The paper rose in his lapel was wilting from the monsoon, she says.
And were his eyes dark, I say. Did he touch you?
This legless lady, Eli, she blows a kiss to me.
St. Dietrich plots to assassinate the dictator and fails. He’s hanged and his faithful horse rides off into the hills full of olive trees. The horse lives with a traveling show and one night thieves cut out the ringmaster’s tongue. The sand sings in the dunes and the horse runs forever in the darkness.
Let’s put physics in reverse, Eli. Use an event horizon as a glory hole. Jump the turnstile to the dimension where Boom is still alive. Maybe there’s a world where we are kids playing doctor with the neighborhood girls again. Tiny adventures to please our dirty minds. Our souls age at a cosmic pace.
Out the car window is our wild fantastic country, rolling on. Quick prayer for the Indians. Let them have the sweet rain they’re always dancing for. I drift, reckless as we ride. The old Kentucky roads of my youth under our wheels. The ponies I straddled here, Eli. Have I told you? I had a horse and a princess and an electric city constantly unreachable in my dreams.
I was a ballerina as a girl, Darling says. Heel, toe. Pirouette.
I can see you there in my mind, I say. The delicate rising of your leg to the bar.
There was a peculiar sadness when I danced, she says. There was an elegant sorrow as I vaulted through air.
I long to live with eyes like smoke. The whole sweet science—I see it. History is breath against breath. Puff puff, blow the house down. The falling walls of Jericho. The crumbling towers in lower Manhattan. Dick Dickerson’s house becoming ash. I kiss Darling like a madman, raise my hand to the night, and ask the Lord a question. Where are you, Señor Cloak and Dagger? Hosanna in the highest, if that’s your real name.
Dying is living for me. Our child grows as we fade. Inside Darling’s belly she is the size of a fist. We blaze a straight shot up through the guts of America aiming for the grey girl on her island.
Satan was seen buying a café au lait on Friday the thirteenth in the Year of the Dog. He was wearing a Mexican wrestling mask and a monocle on a gold chain the color of the sun. The lights of the casinos filled his good eye. Our days are numbered, our weeks are fading away.
He is blind, this man I see. He is of indeterminable ethnicity, he wears Hawaiian shirts and smokes a cigar like a woman. Exact replicas of his eyes are tattooed on his eyelids. Red laces on his hobnail boots. Are we to trust this man’s ability to search and destroy us? Nono has hired him to find you, Eli. She has made him a thermos of soup. He is the copilot of their minivan. His name is Jack Cataract.
These are the years of recklessness and pride. We are the sinners barely comforted by Christ. Let us seek the strong hand of Mister Unknown. Eli, we have driven out the demons of lesser men. We have fought the tough battles on the sixty-four black and white squares. My aging Tonto. My mystical amigo, we ride on.
St. Walter dies in a fire but they say he walked on water. The moon is a Cheshire cat above the palm trees, dancing. Put the lilies in a basket, are his final words.
We have a midnight loiter in the dunes, Darling and I. The American sky is black with expanding stars, one could call it dignity. We are on the threshold to happiness outside the laws of man. Sexual congress with urgency like it’s the end of days. When it’s over she’s got that good light inside once again.
I was a whore and you brought me in, she says. I had all seven sins.
You were a waitress at Starlight when I met you.
I love you deep as an ocean, she says.
High as a mountain, I say.
10
Blazing up through the Appalachians I feel Nono and Cataract at our backs. Hellhounds on our trail in a brown minivan. I belt out a song from my youth, “Ten Little Indians.” What vibes up here in the north, Eli. The Civil War left a weird suture along the gut of the country.
We are far from our comfortable Southern despair now as the city lights approach. Manhattan is a sparkling sickness of an island. Condos made for Euro trash, swimming pools in the sky. Over the bridge, Eli, here we come. I’m your incognito kemosabe, you’re my redneck Virgil. Graveyards on top of graveyards and where the hell do we park this boat?
