Joshua Cohen - Witz

PopPop leaving behind him a beach on his heels, from the blowsy elevator to tread the wet over the carpet laid intermittently rumpled with dune to the door to his penthouse, an opalescent sun its button of bell whose plaque underneath, if rung, proclaims in text and sound, POP — POP (has that ring to it, doesn’t it? he’d said to Benjamin, icebreaking, shattering stuff, this getting to know you), makes as if he’s digging himself out of his pants again for his keys amid the loose change and changeless sand as the door to the elevator shuts, and the metal with its urchin descends. Then, he frisks toward the only other door on the floor, opens it to the stairwell and falls down a flight edged in green railing and emergency lights, tripping over the threshold and out the door a floor below klutzy footing until steadying in front of another, pants, pauses, sucks air, straightens his hair in the nameplate’s reflection, ARSCHSTRONG writ in wrinkles across the forehead, untucks, then tucks in again the tails of his shirt, tries to put a hand in any pocket of his vest, then realizes he hasn’t yet slit them. A hand unpurposed is as a deliverance withheld and so he knocks, redemption, as ordered knocks three times more, knock knock knock then — an arthritic shuffle; an eye’s squint through the peephole; a surgical procedure this unlocking of nine locks, and then there’s the deadbolt to think of; a gentle gentile appearing simultaneously young and intensely old, not as much newbornlike as a fetus overstayed, a fruit gestated to sensate and so, overripe, he slights the door, draft, light, plucks from his mouth a slick and yet rough prune for a tongue, and through the sliver with all along the chain still on leans slowly to lick at the tonguing returned of his lover, who just darkness ago had been the repressive responsible for Benjamin who should already be sleeping upstairs, dreaming of anything other than this, God forbid. Then, Arschstrong withdraws, shuts door, undoes the chain in a rattle, opens wide: PopPop, with his hands out in front of him, his late offering bagged, a fresh hatch of Nest Eggs.

A happy and a healthy, Adi, let auld acquaintance blah blah, I should feel lucky to be alive. A wonderful New Year, though that was probably months ago now; here’s to new beginnings, and to my Benjamin, too, a comfort in our winter years…once I get named guardian, the papers go through, the accounts revert — just think of what we can do: I’ve never been to Greece, have you, never been to the Islands, don’t even know what they mean by the Islands when everyone’s always saying they’re going to the Islands. Venice, never been to London, Paris either, or Rome, Minsk or Pinsk, with you I mean, what’s Siberia after all without you?

Tonight to be the last of their assignations, each of which would satisfy thrice per lunation: sessions of sex slow and dry, despite any lubrication — and they’d tried them all to rashes, allergies, itch, once’d even made their own out of PopPop’s liposucked fat — unabashedly analytical, measured in how hot (tush temp.) and dry, their orgasms later noted in a leather ledger Arschstrong keeps in the kitchen in the drawer along with the pen and the knives, though they engage themselves down the hall in the bedroom, sunk amid hazards of splintered wood packingcrates, looseflapped cardboard boxes, scuffed suitcases and trunks, socks swallowing socks, balled into bulges, tight and dark wads stuffed to puff used underwear scattered sexually negligent, with talcum powder just everywhere, a dusting of weatherform white dirtied with dust, as if neglect purified; as they’re switching positions from the favored Thrombosed Mosquito to the exceedingly advanced Reciprocal Six Handled Spoon, Arschstrong spurting a last helping of glide onto the rub of his lambskin, Pop-Pop asks he can’t help it:

You’re leaving me, why?

I’ll kill myself, it’s something I said, something I did — Benjamin, He’s only temporary.

Relax, says Arschstrong touching a shaky finger to the head of his lover, I’m only moving across the hall. You remember the Golden-Schlitzpickels, they died, you know, like so many, too young, it’s a sin, and with an oceanview…

Theirs is three times the size!

So is mine, Arschstrong says as he enters.

Dead of night arrives, that inviolate guest, unseen, unheard, leaves like stealing, having pocketed the clock. Balls fall, inexorably. They lean on one another, sucking each other’s shvitz, gasp air recirculated, the soul of the ducts. Then, as if variety’s been made mandatory to pleasure, they retire their silence to what Arschstrong’s always called his Florida Room, in an apartment in which all the rooms are actually, technically, Florida Rooms, there to admire the haze of their engaged reflection in the glass that is the furthest wall, which would slide open on its greasy track to reveal just past the patio used for storage only — skyline, frozen. What a view, away from the ocean, toward the parkinglot, plow and corpse, the weeping palms of Babylon, the street that whites west toward the highway. Miami sobered this New Year, unforgiving of revelry, left corkless, without bubble; there are no lights from up here that aren’t sirens, the lingery grope of emergency pulse; the balloon of the moon resoundingly popped, by the darkness.

After two attempts, one culminating in mutual cum, Arschstrong invites PopPop to stay, he’d never done that before; theirs has always been strict congress, sweet, quick, though not as hurriedly harried and awkward as the inevitable exit to follow. To get older is to get none the safer in your own skin…PopPop’s flattered, a gratitude perplex; if an apology, he’s uncertain whether it’s been offered to him or by him, for such premature arousal of every suspicion, that scare with the socks, the underwear, the powder. In a corner, a plastic plant ornamentally webbed with teabags patient for repeat steeps. To warm them, Arschstrong heats a pot, weak mint they sip in an ocean of lull, lazing about the sofa’s plastic slipcovered lump, surrounded by the floats of garmentbags, toiletrycases, scissors, tape and twine. With a pillowcase spared to shammy and what’s left in the kettle, Arschstrong removes PopPop’s sandals, washes his feet, individually the toes then, dispensing with the other foot’s plug, puts a shoulder into it deep into the hiccoughing flesh, rimming the void, pale and wrinkled, lies on a knee his other hand, its wristwatch just ringing midnight, an alarm preset, a shriek of the veins that strap down the arm, binding his grip to the battery of the heart. As if to insinuate that PopPop should leave, please and thank you, Arschstrong giving justification to this madness, abrupt, by saying time for pills his and yours, his toilet, beautybed, a call to his daughter out on the other coast of estrangement — and this with the pillow’s shammy still dripping onto the floor from which the rug’s been removed, rolled and hogtied. PopPop steps into his clothes, takes up his saggy bag and in that lean kisses at his lover still sitting, out the door then up the stairs one dainty step after another through the door to his, which he unpents quietly, not just tiptoed but discreetly up on his pedicure, so as not to rouse Benjamin, who’d stayed up midnight late though locked in, forced to keep company and amuse with whatever belongings of MomMom’s PopPop couldn’t sell, didn’t, no one’d yet offered the right price, no one would: hummel figurines forever unparented, earth thrown into a kiln then fired to kitsch, pastel samplers and quilts, unfinished knit caps and booties, which bled yarns for the grandkinder of friends, not her own; then, on a highest glassed shelf, a furbish of spoons silver but tarnished, souvenirs brought back from the vacations of others, always, to remember to her where she’d never been, never would be, which was most everywhere outside Florida and northeastern environs. To try the knob, to make sure of its lock by bolt, and, satisfied, quietly, to his room, to become naked again but alone, hanging each piece of his suit up on its designated hanger, PopPop falls onto the bed and asleep over the covers, to turn from one side to the other along with the year, the millennium, all.