PopPop takes out his teeth, spits on them, rubs them shined on a sleeve of his robe, shuffles to the kitchen then returns with an alternative, puddings, a delicacy of the Mixed Kitchen, the specialty of an alien house; a neutral foodstuff this linnerless or undunched option, the favorite dish of the Unaffiliated and those, too, with dentures of any persuasion: pareved without ethnicity as it’s become, institutionally, the chosen sustenance of the elderly, the geriatric without mind or the stomach with which to digest implications of nationality, race, or religion. PopPop favored pudding, the more jiggling the better, and concocted it well, its recipe no miraculous secret, you just have to ask, though its vital ingredient you wouldn’t expect.
They’re Nest Eggs; white ellipticals washing up on the shoreline since last-last-Xmas — at least, that’s when they first were noticed, or initially reported, three years ago now — amazingly white rounds, almost geological, waved in to rest upon gently sloping, surely endangered dunes: seeming, too, like supersized disembodied teeth, artificially whitened, set in sunken gums of sand, for a while the phenomenon was suspected a savvy advertising scheme on the part of a statewide dentistry franchise, which suspicion has since been allayed as the owners of said franchise died, this Xmas Eve, and the ovoids kept washing up, apparently innocent of ploy; a handful of local Injuns had been spreading rumors of them as ominous if hackneyed omens, cryptoSeminoles casting them mailorder to the interior for an old doublesawbuck, shipping also overseas at a profit not insignificant; select restaurants and participating retail outlets throughout panhandle and Gulfside Florida had begun accepting them in lieu of cash, credit, paper, or plastic; and many began to worship these odd ova, which emanated a strangely cinematic, lowbudgeted luminescence under sufficient strength of overhead fluorescence: enough to tan, not enough to make accompanying toast; they became ensconced on dashboards, as hood ornaments; largebreasted, thicknecked women wore them in silver settings around their necks; the athletically inclined jogged with one in each hand to enhance the effects of their morning workouts; meanwhile, environmentalists were out scooping them up, gathering them in deep, widemeshed nets; every once in a while a volunteer occupied untangling seaweed from a net would break one underfoot, to a flow viscous, noisome — they seemed to be a species of allyolk egg, which subsequent laboratory tests inconclusively confirmed, identifying them as Nest Eggs, after some janitor in a hot labcoat came up with the name; and one, which as the circumferentially biggest yet found had been taken to University of Miami Medical for experimentation, after a period of tepid incubation hatched a previously unknown species of snowbird, which was immediately determined nonkosher, slaughtered then barbecued to refresh a faculty banquet. Three Nest Eggs, stacked in a glass, cracked on its rim, then poured out into another glass, the preferred nightcaps of PopPop Israelien: he drank them before bed, ate them in omelets in the morning — with diverse species of mushrooms, onions, peppers, as equal opportunity cheeses as his lower tract could allow — fried them for a snack, hardboiled them, sliced, diced, then mixed them into an undressed salad in the afternoon, poached them for a snack, scrambled, or sunnysided them up in the evening, used Nest Eggs in eggnog, too, this being the season, and of course in the omnicourse dessert he serves himself, the pudding. Monday through Saturday, this was his sustenance, but every Sunday since he and his wife had retired here, the days of her death and Benjamin’s arrival included, PopPop brunched in a buffet, alone, the Restaurant Under the Sign of the Imperfectly Toned Pectorals its name, liningup always at nine sharp and waving a vellum swath resplendent with Habsburgian seals, shrieking indignant theft at the expectant waitstaff.
