Wholly psychosomatic, thinking it’ll go away on its own, just as its onset manifested, that He’ll survive this, too, as down Orchard Street He slips on His own looping, from Uptown, backtracked and without bearings as if to break His back here — slimed on His own slip of street on barren, citified Orchard slipping itself from gutter to sewer — shelled unsteadily and so goes groping for any hydrant, a lamppost or parkingmeter not yet uprooted, them or the root of a passerby, the tap of a cane topped in jade. Anything to stay balanced, the stayed course of the upright, not this wavering and wobbly, but there’s none, and so falls again, atop what He’s stood for, facefirst and onto the sidewalk outside this last open franchise, an Oriental restaurant that’s wondrously still lit. This the last late encroaching of those other eastern emigrants and open late, their sweet restaurant on this side of the street, the sour until last week had been serving on the other, the west: this storefront pagoda shooting stilled like a firework frozen in an ascent into air, the space a hexagonal vault of bells, carved flowers, and honeycombed shrines, fired tiers high from the mediating serenity of a garden of rock. The sidewalk B falls on has been starred, shined through with what seems like the least of the firmament; on the way down, He recognizes no names…apparently, this whole block has yet to be graven over, is handprinted still and signed by the ostensibly famous: older names, PopPop if anyone would’ve known; their autographs lasting longer in cement underfoot than the memory of their signatories in the world. Only a block north the concrete’s pouring wet from recent renovation: since Affiliation, Mayor Meyer’s been obsessed with bringing the old neighborhood up to code. And famous or not, what’s remained proves welcoming to such an accident of talent, since His prints are now pressed there alongside those of handfuls of others, His life palmedoff on posterity, hardening: a hand thrown in front of Him, His face, to still the hurt of His fall, extending a finger, too, and with an outgrown nail attempting to sign guess which of His initials, an ideogram, a sigil…and just then, one slash before that letter can be completed, a to share portion of cummerbunded waiters, some from column A, their bowties tied, others from His own column B, theirs loosened like lips, scuttle out to help, gesticulating placidly that for them is wild, excusing themselves hoarse in a mothering of all tongues.
