Joshua Cohen - Witz

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.