Steve Katz - Kissssss - A Miscellany

Andrew loves to watch me dress for such engagements, and registers with a squawk how I like to slink into my three-thousand thread count Egyptian cotton dress shirt, deep burgundy, feel it slip over my torso, a near zero friction coefficient, slipperier than silk. A pale lime double-breasted pin-stripe Armani suite closes over my dusty pink velour tie, and my feet in evening blue socks hidden by gray suede high-top Vans sneakers.

Andrew swoops to my shoulder. “Looking sharp, Andrew.”

I push him away, to one of his perches.

“You tell the president not to blast Iraq so much with his technologically advanced boom-booms. He kills too many parrots.”

“Those are people, Andrew.”

“God is a parrot. You tell that to the president.”

I open the elevator door.

“You live in a big loft on the top floor. You got the privileges, vato . You got all the luxuries.”

“So what?” I ask as I step into the elevator. As if I have to ask him anything.

“You bring in mucho dinero , Conchito.” His previous owner was a Puerto Rican Romilar queen, who died in a sex shop shootout.

The wind is cold and lifts a layer of street grime into the air. Airborne are several pages of the newspapers, headlines heralding something or other about the unnecessary war foisted by a self-serving cabal, with no flexibility or imagination. I hope this president hasn't decided to protect me, because that could be a death sentence. At one time when the wind was full of this kind of grime and dust, I would cover my mouth so as not to breathe it in, but since the World Trade Center was laid waste I take it into my lungs, because this dust is a taste of my friends — nice Henry with his head full of hockey stats, Sophia with the sultry voice, Charles the compassionate, Mustafa the nervous atheist, dark Lily and Marcus the secretive — who surely still make up some of the dust in the air, and I refuse to deny them, or anyone else lost in the catastrophe, entry to my body, protection of my blood. I shall perpetuate their minced vestiges.

The cardboard sign of the victim camped in the next doorway has blown over. I stand it back up and secure it with a block of wood. He has printed it in an impressive calligraphy, with a magic marker.

PLEASE HELP

I WANT TO FIGHT FOR MY COUNTRY I AM DYING OF AIDS

MY FAMILY HAS ABANDONED ME I AM THE ENEMY OF

ALL THE ENEMIES OF MY COUNTRY MY FRIENDS HAVE

LEFT ME AGENCIES REFUSE MY CASE BECAUSE I AM A

JUNKY I WILL KILL FOR MY COUNTRY I WILL PROTECT

AND SERVE I HAVE NO HOPE AND I HAVE NO MONEY

PLEASE HELP

As I have every day since he showed up a week or so ago, I put a dollar in his cup. He lets out a small squeak of thanks, and a line of spittle comes to his cracked, bloody lips. I bend a bit closer to listen to him better. His face is blotched with exposure and disease. The last sweats of dying reek from him. His piss and excrement smell sweet by comparison. A skinny arm, covered with lesions, twists out of the pile of rags and reaches for my face. He says something. I get closer. “What?” I ask. “Kiss me,” he says. “Please kiss me.” His pucker is a coiled snake, his tongue a molten spoon. Immediately I straighten up. This is the way it is.

A cab runs me uptown.

We get closer to my office, near the museum, where the density of homeless and derelict seems to diminish, or at least get absorbed into the crowds of people more like myself, the kind of people who make the money. They walk to their businesses in their thick overcoats, locked dispatch cases strapped to their wrists. Everything leads to my meeting with the president. I don't look forward to it, but neither do I dread it. What I have to say to him I can't say to anyone else.

My tongue grazes my lips. Though they never touched his, my lips taste of the dying man. Now that I have almost tasted death, I am sure of death. The rest of my life will be a long process leading there. Death, death, death. Sweet. As a word it's more soothing than money . Maybe death is a renovation, a trip to the body shop. Perhaps the president will know. In the first place, I never requested its opposite. I never said to mommy, daddy, “Let me have life!” For anyone who does life, death always follows. The newspapers fill with it, never enough. The president promises a hatful of death as his war-wish comes true. I once thought death was a semi coming at me in reverse. But now they tell me that death is like corn on the cob, or couscous on a bun. I don't mean to get silly. I love corn on the cob.

Daredevil couriers graze by on sleek bicycles, their packs slung across one shoulder, full of numbers that turn business in the city. The air around the buildings is full of numbers. Numbers rain down from the skyscrapers. I pay the cabby a number of dollars, and walk to my building across from the museum. There is little time to waste. I am later than usual, but still anticipate my encounter with the man who for the last year has lived under the arch of the shallow colonnade of the church. “I'm an artist,” he always says, “can you help me out till my next show?” He is able to hollow his hand into a substantial bowl. “I used to live in a tent in the park, but they tossed us all, ya know. The president won't let us back in.”

I often mention to him that I once was an artist, thinking to engage him in a conversation, but he won't be swayed from his routine.

“A dollar, or whatever you got lying at the bottom of your pocket, that's all,” he repeats. And when he gets it he says, “Thank you, sir. You've helped a starving artist. Joy to you.”

He's not out on the street today, but I see him crouched inside the colonnade, holding a sandwich to his mouth, his hands in grey gloves, fingers cut at the first joint, body bent as if to hide under a tent of greasy blankets. I approach him there with a dollar held out in my hand. This has been the toll I have paid for months now, to cross the street. He doesn't reach for it, but looks at me through pale brown eyes, a delirium of disappointment.

“I can't take it,” he says.

“It's a dollar for a starving artist.” I hope he doesn't think I'm trying to mock his routine.

“Come back later. I can't take it now. I'm on my lunch break.”

I look at my watch. I don't know what to say, except, “It's not even eleven o'clock, and you're already on break?”

“If you think this isn't work, you try it some time. I do a day's work here. I was up and at ‘em early. You run your business, and I'll run mine. Right now I'm closed.”

I feel uncomfortable holding out the dollar, so I lay it on the pavement at his feet. He shrinks away.

“Look, can't you help me out,” I say. “I've got to get across the street, and every day it costs me a dollar. Help me out. Take the dollar so I can get to work.”

“What you got to do today?”

“Today I see the president.”

He grins, exposing the egg salad that covers his teeth. “You full of shit too, man.”

“Look at all those lights in the Trump Tower. Deals are being finalized while I stand here.”

He inflates his cheeks and waves his head from side to side.

“Look,” I say, “I used to be an artist.”

His laugh sprays egg flecks on my wing-tipped sneakers. “And a Gulf War or so ago I used to be in Special Forces, a nasty motherfucker. I'm still nasty.”

“Take the dollar.”

“What time is it?”

“Twenty to eleven.”

“Okay, Mr. Used-to-be-an-artist. Leave it here. If it's still here in twenty minutes, after I'm done with my lunch, call it even. If it's gone, then tomorrow is a two buck trip.”

A squad car pulls up to the curb. The cops within squint at my man. “Let him be, he's my brother,” I say. “I'll take care of him when I leave the office.”