These are the years of recklessness and pride. We are the sinners barely comforted by Christ. Let us seek the strong hand of Mister Unknown. Eli, we have driven out the demons of lesser men. We have fought the tough battles on the sixty-four black and white squares. My aging Tonto. My mystical amigo, we ride on.
St. Walter dies in a fire but they say he walked on water. The moon is a Cheshire cat above the palm trees, dancing. Put the lilies in a basket, are his final words.
We have a midnight loiter in the dunes, Darling and I. The American sky is black with expanding stars, one could call it dignity. We are on the threshold to happiness outside the laws of man. Sexual congress with urgency like it’s the end of days. When it’s over she’s got that good light inside once again.
I was a whore and you brought me in, she says. I had all seven sins.
You were a waitress at Starlight when I met you.
I love you deep as an ocean, she says.
High as a mountain, I say.
10
Blazing up through the Appalachians I feel Nono and Cataract at our backs. Hellhounds on our trail in a brown minivan. I belt out a song from my youth, “Ten Little Indians.” What vibes up here in the north, Eli. The Civil War left a weird suture along the gut of the country.
We are far from our comfortable Southern despair now as the city lights approach. Manhattan is a sparkling sickness of an island. Condos made for Euro trash, swimming pools in the sky. Over the bridge, Eli, here we come. I’m your incognito kemosabe, you’re my redneck Virgil. Graveyards on top of graveyards and where the hell do we park this boat?
East Village, but where are the poets and punks? A KFC on the corner and every man a smiling wad of cash. All the starving artists eat well by professionally wringing their hands on the Internet. Everyone is an extraterrestrial here. My poverty of spirit has returned. Downcast eyes and a desire for prescription painkillers.
Washington Square to hustle the hustlers. The standard players playing five-dollar games. The big guns playing twenty bucks. A couple young Bobby Fischer posers with their mothers eat baloney raw. I buy a joint off a thin black kid named Fuck Face and Darling and I fire up as you collect winnings, Eli. Then I am struck with a vision. Cataract smoking a blunt with the pages of the Book of Revelation. His eyes have never seen a woman or an ocean. Darling watches a skywriter propose marriage in the air. Horrible music plays from horrible cars.
Darling, come closer. We are high on the rooftop where we sleep.
There are four million possible earths out there, I say.
Yes, but also black holes everywhere, she says.
Goldilocks planets, they call them. Not too hot, not too cold.
Darling’s ears are cool to the touch.
Maybe each star is a little bonfire on the beaches of heaven.
She touches my nose. We kiss.
Some kid trapped between the wall up in Queens sings the Bee Gees till he’s found. Women apply lipstick in the reflection of the butcher shop window. A man walks in tap shoes down the street. A girl pukes out of a cab. A dog licks another dog’s vagina. These are weary days as we walk the streets. Laying low for fear of the fuzz. Wanted posters of us all over town.
Eli, I tuck you in on the boat parked near Union Square. There is a circus, a clown, a dwarf, and his gimps.
Armadillos have the most attractive dreams of any animal, you say, Eli.
I’m thinking of living underground, I say. Where no one would find us. I would drive the trains.
I saw a man once crying down there playing cello, you say, Eli.
To be in the darkness for so long underground as I drive, I say. Then to come up from the tunnel into the light. It’s got to be something like birth.
Yes, says Darling. But wouldn’t the light hurt your eyes?
We’ve taken up residence in St. Thomas Church on Twelfth Street downtown, closed for repairs. Eli, you sleep in the belfry, we put two pews together. The stained glass windows make our faces blue.
St. Zim refuses to spit on a picture of Christ and is beaten to death in a stadium in front of ten thousand people. It is the largest public gathering in the city in some time.
Darling is bundled up like a child in swaddling. She wears a leopard-print hood and a cashmere scarf stolen from a frazzled heiress. Yes, we go to the jazz club and I commandeer the piano. Kick up my leg and piss my pants while playing “Great Balls of Fire.” These bouncers touch my Darling. There is a row. When the man’s fist collides with my face, it feels as if it were meant to be. Angels from heaven surround me like a Saturday morning cartoon. When I wake up Darling is screaming.
How could you get beat up like that? They could’ve found us.
She slaps me and I’m all question marks.
In New York people rap to themselves as they walk down the street and the florists look at naked pictures on their phones. Love is everywhere and we feel it but we can’t see it. It’s a child’s concept of God. Fill my lungs with the breath of life. Put Christ’s blood in my blood, his flesh in my belly. Let us eat God clean and pick our teeth with His bones.
There are strange beauties everywhere. A whole pack of models stroll down Houston. A woman is a tailor. A man sells European shoes. His ascot is a handsome teal. We drink rum and toast to a fair fucking fine howdy-do.
A toast to all the wars we’ve won and lost, the Englishman says.
To all the deaf people, I say, and the people who’ve been bitten by rattlesnakes or probed by aliens or fondled by their uncle or ever had their wisdom teeth taken out or had appendicitis, to all the people who died virgins, to all the people who don’t know how to drive stick. Blessed be to God.
Rev. Maloney, drunk as hell, says you, Eli.
Sometimes I feel like we’re soldiers but there’s not a war.
Darling cuts a lime slice for my beer.
I love her.
11
I’m the mayor of a lonely country. A passenger on wax wings tilting left to right, diving toward a river as the peasants go about their day. Another politician is found with his dick in his hand, a belt tight around his neck. I scratch the scratch-offs and play the numbers, the ponies, the fights. There are longer shadows later in the day. Darling takes my hand.
I want so bad to be a saint but I’m a coward and barely Christian, I say.
That makes you a good candidate, she says.
The urbanites dress like sinners and I love the sin. I rank folks mainly by their vice and folly. A blond with daddy issues sucks heroin up her nose. Hurt me, Lord, she says, I want to feel more nightmare. I seek the love of the Trinity but there is only my DNA, my center of gravity, my supercilious mouth. I step to the edge of the roof.
What are you doing, asks you, Eli.
Feeling the pull.
Thinking of cashing in, are you?
I’ve already done that, Eli. I’m just waiting for the horses to carry me away.
For millions of years no creature had an eye. When did life start eating itself, growing as it diminished?
We are born to eat each other, I say.
But we have hearts and brains and courage, Darling says.
The baby kicks in her belly.
What color was the first eye, Darling asks.
Manhattan is a place where all spirits go to die. My mustard seed of faith can move no mountains here. I take the elevator to the top of the Empire State. It is the godly cock of the island, reaching heavenward. The Chrysler is the godly cock of art. The Freedom Tower is the godly cock of grief. I will soar between them with my homemade wings. Nono irons Cataract’s shirt in a fleabag motel. He makes instant coffee and plays computer chess. Everyone on daytime TV is a psychopath.