Joshua Cohen - Witz

It’s depressing, enough, to lose this, too, she’d needed it; she hadn’t been to closing in who wants to think, too long, to tell the truth she’s never. Loreta the realestate agent, she used to be a secretary, Israel’s, if you hadn’t heard already: questioned in the winter of last year after he’d died then released, for cooperating (turning over files and tapes they’d been interested in only she’d known where they were, in which system they’d been filed, for saving certain timesheets, also, from the looters, plaintiff attorneys who’d come to claim the spoils of adversaries settled into death), the Garden had offered her protection, a unit in Miami, just downstairs — Arschstrong’s, she hadn’t wanted to ask whose. Knew to keep her mouth shut, what with a free roof above her head. Loreta, who down here couldn’t find work with any surviving attorney; who’d give her the references, the resume’s blank bottom: anyone who’d worked with her up north was either graved or Gardened, and so she went and took a nightclass, got certified and began trying to sell off units in this building and others owned by its benevolent management company, units 2br/1.5 bath w/ k.k. almost totally abandoned if not wholly from death then from its collateral flee, all around greater Miami, her territory down to Key Wherever due south, not that she’s ever been down there, she didn’t have the keys; she’s not much of a success or a traveler (which is what she’d wanted out of retirement, if ever), her life hasn’t been what it could’ve, not ever since, it stings. Loreta, the woman who’d spent the most time with Israel, the most facetime, talktime, minutes for the two together if they’d’ve been kept would’ve totaled to intimacy, she would’ve been billed the most total sum of his face-hours, his talkhours (for which she’d pay him in overtime daily), Israel’s wife and daughters and certainly his son who’s barely born, forgive him, inclusive. Loreta, she’s presently among the most observant, or at least convinced, of Affiliated converts, having with Israel’s death and the death of the firm, its partners and many if not most of its clients, too, was not only unemployed but also severely depressed, clinically a wonderful state for coming nearer my God, as her people would’ve put it (an idol of the Virgin not her once standing veiled in the corner of her mother’s room back home in Vineland), moping around that Joysey house — which she hasn’t kept: how it’s the only house she’s ever sold — in gray sweats from her stateschool alma mater, her disconsolate and sobbing while gorging on medications, pills for pills requiring pills, gallon after gallon of icecream melting under the Xmas firm giftbasket liqueur she’s hoarded, a cherry cordial she’d pour atop the vanilla scoops to get drunk on then fall asleep from as if melted herself on the fudging of the couch: hers the rockiest road, the chunky should be chippiest and yet the doughiest, too, without direction, no shoulder to cry on waited out, for her next calling called, the phonetuck, the onhold lean, scraping dry skin from her elbows, flossing nightly with her hair loss, showering less and gaining weight. To get up from the couch, only to run up the longdistance bills and in ratty weekend sneakers. How the phone would ring, then she’d trip over her sweats baggy to the carpet to pick them up and answer it, hello — you’ve reached the law offices of Goldenberg, Goldenberg, &…always the wrong number — Loreta? Nobody by that name here, sorry, now’s not a good time, I’ve been changed, my number’s up, it’s disconnected, please hang up and dial. Married last moon to the building’s super she’s lately Leah Weiss, and who doesn’t want to lay a Weiss — Israel, are you listening, are you out there; though he never laid a hand on her, not one, not even once a finger, not even on those longhot, palm-printed on her windowed memory afternoons summering late amid southernmost excruciation, when she’d lean all the way, way egregiously over to file who knows what away without doubt unnecessarily, extraneously so as to liven up the hours with just a wiggle of those two scooped loaves of hers up at him, their wisp of yesterday’s panty, her knocker knees in those wriggly heels of hers or the Friday boots up to her crotch, the ran slightly ripped dark hose worn three sizes too small as if to cut off circulation, not his, no, it’s that…he’d never even given her a mean word let alone a slap, a shtup, a good hard zogging; no matter, he wouldn’t live to regret. Loreta sits late at her overflowing desk, her husband’s, to be precise Evan Weiss (he’d mocked up a replica for her, for love, a handymensch, from memory, hers)…who’s downstairs just now, he’s checking on the boiler. In Arschstrong’s den made her showroom/office, she pores over dictation, with her fingertips like tears, listening over the headphones to the old dictaphone tapes she still picks and pecks, types the night away at this old manual, an antique Remington 18 Evan had purchased for her with scrip from their one of many Recently Affiliated Unions (RAUS) just getting organized, splitleveling up from out of the freeze all over winterized Miami. Easy on the manicure, diddle the platen, she scribes, taking the same dictation from the same dictated tape she’s taken already a hundred, a thousand times previous, and still, she’s never remembered…how she does this every night late, she needs to (who to complain of the clacking, as her husband here’s the boss and obviously no one lives above, or below), needs to hear him and his formulas again, again his formulations forever, dear so & so, in re: INRI: she’s thinking, and what a martyr, too, in that she most loves now those duties of hers that she most hated then, the fetching of an Elijah’s cup of coffee, makes it hard on herself and black when the cup’s not sipped how she tells herself it’s terrible…take a letter, says his ghost, a little of the martyr in him himself: then shred all and send its scraps on the wind, she knows these moods too well…with a CC: to the east, a little Latin, while lower down there’s to be a section sign—§, which symbol Israel would always remind her had been derived from the ancient letter gimel , the third of the Affiliated alphabet, from gemul , a slight antagonym, he’d explain, selfmeaning and, too, contradicting itself, a contronym translating alternately as Reward , and also as its Punishment .

Got it.

Read it back.

Hereby. Respectfully submitted, etc.

Sentence, his ghost says.

And then, paragraph.

Very Truly Yours, it says statickly, Me…and then how she’s to fill in the Me with Israel Israelien, Esq., over which he might, if he wasn’t too busy, in a meeting, on the phone or otherwise disposed with the trashcan in the corner of his corneroffice and tossing, attempted, crumpled, looseballed papers as if the flakes and drifts of their snoglobe weights above, or else in court and what with this letter, brief, or contract having to go out now — the mail’s at three — sign the same name Israel Israelien Israel Israelien Israel Israelien over and again in an illegible haste, a smudge of impatience, ink blotting blemish from the forge of his fountain (Loreta turned Leah had done this all the time, filled in for him, even once impersonated his voice, the one still speaking if only for her own ears, confidential years ago in a longdistance call to his father, who’d been crazy and estranged, according to him, though when she talked to him that once he’d seemed fine, decently sane and even, though she wouldn’t mention it, kind), smirching the remaining hold of firm stationary she’s stolen, 20lb. noncorrasable bond still preciously surviving; she’s already licked out of envelopes, has only two reams of letterhead left — she keeps them boxed in her oven, which is selfcleaning, when she’s not cleaning it herself.