He wept a little more but not as bad as before. I guess his boyfriend was Bill, the one we all thought was his brother. Mention of the boyfriend made me less scared of how Poc touched his arm, which she continued to do, but not that much less scared. He fell asleep soon after that. His beauty still consoled, in spite of all. And Poc’s singular ugliness did more and better than console. She came and put her legs on me, hands, mouth, in silence. We fell asleep right afterwards, or at least I did.
Father Buck got better and Poc got sick. She had the shakes, the trots, redrimmed nostrils. Love moves the place where you end and not-you starts. I know this because when Poc got sick I got sick too. When she was sad I was sad. When she stubbed her toe I felt it in my thumb. When she thought of yellow I said sun. When she came I cried out. I began to crave this undoing of me: when we were apart and I couldn’t be sure what state she was in I sneezed, cried, ached, thought, and came again and again to make sure I was still her and vice versa.
The truck stopped. Smith opened our door. Martin sat on his hands on the cold road. Dick Buck and Bucky Breck climbed down. I carried Poc out for her first taste of New Jersey. A green and faded sign said Union City, the name of a place long since dead. Naming inaugurates nostalgia.
We breathed this air that wasn’t used to being breathed. We were all a little stunned, by being in New Jersey, by the continued existence of New Jersey and ourselves, by myriad other things. “So this is New Jersey,” Pocahontas or Shineequai said.
We looked across the river at Manhattan. The Chrysler Building continued to be gone. Since leaving, I hadn’t thought of the earthquake we’d left in the middle of.
“How will we get there?” I said.
“Let’s try the Lincoln Tunnel,” Smith said. “If it’s flooded then we’ll have to find a boat. Let me drive, but take Martin, he’s creeping me out. I’ll take Rolfe and the Indian girl.”
We looked at Martin in profile as he gazed, mouth shut, at New York. The wind swept across his voluminous and dignified brow and sawed-off arrow ends. He walked toward the truck on his hands, stopped, pulled himself up into its back, walked toward the cab along its metal floor, spun around, and stared at us. Since he didn’t talk this was like watching some highly intelligent trained brute perform a stunt. How had his arms and abs grown so strong in so short a time? We agreed, out of earshot of Martin—unless his ears, too, had grown preternaturally strong—that the Martin who said nothing posed a greater threat than the one who voiced each complaint.
But for debris the tunnel was clear. We were stopped coming out of its mouth by armed Company guards. They knew who we were. One of them climbed the metal stair on the driver’s side and signaled Smith to roll down his window.
“Where’s Argyle?” he asked.
“Didn’t make it back,” Smith said.
“Who’s in the rear?”
“Father Buck, Bucky Breck, John Martin.”
“Who’s that?”
“Indian girl.”
“What kind of Indian girl?”
“Princess. Daughter of their chief.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Let’s see her credentials.”
“And, oh, who the fuck might you be?”
The guard contemplated his own identity awhile. “Follow us,” he said. He climbed down. He and his pal mounted a pair of bikes and pedaled them ahead of us through town.
“Why didn’t the earthquake wreck the tunnel?” I said.
“What earthquake?”
“When we left.”
“That wasn’t an earthquake, that was a bomb.”
“Who’s got a bomb like that?”
“Who do you think?”
“Brooklyn? How do we know they haven’t already staged a hostile takeover?”
“Because that’s not their plan. How could it be? Brooklyn can’t afford to annex Manhattan any more than Manhattan can afford to annex Brooklyn. Everyone’s strained to the brink. They don’t want to own us, they want to destroy us.”
“How do we know they haven’t already destroyed us?”
He punched me in the arm, friendly but hard. “That’s how.”
Pocahontas
I don’t feel so good, I don’t feel so good. This place where I will start my new life—some new life, ha—great new group of guys I’m with—strong one, lame one, holy one, crafty one, one who thinks he’s me, love them all, love them all—this place where I will start my new life is dilapidated and forbidding. I don’t feel good I gotta cold and am smooshed against the car door by my boyfriend’s bony ass and am expelling gruelly poop once an hour and my eyes are red and my nose is red or so say the sideview glass. O gruelly poop I love you so, sad to see you go. “Lemme sip some uh that watuh from that erstwhile animal you got in yo lap, playuh, whilst we led through thuh ugly streets uh this town by those two dudes on bikes. Hey how come ain’t no buildings here in thuh shape of uh lowuh-case n, n-e-weigh?”
There sure are a lot of enormous houses here that aren’t houses anymore. It seems eight of nine of these is so crumbled and fallen-down and vacant-looking and grim that can’t nobody possibly live in them or use them but for scrap or a place to crap. And then you’ve got that one of nine, it too in disrepair, browned by bad air, windows thick with smudged dirt. Making homes of trees as we do where I’m from is what puts the texture in archi-texture. Each twig of your home has a grain, a name, a past, a slant, a tree that was its mom or dad, a mark or set of marks that makes it not its neighbor twig. But when you use, uh, “What’s this stuff called again?”
“Concrete.”
