to sleep, the z’s.

Hands hold Ben flat, face up to the sky, borne in triage above the muddy throng. His pockets are emptied, of empty, nothing gained, His holes prodded, He thrusts hands to prevent violation. From atop, the valley and hills on both sides, though human, have been reduced to an animal rout.

Don’t think you’re the first person who’s known his rights, is heard. And don’t think living here you’ll live any longer. Hell, don’t think at all…

Registration’s at the western slope, an orientation meeting to follow — hahaha, a general hilarity, which manifests in a gnashing of rank gums.

Stop confusing the boy, an older denizen says.

Refuge, he goes on, asylum, you dig?

Shalom, welcome…groovy, hip, here goes: make love not war but both are money, peace be to you, all that.

These are the rules that aren’t: if you make it here, you deserve to live; if not, not, easy enough — and, another adds, deserving to live doesn’t mean that you will.

But, to begin: no one here’s anyone’s anything…we’re all equal, the same: farout degenerates and dippy dropouts, gratuitous grudgeholders, zonked lowlifes, and petties; the walkingwounded veterans of private, unsanctioned aggressions…

An older refugee it has to be, another atop the swarming, the whirling whorl, how he shrieks out almost unheard to Him, God, I know you, I know you, I do, how he’s insistent this putz, won’t give up: Israelien, remember me? I was there that day in Mudville you wowed them all? Under which rock you been hiding? Not here. Been stoned? I would’ve noticed, even in this.

Yet another and another passes and greets with a twofingered, onefingered, nofingered grope as Ben’s passed around for recognizance — as if one of their own, and despite.

I’m sorry, Ben’s crying, help me, forgive me, forgive (lines from the Show, the Tour’s patter His memory can’t quite shake, or won’t) and a voice says back to Him, wait up, forgiveness? you’ve got Refuge, brother, you sure you’re not aiming for Exile? asks a mensch depluming his chin, feeding hairs to his protector who done chomping gummily asks, where’s that? Answer is, a day’s walk in any direction. Ben’s handed from mamzer to shmuck down to schmegegge to schmendrick, the greasily unwashed and the gracemad, the hippy hippie fallen on hard times, no great shakes, the losing, the lost. A commune bit dust and rusted and aged to entitlement, rage: burntout bug vans and veedoubleu’s, overgrown with tiedye and hemp. An air dayglowed with smoke pungent from where and with failure. An exceptional deformity rides up to Him on a bubble bursting, is passed on from hand to mouth in approach: he’s eyeless and toothless, too, with a nose just nosing on. Psht! he asks in a whisper, pssshht, I’ll trade you an eye for an eye and flashes the ripped fray of his jacket to expose mucosal wares. No? Howabout a tooth for a tooth? I’m talking top quality incisors, none of that denture dreck. Limited time offer, friend. Going fast until you’re robbed broke and blind. You’ll find me if you want to. As he’s hauled away he yells behind him, ask for Mendy, then when they tell you they don’t know from no Mendy you should say, you know, that Mendy…it’s obvious, then, that there are darkening markets of ever darker markets here, unto pitch, and that even their goods and services are tightly rationed by avarice, or secularist greed, the extinction of latest hopes and radical will, the triumph of desert over a dinosaur’s dream; obvious, too, that everyone robs everyone, that robbed stuff is robbed, rerobbed loot robbed then robbed again, as the dead pile up underfoot, counter the culture — there’s no Law, and everyone’s in on it.

Freestanding, eminently wandering, emanatingly wanderable, these refuges providing shelter for the homeless, the broke bust heimatlos, whom society seeks to destroy and now more than ever before, have been set up on no money, only grudging permission, and’ve decayed from the first, becoming less about honoring the provision of the Law than about finding any loophole providing, then — inhabiting it, a temporary noose, looser than most. God Above, how excessively fringed, how faded: intention, respect, a sense of place, standing, a feeling for land. Debauched without habitus, amid the spiraling mud. Though it’s important to make this distinction: this city of refuge is not a city qua city, classically speaking it’s no city at all, only a gathered mass of land, of lands, and their refugees, formed to the give of a valley, the left mess of leftbehind people, outcast undesirables sleeping on each other, waking up on each other, as each other, eating and drinking one another, it’s sick: with no aid from the outside, no intervention, how these people have become their own beds, knives, forks, spoons and cups, transportation, people are shelters from the unaccustomed harshest of elements, people as floors over the earth, people as roofs, sexual implements, sites of excretion, means of execution; the people are the city and the city is the people, and so the decay it’s transmittable, transmutable, how it follows them, waxes and wanes with their migration, their wandering devastation as if they’re a swarm of locusts, not a disorganization of parasite humans — destruction the legacy of this city that’s no city, the sole and so lucrative if ever desired export product of Refuge. And so the exact, on the map location of this city of refuge, of all the cities of refuge, of all the cities that are the one and only city of refuge, up and moves often, is moved, inexacts itself, imports itself then takes leave, wanders and roams widely with its refugees and as them, too, in their tight, evasive spheres, their madmuddied paranoid spins and loops, backtracks and longcuts and yadda and blah — and so the pleasant, peasant mensch with the poor horse stuck whose route of trade takes them past or around and around the Refuge wherever it is often thinks to move the sign, an oaktag placard of his own design if and when his ride obliges; his ride that is his trade, and his only possession: he’s been trying to offload the horse now for moons. Traditionally, though, the refuge roams itself coast-to-coast, accumulating refugees all the slow slogging while: wandering’s forever, as people that tightly knit and wound, grouped for safety, survival, braided and dreaded in curls, they tend to trip each other up, sort of fall for and backward over one another, on top and under, in an intoxicated and intoxicating to participate in or even observe stigmatiferous staggering from platz to plotz, it’s hypnotic.

At Ben’s arrival, they’re heading east again, if roughly, and this valley’ll serve for a pleasant spell, recently popularly voted to be surroundings suitable for a welcome moment of repose, a refuge from Refuge pop. ilimitable, before moving on to ruin the next town, to leave it smoking, wasted; there wherever a mouthful of people to move on out to the edges, daring to, feeling strong enough it’s tempting, to transact business with shops along the way, to purchase sundries and packagegoods at the price of favors, humiliations, disgrace, to say Shalom, send a letter or telegram, make a phonecall, find a new mate or victim beyond the walls of the city unwalled. The people of the wall are regarded by many scholars as those possessing the most guilt, those who’ve decided, freewilled their own standing out there on the outs to functionalize form, structure, stolidity; the most unfortunate of them, edged up against the tumbling hillside, becoming eternally crushed. Otherwise, the wall that is all of people are those who just happen to be, whether through fate, the leaning fall of happenstance, abated natural strength, who happen to have found themselves left to the skirts, banished by the decree of no God they believe in out to the periphery of such a violent, illintentioned throng, the unwilling fighting and gnashing to get in deeper, to the destruction at middle where it’ll still hurt but you’ve got a better shot at dying by the hands of your own brethren companions (if hands they still have, and free), which has to seem, at least in the way of dignity, preferable to most to death from without, to being murdered by those who lie in wait for a refugee remade. In the interior, amid the ruin of tattered tents and leantos and threadbare teepees and hogans and wigwams, among the remains of doomed domed gardens and farms and a dry, witheringly lumbered pen for the raising of livestock gone missing, which animals they’d agreed, or once thought they did, to maintain and care for communally and then to slaughter and divide up equally their flesh fed on dream — everyone’s lost their personalities, also their ages and sexes: female like male, kinder the elderly, kinder who’d done their parents wrong, elderly who’d sinned against their kinder, who’d murdered to enjoy the sorrow of outliving in anything but this peace and quiet however deserved. An encampment of families mixed and broken, converted to lives without name. By dint of sheer width, Ben — after His initial inspection atop the mass, after He’s strangled back down — abides like a lodestone at center, immovable but molten, a star’s burning core; liberally not planetary but sunlike, that around which all must revolve. In this middle, the epicenter of such seismic scorn — with limb shattered to limbs, throats stomped to sucking death — everyone’s trod upon, but Him, He’s the exception, always is: there wombsafe, coddlecradled, a babe.

Ringing the valley, pulsing, on the hilltop, are obscurant forms, establishing, establishment shadows — businesstypes, respectables, former congress-menschs they look or talk like, MD-PhD’s, editor/esquires…people in waiting. Mandated to remain outside the Refuge, they wait to exercise their right to exact punishment from the refugee should he, she, or it ever take leave of the city and so, its protection, should they ever quit the company of their sins: ever prepared, dysnfunctionally vigilant and yet patient to win such vengeance with axes, splinterhandled, incomplete sets of kitchen knives, with swords of elaborate letteropeners, factorysecond nailfiles, cactiburrs made maces, found hunks of masonry, unfinished railroad spurs, ties, rocks, meltsharpened icicles, wormlengths of scrapwood. Passing the time, dust from sand they sieve with their mouths, hanging open, panting, not shocked at the valley but impatient for its opportunity, when — for a future not to be occupied so wastefully; their ties slung heroically over their shoulders, the sleeves of their suitjackets rolled up as if for heavy lifting, for toil.

