To soak it all in: all the promenading people in retreatmode, retired even from vacation, chazerai of chazerai they’re lolling around in the mud, penned like pigs but ostensibly for their own health, can you believe, the young, kick-shaking spirochetal, the suspected syphilitic, paying homage and offseasonal doubleoccupany, too, to a gerontocracy of the hypochondriac with their own ibberbuttled elders to deal with, with enough of their own about which to kvetch kishkas’ deep: chemodialysis victims, we’re condolencing, poor diverticulitis schmucks become prisoner to their own waste impounded in bags hung heavily from bushes and the branches of trees; munificent municipal parks trailed through with every nature labeled, thoroughly marked, pasture stretches adorned with lifelong, ornately armed benches, inhabited by monuments, defaced these monumental menschs and their womenfolk sitting arteryhardened, encased for plaque’s posterity within the dreck of just visiting pigeons and gulls, waddling off their early feed only flakes of skin and nail peckedup, then passed through and out. And in the distance, on the opposite embankment, those grand colonnades, their columnal pitch and canopies grave and imposing, but ornamentally fragile, delicate in filigree as if of frozen winds, gleaming purely; to reach them, He has to cross the river thiniced over a slippery slip of bridge down a slated, turnedover leaf path littered, too, with souvenir sippingvessels, to shatter them underfoot.
Ben goes and books Himself into what just has to be the most expensive hotel on the boulevard, a wonder they have the room, though they assure anything for Him under the name of one Doctor Karl Young, with a tipped hand in thanks to Herr Portier and a promise to pay when He can — from the proceeds, hopedfor, of what’s to be His dissimulative hocking, schlocking, and petty steals: the claimed unclaimed dummy drummering luggage of a traveling salesmensch He finds here in the hall and wheels away to the hold of a service elevator, lost sprung open to be found stuffed with barters, that and the oddsending wampum of reliquary junk: shrunken skulls, baculumbones of coonschlong preserved in what dipped finger smells and tastes like snake-oil; the black currency of blond scalps; then the Hopi dolls and rattles He’d fingered from his Sabbath Injun host, to sell to an elderly spagoer as charms against death — and to sell, too, His parkingticket debts, He hopes, He’s trying, to the eventual spagoner’s gogetting son for either half or double, He’ll forget which, of what they would have cost Him if He’d pay. To live is to stay open, all weekday, all weeknight, to make the business. Checkout’s at noon. He scribes His name into the register an Xlike halfstar.
The hotel, it’s an enormous collapse of grandeur called the Grand, none other now that all’s kashered under new management, the only Grand they say, halfprice of thievery after the summer rush, two pools, one heated and with brunch included, the whole complex: mention this ad and get up to 10 % off at our over 100 restaurants & shops. The lobby’s gorgeous, you should look it up one of these nevers: everything gilded and what’s not is vaulted if it’s not gilded and vaulted both, redwood and brass and steel, brushed just like the hair of virgins, marble veined like the legs of the old, and glass as fragile as their bones. After showering and toweling, which ministrations are hygienically overturned by Ben’s dressing as all He has for later’s the robe He’s been shrugging forever, He makes downstairs again to scare up a meal, wanders from the Grand lobby into one of the just ask them how many ball or conference rooms hallwayed off, a highly windowed, sequoiafloored, plastered paradise of ornately fruity moldings as the valances for bafflings hung, which serve to both dampen any happenings reverberous within, as well as they’re regional maps sponsored by the local Better Business Bureau — in which room, now, a handful of marks having been existentially Cained only to be soon enough enabled are being sermonized to regarding the seven or so but who’s counting highly effective prophecies of highly effective something or other’s, as will shortly be not quite forthcomingly revealed to such an uniformly out of work, out of time audience of this prepaid seminar in what’s promised to be high histrionic style by this schmuck of a mensch who needs no introduction, doesn’t want one either he doesn’t himself either script or vet, this mucky motivational speaker standing up front in postulant posture, embalmed in a suit on loan from the director of the least prominent area funeralhome his brother-inlaw; him a healer of faith for those who really have none to have become so sick with doubt that its sufferers they’re finding themselves here and in the pudged midsection of a workweek, to be preached down to with pitch amid the sideshow of slideshow (have you ever thought about the amazing opportunities to be found in — click — real-estate, such as — click — second homes — click — ski chalets — click — mountain retreats and — click — Island timeshares; what would you say if I told you that I knew a secret — click — a thousand shekel incentive up front, which is yours to keep — click — all your money down, we’ll halve your investment—), all coming complete with a regimen, a system, act now and receive as our free gift to you a stock of glossy portrait photographs as well as an autographed book he’ll let go for nothing wholesale — squint closely, he’s standing on its copies stacked — vanitypublished by an inexistent imprint of the Texas State Genizah, of which he’s not just a client but also the founder; Ben peeks His head in just as the mensch’s beginning, spitting shvitz into the antiquated mic exhumed from the air’s grave of local radio.
Trouble with your boss? he asks.
Yes!
Need to ask for that raise or vacation, you deserve it?
And verily the whole room shouts, yes!
Hymn…he milks it treyf, I can help.
As it is written in the book of our prophet Danieclass="underline" And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate and yadda and blah (he’s skipping, he’s flipping)…I’m about to reveal to you my failsafe method, proven then reproved, which has helped multitudes, I’m talking untold.
Are you ready?
Amen, they shout in response.
Week One: Confirm your Covenants! Those you make with yourself and those you make with others…
Hoping a light snack, those requisite refereshments to be served following, Ben pulls up a chair, gives attention as the mensch, he spits on…on Day One, flicks a slip of imaginary lint from his laminated red powertie, put yourself first! Follow my easy to follow assembly instructions to first identify your Four Beasts then, for the rest of the week, pour your determination out upon the desolate — and nu, take back control of your life!
Amen, they scream spittle to fleck the walls, stain apparitions, visualization techniques…shoes and socks and their crumpled creaseless, and pleatless, foldeddown waistband pants to the elasticized knee as bald as their heads to be soaked in saliva pooled on the floor, before we’re all done here.
Day One, 1st Step: as I’ve said, you must identify your four beasts — do you want an example?
Do we want an example? they answer and mean it.