by Joshua Cohen
Grasping her mistress’ hem, Adela dabs herself dry, she’s still naked underneath, unashamed, lets down the gown over her pocket graying and only then, revealed, takes in the shock of the assemblage. Jesus son of Joseph’s God, mutter of Mary, two hundred, three, a round rallied thousand they seem FEMDOMs, Development Security personnel, and Maintenance staff, their hats off, their heads lowered, as if suffering the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag nowhere to be found, as a prerequisite to what crisis of citizenship…Adela searching their stare in the direction of unidentified alien workers hauling the guts of the Israelien household out and into twelve trucks unmarked and who remembers licenseplates, some idling linedup to the driveway, others with their ramps pulled back to the curb. Adela vaults over the other curb, which is the asphalt hedge of the street dividing properties, responsibilities, lives, to tumble into the Israelien frontyard unmown if snowed, rises, pushing through more of this squat and maskmouthed labor, steps up the slated path neatly and respectful around the lawn furniture, too, packed in a protective wrap of glistening plastic, the comics and classifieds of newspapers with nothing left to disclose to anyone still literate and living, taking the seven step stoop in one reckless lunge then shimmying into the slit left open in the frontdoor with a book propped as a stop, who knows which and who cares. In the vestibule, she sidles past two workers carrying out the washingmachine or dryer, she doesn’t have time its cord tailing between legs and dragging behind them like the forked limb of an electrified demon; taking along with it dust from the floor, tangling with the rails of lain track, which hosts the motion of wheeled pallets to move what the workers aren’t able to lift, what they aren’t insured to attempt, whether it be too valuable or heavy, that out the front and rear of the house then onto the ramps and up them of still other trucks, their tires destroying unto the furthest loll of the brutebladed lawn. In the hall, another worker swivels down the same rusted length of track on a filmdolly, a camera rolling, getting footage of the entire groundfloor, door, hall, room after room, closeup on the doorknobs, then cut to the tile over which Adela heels, further into the fray to observe every foursquare invaded, with what to her paranoia look like government types, lookalikes, suspiciously suited don’t I know you from wheres; some of them taking photographs, with old, surely obsolete photographic equipment, flashbulb glare and smoke infusing the air, others with their superannuated for radio microphones wandering around shushing, apparently recording rare silence, themselves, laboratory-coated goys in brilliant white hazmat hats, booties, and gloves leading their similarly uniformed German shepherds through the hallways opening into rooms, rooms into floors, collecting what would seem to anyone else, Adela, smells evanescent, elusive; as maids insourced of uniformly idealized proportions go feathering in areas recordingwise finished with, finalized, at the flight of risen dust, rarefied specks, sampling it into sacs labeled with relevant locations: DESK #2/DRAWER #3, SOFA#3/UNDER PILLOW #1, WINDOWSILL #12—such an assemblage an affront to Adela, this duty done by dereliction, martyrdom by mote…
O Wanda, Wanda, why hast thou Floridaforsaken me, Wanda?
You’re here to dust, no? a matron asks as she straightens out the starch of her whites over fishnets, you’re late and not in uniform. She flips with the disdain managed only by the utmost professional through papers, a clipboarded stack, blueprints, a roll.
Take the upstairs, she says, beginning with the Master Bedroom, working down the hall to His; get moving, we’ve got two hours, three at the most.
An Assistant Site Supervisor, at least that’s what it says over her name, she clucks over, her head a uselessly nippleless breast tufted wildly with blond from the bottle, tucks a duster molting its feathers under her arm and so introducing the rest of her tag: Mary, that’s it, they’re all named Mary, to us; hands Adela from the pocket of her uniform a tweezers, and a sheaf of glassine sacs already labeled. Tweezer the mold from the grout of the Master Bathroom, she’s repeating its ilk already for the tenth time this morning, placing all in the appropriate sacs, one for each wall of the shower, north, south and, you get me, ceiling and floor, the toilet stalls, then from around the sinks, the whirlpool tub—being as careful as possible to preserve the integrity of the sample; then proceed, down the hall to each bathroom on the floor; don’t worry, it’s all already been imaged; but, she flicks a wrist up to expose a pink watch—you’ve only got ten minutes until they disassemble the Master Bedroom; God, you’d better hurry—you were supposed to’ve been here at dawn…