East Village, but where are the poets and punks? A KFC on the corner and every man a smiling wad of cash. All the starving artists eat well by professionally wringing their hands on the Internet. Everyone is an extraterrestrial here. My poverty of spirit has returned. Downcast eyes and a desire for prescription painkillers.
Washington Square to hustle the hustlers. The standard players playing five-dollar games. The big guns playing twenty bucks. A couple young Bobby Fischer posers with their mothers eat baloney raw. I buy a joint off a thin black kid named Fuck Face and Darling and I fire up as you collect winnings, Eli. Then I am struck with a vision. Cataract smoking a blunt with the pages of the Book of Revelation. His eyes have never seen a woman or an ocean. Darling watches a skywriter propose marriage in the air. Horrible music plays from horrible cars.
Darling, come closer. We are high on the rooftop where we sleep.
There are four million possible earths out there, I say.
Yes, but also black holes everywhere, she says.
Goldilocks planets, they call them. Not too hot, not too cold.
Darling’s ears are cool to the touch.
Maybe each star is a little bonfire on the beaches of heaven.
She touches my nose. We kiss.
Some kid trapped between the wall up in Queens sings the Bee Gees till he’s found. Women apply lipstick in the reflection of the butcher shop window. A man walks in tap shoes down the street. A girl pukes out of a cab. A dog licks another dog’s vagina. These are weary days as we walk the streets. Laying low for fear of the fuzz. Wanted posters of us all over town.
Eli, I tuck you in on the boat parked near Union Square. There is a circus, a clown, a dwarf, and his gimps.
Armadillos have the most attractive dreams of any animal, you say, Eli.
I’m thinking of living underground, I say. Where no one would find us. I would drive the trains.
I saw a man once crying down there playing cello, you say, Eli.
To be in the darkness for so long underground as I drive, I say. Then to come up from the tunnel into the light. It’s got to be something like birth.
Yes, says Darling. But wouldn’t the light hurt your eyes?
We’ve taken up residence in St. Thomas Church on Twelfth Street downtown, closed for repairs. Eli, you sleep in the belfry, we put two pews together. The stained glass windows make our faces blue.
St. Zim refuses to spit on a picture of Christ and is beaten to death in a stadium in front of ten thousand people. It is the largest public gathering in the city in some time.
Darling is bundled up like a child in swaddling. She wears a leopard-print hood and a cashmere scarf stolen from a frazzled heiress. Yes, we go to the jazz club and I commandeer the piano. Kick up my leg and piss my pants while playing “Great Balls of Fire.” These bouncers touch my Darling. There is a row. When the man’s fist collides with my face, it feels as if it were meant to be. Angels from heaven surround me like a Saturday morning cartoon. When I wake up Darling is screaming.
How could you get beat up like that? They could’ve found us.
She slaps me and I’m all question marks.
In New York people rap to themselves as they walk down the street and the florists look at naked pictures on their phones. Love is everywhere and we feel it but we can’t see it. It’s a child’s concept of God. Fill my lungs with the breath of life. Put Christ’s blood in my blood, his flesh in my belly. Let us eat God clean and pick our teeth with His bones.
There are strange beauties everywhere. A whole pack of models stroll down Houston. A woman is a tailor. A man sells European shoes. His ascot is a handsome teal. We drink rum and toast to a fair fucking fine howdy-do.
A toast to all the wars we’ve won and lost, t
he Englishman says.
To all the deaf people, I say, and the people who’ve been bitten by rattlesnakes or probed by aliens or fondled by their uncle or ever had their wisdom teeth taken out or had appendicitis, to all the people who died virgins, to all the people who don’t know how to drive stick. Blessed be to God.
Rev. Maloney, drunk as hell, says you, Eli.
Sometimes I feel like we’re soldiers but there’s not a war.
Darling cuts a lime slice for my beer.
I love her.
11
I’m the mayor of a lonely country. A passenger on wax wings tilting left to right, diving toward a river as the peasants go about their day. Another politician is found with his dick in his hand, a belt tight around his neck. I scratch the scratch-offs and play the numbers, the ponies, the fights. There are longer shadows later in the day. Darling takes my hand.
