To the port then, its pier. There to slip away, stow His flee, wharf a wander — to vag off baggageburdened, though there’s only a single small lawyer’s attaché in His hand, brokenclasped. Thanks to a deal brokered by the proctologist’s jilted daughter and a mensch who’s gone by the name, it’s been said, Laser Wolf (alias Hugh Bris, alias Nicki Noir, alias Anti O’Chus IV, alias Malachy Malachym, AKA Gory ben Davidson), it’s stuffed with the forge of nine nationalities, passports taking Him passage and without reservation under whichever names had been available lastminute — the shorter the better, how long it takes to memorize the newest pronunciations — their photos imaging the face of the most minor god known: a no one with nosehair, an anyone with earhair in the blurry, brutishly lit shots snapped in a booth west off Port Authority; an attaché lined with six diplomas’ worth is what it takes to read them of papers hermetically furled in fists and ribboned don’t forget me fingers: mutiple signatory honors and testaments, letters of attestation, of introduction, recommendation, resumes and titles, citations referenced to curricula vitæ—all dishonorably promoted to the nth degree, beyond credulity to hope. Never such a thing as too prepared’s the ticket, how B’s taking showy, matinee precautions: this false beard slash moustache ensemble, over the top then elasticized around His real, also from Eli, whom He’d contacted by messenger, a singing telegram He’d intended to cheer but had instead settled by cost for a mere note to be brought her by his brother, a quicksilver midget mensch in a red cap whose nose even redder below resembled an infected bell, that and the hands wrung overwrought, to say to her no hard feelings, to go soft and explain Himself, who He was and is, and then how generously she responded, with an uncle’s grandfathered briefcase she’d found in the closet, genuine calfskin as delivered, babied around in a new wardrobe Big & Talled it’s all sewn up, with her stitching into an inseam her best wishes in black thread; she’s helping out with the finances, too, scrimping everything her parents allow her, scrounging prospective dowry downpayments never more than bribes, bridal layaways her suitors hoping; that and any spare she manages to take in from knitting for the neighbors twinned with newborns just downstairs: just enough to tide Him over plus a few days, maybe a week at most from Sabbath to Shabbos then little more — nothing much leftover after paying passage, the grease of gratuities involved, the price of thanks to think, maybe a meal, I hope, a night in a room…
Manhattan’s tip, the prick of its tongue — it wants to say more but can’t because of the ocean, too bitter to speak. B makes it to the edge of the island from which He can’t find His own, disappeared. It’s a cloudy day, caught in overcast nets of smoke. The port, an immense planing of planks terminating in the ice’s horizon — ending as it, clouds tangled in rigging encrusted with barnacles, greenwhite stars, wispy cirri winds. A hawser choking the rust from its bollard — which the raincloud and which the snowcloud who can tell. And then, spearing the clouds, through the smoke, the masts: uprooted trees, made to wander upon the face of the deep. Through a lippy and bristly bustle of fishmongering, fishhandling, fishhaggling, fishy dealmaking, the hazards of floppy, soppy hands, fiddled fingerings, promises, swears and oaths, an immense dingen, all this thinging around, something stinks around here, something rancidly rotten; through a liveliness of livestock herded two by onboard bound for where, chaotic, this loading and unloading of slavish dray, from carts lade with variegate crates, a profusion of boxes stamped in languages as numerous as splinters in the planks, which way up and what’s labeled fragile on both sides of the frenzied line of ice chunked from the surface of the water then hauled handed in from one to another, to keep fresh the catch; bleeding puddles…
