As this nocturnal adventure ran its course, as it did on many evenings, within the confines of the penny arcade, the elders in the castle set their gaming tables in preparation for an evening of Black Hunter, a version of the Korean board game of great antiquity, Box with Corks and Other Corks. The winner of the previous month’s marathon match would dress himself in the clothing which closely imitated that worn by Rose Castle, the semi-mythical madam of the brothel known, as far back as the Crusades, as Taglioni’s Jewel Casket; and a romantic ballet, homophobically yet courageously perverse in its brutal choreography, would be performed by “Rose Castle” atop a souvenir case wheeled in by the masked men affectionately called “The Little Mysteries.” This band of assistants had been in charge of wheeling the souvenir case here and there, whenever and wherever required, for as long as anyone could remember, as far back, as a matter of fact, as the castle’s moldering records went. Then the game began, its opening always the same, the traditional, staid, yet excruciatingly impenetrable and inexplicable move that had been christened, by Mad King Ludwig and The Three Musketeers, “Glass in Naples.” As the game progressed, a parlor constellation, with both rattle and music box, was softly illuminated by two beautiful maids who were always known as Emily One and Emily Two. The Emilys would, at times, at the direction of a particularly playful elder, add a sand fountain that had graced Apollinaire’s Cuban mansion to the display, and sometimes, too, a slot machine that was believed by some to be the handiwork of the beautiful Caravaggio.
While the game moved forward and backward in its ineluctable and darkly mysterious way, Paul and Virginia, wandering through the area abutting the by-now deserted penny arcade, gawked at strangers shoot the chutes, their screams of delighted fear as cheering to the young couple as sweet childhood’s sunbox of Golden Delicious apples and the bel canto of the youthful tenor whose stage name was “the Caliph of Baghdad.” Then they were off to the Midway and the pleasures of sideshow attractions like the parrot with a beak of chocolate, the robotic weather prophet and his talking yellow durgh, the eerie habitats of extinct and loathsome marine life, and a cage crammed with representative poems on the sheer greatness of American Gothic thought and prayer. Descartes’ dovecote, a new attraction obscurely named “Starbox with Starfish,” was not quite what the couple expected, and after a time, they stopped in to the Trade Winds, a café and inn whose Longitude Suite was “just what the doctor ordered,” as Donald E. Mobile, the cutting-edge scripteur, once remarked in his astonishing critical prose. Virginia particularly liked the three-dimensional panorama of the sun rising, the sun setting, and days and nights of temperate beauty; while Paul was attracted to the video representations of the phases of the moon and selected cosmography elements, all of which quite mysteriously became one with the nuclear atom and its space object, which, quite unnervingly, seemed to be the night skies above the Grand Universal Hotel. The latter edifice — although this was not known to Paul and Virginia — was, or perhaps one should say, is, absolutely identical to the castle on the moor, within which the game of Black Hunter was now in its fifth hour. It had reached that moment of transformation called Central Park carousel pavilion, a critical juncture that always nullified the effects of the aggressive gambit, American Gothic casement, even when that move was followed by the spectacular night sky and window façade.
“A Broken Window,” a string quartet by Dirk Giotto, woke Paul and Virginia from their lovers’ sleep, a sleep that had served as the coda to their tender but filthy amours, which, at this time, in any event, had been based on “Circe and Her Lovers in ‘Mathematics in Nature,’” a famous short story especially composed for the people of the castle, the café, the palace, and the Isle of Children. “The puzzle of the reward,” Paul said, as he and Virginia dressed, “is the sister shade.” Virginia smiled. “Home, poor heart, home,” she said, softly, and their slightly loony remarks constituted, at least for them, an allegory of innocence. At this precise moment, one of the Black Hunter players realized that ship with nude, a devastating, crushing move, was possible for him to make, perhaps even possible doubled, as Robinson Crusoe and his blue nude dream. He lifted his hand, moved his platinum counters and his vegetable tiles, and time, transfixed as if to make a rainbow, ceased for a split second, and created, as someone obscurely remarked, years later, a virtual aerodynamics for Allegra’s valentine. “That’s the only way I can put it,” this someone added. For that split second, Pascal’s triangle and constellations of autumn were “trumped,” so to speak, by the possessed player’s deployment of the uncertainty principle. Watching the game, a smoker of chocolate, wearing a derby hat, was the first to realize that Paul and Virginia, two shadowy icons forever hidden within the very “machinery” of the game, had suddenly made their board appearance, if such a term may be used for such an uncanny occurrence. It was a sign to all that the game was about to take a turn toward the arrest of entropic forces. A small cheer went up as Paul and Virginia assumed control, tentatively, from the hands of the last Prince of Urbino, long exiled in Babylon.
CORDILLERA MOUNTAINS
High Concept Men, High Country Fashion
DAVID APOLLO: Celebrity and kitchenware photographer; Three-button wool, abraded burlap and faux-orlon suit, $15,450 and “dirty” ramie and oilcloth shirt, $450. At Barron’s Ice Company. GORDY JERICHO: Fine-art and broken-furniture embosser; Eight-button disappearing pinstripe crushed-wool suit, $9,050. At Barchas-Willin. ELPASO JOHNSON: Backyard and high-school-athlete sketch artist; Four-button leather and corrugated paper jacket, $6,000 and nylon “Good Humor” pants, $1,250. At Sapp and Patsy. MANNY TOUCHANT: Vintage guitar and ketchup-bottle repair technician; Aged cashmere and celluloid pullover, $1,200, from Tommy Cafone. At Tommy Cafone. JUBAL OCTUBRE: Retail-outlet and velvet-animal planning analyst; Ink-stained cotton T-shirt, $450 and recycled-glass “midnight” jeans, $385. At Stroonz. BYRON VAN HAKKA: Vegetable and celebrity garbage-and-excrement photographer; Smashed cotton quarter-shirt, $605 and wool and rhinoceros-hide pants, $11,250. At Paco Coño. COLTRANE MARTINES: Horse-lover and movie-goer; Food-encrusted and fake rayon-blend sweater, $900. At Caponato USA. FRANKIE TEXAS: Frozen-custard designer and transgressive artist; Silk, penne, and potato skin sleeveless “surfer” shirt, $ 13,400. At Jacques LeBingo. FESTIS BENEDICTI: Illustrator and underwear collector; Steel-blend knit top with attached polystyrene tie, $410, by Popp Flikk. At Popp Flikk-Rafe Schnorrer. MOSS ROSES: Hamburger cuisinier and guitar admirer; Extruded fudge and linen polo shirt, $995. At Suck-Egg Mule. KIDWELL MAINWARING: Toilet detailer and loft appraiser; Cellophane sneakers, $550. At Heroickal Feets. MOZART DELANEY: Duck-blind furnisher and apple polisher; “Ham on rye” suit, $3,495 and aluminum-and-synthetic-hemp shirt, $650. Both from I.C. Assappe. At I.C. Assappe. JACK MELBA: Pet artist; Snap-front rotted denim jacket, $1,025 and urine-stained jeans, $674. Both from Jason Basura. At Jason Basura. ROBERT RINGLING: Publishing enthusiast and computer magazine buyer; Lemon-rind boots from So What? Cobblery, $2,750 and crimped stretch-porcelain sweater jacket, $4,000, from Zeppole. Both at Bygge Deele. SAMUEL URGENTE: Crayola artist; Zip-front “knish” jacket, $11,050. At Coney Island Mike’s. JINKS MIKADO: Slang collector and recipe verifier; Five-button tortured polyvinyl and “wet” swansdown jacket, $16,300. At Sabrett and Nathan.