Joshua Cohen - Witz

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.