Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

I said I changed my name. It’s Stanley Glass now.

Why?

Stanley puts his nose between the boy’s smooth shoulder-blades and breathes in. It was time, he says.

Mmmm. I only will call you Stanley.

That’s fine. Oh, we need to steal a bucket, too.

A bucket?

Yeah, Stanley says, spitting on his fingertips. You know, a bucket. For fish.

The illuminated dial at the hardware store on Windward gives them the time: a little before nine o’clock. For an hour now it’s been raining hard, with no sign that it’ll stop. The sweep of headlights through the distant traffic circle makes it look like a dull carnival ride: the slow kind, for old people and little kids. From time to time a car rolls by, big drops streaking the air before it like scratches on a reel of dark celluloid.

Stanley and Claudio huddle under the colonnade between the Forty-Niner and Semper’s Men’s Wear, stepping to the wall whenever the wind gusts, watching water ripple over the laughing faces on the cast-iron columns. It’s about time Stanley stole himself a watch: he’s been telling time by daylight, but tonight’s sunset got snuffed by the incoming storm and put them out in the rain an hour too early. Claudio’s quiet, like he’s frosted about something. So long as they’re already soaked, Stanley figures, they might as well head over to Alex’s pad. Somebody’ll probably be around.

The boardwalk arcades keep them more or less dry till they’re halfway to Club House; after that, they scurry between canvas awnings and pinch their collars shut. As they make the turn they see three figures pass through the bright cone of a streetlamp, pails dangling from their fists, newspapers draped over their heads. The figures shout and pound at the door of Alex’s apartment, and after a moment they’re admitted.

Stanley hunches his shoulders, doubletimes down the sidewalk. Claudio’s right behind him; Stanley can hear raindrops ping off the tin bucket in the kid’s hand. Ahead, flecks of red and orange light escape the apartment’s blacked windows where the paint is chipped, then vanish when shadows pass over them. Soon Stanley and Claudio are close enough to hear laughter, voices.

A knock opens the door right away. A face appears: bespectacled and goateed, backlit and unintelligible. Not a face Stanley knows. Can I help you, man? it says.

Stanley wipes rainwater from his nostrils and lips. Alex around? he says.

Another shape steps into the doorframe, peeking over the goateed guy’s shoulder: Stuart, the bearded poet from the coffeehouse. He was among the three who just arrived: his shirt is soaked, translucent, and droplets glint in his black hair. Hey, he says, I recognize these two drowned rats.

Now Alex’s voice: Is that young Stanley already? he shouts. Don’t stand there in the bloody entrance, Tony. Let him in.

Swinging back, the door pushes aside stacks of buckets: they scrape against each other, against the concrete floor. Stanley shrugs off his dripping jacket; Claudio shakes rain from their upended pail and steps inside. I see you brought the items I requested, Alex says. But you’ve come a bit early, haven’t you?

Me and my buddy started Daylight Saving Time a month ahead, Stanley says. Trying to get a jump on the competition.

Alex and Stuart chuckle, and Stanley scans the hazy room. The orange-crates are all occupied; more young men sit Indian-style on the floor, skunky smoke rising from their cupped hands. A sharp-looking Negro is in the chair behind the typewriter; when his eyes meet Stanley’s, the guy gives him a cautious smile. From everybody else, suspicious stares: their gazes move from Stanley to Claudio to Alex and back again.

Fellas, Alex says, I’d like you to meet — if you have not yet met — Claudio and Stanley, two criminal toughs of my recent acquaintance with a burgeoning interest in art and poetry and other fine things. It falls to us, gentlemen, to see that these lads are not lost to the felonious abyss.

A voice from the corner: Maybe these two can save the rest of us from art and poetry, it says. Make us into honest crooks.

It’s Charlie. Stanley almost doesn’t recognize him: he looks sober, or nearly so. He’s giving them a tight smile and a narrow knowing glare, but it’s not convincing. It’s a look that says I had the goods on you, buddy, but then I forgot . Stanley plays it cool, laughs a little at Charlie’s joke. Nobody else does.

Clockwise from left, Alex says, meet Bob, Bruce, Milton, Saul, Maurice, Jimmy, Charlie, Stuart whom you know, and Tony, our doorman. Now take your friend’s jacket, Stanley, and come with me.

In the bedroom — sheets haphazard on the bare mattress, drooping indecipherable paintings tacked to the walls — Alex takes the jackets and hands Stanley a wad of bills. Count it, he says, and Stanley does: one-fifty. He nods, and Alex whisks him back to the main room.

Stuart and a couple of other guys have restarted what seems to be a favorite argument. One of the new faces — fleshy, fake-professorial, probably queer, sipping red wine from a coffeemug — has the floor now. Of course poems should be like paintings! the guy’s saying. Why wouldn’t they be? I mean, ut pictura poesis , man: that’s the whole history of the form in a phrase. It’s right there in Horace — and Horace was just quoting Simonides. The instant impact of the image, the negative space of the blank page, the depth of potential detail. That’s what we all want, right?

I’m not sold on that, the colored guy — Milton — says. How many of the poets in this room are painters, too? Just about all, unless I’m mistaken. If you’re satisfied with one, why bother with the other?

Tony, still standing by the door, motions Alex over, speaks quietly in his ear. He keeps looking at Stanley and Claudio, unhappy about something. Stanley can’t hear what he’s saying.

Stuart’s arguing with the tubby professor. You missed the scene at the Coastlines reading, Bruce, he says. If you’d caught it, there’s no way you’d still be trying to shovel this shit. Ginsberg ain’t no painter, man. You take the most massive painting you can think of — take the Sistine Chapel ceiling, for chrissakes — and you’re still nowhere near the thing he read. You’re hung up on some kind of museum-academy trip, man. You’re filling little jars with formaldehyde. I love paintings, but they don’t exist in time . Poems don’t happen on the page. They’re made from living breath.

Ginsberg? somebody says. He’s the striptease star, right?

— just theater , someone else mutters under his breath.

So what’s the matter with theater? Stuart says. Poetry needs more theater! It needs more music! Get it off the page, man, and onto the stage! Get some red blood pumping in those paper veins!

Oh, christ, Bruce says, refilling his cup from a gallon jug on the floor. Here we go again with the jazz canto jive.

Across the room, Alex has an avuncular hand on Tony’s shoulder, a raised finger in his face. Tony isn’t talking anymore.

Poets and painters gotta quit shadowboxing each other, Stuart says, and start aping jazz. Free up the forms! Smash the phony barriers between art and life! That’s how we’ll reach people, man. It’s guerrilla warfare. Nowadays everybody’s an image junkie, everybody’s hypnotized. The frontal attack is no good. You gotta get in through the ear, you gotta communicate with the inner eye, the eye that won’t be tricked by some subliminal projection.

Charlie speaks up, his voice a little too loud in the small room. Whoa, Trigger! he says. Now you’ve got me confused. Are we talking about poetry or advertising?

Stuart and Bruce shoot glares at him, exasperated, at a loss, knocked off their rhythm. In the sudden quiet, Tony’s low voice comes through the room: on top of being dope-peddling JDs , he says, they’re an illegal sex, to boot .