After rimming the valley thrice, circumambulations conducting him down and up hills, a goy rare to these parts arrives at the hill further to wait amongst these revengers revenant in their eminent labcoats and lawrobes, others legitimizing in the uniforms of the police, fire, and military, finally takes a seat on an outcrop, down next to a mensch who’s palming a pipe.

Waiting for anyone special?

The schmuck who knocked up my daughter, that’s who, the mensch says, and the moment he gets smart, takes one step out from the group…

And what’s your spiel? asks a mensch sharpening a butcher’s cleaver with the thick of his thumb.

I’m out for a mensch who, Gelt’s thinking…He killed my father — let’s leave it at that.

Gelt’s arrived. That, ear to the ground, is the word: having heard about these Refuges lately cropping up, not as much blossoming as rotting away from a wither, an invocation of Scripture, its manifestation on the map, organic but foreign — he’s flown in from Mormondom via Wyoming to investigate. How exactly he found out Ben here’s a mite misty, unscholared: intuition smokesignaled, or arrived upon the wings of an eagle, following the sand, the trample of shrubs. Whatever the source, the intelligence that is hope indicates his quarry’s below, must be, and so every rise of the sun he rims the valley again to the opposite hill, the mound topped with that large leaning oak, to ensconce himself at its summit in privacy from his fellows waiting, sitting, standing, more often than not up in the tree, hidden amid the dense naked wood. It’s Scripturally illegal, not to mention otherwise inadvisable, insane, for him to venture into the Refuge: officially, there’s no admittance; he’s not running from any rap, hasn’t left a passionately unsanctioned assassination deep in his past — and while he can attempt to pass himself off, obfuscate you know the darkening drill with all the militant prowess he mightn’t possess, they’ll know, they’ll beat it out of him, he’s sure as the night. Also, the Garden’s issued orders to respect the new Law of the land, derech eretz: wait it out’s the idea, and we’ll have Him; it’s inevitable, intended…like how am I expected to work, Gelt thinks, for an organization so goddamned mystical, when times get troubled by facts. Ask the birds, most of which are flown or dead, icy wings. How, he’s patient is how, full of schemes to subvert, pass the time, the gestatory pneumonia if it’s not already onelunged to pleurisy: flying any pigeons he succeeds in branchcapturing, netting in leaf, claycolored ill squabblers sent out high over the wallpeople, carrying his notes folded then tied with the midribs of leaves to the tips of their talons; the vein of the texts offering lavish rewards for turning Him over, Gelt makes the sums up out of thin air, windy figures. Then, when they palm and pawn the pigeons on the inside for food or eat them, Gelt still without sin throws over rocks, again with his notices attached just with sloppier scrawl: stars shot without heed across night as if to effect an impertinent sky; he tosses in strained arching lobs.

Gelt standing out on the westernmost rise of the arrhythmic atrium of the heartland it is, the beating bursting organ of the valley below, hurling his finds over walls of shrieking freakpeople, shirkers and droppers, back-sliders knocked out cold on the freeze, sinners and even, if rare, the goodly Godless, too, beatitudinally crazy they are, wild with love, even if only of themselves — stones strung with scraps of shirt unwound he writes on in blood, which is his, too, then sitting to wait, lying in wait, up in a bare bough and peering over the encampment, stretching his arms out to hurl as if in a benediction or blessing foretold: the stones he throws hit people, people with memories, egos and aches, knock out more eyes and teeth to be traded for favors inside; the notes attached are brought to Ben to read but He can’t really make them out, the smudge or His incapacity to believe the worst, His inability to take a hint, or perceive a threat, and most of the others except the elders here have forgotten how to make sense of words at all, have allowed themselves to go rusty.

WANTED ALIVE

A Refugee Among Refugees

Purse Offered Weight of Suspect in Gold

Significant

Description Fat Glasses Robe Unpleasant Odor

Answers to Name of Israelien

Top of Western Slope

You Know the One I’m Talking

With the Tree

Reward Upon Receipt of Above

Purse Includes Purchase of Apprehenders Silence

[Signed] F Gelt

Unethical, declares an elder, the never made good son of a patent attorney who’d done, the son, two years in juvie before hitting the road as a trucker, and a singer in search of a band or a song…illegal, is how another of them whose mother still writes, sends cards and carepackages never received she just retired six months out of the judicature, weighs in: while not in violation of the letter of the Law per se, apparently, an action like this most definitely violates its spirit, and as such any persons or information obtained in this manner would not be acceptable to, nor admissible in…this is going too far, says yet another of them just tuning in (male, female, both, any gender’s lost in its hair nappy down to the knees); even my ex’s father never resorted to this — says the son of a mayor and medic, inlaw to a certifiably cruel public accountant — and that goy, he’s a schmuck-and-a-half.

Sensing the futility of his enterprises both flying and lobbing, Gelt ties himself off to the trunk of the oak, waisted with woolen rope he purposes in unwinding his trousers; with its ripping assurance, giving him slack every footing, he sidles slow down the hill down its slope to just outside the grasp of the wall, passing his message to outsiders in gestural hoots, people passing the word to each other in shouts, in screams amongst, whispering in a massing roar the information onto the interior, related from the periphery deep into the pulsating middle, toward the flaring thorn in the heart of its heart that is Him: some try to grab Gelt despite his caution, their care not to be pulled themselves out, to become exposed, to pass him on in, warming flesh; others push their ways inside to find Ben, to prod Him hot to the edge, to betray, and connive, to give Him over to the wilderness, the season of open territory left for dead and in recompense, Gelt — attempting to arrange His handingover and in doing so further deserving their settlement herein…but thank a God not many here in this Refuge believe — in that the elders, Fathers, selfappointed, the oldest being the most religiously averse, don’t approve: such specific action would violate the ideal of Refuge, the entire concept of a city such as this, its rules interpreting regulations anciently set out in the book of Numbers, within the sunstilling book of Joshua, too, providing for these cities laidout as sanctuaries, sites of Refuge once delineated upon the plains of Moab, at the Jordan at Jericho transplanted, relocated to this desert these lesser, designated asylums for the menschlayer, the unintentional murderer, you’re killing your mother — the beady lustcrazed, trippydip outcast, the misfit, the degenerate gone to dreck then sent away; a halfway house halfway home, in which to sit in, to lie in, to protest by presence alone their own guilt…to stay until their deaths, in one interpretation, or, in another, until the death of the reigning High Priest, whoever he is nowadays; a voluntary prison this valley, a penitentiary metropolis of the unrepentant, and willfull — refugees from retributive death who’ll probably never leave, who’ll probably die here, fleeing angry fathers-inlaw, brothers-inlaw, and the like overacheiving, both the pursued and pursuing arriving to live together in the harmony that is the knowledge of their mortality impending, of everyone’s end: salvation, like if hell was truly heaven, and no one could tell the difference between.

And you’re Him, aren’t you? asks an elder, a Refuge father, meaning one of us and also, not quite.

Explain yourself — why here?

Summering in refuge, Ben says, same as anyone else.

As if to say, don’t think I think I’m better than any of you — it’s just my glasses, they do that to people.

You don’t understand, another elder says, you’re Him, you have to be, the High Priest, that’s who, you can’t deny it…and when you die, we’re all finally out of here. Free at last, praise whatever provision almighty. Can’t wait. Yet another adds, we’ll admit failure, give up and go home. We’ll relent and assimilate, try out a new life — get haircuts and shoeshines, jive straight & narrow, the briefcase that comes with the bedroom set, that sort of thing.

A bummer, let’s book, we’ve had enough!

But I’m no Priest, Ben’s saying, not a Levite, and not even an Israel, just an Israelien…a ghost haunting boo, a bargain dybbuk, or basement beheymah — probably no one at all.

Forget me, forgive…I had a veil, but it got lost in the shuffle.

But even if all that’s for real, you’re still the one after the Priest, the only next-in-line — the nearest thing we’ll ever have’s what I’m saying; we don’t get much priestly material in these here parts, can you dig?

He means what, my own grave.

Here’s how it’s going to happen…this a palepocked, needlelimbed mensch who’d asserted himself as a leader, an oldtimer with the scars and scarlike tattoos to prove, he’s hollering hoarse and wavery. Quiet already, everyone howling sh and hush up, farout like spaced winds their whisper, here’s how it’s going to work. You pardon us, all of us, and in return we’ll get you out, too: we’ll smuggle you out, as one of our regular nightly dead (there are a handful of these, how should we put it — the first elder adds, the one with the burly beard and the halflensed sunglasses and the whites at every knuckle of his last left pinkiefinger that once rung the insides of his rings that were gold — disease prevention measures, we’re allowed…though the Law’s damnably vague on it all); an offer you’d be at a loss to refuse: we’ll pall you out on the night of the new moon, you with me, pitch dark, right under that Gelt’s little sniveling schnozz.

