And the mensch, up for either Freeholder or Freeloader your choice with two sides potato and greens he ashes his cigar on the wall-to-wall, answers the tourist fanged through the tines of his fork that Miami, that’s just old Injun talk, means only Miami, thank you, it’s appreciated, forget it, don’t mention and returns to his brisket they call it secretrecipe, really choppedsteak marketprice-gouged. Jacob-san tucks his napkin under the straps of his photo and video equipment just as, a miracle, his order arrives, miraculous, too, that the kitchen’s made no mistake: it’s the house specialty, a heaping portion as prepared in the spirit of the old Gospel of Lukewarm, an oftrecommended, incomparably of the moment, most artistic and between you and me delectably profitable selection of savory: the Garnish Plate, which is a dish of horseradish, roots only, each of which’s gotten sliced into the face of a panoply of public figures lately vilified (and accompanied by an indifferent dipping sauce, pareve), as featured, in order alephbetical, on the last page of the menu above the reddened white of the winelist discontinued. Jacob-san forks into their version of the Pope, Pius Zeppelini da Foist newly displaced, become an encyclic salesmensch some joke and it is, a lifeguard to the canals of the ghetto at Venice others might laugh, whatever the giggly rumor no longer in favor despite his conversion, which was only lipservice, most think, suspected reversion, a cryptogoy (according to sources formerly of the dissolved Washington nunciature, Shade had offered a deal, either accept a God without a son or face, or face that son disinherited’s death); he foists the root onto his tongue, keeps his mouth shut about it, masticates thoughtfully.
In New York, where Jacob-san’s due next week if the itinerary’s subject to no change or lastminute holiday cancellation let’s hope to take in the lower eastern remnants of all’s usurped birthright, they’re only a step ahead of the (expected, please) throngs, out erecting Affiliated Monuments out of almost any tenemental, slumlordabove wreck: dedicating plaques, plinths, and statues (replica souvenir statuettes to be made available posthaste, bobbleheaded, skinchangeable, they’re just waiting for the shipments to arrive from the overseas shvitzshops this Jacob-san’s brother helps to manage back home), just a moment before any line should begin to form east from Broadway: an experience in the finding of unfounded memory, an only knocks once opportunity this, to be ingathered again, to become disembarked upon whatever passes for diaspora nowadays, onto this Island offIsland, as were their now again assimilated forefathers way back when, here to wander map in hand and foot in mouth the Heritage Trail, its serpentine ways, alleys and streets, avenues and drives — snakeskin cobblestoned, coldblooded paved, then graved over in an asphalt currently being torn up all over town — of a heritage just about everyone claims nowadays on penalty of, like how not to…to follow the trail of the crumbling bread even the crows won’t peck at, or whatever else that intermittently winding substance our most observant of streetschleppers and sweepers’ve been noticing lately, it’s worrying — though just short of them filing an official report, those dashes and dots of drip dropped up and Downtown this lonesome stretch of barrengardened, coldflat Orchard Street: a secret message of what, encrypted for whom. Anyway, is it even Orchard Street…isn’t it maybe Grand, or Delancey I’m crossing, Division dividing Essex or Essen, hesternal Hester heading western to where, I don’t know, no street numbers I’m seeing, O show me the signs — Second Avenue I know at least, I see they’ve renamed it Avenue Bet, First Avenue, Aleph, I get it, nu, I can count, but this is easier than ever, and southward unceased…who’s been down here before who’s native, who knew, who could ever hope to? Not Him from Siburbia, not used to such mess made of grid, such rank dissolution of order. He retraces steps, trails His own trail, how to get out and where to, wandering amid His own waste, wallowing amidst His own slime, the prints of His shoes swirling His progress He loops up then around, lost again, looks around. He’s lost sight of the skyscrapers Uptown — landmarks, occidental enough, when what He requires is an orientation. Where was that knishery my Aba had loved, that place he’d mentioned once to Ima how he’d go entire blocks out of his way just for their shtikel a pickle? Their bagels, bialys? Anyone who wants to find Him has only to follow His loss, the drop of His drip. Mine. That’s how I find myself, here.