I want so bad to be a saint but I’m a coward and barely Christian, I say.
That makes you a good candidate, she says.
The urbanites dress like sinners and I love the sin. I rank folks mainly by their vice and folly. A blond with daddy issues sucks heroin up her nose. Hurt me, Lord, she says, I want to feel more nightmare. I seek the love of the Trinity but there is only my DNA, my center of gravity, my supercilious mouth. I step to the edge of the roof.
What are you doing, asks you, Eli.
Feeling the pull.
Thinking of cashing in, are you?
I’ve already done that, Eli. I’m just waiting for the horses to carry me away.
For millions of years no creature had an eye. When did life start eating itself, growing as it diminished?
We are born to eat each other, I say.
But we have hearts and brains and courage, Darling says.
The baby kicks in her belly.
What color was the first eye, Darling asks.
Manhattan is a place where all spirits go to die. My mustard seed of faith can move no mountains here. I take the elevator to the top of the Empire State. It is the godly cock of the island, reaching heavenward. The Chrysler is the godly cock of art. The Freedom Tower is the godly cock of grief. I will soar between them with my homemade wings. Nono irons Cataract’s shirt in a fleabag motel. He makes instant coffee and plays computer chess. Everyone on daytime TV is a psychopath.
Two NYU bros argue over the best cut of steak, grass-fed or kosher. A maid vacuums a dead man’s hair from a motel bed. Nothing in this city can be thrown away. Every sin settles in your heart forever. I seek the right questions that will make the silent Father speak. The Holy Ghost tells me I’m an elephant killed by a small arrow.
I’d like to die and live forever, I say.
Or give your life to someone else, says Darling.
I touch her forehead.
You’re warm, I say. You should lie down.
Does the Lord suffer, too? Does he have woe? The Krishnas and Adventists throw their hands up in Union Square. The happy throngs, Eli, full of love and misery. We hustle chess on this old sunny day but then a thin kid puts a knife to your throat.
I thought this was a safe city now, I say to him.
It was till whites started killing brothers.
I have Cherokee blood, I say.
Everybody says that, he says.
Yeah, everybody says that, I say.
Give me the cash, says the kid.
I give him my money and my rabbit’s foot and dagger.
I have no answers for the fading American empire. The streets are quiet now but souls are heavy with gold or the anger that comes with too much hunger. Cataract scouts furniture for his dream house. This might be a good place for him to settle down once his mission is complete. I go to the Met and take my time. It is my church, my house of worship. To the Japanese garden on the second floor.
Damn, this shit is tranquil, says the woman with the purple hair.
It’s Zen, I say.
Tranquil as hell, she says.
I build my wings in the basement of St. Thomas Church. A cigarette between my lips and some hymns playing low on the boom box. The ATM signs make whores’ faces red and the crusty kids from Idaho stay warm cuddling black labs with red bandannas. An old man in his underwear runs after a girl with diamonds in her ears. Then to my personal heaven. I rock Darling in my arms after a long day of work. Flesh of my flesh, I say.
You really think I came from your rib, she says.
I don’t care where you came from baby, I say. I’m just glad we’re here.
On the subway I catch the eye of a girl who looks like Tuesday with a man who looks like Finger. I run for them but they get off the train. I squeeze my way through the doors but my leg is stuck. A drunken lacrosse team pushes me out just before I’m sliced in half. I run after Finger and Tuesday. I knock over a German tour group and nearly push a blind babushka onto the rails but save her at the last minute. I run up the stairs. I can feel Tuesday and Finger’s comfort again. Their friendship. Their weirdness.
Tuesday, I call. Finger!
A man dressed as a woman and a woman dressed as a man turn around.
Sorry, I say. Thought you were someone else.
The summer fades to leafless trees and the rapists on Rollerblades fill the parks again. Cops’ walkie-talkies bark out numbers and a drunk girl is always crying in the street.
I lost my dog, she says.
What’s the name?