What? I should pardon you, that’s what you want, that’s ridiculous.

That’s the deal, what’s that the kids are saying…tateleh: absolve us of everything, all sins and omissions, everything ever acted upon, ever willed, dreamt up, and even the thought. Are we doing business or what? I’d shake on it except I’ve lost fingers that way — what are you waiting for, a miracle, the hand of whose God? I could smack you, I should. Futz that, what’s yours is mine…why shouldn’t we kill you? I’d like to know. Best get yourself up and pardon away.

You mean you want me to pardon you now? Ben asks like who ever heard.

And they answer him you busy, schmuck, got something better to do, a prior engagement?

And so, standing in any proximate center of this loose and ever loosening circle, Ben’s awkward, with exasperation in the roll of His eyes, them with their own valleys to worry — who could take any of this seriously? — the burning sky, the weather of His head cynical, sarcastic with regard to the ironic, opposing fronts meeting only to flower the winter, to bloom it swollen with blood. He goes and waves His hands wildly, much like Hanna would do before guttering from between the flames of her lips the blessing over the candles for Friday; moans a snatch of glossolalia, a bit of showbiz shtick, stuff He’d pickedup on the circuit, crowdpleasers from the earliest days of the Tour. There in the middle of the throng, in the center fast becoming its clearing, the core of this disparate sphere, He kicks with His foot in the sand as if toeing a word, heeling out whichever line of His hastily effaced, kickedover, recovered with dust unto dust to mud, frozen mud — and soon this ritual, whatever it is, whatever He thinks He’s doing ridiculous, disperses a hole in the whole: people shrink from Him, they cower, step back, and huddle, braid, become knotted — then, they all flee. His gestures, giving and gravidly stupid, part their ways; dirtied limbs fly in every direction…it’s crowded even for a melee, maleficently black and hissing — as they refugee again, this once all at once, through the desert without passage, this desert of every passage, every option of open, through the air’s massed exit exploding their sphere, this seethingly tangling, beardbrambly tumble with Ben deep in the middle sent through it, through this shuffling, scrambling of feet shod, unshod, and spidery blue clumsy cold without nails; this wet web of flesh stepping, tripping, then falling and trampling, leaving the dead behind saprogenically still; a massively tumultuous pushpulling up slip up the icelick opposite the oak (in that surge no way Gelt can spot Him, draw a bead, take Him out), up that other hill then over, overtaking the surly waiters patient for vengeance, overwhelming them in a furious, animal tide…a stampede of shoeless feet then legs without feet, tromping stumps, up and over the hill then down down and down further, as they tip into the valley next, its fall, the buffalo cliff.

Amid this late exodus, Ben’s glasses are flung from His face. The overtimes reinforced strap that grannied them held snaps in the jostle, the specs go flying out into the departing crowd, are lost amid the flux of beads, bandanas, suedefringing strangle…Him falling hands and knees to find them, how He can’t by touch alone, more attempt less determination what with this gush of hair, heat, the blur of His disbelief ’s blinking, is trodden on and then, if not a grace granted, then don’t ask how: He manages to find of them a single lens, one round lens from His righteye, His left. He rises shocked, lost in His find to hold it aloft to the sun, the glass — is then as a concave wave pulled back into the momentum of escape, is pushed into pushing, again into a spectacular pulling, His effort at keepingup spurting sparks from His thighs one’s chapped the other’s chaffing to immolate what obstacles ahead, the people, the shrubs and trees that smoke and will, just as well, be consumed. The gauntletrun, deathmarched weak left for dead, how they manage even in their last breaths to laugh at Him now, on the ground, doubledover fetally in their last fleeing life, holding the ache of their sides, which have been split then the blood binding spilled. What’s so funny, doesn’t know, maybe it’s a fat mensch in a rush, like the majority (leaders, followers, stragglers and taggersalong) heading east, if vaguely…about to lunge up and over the far hill, the modest mountain of the latter Law, and there to its summit, murdering underfoot — and maybe only in order to latterly deserve His dwell amid the Refuge He’s just exploded. Ben crests the hill, and beholds in the valley below a drastic emptiness, the hollow given hole between the fallings, constant, as if the earth’s gone agape to swallow them down — these refugees He’s stepping down on from the summit as lightly as possible, which isn’t very, though as if apologetic, nimblynamby leaving in their faces a slippery wisp, heeled dimples, a shoeprint’s dolloped swirl. Him to avert the earth’s gorge and its endless depth only by making His way over the bodies of those crashing down, shrieking, then unheard, unseen, His weight to crack their bones that skein the surface as if winding trails of limb, the chattering teeth of boulders, and a glimpse of rivered tongue, lain flat below and cold; using such casualties as human bridges, collapsing them on His way to mount the summit next, the cliffward hill distant, that mounding one over larger and greater, a mountain even, then beyond the rage of its peak — the westernmost rise of the Rockies. With one lens held to one eye, the other arm thrust out for upright, to fumblingly use dumb heads downed as steppingstones, paths of skull across air to spring from as the bodies under His stride — open mouths that snag, silence — slip their deep and slow sink through the sky, deathrolls entwined, goners givingout their last scattered breaths that storm through the night into clouds.

As it is written, at least here: He knows but does not really know, hears but does not listen, He sees but does not really see…His eyes are open but to them, the world has been shut.

Moon gives way to sun through the window, its sill stooped from having to shoulder the feedbag heft of the light: illumination scattering across the planks of the floor then the filthy wallow of throwrug and then His form, His face; withdrawing from sleep, there’s a waft, the slight smell of brunch cooking, then burning, and then the sensation, it’s pain, a sizzling sprung from His forehead, fire focused through the lens left atop His sleep, beaming to concentrate morn upon a worrisome furrow — Ben beats His head out of wrinkles, snuffs His hair, then fingers the smoldering mark.

Goddamnit, to be awake to such hurt!

Ben holds the lens up to whichever eye’s imperfections it wasn’t made to perfect — blindly guess which He holds it up in the air to His eyes, which squint to see through it…emptiness. A wall, a loin of log. He groans, takes the glass off and away. Without it, there’s the hock of a chimney and furnace, coldbellied, gray. An eye as if rendered to lard. And then, the blur of its veins, which are cracks; the roof ’s leaking, too, that’s the wet on His head. There’s a scar in the pitch, plipdrip the sound. A balm, so cooling.

He forages for the glass again, rinds it into His lids. Through the scratches and dirt, the snoutings of knuckles and thumbprints gathered throughout the untold glut of His sleep…a foursquare logcabin, His shadow like blood clot along its slats barked toward the ceiling. Furniture and fence hacked into kindling, piled in stacks in the corner against the foot of the bed where He lies.

Ben tries to sit up, falls back. With the glass off, all’s fuzzy again, unfocused, bright — how the comforter of the bed’s white tucking toward pink, and the pillow under Him, too, but the sheets staining the mattress darker, they’re mudflecked, covered with streaks of pests exploded, crushed between antic fingers. With the glass off, the chair’s upholstery has come unholstered, a cheap recliner its seat and back slashed, degeneratively red — the curtains of the window, though, they seem to be only His lashes. With the glass on again, He can espy the webbed patterns of doilies draped, lace, a shatter without glass. Then, He holds to the other eye, to take sight of the shelves across the room, empty, undusted, sagging: what’re only spare troughs and farrowingcrates shelved for the mending; their books must’ve already been burned. Must be smoke. A sty. He raises His other hand to remove the lens but can’t, finds His wrist bolted, chained ostentatiously to the knob of the door. Sitting up, He has bruises upon His arms and legs, a prodigious spoil nipples each breast.

A crucifix on the wall, used as a hatrack: it’s empty except for a cap whose logo says, Affiliate Now!

A jeansed mensch comes to the door, knocks once then opens it, sneers his chaw to a windowside spittoon. He takes the recliner in hand and screeches it across the room to sit opposite Ben who’s itching at the gargly marks left by bedbugs.

He takes a pistol from a pocket, takes it apart then wipes everything down; when he’s done, he can’t put it back together and so he sits in silence and mopes — only to startle, throwing the gun exploded to parts to the floor, then kicking them to clatter under the bed, at three sudden knocks at the door.

He rises, knocks in response, lets her in. Amateur, like.

She’s young, younger than him, just in from the shuttered piggery in flannelplaid, spandex under a skirt, workgloves and slopwaders; she’s carrying a tray topped with two glasses, vodka in a flask and a case.

Honey, he twangs to her, meet our new investment. Take a good gander — does He look like retirement to you?

She blushes to the color of a cozy carnation; if possible her hair shocks even higher and sharper, like the electrified spikes they’d used to keep their pigs in the pen: their backfats and baconers, feeders and sucklings, barrows, cull sows.

The mensch takes the tray from her, kisses her away, opens the case and hands Ben His new specs.

He pours out the drink, takes both shots himself without intelligible blessing.

All is clear, or soon will be.

You took quite a beating back there, the mensch says. There’ve been riots. Unrest, with you sleeping. Army went in, the reserves. You’re lucky to still be alive. Let’s just say it was costly, a whole heap of payola. I mortgaged the farm, that and the money I’m making not to raise treyf anymore. But don’t worry about me, I’ll make it back double. There’re people I’m talking to, I’m learning the language. I got me a primer, and me and the wife we’re studying nights with a rav.

I’m your new host, the name’s Adam.

Believe it, I didn’t have to change it or nothing.

Utz all you want that this has been welcomed, deserved, that He’s all this time been asking for it, begging on knees and on the stiff merit of boredom, even that in the end He’s better off bound with gags — slavery’s what He’s in for, to be bargained for, bought and sold, His person possessed. Anyway, the most inclusive of our interpreters offer, slavery means different things to different people, that there are as many slaveries as there are lives, and that bondage can just mean like you know respiring, bound to life, gettingby: Monday morning, Wednesday’s hump upon which the moon was created, then broken for the healing of Friday, the weekend, a job or a spouse. Through the grind. And to be sure, our sages agree, Ben’s isn’t a subservience of the hard labor stripe, which if more slimming is still that much too productive, worthwhile, ensuring the fattened happiness and health of another: owning Him matters more than working Him, which — working — is not quite His shteyger. And so what if it’s not Egypt the real, or Moses with Abraham Lincoln goes south, should that make any difference to us, temper our sympathy for one so abused, ultimately, by Himself? A slave to sciomachy. If not slavery then how else, please, to explicate such a geography of wandering: from family to family, from house to house; nothing this looned’s ever done on your lonesome. Master to host. If not slavery, how to explain such unquestioning surrender to others, their wills, His fate, to a God He doesn’t even believe in (others, wills, fate, God — the same, if only we knew what that was), to a God now — God knows why — Who’s worshipped in every burg Ben’s sold off in, exalted in every dorf He’s auctioned off to?

Might a representative from the midst of the encampment walk a line in the sand, a map to be keyed against the wind effacing everything save the homes that He’s known: Joysey, Island’s Garden, ho and motels, the desert, the Spa, forced home hospitality, revived synagogue poorhouses soon, and then — nothing, with nothing unexplored, nothing else might exist: show them only the stopoffs in a Wander three, ten, twelve unto six thousand jahren, and the people one meets! hands begging shaking, hauling a wilted odd number of flowers to strange, rearranged, reAffiliated houses, logcabins and trailercabs and just for the night, remain vigilant at the threshold, beware the domestic snare (the carpet unfastened, the rug that might catch), the averted clasp of Ben’s welcome…Shalom! this greeting people with a gratitude feigned who wouldn’t have otherwise acknowledged you to spit on you, with their half flung open stabledoors, haylofts, ladders that go up but not down; the lice and ticks of flight through wheres and their afflicting nights that sleep every one of them the same — paltry hours of one shut eye, His shoes still on, still laced up.

Ben’s sold, then resold, sold again, from Adam to eve through to manumit morning. His arms and legs, people own shares. He’s quartered, pulled this way, pushed that. Not that He doesn’t attempt an escape: halfhearted, onefingered dials to reach the Doctors Tweiss fail, please leave a message not returned. Why them? He should collect on His own bounty? Why because He needs some advice is why, is seeking some counsel: needs an image of Himself that’s true, that’s not as-advertised, featured on dayold breadbins, discounted tuna tins, packets of salmon, on stickers stuck on the peels of desiccated citrus, Missing on the back of cartons of milk, Wanted on jars of honey, Him or alive — and wants, too, a measure of respect if not for His self (loathsome, fatter, uglier), then for an unknowable deity that’s His and His only, altogether some something justificatory of further existence: a company of selfregard, which brands might hock for 19.99 shekels shipping not included, a quality of worth religion lets go for the price of a soul. Ring ring rings but no answer: recovering from the Hymie visit up north, boondocked in the Berkshires, phoning into their answering service, the Doctors think it’s a hoax, a prank hallucination, they’re sure of it, and who can blame them what with all the collaboration conveniently going around; inform on your neighbors, report on the mirror — how Johannine’s flipped, shushingly, only a day after the Vice President went. And know, too, that when He breaks down on a host’s phone and calls into the Garden, it’s just a matter of importance, a mandate of filters, of nonresponse, of who did you say you were, right, uhuh, very funny, you and sixmillion metro area others screenedout, lost in the switchboard…go chop down the phonetree, with which to burn up the fuse, the last line. But I really am, He says and gevalt, get over yourself, sell it and a bridge to a party who’s buying. Apparently, outreach’s gone the way of ways, ingathering initiatives for those misguided, lost, single, divorced or even, gasp, intermarried still as dead and gone as His parents — Hanna’s emergency Development meetings to address yesterday’s slights, Israel’s lawyerly panels of pressing issue; and the sleazy, hogging attention His parents had understood as early as the first trimester (how Hanna’d begun showing immediately after conception, that night even, the flailing prick of fading pleasure, her body without calm) now fails to impress anyone as more than a ritual, another enslavement He has to rage against, freedom from which will require either serious will or further professional help, paid for by the hour meaning fortyfive minutes and no, no personal checks accepted.

And then, for dessert to finish off His final dunch, this family’s farewell — indignity poured atop two scoops of consolatory chocomocha (His tush, amply kicked), He’s freed, physically turned loose from a basementcloset slash guestroom He’s been locked in, below the spring jackets and wardrobe for summer, amid the trashbags of shorts, tshirts, and swimsuits, the unseasonal hold. Ben’s let go, again and again having proved Himself worthless: as friend, enemy, as love, anything but the flesh on His bones. Not even fit for bondage, how low can you stoop before bowed. It’s been enough, I got a better offer. Times are tough. Who asked you. Enslaved to another, chained to the bold, He’s remastered, He’s hosted again.

To serve no one but yourself is to live too freely, among so much Developmental openness, amid so much possible, potential, God how to live up to it, how to live down or at all, how to remember when you’re free to invent? History goes garbled. More libraries’ books burnt in irrelevant fire. Tapes get erased. Herein, His degeneration: Adam the former pigfarmer and futzer of that other Manhattan, a landlocked, hillflinty little apple located in the northeastern negation of Kansas, will sell Ben able to Cain, who would altar Him to Topeka Seth; Methusaleh the goy said his name was of Lawrence to hold onto Him forever. He’s a stooped mensch, caneclawed, from another age: he carries a briefcase wrinkled deeper than his face; to negotiate he sets his hat on the table crown down, as not to destroy the meticulous brim. He’s tired in the eyes though the mouth says froth, medicated excited but worried, too, around the rodential twitch of the nose; he’s splurged his whole pension to acquire our schmuck. He takes Him home, feeds Him until the food runs out, the taps go dry, the breathing becomes labored in vain. In the morning in his waincart he carts himself he hauls Ben out through the flatlands toward the Missouri line, leaves Him there with a sigh and a sandwich not on rye but of it, a nod toward the promise of St. Louis, just now in the process of being renamed (a referendum’s been called, streetside prophets casting their tongues).

To wander the river’s edge, icebound, and bound, too, to a calling: the Mississippi, it is, under the sinlessly white rime of which there’s only a trickling sheen, slitherine…Ben’s roaming the bordering bank north to south, toward a loose assemblage of insipid figures draped fittingly formless in a pale that no one should have to behold in the light of the sun this early in the winter of morning; it’s blinding, a blur. Too bright, and the bright it’s too clean. Heavy, though, even their smiles are heavy, lumberously overweight. He’s interrupted some ritual or other ongoing, walked into a ceremony in which He doesn’t belong, whether as honored, honoring, or hardware. Call it a mass debaptism. A disconfirmation, an unconsecration — it’s a Kashering, a making holy, made whole. Holes’ve been smashed into the ice, to the water frothing below, cleanly bleached from frost by the sun above the sunken silt, the muddy crust at bottom — and around clear to the other bank, are tiny tchotchkes getting dunked. People in yarmulkes, in their too short, too tight white kittels where do they get them (their bedclothes repurposed, sheets and slips), are sinking their plates and pans and pots and utensils down into the water freed to soak, led by a mensch, longhaired, neatgoateed, quiverlipped and tall, standing far out on the water itself, it seems, miraculously, not quite, mundanely descending a shiver into a hole he’s destroyed for himself at a shallow; submerged now to the knees, with a sharp rim of ice at his waist he’s mispronouncing vaguely Affiliated words from the sides of his mouth, givingout snippets of prayer, liturgical snatch delivered in a terrible voice mired in schlocky melisma. And not just household goods, provisions of the sleepy domestic — everything’s getting anointed today, must go damped down to holy: pets herded toward the lap of the frozen, womenfolk tugging roped their families’ goats to slip hooves out over the icing, old television sets and stereos and refrigerators, obsolesced computers and calculators and radios and telephone units, impractical electrical appliances still plugged by extension cord into sockets hosted on the only interior walls of neighboring mobilehome units, elders’ doublewides, parking the riverbank (an electrocutionary risk illadvised, but God will save us, always does), newspapers runny, clothes and socks and shoes, officesupplies, paperclips and rubberbands, pottedferns and filingcabinets removed from the offices and backrooms of storefront and stripmall churches defunct, their Sunday School desks, tables, chairs, and pews, sand, shore, and the river itself, getting wet, rendered allowable for household use if not that of the sacred; cars, vans, and trucks fishtailing out onto the scaling, towed by horses and mules and then their own owners, them, harnessed with ropes tied to chassis and bumper, vehicles hauledout to fall into their own weight, to jut up their rearwheels as if icicles expurgated from other holes stomped into the river’s midst, spouting stilled, jagged metal springs: a technological potlatch, a mass giving up, such divestment of the profane.