Adela loops her hair up, walks professionally together upstairs-upstairs, with tweezers and sacs makes her way past the Master Bedroom—such joy, shirking orders—its Master Bathroom with the two toilets his & hers, the bidet, the jacuzzi and sauna, keeps her face down to pass handfuls of other maids sweeping, dusting, vacuuming nothing in their areas, assigned; she recognizes none of them, they must be new here, must be strange to say—foreign: a kind-mouthed pigtailed shvartze plying a tub atop her head piled with the salts Israel would water, then soak in; a Mexican girl she has to be with that host of martyrs churchcandled in her eyes hauling three racks of shoes that are the slippers Hanna’d step into at the foot of the night, to slip the pair she’s eyeing not into her pockets, which’ll be searched, but onto her feet, exchanging her old maid, public transportation sneakers for these luxury fluffies with the loose pink ribboning and the bows by the heels. As Adela turns into the last stretch of hall, there’s a voltaic storm, announcements’ crackle, coming over the house’s infant monitoring intercom system who knew ever worked: Attention, the voice robo remote, mechanically feminine, Water Will Be Shut Off In Nine Minutes—Remember To Unscrew, & Label All Lightbulbs—All BASEMENT Perishables Including Medication Must Be Brought To The Kitchen Supervisor For Immediate Refrigeration—Adela heels away from drowning softly in the carpet, bluewhite oceanically plush, being rolled up tightly just a step behind her stride; down this hallway passing more suggestive maids and their observing recorders in still other rooms who’d even guess (Wanda, she’d only visit Wanda, through the tunnel, its wardrobe up to her room and return, the other rooms only an imagination, like the Koenigsburg’s, only different). What they’re doing here seems an abstruse discipline of what, sibling archaeology, familysifting, the excavation of daughters, maybe, these women in their immaculately fitted, speckless uniforms feathering dust, tweezering mold, yes, but also diagramming the disposition of posters, of plaques, compiling the loose stacks of blandly centrist newsmagazines, listing the order of books on the shelves, encyclopedias Volume 1 ABRAHAM–AVRAM, dictionaries and condensed biographies of kin, Einstein, Herzl, whichever Marx, insane, that and a million more processes that must’ve been incredibly well thought out, planned like war, anticipated like miracle, long before Adela ever arrives at the hall’s furthest funeral, which grave would’ve been the door to Benjamin’s room if it hadn’t already been tagged, bagged, removed, relocated. Wholesale. It’s open, exposed, scandalous to air, there isn’t anything left inside, not even carpet, rug, blinds, window; it’s freezing with the snow winded in and its guest, which is ice—they’d taken what there was to take, they’d repossessed all the possessions: no bed, that fourposter, which’d been Rubina’s then her mattress, too, the bassinetcrib never used, no chairs either, neither the chair fixed like the Heaven above the heavens above the turning earth, nor the chair that like spring reclined, which’d been brought here from Israel’s office and its conference room now barren (Everything must go! each to its own gleaning, professional, expert)—no blankey comforters, no cushions from any of the sofas Hanna’d always said couches, from the family’s livingroom, Israel’d said den, which had served as pillow for His pillows; none to sleep, none to wake, thank God at least with Wanda gone, but for how long, she’d said she’d be back for the New Year.
Tonight being that, the Eve, another Turn turn turn…it’s also Friday, the dusk of the Sabbath. As light earlier, they’d observed the entire rite, for Benjamin’s benefit PopPop blessing for the first time
in too long, not long enough, what’s come over him, it goes lehadlik ner shel Shabbos, the lit (lehadlik) candles (ner), which were yahrezeits, waxen jars two of them set with serpentine wicks that supermarkets had stocked a yomtov ago, aisle numbered numinous now marked down for no one; Kiddush was said borei pri hagefen over the fruit of the vine, which’d been a rabidly sparkling, grapey champagne PopPop had had in the fridge since last Xmas; they washed, al netilat yadayim’s that prayer, Amen then waited on the buzz from the lobby so they could break bread, hamotzi, or whatever they’d ordered. Blessed Art Thou Lord Our Gaud…Who Hath Given Us Takeout, & Delivery—and then, what’s the bracha for dessert, for pudding as always, the warmth of its flesh, the spoon of its skin? Shehakol.
Benjamin’s put to bed early, PopPop lockingin SonSon, to sleepsleep in the roomroom of His MomMom; are you cozy, comfortable, suck it up, I’ve known worse. I lived twice what even your parents lived—I’ve lived double lives.