“And this?”
“Steel.”
When you use concrete and steel and it falls down it becomes nothing. But that ain’t even what happened here cuz they ain’t even fell down all the way cuz if they fell down all the way they’d be a lot uh nothing all around us and a body likes to have a lot uh nothing to roam around in, good to roam around for hours a day in nothing when you growing up to make you feel you free even though you not free, make you feel like you got control over where you go and what you do even though you ain’t got it, really, much. But I don’t like the half-fall-down state of this whole town, whose canyons trap the air that grays your skin as you wander through them on your bike or in your truck. This here is way too much ugly not-nothing to be bumping up against all the time with no remit. Shesus no wonder all these dudes who grew up here is turned out like they is. Daddy build the building and the building turn around and build the son.
“Are we there yet?”
“Almost.”
“Where we going?”
“Don’t know.”
“What’s your guess?”
“Office of the Chief.”
“Who dat?”
“Jimmy Stuart.”
“What’s he like?”
“Priapic.”
“What else?”
“Narcissistic.”
“What else?”
“Unkind.”
“What else?”
“Clever.”
“What else?”
“Warlike.”
“What else?”
“Charismatic.”
“What else?”
“Generous.”
“What else?”
“High-minded.”
“What else?”
“Poetical.”
“What else?”
“Cultural.”
“What else?”
“Devout.”
“How should I act?”
“Be yourself.”
“Who dat?”
“Me.”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“Me too.”
“What is that enormous pile of debris, stretched as far as the eyes can see?”
“I don’t know. Smith, what is that?”
“That is what I think we once would have called the Chrysler Building.”
“It is black.”
“It is
covered in ash.”
“It is ash.”
“Chunks of blackened brick and steel and concrete.”
“It stinks.”
“Smells bad too.”
“It seems to smoke.”
“There is so much of it.”
“It goes on and on.”
“We are right next to it and it is huge and we are tiny.”
“Look at those children playing jumprope by it.”
“They’re smiling, but their feet and ankles and knees are covered in black soot.”
“It is crawling up them.”
“They are becoming it.”
“Soon it will reach their brains and they’ll be naught but it.”
“Soon we’ll all be naught but it.”
“That’s an ugly thought.”
“What’s a beautiful thought?”
“Gimme a minute.”
“You should always have one ready for times like this.”
“The Chrysler Building itself was once beautiful.”
“That is not a beautiful thought, that is a beautiful building.”
“Same thing.”
“But many died in the making of it. And many more were spiritually crushed by it.”
“At its top it had a stack of gleaming arcs on each of its four sides, eight arcs per stack, I believe, times four equals thirty-two arcs, each arc polished to reflect the sky around it, man’s literally highest achievement reflecting God’s grandeur. Back when it was built you could stand at the top and feel the clear, clean, cold, blue, crazy-ass air hit your skin like—like—like—like—like—air.”
“But each gleaming arc you mentioned had fangs.”
“Those weren’t fangs, they were the points of a crown, or they were triangular representations of radiant light.”
“God gave us light and we have to keep making more.”
“Let’s not fight by this mile-wide pile of night.”
“Little children playing next to it.”
“But not in it.”
“Oh they’re in it. We’re all in it.”
“We’re almost past it.”
“We’ll never be past it.”
“Let’s forget it as soon as we can’t see it anymore.”
“Which will be never.”
“Or very soon.”
It’s good to get a little New York history. I always like to know the history of the places I visit, even though I’ve never visited anyplace before. Did I mention my father just died and I’m sad and away from home for the first time even though there isn’t really any home for me anymore so I’m nowhere and everywhere at once? Look, the bicyclists are slowing down.
“I guess we’re here.”
‘“La Petite Marmite.’”
‘“The Little Cooking Pot.’”
“He’s meeting us at a restaurant?”
“Disused restaurant.”
“Speaking of pot, I could use some pot.”
“We left our source of pot tied to a cot, ach mein Gott, I love Sal a lot. Chances are that now he’s not.”
This erstwhile restaurant that we are being led through on foot by those nondescript guys who led us through town on bikes sure is dank and grim. The once-white swathes of cloth that cover the two dozen small tables we are walking past seem to have absorbed so much dust, smog, ratshit, and anguish that they are now dark gray and hard like the bones of the folks who ate off them before they died. Through a dank and grim door, up a dank and grim stair, down a dank and grim hall, up more stairs, some more dank than grim, others the reverse, chipped, mottled, cracked, worn down, worn out, broken through, home repair a vanished art, home décor a distant dream of the people of my boyfriend’s town, it seems. A golden door, rimmed by red light, glows at the end of the hall. I continue not to feel so good, I think I gotta puke, would prefer not to go through the door, don’t like what I believe awaits me there, must go through the door, not to go through the door that glows at the end of the hall is to shun life, die unfulfilled, haunt the earth as neither mood nor thing. I’ll wait in the hall: a coward’s motto.
“I’ll wait in the hall,” I say and cop a squat on a cobweb.