Ben shoves the survived of His mother’s robe down into pajamapants, which are suborned with stripes, inherited from a recent enslaver, rolls bunches of fabric into fisted cuffs, then holding them high wades out and over. Assembled, they stand and stare, their mouths hang mailbox open, flags up the flabbered nose; but while some chance to pick at or cover their gapes, others hold tighter still in fellowship and psalm: it’s Him…the gospel’s that He’s recognized, silence; not a chirrup or a shatter of ice, not a plash nor a bird’s flying song And then, without signal, as if tranced, made vehicle themselves, takenover as prophet, what do they do — they congree and give Him the bumrush, they grab Him, lay hands upon hands…the adolescent mensch in the markered goatee, it is, holding Him by both arms crossed as if a sarcophagied Pharaoh: to sink Him down with them together, some seated on His chest buoyed with breath, others up and stomping on His shoulders, neck, and head dunked through the give of the frozen, violently deep into the slow, ropy water below…the water displaced, now rising up, now gurgling over, through His hole then the other unfished holes, too, as if they were throats flopping over the rims of their mouths this freezing vomit — the flooding of every hold that might hide His heart icebunched, bonehardened…

Kinder assembled on the bank they’re snapping photos of the dunk, staging the scene for posterity’s too obvious — within the frame of their ready youth, their rummaged souls, there’s a memory in the making and a history, also, they’ll admit: the fleeting innocence of such revelation…a sign gets tacked onto a tree at the back, lightninged to fall to the Miss, a bridge to tomorrow and its hopeful conviction; the poster there indicating in attractive lettering, Wanted Dead, Westernly sherrifed with serif…that here’s an Officially Recommended opportunity for a photograph, what’re you waiting for? and soon, flashes pop off everywhere, lenses loom, apertures widen to the horizon, the glaregolden set of the sun; despite the darkening, the f. stops keep going, keep flowing, the gaping mouth of the delta all down to the Gulf ’s flooding with collodion, gun cotton dissolved in ether, that is…the exposure’s nearly half a minute, a minute, more, longer, always longer: one meaningless motionless moment frozen as solid and as flat as the river just a lame handful of strokes north upstream; and in that time, not even an eye may twitch nor a lid shy shut (a traveling photographer, who maintains offices on the leftbank of last century, hustles into his darktent, to unpack his grip and arrange the trays of his developing outfit, his bellows, cranks, and reels): the plates have to be developed immediately, there’s no time to lose, never is, must be kept wet under syrups, thickened tears, honey dissolved in water, must be sensitized in a bath of silver nitrate spread on a plate of glass, or in cellulose nitrate, this substance more flammable than the paper it’s to be smeared on, the product printed, the image forbidden to even itself — and that’s why it can be developed, its reversal, that’s why it’s facing out…this is all process, understand, with the assembled — us — invited to select their medium, ours; how any souvenir can be developed any way you like, in almost too many ways: in an emulsion of gelatin silver, or with the technique it replaced, albumen, which is eggishly eyewhite, given generational hatch — whatever their nostalgia requires, we’re here to serve, whatever you want or your memory needs, we provide. A life macerated in magnesium, or developed in a dish of heated mercury, amid the vaporous essence of iodine, the balm of bromide from stenchy, unquenchable bromine, sodium thiosulfate, a host of other names none can ever know to pronounce, to concoct chemically in the lab of the mouth…this and more’s explained to these lost revivalist, whiteshrouded kinder lining as if in timeline the banks of the river — the pose, the technological prosaics of wonder; the photomechanical processes that make the widespread dissemination of images possible’s what: Do You Know This Mensch? all over the Sabbath pre-prints, in bulletins and circulars, at the postoffice, and waiting on line; an image strained through a fine screen, dispersed into dots, newspaper raster, each schmeck of Him every dark and darkening pore holding the secret entire, exploded hugely across the fold, a spread, a schmear campaigned to claim uneasy truce with flaw; etched then inked to the page, gravured…intagliod in halftone, in duotone: yes or no, it asks, the binary cleave, life or death, who wants to know; or maybe you’d prefer to know Him in solarization, that inversion of tones resulting from an image being exposed again, reexposed, to light during development — whichever, your wish is ours and, anyway, I’ll shoot straight with you, it doesn’t matter: as whatever the presentation, production, or reproduction by which we destroy, there’s always wear, inevitably tear, everything in the end goes to molder in sepia, or gray, which is the murder of black by white — memory’s tone, the past fading In.

O who wants to spring for an exposure of nearly six thousand years…this winter, is it, no, couldn’t be, has it been that long, doesn’t seem — an exposure infinitely exposing…stay still, say still, and hold it. Our lives frozen forever into one shot, indivisible, and eternal: as such is our venture outlasting generations, nations, languages, loves, not destroying, no, but preserving, even as any proscribed, prophesized against Image weathers the fires to outlast our forgetting, outlasting even itself, in its sin, that it’s forbidden and yet still exists. It doesn’t even matter if it’s never developed, never seen except in the negative, by the eye of the mind. Snap. This is your new house, Mister & Misses Israelien, yet to be built, of course. Click. This is the girl I was seeing before your mother. Smile. This is the boy I was seeing before I first laid eyes on your father. Here, this is what I looked like when I was your age. Shudder the wind. At His father’s work, atop his desk: twelve photographs divulged in an arc; tap open their glasses, then work the images through the vesseling shards. An album’s discarded, never replaced, another’s struck from the shelves for its ravage: Hanna’s had been leather, leafed in dundusted gold, must into the pages of which she’d meticulously pasted, plasticized, these keepers these how many years; flip the page, they lie empty.

Here, look here: His father in moustache days, laying hands on a suit high and thick with padded shoulders, Hanna’s, she’s seated, which is unlike her, though pregnant, which is; red, there’s writing on the reverse: Is & Han, Woodmere, with swingset and toy pony, it would’ve been backyard at the house she’d been born in, deep in what’d been known as the Five Towns, retroactively doubled to ten, fifty and further (neighborhoods expanding, the Affiliate sprawl), another island, another world to remember…another photo, this His father again, alone and younger, like what they’d take at a mall, or in an auditorium, lobby, or hallway upon graduation: gray screen behind him whitewisped, as if oceanwaked, hair’s styled wet, eyes, too, and on the reverse, another inscription, another hand: to Hanna, with love, XOXXOOXXXOOO; His PopPop, in a warmup suit, it must be polyester, he’s not warming up, He’s cool and removed, with casual knees seated at the edge of an unlit hearth; on the reverse, Dad, Hanukah, December/80; Hanna was always great with the details, organized was her life, she’d probably snapped the shot, too; then Pop-Pop at the ocean, in a suit, watertight, like a wet hand clutching his cluster, hairless, longnailed toes sinking under garish grains; reversed, Dad, Florida, July/76…relics, then, of the displaced, the replaced, made museum: Hanna’s father, her stepfather, stepstep and on up the stairs; recognition repurposed, reversed: some mensch in some country there in the uniform of its military, then the same mensch in some other country there in a suit and vest and tie; the same straw’s doll clutched to a breast by the same hands on two continents, who is she, she looks like Ima, but what about the girl holding her? MomMom’s pain if she ever even knew that emotion as separate, as a part of life, and not just all there was to it: PopPop and another, not Arschstrong, posed around the unit of the latter, condo’s hall and its tree for Xmas, mistletoedecked, about to kiss with closed eyes, with tongue. This’s your (great-great-great-)-grandmother, that’s her standing with a hole in her bucket and behind her, that’s Rus. See the trees. How the snow seems so white and as white, so pure, it’s so fake. Frames are savage, it’s been said; they’re terrible, as they limit the world, obliterating what is with what was, while also negating the future, forbidding any sense of what might still be. To be punished for this trespass in image — Ben should be forced to wander around until the end of His days, hung around His neck an unfinished frame, unwieldy, nailstuck wood. All this is mysticism, though, the world as we’ve posed it — this desire to know who we are today merely an outgrowth of our fanatical memory, our insistence on not denying anything its existence; the result of our demand upon responsibility, of our passion for Law; this obsession with preservation merely our own human, mundane, limited imitation of the next world’s coming to come. A reproduction in advance of this world to be divinely perfected. On every reverse is scrawled a last question in invisible ink: are we patient enough — to wait for everything we’ve ever been promised, being content to accept its fulfillment, however, only in image, in images of Image…in imaginings, hymn? Even here, amid this Eden we’ve so tastefully and expensively furnished and draped — nu, we’ll have to make do.

