And, too, like any nature, His presence is everywhere, if not the ideal itself then its imaginable made: numinous as omni, the nimious divine — appearances whether in person or name cutting with the dullest rustiest knife to commercial again and again, on the eye of the teevee and over the mouth of the radio, also, Ben borne flaky and weightless upon their flurrying waves; interview the morning after gunkeyed, skunkmouthed, junketed night, this having to put up with: lumpy, lumpensaggy beds just upgraded cots, the patronizingly perky wakeup calls, impertinently polite alarms, and drecky, limited menu roomservice — without privacy to redeem any downtime allotted save that afforded Him by mother and sisters Mary, dizzying, revolving-doored, them following in the livery of a private minivan, metallic pink. Advance family, it’s theirs to prep His suite, pretrash it: filling it with His variegated mementos, babylore, and cheapskate keepsakes, His parent’s tchotchke inheritance already synchronized atop foreign shelves and alien mantels by His delayed ETA: the Messiah has landed; in every stop at nowhere, in every accommodation, they recreate His old room, which is contractually bound through the adjoining to an executive suite, to host Der footing the tab at the head of a hierarchy connective: down the halls doors opening onto doors, into the rooms of His minders Gelt, Mada, Hamm, theirs communicating ever further toward the obstructed, parkinggarage, parkinglot view with those of His others, His entourage whose disciples Ben pretends He doesn’t know, or wouldn’t — like when they dropin plausibly to borrow His bucket for ice or remotecontrol, then try to make professional acquaintance how He just grunts under the eyemask worn over His mouth, ignores them into the womb of the pillow (though it’s not snobbery, it’s just being bored with Himself, with His selves); altogether them a stagparty of shvitzy, hairy fat taking up an entire floor of even the most generous of hotels, bulging the atriums, which are sky-glassed, bursting through the fernfestooned, goldappointed lobbies…

No matter, Der says to Him in the limo up the highway, passing the docks disused, the empty slips and their warehouses warehousing only the inferiorly talmudic, mishnaic, and midrashic effects of the Torahfact dead (that’s where the excess haggadahs went, that’s where the surplus megillot are stored); the asphalt lots surrounding still fenced if lain fallow, for now, cracking, they’re breaking apart from within, furrowed for the lasting plant of the weather — the Sabbath’s always a traveling day, we’ve booked no engagements; you’ll notice, all our Saturday shows begin after sundown.

You’ve booked no engagements because nobody’s going to pay for a show on the Shabbos, haven’t you noticed?

The world’s lost its mind. Everyone wants to be me, except me.

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