Joshua Cohen - Witz

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.