Thrashing under the water under the ice, He flails, He founders…He but not yet He, Ben not yet: only a dimness, a trifle of dark, diffusing in the depths of the bath to cleanse Him of He…purified, but into and for what: not fetal but unshaped in the solution, enwombed without form save flub, glub, and the bubbling — I can’t breathe, which given the wetness sounds only as ripples, as waves. Limbs liquefying, not their loss through melting but to become remade, to be crucibled. He tides into seas and oceans, turning up wake. Viscous uterine life. Maternal syrup. Paternal stick. Its eyes stinging, its nose, too, then its mouth and throat, then no eyes to sting, no nose nor mouth, tongue dissolving at the hint of honey, the faint taste of urine, then, of silvery poison: sensing its last…a substance that Hanna would’ve kept under the sink, always offlimits, kept locked.

Will you shut the goddamned tentflap? the traveling photographer yells.

Who’s he again, who does he think he is? A mensch time out of mind — he looks any way you want him to look, though most of the timeless you can’t see him because he’s looking at you.

Here, hold these — and there’s a great shuffling of glass sound, a crashing, the breaking of plates…pass that nitrate over here, will you, the sound of fumbles around. He’s yelling at his assistant, a slow, dullwitted girl disguised as a boy with bangs, the rest of her hair gathered in a pile under his cap, a slight moustache smudged on with tint; her first name’s Never, and as for her last name, Forget. Or else we’ll do the albumen, he says to him, or the gelatin; forget it, we’ll do it all, we’ve got the time. Smash those eggs for me, will you? And, this time, don’t forget to separate the yolks…

To stir, then tong flat — picked up then hung, they seem thousands of Him, they seem millions, Hims suspended from heaven by a pinch of the trees, their wooden reaches pinned to horizons. Dripping emulsion, He’s patted down with sheets, these sheets His selves in the sopped love of image engendering images. These padding clouds. He’s bent, then checked; memory’s done entirely inhouse; ripped already, pretorn, folded thrice, then shrunk, then enlarged: pores of an infinite process, He’s inhaling this whole time, in-taking, passingout, comingto, elementally, being assembled from every gradation of the mnemosynic bath; given focus only to dry: in a black & white encompassing every slowslipping tint, which if anything they might first yellow on their slow ways to, disappeared. To be developed, finally, then exiled out to the edge, posterity’s furthest diaspora. There, at last, to be framed. That is, if anything can ever contain Him.

Ben’s image will precede Him everywhere except here, it appears, amid these trees unknotted with signs, these forests left barren of martyring tacks through His face: this the most religious enclave of recent adherents, enemies of representation, of the modern, of even the olden made new — the land of the people formerly known as the Amish, the Pennsylvania Deutsch, if you’ve heard. At least for them, conversion hasn’t been tough; they’d already grown the hair, bought the hats. If yesterday’s habits die hard, what about its people, community, brotherhood. What else to do, they’ve already committed to black. In a field, Ben wakes to a rain, a drippingly dense precipitate, intermittent if implacably slow, deliberate, and thick. Ruddish raw milk, irritatingly unprocessed. He turns His face to the tasteless heavens, the pinked underside of a naturally nonhomogenate moon. He’s under an udder, bovine, that of a Joysey cow, not just any: a heifer red and so rare, whose bloodlet ashes would’ve served to purify the sins of His people back in the days of the pioneer temples. Exhausted from the trek, His owners who deep in their souls are the owned, masters and hosts of underground trade, that moneychanging hands passing hands fingering change, the cartrides then the horserides, the changes of horse and cart then the portage, hiding in steamers and trunks, amid bags, boxes, and crates, His entire smuggle wormhollowed, spoondug — He opens His lips now only to spit, as if there’s anything left to be said; this after having been ignominiously dropped, left in the Keystone, abandoned without ceremony or cerement as not worth the skin He’d been born shrouded into — that and His onerous appetites, this sleeping lazily late until too tired to wake — the pinchednasal kvetch of the slave whose soul’s the enslaving. He closes His mouth to the weather of this cow on the graze, turns away and sleeps on, the ingrate, not thirsty.

That night, which is that of the new moon, and so that of the month known as Av — the only moon not mentioned in the Torah, it’s related, a moon too dark to mention, we might, the darkest, as if so old or forbidden as to be no moon whether new or not, its absence tonight too sad and best forgotten or never lived through, the moon of destruction, the moonlessness of the dead — above Him appears another vision, a visitation of sorts…this mensch who seems like the grandfather He’d never had, never knew, maybe great, or greatgreat: his payos rustling in the slightest of winds, he’s bearded but without the moustache. Are you oppressed, my fellow? he asks Him.

Brother, might you be hungry, or a pregnant sister — ach, you need maybe a pillow, or are you good with the grass?

Hab rachmones, He can’t just sleep out here all night without a moon, says the mensch’s true grandson with the name of a prophet, which one who remembers: nicht nicht…a bad omen, bodes ill. And so through such an unpropitious pitch, a copse of trees is mightily felled from the edge of a lane, they’re chopped to size then their logs are planed, their boards becoming fitted and nailed. At dawn, their strapping kinder raise up a barn around Him; their womenfolk having spent the eve further antedating themselves, while at the same time updating the past, what with their knitting of yarmulkes and hermetically holidaythemed scherenschnitte, doing their laundry so as to be prepared for the approach of the ninth of the month, hanging their white mourning garb out on the fences to gather the darkness, then in their kitchens preparing a meal for the eventual wake of their arrival, busy with their stews and goulashes while cuckooing gossip to one another, which translates to prayers; a syncretism this eclectic mix of writs and superstitions, traditions and rituals, incantations of spells the recipe, a meltingpot blackbottomed, full of misgivings’ blue brew: prophecy’s invoked, stars are observed in their own light, alone: how in the zodiac, it’s lately Leo, traditionally the time to snip hairs to be pressed under pillow; then, how Virgo the virgin comes next, hens to be lifted to count their eggs out from under them and then, from that number, interpret, extrapolate. Go on. Plates are shattered, their remains are stirred in the fire.

How to rouse Him?

Maybe I should kiss Him on the mouth with the tongue of a turtledove? says a girl not yet of age.

What about me? says her rumspringa sister, a year older though already a mother herself.

His presence an omen distressing, how could it be anything but what with Av’s erev upon them. Almanac tells only of frost, perpetual, ferhuddling. After their work through to dawn, they pray away the rest of the morning then at afternoon hit hard a schnitz, beginning brunch without Him still sleeping, as if unable Himself to be raised without nails: they dig into their shoofly pies sided with greens, their breads spread thumbthick with apple butter, accompanied by bottboi and chowchow, pickled eggs to nosh, bushels of beets. Hardcider flows freely, without a mind to their P.ints & Q.uarts. Then, finished with their leftovers then with afternoon prayers, the daven of mincha, their meeting begins, if in a tumult of grievance gotten unrepentantly drunk, plowed with paranoia: pews are tossed around, scuffled across the floor, broken, beards are swallowed, moustaches sucked in annoyance: what portends this passedout mensch? our charge, our barnyard starred? He’s a spy, Meek Zeke shrieks, from the government, Intelligence, here to keep tabs or chits, checkup; or, He’s come to convert us, to lead us back into the corrupted fold, a wandering proselytizer if a touch sleepy, or sheepish…gevalt — a missionary inleagued only with death!

They referendum to port Him out of their barn newly risen (to be repurposed in repentance to an almshouse, if not to be razed), to cart Him unconscious still over to Paradise…by way of Bird-in-Hand, if you follow, then Intercourse, let them decide what to do — arriving there a day or so later and in terrible weather, to tax shelter under the gables of the former Trinity Reform, now a synagogue, the hochshul’s what they say, its hex replaced with the Decalogue; they sprawl Ben out on the lawn. A freshly accredited rabbi sits on the stoop — he looks just like them, introduces himself as Rav Nissen King, asks them if they’d consider contributing to the reduction of a mortgage. Forget it, they cart Him back, then into Lancaster proper, get orders from the community to wait for a responsa from York, city of the white rose, the light of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or l’PA: searching for what, remedy, guidance, a party to assume their burden, their charge and its charity’s care. Tzedakah this mitzvah. This whose is He. Not one of us, meaning stranger. They store Him granaried, in disused silos and troughs, and in cowsheds again erected overnight, so as not to profane the sanctity of their own haylofts and homes.

