Billy was a sour cherry pit, said Mrs. Klink. I believe her first name was Mrs. I took to calling her Mrs. and she never objected. She was always extremely direct, even when she was flirting with an episode of dementia, as when she said to me at lunch, You’ve mown the grass horribly, Philbert. You’ve missed all the edges. You are a wretched man. All I could focus on was the fact that her husband’s name was Philbert Klink. I imagined him unhappy. But that’s not the point, she went on. They will kill all of us and rummage through our things.
We’re old people, Emily Kuratowski said. She was a small woman with piercing eyes that never seemed to point anywhere. What can they do to us that will really matter? We’re nearly dead anyway.
Hear, hear, said Mrs. Klink.
Billy did not die happily or happy, I said. They turned and stared at me because I was generally the quiet one of the newly formed group. We can make sure they don’t win. We can get even for Billy.
Yeah, right, said Emily Kuratowski. What will that do for us?
It might satisfy us.
We’re long past satisfaction, Maria said.
Okay, then it might amuse us.
The group paused at the word. They liked the idea of being entertained. Their old heads nodded, then nodded some more.
I’d like to be amused, Sheldon said. Lord knows I’m not getting any action around here.
Maria Cortez gave Sheldon’s arm a playful slap. Stop it, you.
What do we do? Mrs. Klink asked.
They all looked to me. I had already, fueled by an new and inconsonant desire for revenge and an even more uncharacteristic willingness to take action, decided to take the lead. Though I had no plan, I understood that our objectives would have to be clear, simple, and quick and without too much ambition, as my comrades were subject to sudden slips into other worlds and times and, for all I knew, so was I.
29
In my rooms I stood and studied my little kitchen area and was reminded of Cornell’s Toward the Blue Peninsula, imagining the steps from my little range to my little icebox, then marveled at how my use of the term icebox dated me so efficiently, so uncomplicatedly. It might be easier, I thought, it might be easier.
I sat in my living room without lamplight and pulled out a random book from my pile — a pile that throughout my life was constantly growing but was now steadily diminishing, my being well past mezzo del cammin di nostra vita — Dante’s Inferno. I opened it but did not read. I cried. About Billy. About your mother. About you. And it was not ugly music. Io non piangeva, si dentro impietrito. Forever the pounder of metaphor, the seeker of stretched connection, the pioneer of extended conjunction, I imagined the Gang or orderlies as the six wings of Lucifer, beating to free him from the ice and creating an icy wind that only creates more ice.
And so you’ve come to visit and you’ve written your visit into actuality or I have written this for you, once again, though none it matters a hill of whatever now, does it? You asked me once if I was postmodern and I asked you if your question contained a hyphen. I finally have an answer and I offer it here as it is apropos of my following dear Virgil down Satan’s shivering, hairy back. I finally have figured out I do not wish to deny being a modernist by trying to embrace all that is familiar while pretending to not be concerned with making something brand spanking new. I do not wish to create new clichés. But neither will I bare my soul to build the new machine that no one has seen just to have it do what the old machine did. So, what am I about, son? Dying, son. Dying well. Dying powerfully, vigorously, with might and main, to chop and change to suit my dying mission, to tie dying ever to life, to living, to breathing, to tie dying to the moon and the stars, to fix dying to light and darkness and rain and mist and arid winds.
Preface
I don’t know if readers will like your novel, if you choose to write your novel or take credit, perhaps blame, for having written your novel, I don’t know, just don’t know if they will like the turns it takes, the turns you find so pleasing, its comedy, its fantastic elements, the pones you consider passably original, its relaxed and natural transition, except where abrupt and intentionally jarring, the curious, unconventional mixture of different styles that gives the work a distinctive air, leaving you to hope that you entertain, perhaps upset, maybe frighten a reader. . but what a bad preface I have written for you, leaving you nothing to do but tenaciously cling to your conclusions; this is a funny book with natural transitions, except where abrupt, with original fantastical elements; and if all that is true, then your work is beautiful; says who? How bizarre a reader you construct, because you do construct her, him, it, don’t you? How bizarre that reader must be to ingest your preface and believe it or at least not abandon your projected desires concerning your so-called novel. However, in fact, your book might seem to begin in the manner of a definition dialogue, setting out to identify rhetorical stratagems, but concludes, as perhaps all things conclude, appearing as little more than an attempt to discern how one can best find some happiness in this life. Whereas we might be moved to plausibly regard the novel as just this, we would still be wrong, wouldn’t we? Because all it is, all it ever will be, all it ever can be, is an effort at saying how much you love your old man. And a day late at that.
Our visits are always so short.
30
It had drizzled that morning, but by lunch it was sunny and hot. We were all crouched on the brink of something, ostensibly the bank of the little pond on the grounds, but we knew it was much deeper than that. Mrs. Klink blushed painfully when she discovered that her skirt had been hiked very high up her wrinkled thigh and that Sheldon Cohen had been appreciating the view. Oh, don’t cover it, he said in a sweet way that did little to make her feel better or less conspicuous, though it was clear to me that she was enjoying herself. Maria Cortez said, Take a pill. And then we were all quite quiet. I had just revealed to my friends that one of the keys in my possession was to the pharmaceutical locker. Emily Kuratowski was not with us that day. She had been taken to the hospital with pains in her side, this after having to wait hours before an orderly came to help her to the toilet. They’re going to kill us all, Sheldon said, one by one. We’re near dead anyway, Maria Cortez said. That’s right, I said, that’s right.
31
Teufelsdröckh was set on thirty well-watered acres adjacent to a suburban calamity called Calabasas, a roadside mishap that stank of fast food and automotive puke. It was a better buffer than the chilling water that surrounded Alcatraz, for at least the water promised certain death. We residents, as we were called, discarding the more unpleasant designation patients, as well as the more accurate term inmates, were not discouraged from venturing out to play in the traffic, as it were. We were free to walk or catch the bus that was twenty minutes late regardless of one’s arrival at the stop. I walked three long, unshaded blocks to a mall the size of a small Iowa town. I had of course been in such places before, perhaps many times, though I had always tried to avoid them, so I should not have been surprised, stunned, by its massiveness or by the eerily familiar repetition of shops or by its complete uselessness in the face of its terrific promises. All I wanted was a locksmith, not even that, but a human with a key-making machine, my key on one side and a blank key on the other, a whirring, screeching noise, a spinning, buffing noise, and then two keys hopefully capable of opening the same lock. After exhausting myself with a walk the length of the place I learned by way of a directory map that Frenhofer’s Key-Ask was located near the door through which I had entered. The KeyAsk was in fact a kiosk set in the flow of traffic and it was manned by a boy dressed in all black wearing black lipstick.