He was a cool cat with no time for the boys on the block. They were out for stick ball and manhunter, dodging between hydrants and ducking into back alleys. Their mothers would call for them from 3rd and 4th story windows between laundry lines tied across rusty fire escapes. And the boys would whine for one hour more and in turn they were scolded that they had until their fathers came home, big burly men who lugged toolboxes and brown bag lunches day in and day out.
No, he was always on the Concourse, leaning up against one thing or another, be it the shiniest lamp post on the block, outside a 1st floor window drifting a salsa tune, or even, a 1955 Cadillac Eldorado. He would eventually own one, long before the 331 cubic inch overhead valve V8 became a dinosaur, and hang on it long after it became extinct. He wore zoot suits that he was too young to be properly tailored for, and one of them hats that earned him scorn from the local flat foot on the beat. The fuzz always pulled him aside for a word or too about the straight and narrow, and he would grin his grin, shrug his shoulders and slyly twist out from under his glare. “Easy Jack,” he would say, “the threads, they might be from Persia, but they don’t stand up too well to heat.”
While the other boys on the block chased each other between the folds of their mother’s skirts, he was trying to get under them. He was smacked around a lot at his advances, but he didn’t mind, it wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. But there was a mother or two who returned his sly smile with something more alluring and he found himself, in the beginning, way over his head. But this is how it started and as the summers rolled by, he got better to the point where he didn’t to hang out on the Concourse at all anymore, slouching from one corner to another. He literally went from door to door, and a couple of times, particularly in the early morning or late evening, winding down his “route” , he even tipped his hat passing by the husband right in on stoop, or nudged by him in the stairway on his way up.
It was all well and good until he started hitting the clubs, that’s when it started getting expensive. For money, he could scrunch some change to get by, nicking from an unattended purse or even putting on the water works about his dying mother right there between the sheets and shamelessly right after they had done the deed. But his mother could only be dying for so long until he would have to admit she was already dead. He never used his father in any story as his father apparently had no use for him. His only memory of the man was that he held his saxophone more often and with more grace than he ever did his wife and child, but his father had never played them a tune. And now, no matter his disdain for his estranged father and the horn that man carried, he felt himself compelled to all sorts of music, and jazz in particular, although he would never admitted it until he was near dead himself.
One summer he found himself with a Maria, which wasn’t her name, but all Spanish women were Maria to him because of that movie West Side Story, and he would steal lines from it, which made the Marias in his life coo. “Boy, boy, crazy boy,” they would say, as he slid one hand up a skirt and another down a blouse, “be cool boy..” Unlike the other dames on his route, this Maria had a husband that worked the night shift, which made her want the sort of night life glamour the other women in the neighborhood would die to have. The only problem of course was that he was often penniless, all of his loot going to keeping his suits clean, his shoes polished and a bit of starch for his brim. He saved up here and there the first time, thinking that he had enough to paint the town red for her, until he reached his first stop and blew three fourths of his wad just on the price of admission. It ended up being the most expensive lay of his life and he wasn’t quite ready to stop dancing the tango with this broad.
He teamed up with a younger kid he once knew on the block named Lucky. Lucky had actually caught him with his mother once but Lucky, and Lucky being not all that lucky or all too bright, believed him to be his real father (or else why did he do that thing that made babies more often than his alleged “father” did?). Lucky fell into the trade at the time, the only one from the neighborhood to do so, while everyone else got hooked onto it instead. And the two of them started to really clean up. He caught his 1955 Eldorado and more money than he could spend on his ever increasing cadre of women. Lucky was like a pig in shit, never when any skills for the ladies, he found now that he didn’t have to say much at all, just from hanging out with “Daddio” (and he insisted on that instead of having Lucky following him around calling him “Dad…”), he got plenty of affection.
Upon reflection, Daddio wonders how things would have been different if Lucky hadn’t confused him for his father. Would he have done what he had did, would either one of them have something to say to the other today? But that was long ago and he felt he had put enough miles and clubs and women and cheap motels between them so he could finally sleep at night, until he realized, that he would never be far away enough from his past. Even worse, he knew he wasn’t ashamed of it at all, not for one bit of it. He damn well enjoyed every minute, punch and drop of it. And if his old bones weren’t so brittle, he would be out there now, spitting on the sidewalk, watching the mutts swing broomsticks for bats, tipping his hat at the newlywed he had last night or flipping the bird to the man stuck on patrol. Yeah, if only these wires weren’t holding down and this pump and these doctors. If only they’d let him breathe on his own, one last time and let him whistle that tune he never heard his father play.

Dear Baba,
Today we celebrate not one birthday, but three: one for the loving father who has provided and cared for us through physical toil and emotional strength. The other is for the husband, who’s kindness and patience has laid the most solid of foundations for a long time future of love and security. And more importantly, we celebrate the birthday of the man, always quick with laughter and wit, the very soul of this house.

I did not tell you of the dream
Where I wept
Sleeping
Awake from the arms as you
Or the sensation it had been
Around the corner dream
The corners of my elbows raw
From having turned away from
The dreaming of a dream
Weeping, wept of having not told.
I did not tell you of the fascination
The twisting turn
Of this side into something wondrous
Unscathed but scathing
That something else having me by the hook
And little left of pretensions
To be fascinated once again when I well
Thought I was no longer fascinating for.
I did not tell you that, nor this.
There are so many things I have yet to say or tell
But that would be telling and there’s so little time for secrets
But so much time for love.