Mr. Nobody.
Nobody?
She weeps.
Nobody. Nobody. Nobody.
I am among the long-distance runners in the long-distance race. They enjoy their strong hearts. They say running gives them great sexual pleasure.
Where are we running, I ask a runner.
To the finish line.
Where’s that?
Depends on how far you want to go.
St. Edmund dies in the arms of a peasant girl. He’s known for wearing shirts made of human hair. Tonight at St. Thomas Church we dine on rotten peaches and stale coffee, Eli. I shall set sail into the great expanse of sky and to that Lady Liberty and fill the voids of my heart with a new child for the nation. I am the wings, bad saint of the sky. I am the lover of wonders. Peace be with you.
And also with you, you say, Eli.
Go back to sleep, I say. There’s nothing good out here to report.
From sea to shining sea, lift up thine eyes. To the serious nurses going serious places. To the asinine lovers of fine wines and cigars and the food-obsessed. There is nothing worse than an aficionado. Darling, come closer to me and let my hand rest on your belly. Just a little and let’s weep together for this the most awful and beautiful nation in history. The stranger asks the stranger, Will you watch my stuff? I fall in and out of love with humanity again and again. A cop kills an unarmed kid. Hate. A Korean wedding party laughing on a double-decker bus. Love.
St. Charles dies in the dunes of Arabia holding the hand of a lost rabbi. They pray together to the same God in different ways. They feel the pull of the long-dead kings of the world, their slaves and wives and plagues and firstborns murdered in the streets. Eli, we could eke out some romantic vision of the South, go back to the old time religion of Mississippi. Stay closer to the cave than the drawing room. Destroy the poets with their hearts on their sleeves.
Cataract reads Penthouse in braille. He writes songs about the rapture on his yellow guitar. Nono jogs in her velvet black tracksuit and brews kombucha tea. The living long to live more life. Cataract gives a quarter to a one-legged trombone player in Washington Square then takes ten bucks from his cup. My visions are escalating. The tiger and lamb make love. The snake and Eve commiserate. Adam takes another bite.
St. Sylvia clowns on the streets of Budapest for her supper when the prince finds her and makes her queen. From the seat of power she protects the Christians from being thrown over bridges. She walks the promenade with orchids in her hair. Her throat is slit by the descendants of Spanish Moors in the afternoon so everyone can see.
> The man with horns in the West Indian parade has a message for you, says Darling.
What did he say, I ask.
He says you will only know yourself when you see your face.
What?
Physicists explode the world to bits to see what we’re made of. The signs of everlasting life are all around us but I don’t have the right eyes. Gods are dreaming up new stuff to baffle everyone and the snakes in the grasses smell with their tongues. I am stretching myself toward the streetlamps that fill the empty heavens. The news isn’t even news anymore. People work and work and work for tiny numbers in the clouds. The ditch digging will never end and the thin, sad girls of the East Village all live in Brooklyn now. Eli, there is nowhere to preach the gospel, no gospel left to preach. No sun I can see. Nowhere left to lose my mind in peace.
I wish people still smoked cigarettes, you say, Eli.
They do.
Yeah. But not like they used to.
Below the sports bar is a grave where the dead Indians slumber. Darling and I fight all morning. She is suicidal and so am I. Then we make up with kisses and cups of black coffee and the stars of the night fading into day.
I want to marry you in a French country church with the baker as the witness, I say.
I want to marry you in the wheat field where van Gogh killed himself, she says.
Cataract is fishing in the Hudson River. He smiles at the bankers and fools, his dark eyes seeing everything but the physical world. He knows every dream we have and every fear and every highway happiness. Nono cleans the fish and they feast. They seek the carnivals and fairs and go antiquing in the good part of Bushwick. Darling’s father’s father was a great crooner of love songs and her mother’s father owned a condom company. She darns my socks and makes my breakfast. Eli, we are men by desperate means. I rub my wings and pepper the night with prayers to my lovers and friends. I go to the chapel and weep for better ways to make my bed.
Sophia Page 6
