This trouble out east, and the homeless know, breaks the ice, what a case…the Garden’s trying to put Him back in the news, keep Him in headlines. Here, read my yarmulke, my kippah, my kopfcap you call it, and he takes it off to let Ben unfold it all for Himself. Total conspiranoia, the mensch goes scraping at his scalp. Turn it over. A2. Me, I’m not buying what they’re selling. Listen. My sister’s my sister, and always will be, but I’m not with her on this one: either she’s in on it, or she’s being set up.
Never mind, his sister, Abe’s exlover’s saying on the steps amid the plink of the pushkes. Abe would’ve married me. He couldn’t stand Elaine. Let me explain. Eileen, I mean. Whomever. Of Blessed Memory.
Ask Abe, the homeless says, if he was alive and he’d tell you. He’d be the first one. Abe, my brother-inlaw, okay, so maybe just my sister’s gentlemensch friend, but we’d met, over the phone, he’s good people. My sister, his lover, alright, his receptionist — she’s family but not to be trusted.
My brother? the woman’s spieling to a grand jury after the complaint’s finally cased itself in front of a judge. His health isn’t what it should be. A lawyer, too? If he was he never practiced. He had to quit after what happened happened.
Or, he never passed the bar. The firm that’d hired him to file had gone out of business.
The homeless turns to Ben and says, if you ask me, He’s not a False Messiah, a faked Moshiach, He’s no fraud.
It’s just.
You really want to know who He is?
Suddenly, a mortuarily fat and pale Oma sullen in a skirt three bolts of cloth past her toes tripsup to them then sits down on the bench between them, obstructing. You poor things, she says already tearing, becoming of charity the sight of them two, you’re not well, you have to take better care of yourselves; maybe you should both come back to my place, a shower, a hot meal, a bed for a schlaf.
O, I don’t know, his sister says, he went out west for a while, Los Siegeles, I seem to remember…she holds up admirably under Torque Mada’s inquisition, her lawyerhusband unable to make the session due to an unfortunate accident of the type pathologically reported within marks of quotation.
No, I don’t think so, that was so long ago. Who remembers. I was temporarily exhausted. Shleferik, those were the days.
The Oma goes to embrace the homeless mensch — you’ll make a success of yourself yet, ignoring Ben and His cry as, not to meddle in mazel, she throws a pinch of pocketed salt over her shoulder that sprays Him in the face, an eleemosynary lick at the eyes.
Ben’s stunned, rises from the bench then turns to confront, and there — beyond them, a miracle of decoration as she’s describing to the homeless her house in every amenity (you’ll have your own room, I can cook, I can clean, I can learn how to love), they’ve carpeted even the beach, the outermost world wall-to-sky…O the ocean forever — enough of it to still even the most determined of currents wandered from home and its humbler shore. Off with His shoes, both of them the laces of which He worries into a knot then holds the whole in a hand, He goes out to the sand and its give. A cool and cooling sink amid dunes…and the air, that weighted, saltfraught freedom — it’s always right behind you, a wonder. A bench become shrouded within the mist of the wake. A symbol, a sign, turn around, there’s no more.