Only to return an old, barnacled, loosebottomed wreck at the end of his days—to youth; a late evening stroll along with the waterfront at the changing of the guardian tide, which wets his way along a lip of expectant froth, an undulating tongue of wake, sinking in then swallowing down to dampen his shoes and socks, almost tripping, to tumble onto the sharp weed of his whistle, fallendentured, suckedgummed and burdened, too, a bag schlepped over a shoulder’s stoop, filled with those nightly fresh, skyshelled orbs known as Nest Eggs, late evening and its speckled space being the best conditions for collection. After a’gathering from along the shoreline, amid the ribboning of bows from the crash of waves, his own Xmas presents, belated tokens for the near and dear, eggs uncovered from sand, redeemed from tangles of kelp, hypodermiclike shards of shells, found amid glassy drift, pyres of driftwood, fallen clouds of sand, packed like snow, grained with ice, PopPop—tattered in overcoat, scarf knotted like a second necktie—meets outside the sandside, seaswept eastern entrance to his tower a goy who must merit the rating of at least an acquaintance, waving I’m so excited more hands than all the poor of the world would know to clasp in the brotherhood of schnorr and so Pop-Pop stops, feels at his heart, sets down his burlap bag, fishes the hook of a stogie out of a pocket of his overcoat, which is furry and full of holes as if gnawed right from the skin of a deepsea Levantine monster, and lights it and sucks and lungs out smoke and steam, waits as this acquaintance in a felt hat and dewy mink approaches him in a wade and worm around and through a hulking, violently slippery pod of squidy, octopusal mutants. Dim menaces, terrorized with three legs, actually slimy entities of two legs each ferociously lamed by a distended, additive antenna—they’re merely the night shuffleboard enthusiasts, congregated under the sunny blast of facility kliegs, the goy highstepping over the flight of their discs, thrust cues and on into boxes, ten points, twenty (the laws of mourning don’t prevent them from enjoying, even if they’d had any respect), to greet PopPop. But who is he? PopPop removes his glasses, licks the wonder onto the face of his lenses, breathes and wipes, a glare, a blur’s bubbling smudge, the heat from the tower’s lobby fogging again even at this distance whenever a fellow tenant comes and goes, the revolving, revolvingly vertiginous door—my sight isn’t what it used to be, but he’s said that for as ever long as he’s had sight; though, then again, neither is that that needs to be seen.
Enough, we’ll let the thing talk.
An openingline, long rehearsed, memorized by mirrors of lobby and bath.
I’m making a fortune in furs, I’ll tell you, seems with this weather last few days…it’s peculiar, isn’t it—sales are up what, like two hundred percent.
As he tells you what he wants, he tells you who he is.
It would be Freddie, wouldn’t it, who else the none other, who knows how it’s spelled on his bell: Freddy, maybe, the Fur King, newly mounted, crowned in a taxidermical head, anointed with formaldehyde, a sheep in the clothing of the wolf, which is bundled tight under tens of gekkering foxes whose tails have gone red with shame.
Listen, he pleads PopPop, hat in hand, scratching at the bumps on his bald that seem prospective antlers, it’s not profiteering, I’m as sorry as the next about what’s gone on, what’s a goy to do, tell me, he attempts a handshrug, trying it on for size, forgive him it asks, he’s new around here…just trying to make a living, nothing wrong with that, no, got my daughter with the abdominals and always with the yoga meditation talking my ears blue about responsibility and such, but I’m telling you, he’s telling PopPop, Faivish olev ha whatever it is, he would’ve wanted it this way, no doubt, he was always after the sale, all about business, life is death he’d always say but business is business, which is both and it’s good, listen I’m telling you now it’s almost too good—now this would’ve killed him! that he doesn’t know what to do with his gestures, as if to ask without asking, any typology tips? and since his hands of tens heads dumb don’t know what to do with themselves either he hides them, in the pockets of his mink, furry little rodentholes, lintlined burrows, and—despite the cold as he’s not sure if PopPop’s listening, or had answered him, or of anything—he removes his earmuffs, which are bunnypuffs, the tails of rabbits that thump no more and, breathlessly, shoves them into his other pocket.
What about you and this grandson I’m hearing so much about?
It’s true what they’re saying?
You know some people are asking questions?
You got maybe something warm for Him for winter? We’ve got to keep Him in good shape, alive.
You don’t worry about us, says PopPop, please God, everything’s fine. He’s wearing an old rag of mine, I’m wearing a newer one; when we don’t trade, we share, send the spare shmatte out to be cleaned.
It’s been pleasant, Friedrich, but I really must and yadda with lessening tact, he heaves bag onto back, offers the fur a snotted sleeve limply shook, then slumps through the doors, which are automatic to the left and right for the handicapped when they aren’t in the middle revolving, through its mortuary lobby, funereal arrangements of flower atop low benches like coffins filled with stone to the elevator, express, overclimatized against the outside inclement, spurting muzak, an icicle clarinet, a snowflake cymbal, dingding he digresses his tweed tighter, the gnaw of the gut, hound’stooth, raises his collar and resumes a whistle at meeting this other orphan, a filthy wild though appealing update of a newsie or shoeshine type, who lately lived in the elevator, left to fend for himself while on vacation by a grandfather who’d lived in the tower until he, as Affiliated, died, without his firstborn grandson, who over the last week was given a uniform and salary financed by the facility’s more generously gullible tenants in return for doing what he loved best, pushing his home’s buttons at the violently random. He grins small fangs, scratches skin, pimpled one cheek the other pubered with stubble, then flicks a middlefinger out to depress all the floors in a swipe, last among them the eye glowing PENTHO SE.