Nodding a promise to return, B leaves with that wad of money swelling under His robe: dirtyfingered, ripped then taped or glued back together again shekels bearing denominations of an image that’s been graven too known…Him gravely aware by now, also, as the deal here’s finally downed, that He’s been shylocked, slumlordedover — that this money, it’ll be worthless forthwith (inflated to paper, mere fibrous idea, leaking ink in every shade, to become as absorbent as any still and white cloud), with fresh gelt minting its way in any initiative: new notes bearing new guarantees, circulating their own brand of surety, yet another promise never to be broken inscribed within the signature of the Administration’s divinate X; their cash to feature a host of wizened and sagged, beardcraggy faces familiar only to future (what remonetized rabbi, I mean rebbe, what cantor — I’m sorry, chazzan), honoring what miracle or mazel, tendered to our spent every prayer; don’t you want your ticket? the pawnbroker whispers after Him, to the door slamming loudly shut in His haste, the coinlike tinkle of chimes.
No matter, what could be left in his will, the mensch’s? As there’s almost nothing left in his shop, which establishment is itself in hock, though to whom he forgets: indebted in its every drawer and window display; nothing — not even the books, though they once were his, too, presently being held by the super for study — save his own tallis, half a set of tefillin, the head (his cousin has custody of the phylactery’s arm), and the spoon just hocked that the broker buries deep in his mouth, which he maybe owns, not its words.
With this windfall though mind the scatter, B makes it to a hotel, so a motel to save money, face, economize humiliation and cut back however ennobling — Hanna’s dieting, Israel’s distinguished reserve; having had enough of this, having been toldoff and His place while they’re at it. It’s westside from Times Square and rivered further, Hell’s kitchen with its bedroom unkempt, its bathrooms shared filthy, maintained to ruinous stain far along the highway opposite Joysey. A falling to flophouse B’ll bury Himself in on this night of our mourning: splitleveled over a parkinglot, the accommodation itself accommodated triapsidal three wings off the central office roomed with a view, if only potential; an ashpit alleyed below off the trash access of the city’s lone surviving peepshow slash sexual raree agora, lately combined with a clinic for hypodermic needles, dropin; ostraca of glass islanded amid oases of frozen urine, bags tenting over the rise of discarded syringes, surrounded by the scurried smeared droppings of dogs…He could’ve gazed clear across the Hudson then far past the low Palisades, if only He’d incline His head through the window that doesn’t open, that’s not there at all and so is only the wall’s plaster wet and then, hurt, wounded, stare, by then toward the stars, invisible by the lights of blocks east then those of the Turnpike’s transept, too, the skyway sprawls of condemned cogeneration plants, remember, those dusky stretches of storage and transit that lie just over the river, toxically gray. This motel the sort of hourly rated nowhere forsaken everywhere you don’t want to be and yet usually are, anywhere outside of Joysey, that is — the true wilting Garden; its units replete with inroom, onechannel televisions that operate on dimes no one uses anymore, and with whirlpools that are actually bathtubs in the hall that can always be churned up or unclogged with a plunger provided at cost, advertised upon the 10th Avenue marquee in promises smirking gaptoothed:
