You got maybe something warm for Him for winter? We’ve got to keep Him in good shape, alive.
You don’t worry about us, says PopPop, please God, everything’s fine. He’s wearing an old rag of mine, I’m wearing a newer one; when we don’t trade, we share, send the spare shmatte out to be cleaned.
It’s been pleasant, Friedrich, but I really must and yadda with lessening tact, he heaves bag onto back, offers the fur a snotted sleeve limply shook, then slumps through the doors, which are automatic to the left and right for the handicapped when they aren’t in the middle revolving, through its mortuary lobby, funereal arrangements of flower atop low benches like coffins filled with stone to the elevator, express, overclimatized against the outside inclement, spurting muzak, an icicle clarinet, a snowflake cymbal, dingding he digresses his tweed tighter, the gnaw of the gut, hound’stooth, raises his collar and resumes a whistle at meeting this other orphan, a filthy wild though appealing update of a newsie or shoeshine type, who lately lived in the elevator, left to fend for himself while on vacation by a grandfather who’d lived in the tower until he, as Affiliated, died, without his firstborn grandson, who over the last week was given a uniform and salary financed by the facility’s more generously gullible tenants in return for doing what he loved best, pushing his home’s buttons at the violently random. He grins small fangs, scratches skin, pimpled one cheek the other pubered with stubble, then flicks a middlefinger out to depress all the floors in a swipe, last among them the eye glowing PENTHO SE.
Even with all this happening, PopPop says in interruption of his own humming, I should wish you a happy and healthy, pursing among his hides for a late holiday tip — may this year be better than what’s passed, and not wanting to waste an egg on the boy, with stiff nervous fingers finds a dime to drop to his pocket.
PopPop leaving behind him a beach on his heels, from the blowsy elevator to tread the wet over the carpet laid intermittently rumpled with dune to the door to his penthouse, an opalescent sun its button of bell whose plaque underneath, if rung, proclaims in text and sound, POP — POP (has that ring to it, doesn’t it? he’d said to Benjamin, icebreaking, shattering stuff, this getting to know you), makes as if he’s digging himself out of his pants again for his keys amid the loose change and changeless sand as the door to the elevator shuts, and the metal with its urchin descends. Then, he frisks toward the only other door on the floor, opens it to the stairwell and falls down a flight edged in green railing and emergency lights, tripping over the threshold and out the door a floor below klutzy footing until steadying in front of another, pants, pauses, sucks air, straightens his hair in the nameplate’s reflection, ARSCHSTRONG writ in wrinkles across the forehead, untucks, then tucks in again the tails of his shirt, tries to put a hand in any pocket of his vest, then realizes he hasn’t yet slit them. A hand unpurposed is as a deliverance withheld and so he knocks, redemption, as ordered knocks three times more, knock knock knock then — an arthritic shuffle; an eye’s squint through the peephole; a surgical procedure this unlocking of nine locks, and then there’s the deadbolt to think of; a gentle gentile appearing simultaneously young and intensely old, not as much newbornlike as a fetus overstayed, a fruit gestated to sensate and so, overripe, he slights the door, draft, light, plucks from his mouth a slick and yet rough prune for a tongue, and through the sliver with all along the chain still on leans slowly to lick at the tonguing returned of his lover, who just darkness ago had been the repressive responsible for Benjamin who should already be sleeping upstairs, dreaming of anything other than this, God forbid. Then, Arschstrong withdraws, shuts door, undoes the chain in a rattle, opens wide: PopPop, with his hands out in front of him, his late offering bagged, a fresh hatch of Nest Eggs.
A happy and a healthy, Adi, let auld acquaintance blah blah, I should feel lucky to be alive. A wonderful New Year, though that was probably months ago now; here’s to new beginnings, and to my Benjamin, too, a comfort in our winter years…once I get named guardian, the papers go through, the accounts revert — just think of what we can do: I’ve never been to Greece, have you, never been to the Islands, don’t even know what they mean by the Islands when everyone’s always saying they’re going to the Islands. Venice, never been to London, Paris either, or Rome, Minsk or Pinsk, with you I mean, what’s Siberia after all without you?