On the eve of the first Shabbos of Av, Ben wakes to a sliver of moonlight, shining in through the grain of the slats. He gets up amid the small space, finds a rusting, whirlwindreaping scythe propped lazily in a recess, against the woodenwall sunk in straw, makes to hack His way through the lock, slices it down to splinters, rips a gash of door in the door in a single sharp sweep: there’s darkness without, still’s quiet, a night. Free and about to quit the cow-shed, make an escape, He hears a lowing the sound of a shadow within, a low and susurrant moo, full of loneliness, sympathetic grief. What else but the cow, the Joysey, the heifer red and as huge as its sound: red the shade of its odium, it’s never been yoked. Insistent on following Him from town to nowhere as these reformed Amish of greater York, they make their rounds to plead help; curiously, it wouldn’t milk unless it’d been allowed to follow, and no one intended to grieve it, foolish to even tempt at its vex: God forbid it should die or be rendered otherwise impure before it goes for undreamt gelt at Philadelphia market or auction, hope, to that mensch from the Temple up north made an offer, in the big city, who trusts them, who’d afford not to these days…that deal means future, survival — a refurbished kindergarten, just think of it, the new mikveh, the lease of a new cemetery, too, and a bier bought to own; and so they’d tied the cow off to the cart, led it on, never letting it tow, not even thinking, such defilement, shtum.

Ben stands — His legs flung doors apart, facing the open. As the heifer stampedes its charge straight ahead, at Him, determined and quick, its horned head down underneath Him, carrying Him over then onto its mass hairily red and pulsing in muscle, and then out and into the night. As if told to Him, but it’s no talking cow, not all of them are — revelation transmitted up from its beating, breathing hide dirtily wet to His tush and then into His mind, Ben understands He’s not to lead but to follow, to be led, only to ride. He surrenders Himself to the heifer, winding its ambly ramble down the pike east into the liberty of Philly, toward its columns and cobbles, its kites, keys, and cracked bells, through its ritzy, Rittenhouse streets, heading for the riverfront alleys, Penn’s Landing past the statues tugged fallen, monumental malfeasance, skyscrapers lacking for glass; the heifer hoofing them through the following dark, a slide across the Delaware’s ice, enacting Washington’s crossing but now in reverse; through the hushed middle night of wharf and warehouse collapsed, of boats frozen to shelter slips and gullish middens — Ben tightening His thighs around the heifer’s flanks, holding fast with the fist of His loins.

How much longer until we’re there yet, again…but even after having reached the other shore, this heifer’s not too big into conversation — remind Him, not all of them are; no offense meant, if silently taken. Ben without blessing dismounts from its back, clumsily, insulted as much — which the heifer interprets as a sign now to switch. Upon its two hindlegs it hurls itself up on His own back, scarpimply, hairy itself, a huffy hump stooped. Ben gives a groan under its weight, it soon settles, tips, weaves lanes forsaken, grazed of their traffic, the heifer steadying itself with its hindquarters to hooves wrapped around waist, held by the bulge of His motherly hips. He walks on, trudges, a slipsy route down the untrafficked interstate shoulder — its pines and within them, the myriad, secret sandy paths linking graves: the trails and paths dug between Turnpike and Parkway, between Expressway and local — them highstepping over and around the thrown tires and trash, then, back to the blacktop, slowing up on the turns, yellowarrowed reflectors they dazzle the eye, the forehead’s headlight, holes of uprooted mile markers set for the occasional stumble, the sharp clovens of His burden digging a urinary sting into His kidneys, its hindquarters pried loose from their hold under the lungs at the ramps on and lost off He uses as turn signals, alerting with hair and hoof their presence to no one around. Though Ben’s carrying, the heifer still directs, navigates its own load, leads as always in its snouting of lefts, its horning out rights, though it seems not quite sure where they’re headed, exactly — suspicious, this transference of bestial blame, as if a sin offering to the subliminal…what He needs, what wants, where the feet feel to walk: how this is beginning to be familiar, intersections these interstices familial, then known. Route 70what. The Mall. Ellisburg, what’s it called, Ellisberg, King’s Highway. Names, and numbers, too, these codes born of area, the zip that doth zone; the network, its treelike ringings and reticulations of tar, the grid wide and open, the grin of the turns and the looparound smiles, even the smirk of oneways — all the sudden and happy logic of connectivity, of togetherness…a gathering, more communicative than most, not taken but granted. Now how it’s all that old comfort made cold, still loving if saddened, a family there for each other if lately forced empty, forlorn; feels as if there’s been a death in the immediate parenting, a hearthloss, a graving of home. You can take the boychick out of Joysey, but you can’t, forget it. Take Joysey out of, you know. Wishniak Hill it’s called, a city of no hills, only plain, the inexorable flat — and then, above that eponym of a hill that doesn’t exist, that fat, juicy Wishniak itself, a cherry beckoning, gleaming high and yet outwardly impotent, a stormy and fiery sun.

All that — with the unexpected on top.

Ben loses Himself to memory found, rediscovered…the trike on the lawn, the umbrellad heap of patio furniture, denuded rhododendrons amid an ashen pyre of cedar split fallen — hollycroft groves the sharp of their leaves scarring the wind, remember, too, the poisoning balm of their berries in season…it helps to forget mind more immediate, that and the kidneys and the spleenstrangled stomach, His raw arms and legs and the spine between that’s bent and begging there on its vertebral knees for realignment, a shvitz, perhaps, followed by a dip at the Development pool, Israel’s Sunday hour or so at the Rec Center and then the crack of the chiropractor who’d once bought down the block for his daughter: reverie, idyll, distracts, diverts, it’s all coming back to Him now — until a mensch emerges from a unit showhousey spacious, if a model dilapidated, or as yet unredone, then hobbles over to face Him, and His load, the hefted heifer.

My, how he’s aged.

No animals allowed, says the Gatekeeper, it’s policy, sorry, and he fingers thought at his newly grown beard, infested with nitpickings and lice.

We already have enough of our own.

He heaves the heifer up to His shoulders to better steady His stand, and the thing — it begins a graze at His hair as if mocking.

Not in front of strangers, you schmuck.

What about me?

What about you? is what the Gatekeeper asks, having quit scratching his pocks, taking from his mouth the cigarette, exhaling his last then snuffing it out with his fingers.

Nu, who — you have any ID?

Ben spits to the ground, just trying to fit in here; as for the heifer, it lows — which serves as a memory of the sirens.

Then you don’t belong here neither, he picks brunch or a grub from his moustache. Sorry, rules are rules. Now stop shtepping me. Tenks.

Tell you what, He says, I’ll give you my ride if you let me in: ten minutes, five, one, all I ask.

Hymn…scratching under shirt at his underarms, hot, picking with smoke-dark nails the hatching eggs of his louse, flicking them a scurry to the ice and the asphalt — you might seem familiar…

Listen, it’s red, I’m talking real red, and it milks like there’s no tomorrow — it’ll go for its weight in gold.

You know, if gold’s your thing. If you’re into it. A heifer.

I can see it’s a heifer, he’s squinting through a face of all hair…I’m dumb, but not blind, not just yet, poo poo poo. You got any papers for it? Rabbinic certification? Aha, that old handl.

None, but it’s legit, trust me, echt, it’s kosher, glatt, a hundred percent, not a blemish, it never gave birth…reaches back, pries loose one of its hooves not to turn a left or right but a profit, holds it out for inspection and the Gatekeeper scrapes the nail of a forefinger down the thing’s leg, attempting to do away with the dye, but his finger emerges clean, at least as clean as it was before he’d inspected.

Amen, but you didn’t hear it from me…and I’ve never seen you before — you’ve got a deal…and he goes to the hut, raises the guardrail. Geschwind, whoever you are, hurry up. Welcome to One Thousand Cedars!

Ben with a groan unloads the heifer onto the sidewalk, where it sits, good boychick on its haunches as if to schnorr for littered scraps. Then, with a nod of thanking Shalom to the Keeper, He heads inside, scamperingly, and impatient, as if expecting what — for His life once within…His house to be known only through its other, with Him unsuspecting its grave, its cinderstood basementholed lot. Regard the Island’s, then, as His winterhouse — an investment in memory perhaps not worth the properties of its taxes: the burden, the fear of breakin, or fire; the Hill’s vacational double, its unseasonal reflection, an image of an image, resurrected because relocated, transported, only moved. He’s making for the house He remembers exactly — how else, if at all — from its stand upon a spur of rock at the edge of the Garden, overlooking the ocean and waste. Here, though, had been its hearth; here, His home itself was at home.

