Benjamin’s put to bed early, PopPop lockingin SonSon, to sleepsleep in the roomroom of His MomMom; are you cozy, comfortable, suck it up, I’ve known worse. I lived twice what even your parents lived — I’ve lived double lives.
Only to return an old, barnacled, loosebottomed wreck at the end of his days — to youth; a late evening stroll along with the waterfront at the changing of the guardian tide, which wets his way along a lip of expectant froth, an undulating tongue of wake, sinking in then swallowing down to dampen his shoes and socks, almost tripping, to tumble onto the sharp weed of his whistle, fallendentured, suckedgummed and burdened, too, a bag schlepped over a shoulder’s stoop, filled with those nightly fresh, skyshelled orbs known as Nest Eggs, late evening and its speckled space being the best conditions for collection. After a’gathering from along the shoreline, amid the ribboning of bows from the crash of waves, his own Xmas presents, belated tokens for the near and dear, eggs uncovered from sand, redeemed from tangles of kelp, hypodermiclike shards of shells, found amid glassy drift, pyres of driftwood, fallen clouds of sand, packed like snow, grained with ice, PopPop — tattered in overcoat, scarf knotted like a second necktie — meets outside the sandside, seaswept eastern entrance to his tower a goy who must merit the rating of at least an acquaintance, waving I’m so excited more hands than all the poor of the world would know to clasp in the brotherhood of schnorr and so Pop-Pop stops, feels at his heart, sets down his burlap bag, fishes the hook of a stogie out of a pocket of his overcoat, which is furry and full of holes as if gnawed right from the skin of a deepsea Levantine monster, and lights it and sucks and lungs out smoke and steam, waits as this acquaintance in a felt hat and dewy mink approaches him in a wade and worm around and through a hulking, violently slippery pod of squidy, octopusal mutants. Dim menaces, terrorized with three legs, actually slimy entities of two legs each ferociously lamed by a distended, additive antenna — they’re merely the night shuffleboard enthusiasts, congregated under the sunny blast of facility kliegs, the goy highstepping over the flight of their discs, thrust cues and on into boxes, ten points, twenty (the laws of mourning don’t prevent them from enjoying, even if they’d had any respect), to greet PopPop. But who is he? PopPop removes his glasses, licks the wonder onto the face of his lenses, breathes and wipes, a glare, a blur’s bubbling smudge, the heat from the tower’s lobby fogging again even at this distance whenever a fellow tenant comes and goes, the revolving, revolvingly vertiginous door — my sight isn’t what it used to be, but he’s said that for as ever long as he’s had sight; though, then again, neither is that that needs to be seen.
Enough, we’ll let the thing talk.
An openingline, long rehearsed, memorized by mirrors of lobby and bath.
I’m making a fortune in furs, I’ll tell you, seems with this weather last few days…it’s peculiar, isn’t it — sales are up what, like two hundred percent.
As he tells you what he wants, he tells you who he is.
It would be Freddie, wouldn’t it, who else the none other, who knows how it’s spelled on his bell: Freddy, maybe, the Fur King, newly mounted, crowned in a taxidermical head, anointed with formaldehyde, a sheep in the clothing of the wolf, which is bundled tight under tens of gekkering foxes whose tails have gone red with shame.
Listen, he pleads PopPop, hat in hand, scratching at the bumps on his bald that seem prospective antlers, it’s not profiteering, I’m as sorry as the next about what’s gone on, what’s a goy to do, tell me, he attempts a handshrug, trying it on for size, forgive him it asks, he’s new around here…just trying to make a living, nothing wrong with that, no, got my daughter with the abdominals and always with the yoga meditation talking my ears blue about responsibility and such, but I’m telling you, he’s telling PopPop, Faivish olev ha whatever it is, he would’ve wanted it this way, no doubt, he was always after the sale, all about business, life is death he’d always say but business is business, which is both and it’s good, listen I’m telling you now it’s almost too good — now this would’ve killed him! that he doesn’t know what to do with his gestures, as if to ask without asking, any typology tips? and since his hands of tens heads dumb don’t know what to do with themselves either he hides them, in the pockets of his mink, furry little rodentholes, lintlined burrows, and — despite the cold as he’s not sure if PopPop’s listening, or had answered him, or of anything — he removes his earmuffs, which are bunnypuffs, the tails of rabbits that thump no more and, breathlessly, shoves them into his other pocket.
What about you and this grandson I’m hearing so much about?
It’s true what they’re saying?
You know some people are asking questions?
