O Siegeles! Bugsy’s burg, Lansky’s kinda town, I’m leaving you to-ni-ight…its name, hymn, how it might be derived from the German word Siegel, implying as some scholars hold the King’s Seal of approval, that infamously rhinestoned monarch whose memory lords it over these strange, illicit festivities: thank you, thank you very much…or else, other sages have said, how it might be a benign corruption from the Sephard, its Siega, though the word’s shyly feminine, with the meaning of Harvest, out southernly in this desert due west where nothing grew in the olden heat let alone in this freeze, you get used to it. Here in this garish desert Egypt, Mitzraim’s what the locals know it as, gone Goshen — give yourself another season.
Verily in the course of the buffetline that we call the land of our forefathers they came upon a famine. And so we generations stay enslaved even now, which exile’s to be redeemed with appropriate voucher. The Al-Cohol Hotel & Q’asino…try your luck, try your, try, three wishniaks pitted, rotsweet, it looks like we got a winner, close your eyes, stick out your tongue, here comes a manna of dimes. Tonight and tomorrow, it’s independence from independence we’re observing for the final, last call and closing time and all, though only a handful of the stubborn still wave in the manner of Old Glory. Onearmed bandits: the veteran homeless crutched at the crossroads, as stiffnecked as poles barren, BAR BAR BAR the stripes reeling, slowing, fading…oldtimey jingoes sleeping the day away standing upright, with their thumbs still out, their lids at halfmast, with their hands out, too, begging alms with false palms by the oases motelfront — and that’s it so far out to Mesquite, on the road north toward the border, its barricade, the purdured purdah of the holdouts, Mormondom.
Not to worry, though, there’ll be fireworks enough by tomorrow, the Fourth that isn’t the fourth, the false fourth, the day of the Israelien — Shade wedding, newly autoordained Rabbi Travis Travisky of the drivethru shul to preside: the halls of this Q’asino Hotel coagulating into veins mined for congrats; guests shaking hands, handing around envelopes enclosing checks and tables’ chips, addressed with advice in bright blood: senselessness, don’t spend yourself all in one place. Ben brought low in a seat that both rises and swivels around, costumed already, rouged, perfumed, and powdered: the faygele doing Makeup’s — secretly the partner of the one doing Wardrobe, don’t doubt — gone maybe a little too hard on the coverup, and now the tall, lashthin, lonely stoop goes tweezering again at His eyebrows.
Are you excited for tomorrow? he asks…and what can He say with his knee in His crotch.
O I do love weddings, he goes on, who doesn’t: she’ll walk around you seven times, and then shtum, He doesn’t want to think about it, thinking: where’s my coffee, I take it black but by now you should know that, what about my water, my invincible pills…anyway, why all this makeup if I’m married to the veil — which matches the white jumpsuit, too tight and tawdryjeweled?
Tomorrow, He’s to be married into the family of the President of the country that loves Him, which God blesses with each bountiful lapse of His wilclass="underline" the woman a girl He’s never even met, soon to be converted from daughter to wife. Her name, wait, give me a moment…Lillian Israelien, it has a ring to it, nu, and hope Gelt’s got the ring, sixstitched to his pillow. Then, the chuppah that’s been made in the image of a bedsheet upon which a son will be spilled — the weather holding its sky, which is a canopy greater, a next night’s clouding of the sleepless new moon, tomorrow’s redeye to Newark. Tonight, however, Ben’s been forbidden from mothers and sisters, urged to save up His strength, avoid such risky indulgence: though there’ve been allegations, ahem, situations, hymn, little embarrassments, random indignities…a measure of Schaden done, but nothing the glad hand of Publicity won’t wipe from the face of the earth.
And though there’s no rehearsal tisch, there’s still a rehearsal, which is always the same — whether religion or revue, and no matter the variety, the show must always go on.
Onstage in the main showroom, the Tut-ankh-a-men Ampitheather its name is, the paraplegic, extapdancer who’s also the second asst. director he’s not quite kickstepping, knocking, screaming out the kinks still left in the openers. Mada sits in the emptiness middlerowed, taking quick blacksmeared notes on a legalpad and shouting, too, as the small balding wheelchairbound mensch rolls himself into the sets in a dissatisfied fit, exhorting emphysemic through the hole in his throat, its metallic electrolarynx, the performers assembled: lefthand, and he means it in his emphatic tinny wheeze, the fingers must flutter, you with me, righthand now, right, and soon enough they’re arguing…Mada disagreeing with him through his own hands cupped to bell yell, you’re getting it wrong, then him demanding of Mada — tell me, who’s the professional, he’s asking voicelessly though, without apparatus, unable to manipulate sound as with his hands he’s frantically wheeling toward the lip of the stage, who’s the goddamned professional, rearing himself up almost vertically, this spooked tilt, as Mada throws back, who’s paying the professional…he’s leaning in a smoked hoarse, throatily impotent rage to fall back and out of his chair, which spits out from under him to fly up and into the frontrow, then snaring on a seat just spinning its wheels, him thrown to squirm worm atop the floorboards stageright. Houselights dim, with the spotlight on him; the operator’s been finally woken. He struggles to sit up against a tree prop, redfaced, and tearing, on elbows across the stage foundering before making an attempt with swipes of his fist to lisp pitifully through the gasp of his puncture.
What do you want from me, he asks, what are you asking of us, he pauses for the strain of next speech — that we scrap an entire moon of work, he’s wriggling his insensitive spine against the sloppily paintcaked wooden tree wheeled, which falls over its waxwork fruit: that we should just stop trying, he tries again to sit up, and trust success to what, bribery, coercion, providence, God or His headlining angels? then slumps, to be proppedup by the twelve principal Benettes, who fan him with their wings.
Am I on yet? is Ben’s voice from above — heightened amid the wisps of the walks and there even patiently, too, just hanging around: from the ceiling, stretching the rubberized cords wrapped around waist and stropped to a strut overhead, dangling Him limply over the pit and its floodlights, and sagging, halo drooping, toes weighted nearly to stagefloor — without drama, not enough tension, not much to spectacle at when it comes to suspension.
Save your voice! the crumpled choreographer gasps, a direction taken up slowly in whispers, vouches, and oaths staged by all in unionized unison: Ben. Benja. Benjamin, the stagehands intoning His name in this newly popular propitiatory formula; not as much hoping to save their star from falling than a ritual of pep, invoked in a style baldly copped from the profuse, profaning neon, flashing outside passersby, their yarmulked kith chauffeuring laden, bluefrozen kine. Along the Strip, marquees advertise attractions both former and upcoming in small print (all your past favorites: comic & corpseimpersonator Reggie Feldsein his name is, whom you might remember from his only appearance on Late Night with, forget it; next week: Eleven Intepretations of the Ten Plagues in Lasers & Lights—“Two Thumbs, Guess Where?” says the Siegeles Sun), but the large print’s always for Him: B-E-N it flashes, ten tall, BEN, and then BEN…B-E-N, BEN, B—a pause—N—and a member of the maintenance staff ’s chosen by lots, tephramancy: by the interpretation of ashes, the reflection of helium, argon, krypton, or xenon in puddles of gutter manure — cast out into the wilderness to screw in a new bulb.