His weekly dispute, you understand, was over the sun, parching premeditated arson over the openair diningarea. PopPop Israelien owned the sun, if you’re following, he tells Benjamin between pudding mouthfuls, having purchased it from its former owner — a local greyhound breeder with whom he’d often shared a card of onehanded B — I — N — G — O — with goddamn near his entire savings, having signed the papers a day after his retirement (MomMom had almost died upon receiving the news: from that day, her cancer, Israel’d thought, the slow sunning to Malignantville, FL, Cemetery County, the dead’s exurbanized plot), the sun the only property in his portfolio, his sole investment, and due to the ever over and over again difficulties as explained to the manager — who was apparently not deaf, despite the impudent buzzing of his cochlear implant — the impractical exigencies of keeping track of just who exactly uses the sun, for what purpose, with what intensity, beginning when and for how long during what season because rates always change, PopPop explaining to Him now, he’d decided to extort payment from here and here only, having been successful only this past week, and what a stunner, though what with the late weather who knows how long it’ll last.
I’m telling you for the last time, PopPop’s telling him the Manager for the last time that Sunday, you need to get out from under my sun; you’re stealing my light, my heat, and I’ve asked of you virtually nothing, zip, nada, I was willing to go as low as what, $10 a month, ten dollars, know what it set me back, much more than that, I’ll tell you, listen, my son…
Please, Mister Israelien, the Manager’s shivering under the property in dispute, we all know your son’s a lawyer, we’ve discussed this matter with him on a number of occasions; now, allow me to apologize for any inconvenience.
We’ve just recently agreed with him to rent your sun for the sum of $8/month, we think this fair, overcast or not, eclipses we’ll deal, and we hope you’ll agree; we’re prepared to pay today for January, and will pay for every month within a week of its first. In return, we’ll have unlimited usage; no rays attached, if you will; you’ll not hassle us anymore, do we have an understanding? and PopPop adds up the figures tattooed on the mensch’s arm, asks him let’s shake.
I’ll need a month’s security deposit, and two months up front…
The manager shuts eyes, grinds lids, says, you’re very fair, Mister Israelien, then shakes his cuff as PopPop’s a bissel too afraid of the germs, and this with a Health Inspection last Monday, then leaves him for the kitchen to telephone the son, Israel, to finalize the terms of his payment, to be remitted in full to the restaurant midmonth ($18), payment — eight dollars, ten to the restaurant for its trouble — to be transferred to the account of the son’s estranged father a week later; please, the manager’s asking the lawyer who just last year cleared himself a competent million, I’d prefer a bank check, you understand. And though Israel’d thought about taking a percentage for himself, Hanna she, forget it.
Limply limbed through the buffetline, PopPop rests his tray at his regular table, outside though shaded and even in this winter they’re having, to partake with a slow deliberation that would be laudable if it wasn’t excruciating, not manners but their vigilant, overdone caricature: he remains erect, firm, silent, disciplined. He esses like the Kaiser must’ve, perfectly, a fressing annoying in the extremity of its decorum, its stateliness and the force of its grace, his posture as if he isn’t indulging with a spoon but is rather sitting on one, and deep, jutting up his gape and into him to scoop out all the inside nervousness, impatience, Weltschmerz and its American stress, the disapproving pain of its stick and the bowl of his bowel perhaps actually enabling the outer serenity, the set face under which his napkin remains immaculate throughout, unto even the postprandial, tucked meticulously under chin and over collar, further protected by the fork and knife he’s using and though recently unmatched plastic at this establishment he’s so enthused with his rental he almost doesn’t notice, just remembers to tip less, and ignores, too, the interior decorating just beyond, the chintz on the cheap with the mirrors, the lights and the Polynesian thatch, the tiki torches and hula luau lei, preferring instead the gustatory setting of his own increasingly senile mind: stags’ heads, alpine appointments, huntinglodge surroundings, fluted stemware, bone china. Wrapped in reverie as if for mental takeout, he’s handling his whitely tined pretensions to silver, slicing and scooping away as if to pristinate plate, as pure as his conscience and cold, a disc plastic itself, and probably inadequately washed, then attempting in the interest of kinder starving in nations darker, unsunned, even the garnishes slit into flowers that bloom like malicious vaginas, magically metamorphosed sexbidextrous swans, prior to reclining — though only after a final faint swipe of his lips — then lighting up an imported cigar banded in gold to lip rings of smoke to the least heaven of umbrella, whose shadow has been sponsored, apparently, by a maker of popular water.