Ben walks unburdened blocks familiar, block after blocks. Up from under the freeze the sidewalk comes to kiss at His feet, to smack His soles with lips that are cracks. Brokenbacks. Obeisance, the denial of one self in the service of another. How habit, and this despite its particularity — even if grand and luxury and maximally moneyed — always seems humble, modest, and small as too known. This is because we can adapt, we must, get used to anything, get used. But still, we’re aware of this capacity, always, of our ability to change — and so the lure of origins, the tempt of what we have been. How being here, and especially alone, it’s like living again, for the first. Though it’s not so much that He’d loved it here (how could He have, how long had He been here), or that He’d lived for so long, not long enough, in its displaced dwelling, under its exiled roof; it’s not that He was born here either that makes this all, wasted, destroyed, so true, and so intimate, and this despite the lack of stroller or sisters’ share: what makes this Siburbia so comforting, so comfortable, isn’t the lapse of time, no, neither is it the impression of time lost upon the impressionable, the able and willing, the wistful or sentimental nostalgic, think again — it’s that Siburbia itself had been built familiar, that One Thousand Cedars was built to be familiar from the very beginning, welcoming, Shalom and stay a while, take off your shoes, take a seat then holy us with conversation over coffee or tea; how it’d been intended to be indistinguishable, immediately, from any other annex, extension, or subdivision of this Development we know of as earth, as America — the freest if most dangerous and perhaps damning of possible worlds: only the fundamentally uninteresting, the absolutely anti interesting, could be so familiar as to transcend its particular existence, its particular name, its geography, and specific time. In essence, without essence, nonexistent, no life: and how it’s this very nonexistence that allows us to encounter it as we want to encounter it, however — to make its meaning whatever we want, tophet or home, whether nowhere or the only.

Though who could tell from the ground, One Thousand Cedars had been laidout as a circle, as a concentric Abandon all hope centered around what had been the plot of the roomiest, the most spacious, house, the Israelien’s. From the eyes of birds, nested as if a target — the eye of a urus, an auroch, a sacrificial bull. Directly past the Gatekeeper’s, inside its perimeter fence, there are the poorest houses, or were: stubby ranchers set way the far back on these small stubbly lots, vinylsiding wrecks their roofs wanting for shingles, held up by the very fences they’re backed onto, wire strangling wood to splinter. And then a circular road, which separates one ring from its inset better: in this next, there’s a round of larger houses, twostories, the bedrooms up top, waking life down below, lawns respectable if still mowed by their owners. Development Maintenance had always been reserved for the homes of the three inner rings, that’s what help the prices here bought you: another road, then the rich threestory houses, colonials of ruddy brick and sparkling fieldstone; another road then the fourstory houses of better brick, never to spall, hand-made in shades mottled and faded, duskily suggestive of the old, of the made old and by hand, the venerable and the lasting; such houses a defiance of impermanence, an entitled dare to fire, privileged in their security when all’s wellinsured. And then, the largest and widest swath of fivestory houses: an inner, defensive wall of them almost, overprotective as they’re set on immense lawns lined with shrubbery of an immaculate levelheadedness, trim and fit and ready: houses with multiple drives, endless entrance porticos decked with flags in recent favor (change the regime, they’ll change the decoration), imperial façades clean and neatly marbled, their white the purest blank. Inground pools emptied or frozen, cement graves marked by the tombs of cabañas, a tiki memorial to gardenpartied wakes. And then another road, a curb, a sidewalk, an even, domepitched circular lawn — and here, set atop it, the Development’s jewel, purported to be its grandest, and most luxurious, the Israelien home. Or where it once had been, where it would have been still, if not for the Garden — where it’s since been converted into an imposing museum of Him, the Metropolitan Israelien, of late less and less visited, it’s unfortunate. Initially, it’s open only one day a week, for an hour…

He takes the arcing turn from sidewalk to sidewalk — how tiny it is, how have I grown, a miniature life…existence matured within the shadow of the demeaning, the diminutive, Benya, my little boychick, meine Zaimele, be careful, keep safe: despite no traffic He’s still pausing at each intersection to look both ways left, right, then left again. Ima would be proud, Aba, too, would’ve been. A hexagonal sign says to Him, Stop…hazardously topped with the putrefying nest of an absent stork. To keep feet within the bars of the crosswalk, imprisoned — Wanda would approve, would have, or just wouldn’t have cared, offered a cookie nonetheless, a finger of her milk. A left, a right, the knowledge in His feet, though His head’s free to look not only both ways, but further — He recognizes no one, they all look the same. Neighboring strangers, sojourners. Nextdoor in hiding. Not emptied of people, no, only emptied of life: people occupied, finally, with something other than themselves, with something maybe, shockingly, disappointingly, less. And then these new grates for the sewer, too, now stamped U.S. of Affiliated. An Underground sunken, the descent of dissent, an emptiness deeper, the septic tanks of the soul and those rank pulsing pipes…and then — Apple, the sign still says Apple, His old street…it’s His, the cornerless circle of Apple an immense looparound, islanding traffic toward the drive of the Koenigsburg’s, in whose windows the curtains are drawn; candles in the others windows, though, in all the windows of all the neighboring houses, He notices, homes, burning behind the shades. Except His.

What once was the immaculate, gently even, geodesic rise of the lawn’s been let wild, overgrown, once suffused with that shade kept only by the richest of lawns and the newest of money now an impoverishedly sad landscape of grass grown out in every grayed shade of the spectrum not green: faded yellows and brown and black and ashdead, whitefrozen. Iciclespikes from the snirt. Mushrooms, umbrella mounds of sandbox sand overturned from holes made by hail. A swingset strangulated. The graves of sisters’ goldfish that hadn’t gone down the toilet so swimmingly. Livestock graze amid the patio. Uprooted foundations, cinderblock scatter, leaning beams, the dull crash of wet wood on wood. Gone to ruin, is going — this rise adorned, too, with the turds of goats on the loose, mating amid stalks of antediluvian weed; chickens peck among the remains of the flowerbeds, the skeleton of the herbgarden; roosters crow noon from the satellitedish, more and more storks nest atop the lightless lamps, the leaning poles…

At His feet is a hole that had held His house. And at its bottom, a glimmer. The Garden’s goys have only disappointed any subsequent looters (the curious, the bargainhunters, and a profusion of new neighbors, their quote unquote relatives moved in from out of nowhere with the approval of no board or committee, even without that of the Keeper himself, also a raider though only of bribes being offered, a hoarder of any finds that find him), having proven themselves thorough, professionally so, greedy and handrubbing, grubbingly giddy: they’d taken everything…or so they’d thought, or so they’d reported so as not to be officially remiss; everything, that is, except this — such glint missed, forgotten, overlooked, don’t look down, who knew, who would still. Maybe they’d respected it, rated it touchingly, it whatsoever it be (Ben leaning over the mouth of the pit as if a word spoken into its echo, the incomprehensible shriek of Israel’s least favorite son, an unmentioned, unmentionable, lastbanished brother of Joseph — on His knees digging, and flinging then falling and hitting the rock of the bottom, the hole’s pithiest black), maybe they’d wanted to leave behind at least one relic wherever it lied, and there unexplained, for posterity inexplicable, the edification of any future paternally stable, maternally exacting, precise: one thing, one object, one item not in their inventory (in the house remade on the Island, and there displayed ever since their return from the traveling tour: the family’s bible, Hanna’s addressbook, her diary, and loose refrigerator lists, a legal index of Israel’s, a tome of building codes, a volume revealing of the intricate mysterium of corporate finance, it’s said — on show in these cases lining the hallways, their glass regrettably fogged, of late seldom cleaned), page 1: one find lost from their catalog cum reliquary…panel 2: missing from their immaculately kept litany of incanbula…plate 3: unaccounted for amid the bulletpoints and crossoffs of their ledger illuminated by nightlight…the glowering glowworm of the hallway upstairs-upstairs — that is, if they have a record, if records anyone keeps anymore. If a miracle, then one He has to work for, uncovering with hands dirtied to warm. It’s a piece of silverware last seen missing from an heirloom set, a spoon for Him to suck on, reduced, immaturely as not table but tea, to rattle at His teeth in defiance; still, its handle the long and strong arm of any parent, its bowl largely wide enough to hold the burn of every sun: twisted to tarnish, anno don’t ask, it’s an antique, smuggled over from God knows where when any oppression would’ve threatened to melt it down to a bullet, which would be used to murder those who once used to spoon with it supper, with a shot in the mouth from a gun of an allied metal — their bodies to tumble down into a pit such as this, where Ben’s found.

Holding it in His hand overhead, up to the sky to glean the light that’s gleaming at noon, He’s awed, struck…He’s stuck. Trapped. Unable to get Himself out. To be held for slavery, for exile to a land named Joysey — and with of all things only a spoon, impossible to dig Himself up but He’s thinking, at least. A son stuck at the bottom of a basement, left by His brethren dead in this hole in the earth that once held His home, if unfinished — without dream or its angels, their ladders, which Israel used to keep in the garage, stacked next to the shovels, the screens.