Joshua Cohen - Four New Messages

Nope, it wasn’t anything that petty, nothing that begrudging — it didn’t pique that he was the only one of us who’d published (though it was only an academic monograph on the history of brick) — no, my problem, getting down to street level, was just that he was the closest of our classmates to the edifice itself, a New Yorker who probably passed that prototype daily and was probably solely responsible for its welfare. How could he take that? how lucky can you get with your education?

Now just like the professionals we become after we graduate aren’t constructed merely from our student experiences, literature isn’t built merely of words — instead both require an extra material, whatever quantity of indefinable spirit that sent Tub to parts east, me up to the roof, and Dem to designing and decorating even after, especially after, what happened with Greener.

A writer, or a couple of exwriters, staying in this city at the W Hotel, might express their room’s bed and chair and desk by just repeating the words bed and chair and desk —while any deepening of a reader’s appreciation would depend on deepening the descriptions.

Would depend on, inspiration.

Following Greener, however, Dem preferred to choose a room’s furnishings rather than choose the verbiage that furnished their details.

A writer can write “the room had a couch,” or a writer can just give up writing, go out and drag a couch back into the room, having selected the appropriate model — it’s this total specificity, this absolute precision, that allowed Dem, having left the arts, to once again keep her exterior flawless and her interior private, her own.

By early evening, Dem had become particularly obsessed with the W’s room’s curtains — while I shaved twice, fussed with a suit, and pretended to worry about being late, this was her attempt to distract me.

On our way out she stopped at reception to ask, Where did you source it? that gorgeous microruffled white muslin?

The concierge didn’t know but said he’d do research, And, Madam, you have excellent taste.

He was a boy with a face from home, which he bowed to his tie, to repolish his accent.

I piled the family into a taxi, instructing the driver — Iranian? Iraqi? allow me to claim I’m too bumpkiny for such distinctions — to head uptown, but to take the West Side Highway (I should’ve subwayed, though which train’s a mystery).

Dem — vacillating between nervousness at traveling to an unknown, possibly even undatabased restaurant, and guilty joy at finally gaining the island’s northern latitudes — suppressed those sentiments out of concern: she was staring out the window then canting back in my direction, fixing me with her big blue salty puddles.

Veri wasn’t privy to any of this — didn’t know about that past, not even rumor. Inevitably she knew I’d roofed that dilapidated campus building modeled on another dim building dimly in New York — but how was that remarkable when I’d also roofed her friends’ houses, our neighbors’, our own barn and stables and four-bedroom, five-bathroom mock Colonial Revival, Mesh’s manse, and every home ever mortgaged by Bau and Lo from starter rancher to condo? She was gorging on the trailmix Dem passed her. She was very excited for her first Broadway show.

At Canal Street the darkling driver said, Too much the traffic is, an accident must be, as he swerved to continue north on — Bowery.

I asked, Can’t I choose the route?

The cabbie said, Bowery is best.

My phone rang a txt from Tub, No Greek or Ital, Yes Tk meze korean bbq v. delish.

I return txted, Whever?

As the avenues split I cried, No, stop, but Dem turned to mouthbreathe, No, you stop.

Dad? Veri said.

Sirs? said the cabbie.

Enough, Dem said, you’re a man.

I slouched, resigned — I’m the roofer.

The avenue gave way to Park.

Tub wasn’t there at the end, I mean the very end.

He was away doing what Veri was doing now, checking out schools, for him architectural school, not just touring but having his interview, “his intellectual texts” (that was his terminology) — like pot or hallucinogens — a twentysomething hobby.

Not just him, nobody was there at the finish — they were all in their dorms, cramming the New York City building code of the era, or out at the library studying the Beaux-Arts.

Ultimately there was just me.

The roof is, by default, the last.

Can’t build the ceiling before the floor.

I went up after a fierce spring storm to check the coping — the balustrades, that overbearing cornice (unnerving resemblance to Greener’s chin) — ensure all my work had withstood its final exam.

Topside was wet, slick. Ponds sloshed across the verdigrine tar, drowning the ducts.

Greener stood, trembling.

We all knew he’d been living in the Fauxiron for a few weeks, but nobody had dared to say anything beyond, If you need a shower or are peckish, don’t hesitate, drop by. Dem had outfitted him with a decent penthouse suite replete with foldout sofa, stocked minifridge, full bath, but mostly he slept — as evidenced by the Baby Ruth and straw wrappers, the Coke cans and bourbon fifths and butts and last week’s bundled socks — in the halls or in random other studios. Or up on the roof come April and May, with the term almost over — he had no summer plans (he’d been using his rejected manuscript as pillow until, over springbreak, with us away at Dem’s parents’, he burnt it in his suite’s trashcan to test the alarms, or so he’d told the authorities — the alarms worked, the sprinklers worked, did damage).

The taxi approached the intersection — I was sitting on its west side, was fated to that side.

On the roof I reached a hand out — reached a hand out the cab’s window too — pointing a finger at the air.

The wind the smoothest traffic.

Dem held my knee and Veri, bright with recognizance, shouted, Hey, where are we?

The intersection of voids, the corner of nothing and nothing.

I turned to the rear window.

A laugh.

There it was in its rude sedate slant, there it was in its glory.

The height from which he jumped.

_________________

Beds are made of trees,and coffins are beds with lids. Death is sleep without bottom. Its nature silent and consciousless and densely dark—

Imagine you are walking through a dream. But your dream is not just that, not just open. Your dream isn’t just one big gray open scape of mist you can step into, you can walk anywhere through, stick a hand or arm or leg into and just wiggle anywhere, no.

There are obstructions, even here. This is a dream with obstructions.

And so it is real. So it is real life.

You are walking through the forest but you cannot walk straight, you have to walk where the forest says you can walk, around the trees that tell you Here and There and Here. If straight is your goal you will have to go crooked. If crooked is your goal you will have to aim crookeder. No, better a fairy should tell you, some sort of dryadish creature: “If straight be your goal you must go crooked. If crooked be your path go forth and crook.”

Yes, fairy. Yes, cretin sprite.

I am a woodsman. A forester. No. You are a woodsman. You are a forester. No. Shake the tree. Uproot the roots. He, yes, he is a woodsman, he is a man in the woods. He is thick like wood and brown like wood and nothing about him is green. He has a bark beard. Knots for eyes and knots for ears and a knot for a mouth but while walking he is silent. His wife he has left behind in their hut. From there, noises. Their hut is made of trees, is made of tree, unwindowed. She lies on the ground expecting a child. This would be their first. New leaves, new leaf, a child shaped in lobes with a stem between the legs. She lies there in labor, lies on the earth belabored, olid and fat. She screams and screams and her eyes are angry. (He needs to move quickly.)