“Come on, you have to meet the CEO,” my boyfriend says, “and then we’ll let you ride the fever out on the prow of a bed of down softer than any dreamt of in your people’s bedmaking philosophy.” He hauls me up by the arms.
‘“Let me’? Let this,” I say, and show him the bird that flies from the northern edge of my palm.
We’re through the door. The air in this big room is red and hot to the touch. Finally a room that’s not the remnant of a room. The degree to which this room is done seems to want to make up for how undone the others all across this city are. The walls are covered with a soft red cloth that adheres to them; likewise the couches and chairs. A bouquet of electric lamps—I’ve heard of these—hangs from the high ceiling and its light’s refracted through hard-edged teardrops of glass, each attached to the bouquet by a little hook that lets it dangle and sway with the motion of the air in the room, which makes the light buzz around my eye like a substanceless bright fly. The fuel that lights their chief’s electric lamps is what these guys went south to find, and in the end will kill whoever has it, though no one has a lot of it since ain’t a lot of it left in Earth, and I must admit these lamps are pretty enough to kill for, as is this rug that is red and clean and soft and soothes my hard and tired and fevered feet.
And there’s their main man, the My Dad of Their Side. He’s smaller than my dad, but looks strong. He smiles on his soft red chair. He has blonde hair. White suit. His penis lurks egregiously beneath his pants. All men’s dicks lurk to some extent, I guess, but some let you know it right away—who knows how?—and he’s one of those. He’s in the I-have-a-penis camp, the let-my-penis-be-a-central-feature-of-the-initial-impression-I-make-on-a-heretofore-unmet-interlocutor crew. Who hasn’t met a ton of guys like that before? Oh, the penis, what would the world be like without you? We may never know.
“Hi! How’s it going?” he says, marking him further as a “Hi! How’s it going?” kind of guy.
Smith says, “This is Pocahontas, an Indian princess. Pocahontas, this is our chief, James Stuart.”
“Isn’t the communications officer supposed to do the talking?” says their chief.
“He don’t like to talk,” Smith says.
“How’s a guy supposed to run a business?” Stuart says.
I guess I ought to do a greeting dance for him but feel too ill and slow so I just bow. I say, “I think I gotta take a shit,” which makes him rearrange the fabric of his whitish suit a little bit.
“Lead her to her shit,” he says, and I am taken from the room, and since a lady never shits and thinks at once, suffice to say that for the next while the me that thinks flees down a dark hole.
Johnny Rolfe
“Holy shit, the toilets here are made of gold!” she said from offstage left.
“That’s their princess?” Stuart said.
I said, “She’s grieving.”
“I think I’m in love,” he said, “and I think the princess just shit in my tuba.”
He said I think I’m in love lightly, casually, indifferently, and will no doubt pursue her in just that way, and she’ll succumb, but a schmuck like me will bust a gut for love and still fuck it up. No, she won’t succumb; well, maybe for political advantage; no, she doesn’t think that way, and loves me; well, maybe for the wicked sort of thrill a girl will allow herself on holiday; no, she loves me, despite my flawed and gimped-up love of her. The Pocahontas of my mind betrays me every day. The one on the ground, I hope, will not.
“Well, so,” Stuart said, the signal that business was to begin. He had been sitting with his taut, lean ass on the left side of the seat of his red armchair, his torso leaning back and to the right, right elbow holding nearly half his weight on the right armrest. He stood now and smoothed down the white arms and legs of his suit, brushed each limb repeatedly with long
, brisk strokes of his palm. “So, so, so, so, so. You’re not supposed to be here now, are you? You’re supposed to still be down there so what the hell happened and how about let’s hear it from the communications officer this time?”
“Don’t you fucking touch my girl,” I said.
“Well then let’s hear it from Jack Smith.” Stuart nodded to two of his seemingly endless supply of square-jawed men in dark blue clothes, who punched my chest, arms, shoulders, and neck till I fell down.
“Sir,” Smith said, “the communications officer’s a romantic. Civilization needs its romantics.”
“If you mean that a state can make no progress without a modest percentage of civilians bloodied and crumpled on the floor at all times then I agree with you. Your report, please.”
“We’ve lost a lot of men.”
“And?”
“What very little oil they have they trade for.”
“With who?”
“Don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“They have trees.”
“I’ve seen the trees Newport brought back.”
“How is Newport?”
“Dead.”
“Of what?”
“Some disease or bomb or gun, or was pushed into the sea and drowned, I knew how he died and meant to keep it in mind but I’ve got a thousand worries, each more vicious than the next, and Brooklyn at the door of my ass clamoring to be let in. Trees and what else?”
“They grow crops and catch fish and eat them.”
“How?”
“Food purification technology.”
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“They keep it well hidden.”
“So?”
“We had inadequate men and supplies. We’ll need more to get what we want from them.”
“I don’t have more. Every man and gun and scrap of food and ounce of fuel I send down south I have to give up here. Habsburg’s made massive kills in the past three weeks. He’s suddenly outweaponing me, I don’t know how.”
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