No matter, Der says to Him in the limo up the highway, passing the docks disused, the empty slips and their warehouses warehousing only the inferiorly talmudic, mishnaic, and midrashic effects of the Torahfact dead (that’s where the excess haggadahs went, that’s where the surplus megillot are stored); the asphalt lots surrounding still fenced if lain fallow, for now, cracking, they’re breaking apart from within, furrowed for the lasting plant of the weather — the Sabbath’s always a traveling day, we’ve booked no engagements; you’ll notice, all our Saturday shows begin after sundown.
You’ve booked no engagements because nobody’s going to pay for a show on the Shabbos, haven’t you noticed?
The world’s lost its mind. Everyone wants to be me, except me.
Wait, Der says as the limo drags the slushed and scaled trashy wake of its wide, fishtailing turn into West 72nd, it’s more a question of you than of them…I’m sorry, he has to insist: I’m doing this for you, son. You’ve made, or you have through no fault of your own, plenty of enemies — Ishmael’s, Esau’s, Amalek’s more personal if you want it like that. Offhand — as the limo slips to a stop, with Der sitting scratching what itches, greasing his own palm while averting his eyes to the window, tinted, which he can prophesize out of without anyone peering in: a glimpse of an animally upholstered soul; the beasts who feed on redcarpets, that scopophiliac swarm — I can think of up to eighteen acronyms that want you…quieting as he’s let out from the limo to wait at sidewalk for Ben to be escorted out by the expediter on loan from Secret Service, then all the way around the limo’s trunk to meet him with His pose. Tightlidded, lipped — eighteen why who want me what? Ben’s thinking. Dead, an outsized flicker. Away…under a breath, circumspect one step down the walkway to the revived, relocated Undisclosed Avenue Deli, it’s called: Broadway, Amsterdamned, who knows, the unaddressed location of this recently opened ratnering dive, a katzified joint so premiere and exclusively new it like their refound God doesn’t yet have a name, or a phone, doesn’t take reservations, might never; this a Scripturally themed media insiders party organized by the office of Doctor Abuya, like bring your own Bible and He’ll autograph it for you no problem is the thinking. A Torah torah torah. Reassessed…in another step, hatting His face from the produce and eggs of the salaried protests, then disappearing — the flashes clouding Ben in heavens, the mortal stuff of stars. Redirected, pose, clickclack, who are you wearing, myself, my own wearing skin, Reinterpreted again yet again, with yet another slow step as journalists from the Times, Die Zeit, Le Monde, Il Corriere della Sera, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Pravda among incomprehensible others scribble down that term in our language, soon superseded — with a last step to the door-mensch, Der with an arm around a pole sustaining the sag of the rabinically velvet ropes offers repurposed, rethought…and I would think, Silenced; he smiles flack, crosses the threshold, then and only once inside and safe amid the rank air wafting from the imported grove of ulcerous Jaffa citrus turns a heel to whisper: what would happen — just putting an idea out there, oblige me — what would happen if you God forbid died, Ben…and then what — the ingathered demand refunds, out of my pocket? and he pinches out from the pants of his uniform his own, to air their immaculate linings, softbellied without coin…and in no time it’s a style, a trend, everyone’s doing it, that and those pants of theirs are more and more being bought secondhand, sold door-to-door.
Tonight’s the eve of the eve of Shavuout, also known as the Feast of the Tabernacles, even as we speak being doneup by Properties in granite — the last night of any success to simcha, before tomorrow’s opening at Radio City, for three nights of previews then the road, hitting the stix. And after the well-wishing, the Mazeling gut luck hugs and doubling kisses from the lips of the famous, which never meet veil but always wing at the air at both cheeks, Ben’s returned not to the limousine that’s never left curbside only idled and burnt, at the appointed hour swerving out from the front in its motorcade of ten police up front with ten more down behind and then fire, in the middle the limo warding only a paddedly paid Mexicano double of His, a ruse down Broadway south and into Midtown with a solo helicopter’s whirring moon providing searchlight assistance above — but now out the backdoor, Him through the service entrance and from there crowded through the trash alley and out to the stairwell at corner; its wet descent into the warmer mouth of a metallic smoke snake, the train buried steps below the icy crust of the earth; Heber to limo on, Ben and His minders to travel underground, depths deeper toward down there, Ben suspects where: gehenna, Hell Itself in these the latter days of the subway’s use, His own private transit always express, stopskipping without transfer, no hops to opposite tracks, He’s routed direct even through the outermost boroughs, bridge & tunneling ways toward the ends of the line, terminal termini — the domains of resistance, at Far Rockaway and Ozone Park, is the rumor, at Flushing, Coney Island, and Van Cortlandt, last stops with everyone off the settlements of the unredeemed the gossip goes; or else others hold it’s all a hopeful hoax, that the fix is in if broken, collapsing, and that Der’s just using a threat preexistent, capitalizing on it, creating fear from whatever incentive around; or, he’s been slandered to have set an entire counterrevolutionary consciousness onto the fasttrack, having been behind a Resistance from the very beginning — with his nose to the last cold car with his hands and arms straining, legs taut, and teeth set, to have the system all to his own miscellaneous purposes, once they’ve become clear…don’t mind us, we’ll wait.
Ben riding sitting but jittered, His minders forced to stand, straphanging, leanedup against doors derelict, slouching asleep; them alone together in the frontcar coming down so fanatically fast, snaking the tracks that swallow themselves in an engorgedly warm worming of tunnel, a rodentlike, every-tailed scurry this rush of Him and train like a roach upon the rail of its own vomit…one lone latemodel hurtle if unnumbered, unlettered — now that one train’s givenover to all, every route — turned expressly loose and dullheaded, shrieking senseless on the system entire with everything else stilled, its others last warehoused in a yard boroughed so far Downtown it’s in Brooklyn, which don’t even think about it, too far and dimly imagined, how it only gives a headache to further squint or suspect: the glumsmogged recesses, through the windows — the catacombs; Ben passing here in the tunnels the snuffed candle shadows of saints without cults, the brave without canon, the homeless more beaten than beatified, without legend or enough money to afford for themselves miracles; ragged almost naked, they’re freezing and skeletalstarved, some kneeling to their Savior’s shattered statues, with orders of the secular others disheartened, huddling around their fires, sternoing for themselves icicles, a potable Hudson, taking turns to guard their encampments from the recent patrols — until, a gasp for air upon the Path tracks in Joysey, Exchange Place the stop with Ben’s train surfacing to spit from its rusted mouth a new Caddy, a towncar blackened without motorcade or support from the air, which takes on its own the alternate route ice homeward to the Garden; Heber and the limo to return to the Garden alone, with the escorting police and fire sirening the night with whirlingly guttural flashes, leaving behind a hundred utility vehicles leased on plans as various as they’ve been complicatedly voided: jealousy green bugs and extended sedans, and the yellow thinning ice fear of taxistani cabs both medallion and gypsy honking a sheepish bleat to the edge of the freeze that’ll never hold their gas; exhaust fills the sky; after a time, they turn wide around and skid home, hazards on, empty.