Waking up is the hardest part. Between the dream and the warmth of the sheets, there is a denial of the world outside, there is a safe place from which you do not want to crawl out of. There on box springs and mattresses. There’s hope that the life you are living is not your own, that for a brief moment, everything hangs and it hangs away from your reach.
Then something crumbles away from your eyes. Something loosens and you begin to slip, as if you were falling upward, as if the cliché was true all along: you can’t take it with you, and you suddenly shake with the small fear that this was all indeed a dream and there’s a mild horror in that, that you were falling in love with a dream and that you were safe and now you never were, now the funhouse begins all over again and you can’t do a damn thing about it.
All sleep begins with denial, that you are not in danger, that the world is quiet enough for you to close your eyes to, that you can simply turn your back on everything and not expect anything to happen. That it’ll all still be there when you’re done.
I spend so much time sleeping because what lies in my hands rots and stews and stinks up the inside of my nostrils: the tracks are well worn and the scabs have yet to heal. I haven’t touched a needle, or let a needle touch me for years, but the sores are the same nonetheless. Like yesterday. Like her hands putting the pressure on the thigh and holding the bit between her teeth.
I would see it all spread out and bend and the corners of her eyes become like snakes, like rabid rats crawling up my crotch and this gentle stroking in my head for her to bite and feed on my scrotum and we would tumble and pass out and the next thing you know awake and starving and sick of each other, sick to our stomachs crawling through living rooms out of houses, into calm morning streets to find some idiot to pay for the next hit. But I had it all together. No one had a handle on me.

such, such
things in my head:
they demand
(You walk
into a room and I know you
are there)
and everything
in my head,
pounds, becomes light.
I actually feel
the distance
unbecome and
bend
for you coming
towards me, the space
halves itself
and I do not even look,
you are there
coming here,
you are here from there
(and all this
in my head,
happening,
and only in there,
in my head only)
in your leaving,
you remain still,
a picture and a framel.
How you came and rested
so deep
beneath the
nothing to do
with you,
a matter of time
and place
and the such.
What to do, what to do,
I have this
something here
and it won’t budge,
it is too heavy
or light,
or lighthearted,
it makes the heart light,
you understand,
and the head heavy.
Heavy with you,
seeing you come to me,
from there to here,
so to speak
and that is impossible,
the speaking bit,
it’s not in the cards,
so I, simply,
watch and touch this
in my head,
touching you
essentially,
and that is enough.
It is only just,
it only is
what it is,
just enough,
just that,
something
in my head
that isn’t
anything more
than this:
never
more than enough.
Just enough.
enough.

sounds a voice can hope for
becoming a matter of fact.
precisely knowing this precious smile
hidden by the quiet quiet embrace.
a sense of open wanting
in the bright tear surfacing.
to enjoy falling & shattering something
that has been vacant until this moment.
gently pushing past without question to be
only & only to be soothed in the vein,
suddenly, wonderfully.

Would you mind if I sit a bit and say a word or two?
First thanks for the seat, in this city, it’s mighty kind of you.
Oh what? You don’t know who I am?
Just a man, my friend, just a man.
But I know you, yes I do, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.
You were the boy just down the street, the smiley child, the one I had to meet.
It seems I got to you too late though, your skin is no longer the color of snow.
Your eyes are cracked red and you’re breathing as if you were dead.
Hush, don’t say a word, listen: Your lips are dry, they no longer glisten.
Would you mind if I ramble a bit and tell you a thing or two?
First, we missed you when you left.
It seemed the sun was gone, the moon too.
Oh yeah, on us, you left you mark.
You were that good thing in the dark, striking out, into the city,
’cause those other lights were so pretty.
I heard you started downtown but somehow ended up, uptown.
You made some friends along the way, the kind that don’t know the light of day.
Why your eyes so cracked and red?
Did you know you were breathing like you were dead?
Hush boy, don’t say a word, listen: Your lips are dry, they no longer glisten.
Would you mind if I cried a bit, shed a tear or two for you?
You were so young and alive, see what the city can do?
Oh wait, where’s my handkerchief?
I’m thinking about what you did, that mischief.
What possessed you to shoot that gun?
Did it make killing easy, did it make it fun?
Or was it all that drug money that made you act all funny?
For this, you had asked for a priest.
To see a holy man before the chair, at least.
And I came to see your eyes all red before they pronounced you dead.
Hush, it’ll be over soon, listen: Your lips are dry, they no longer glisten.

You are waiting.
And as you are waiting, you notice how the room takes on a different meaning as the sun goes down. It has been a matter of hours since you first unlocked the door and you walked in. The gun is in your hand, loosely held, on your lap. In a few minutes, when you hear the door unlock downstairs, your grip will tighten, but you will remain seated with your hand quietly on your thigh. There is a corpse in the study with you that is covered by the shadows of the retreating sun, the blood having been partially soaked up by the carpet.
Briefly, you remember entering and finding the wife here unexpectedly. You knew of the wife, knew of the target’s birthday, but the wife was supposed to be at work. She was home to bake a cake for the target. When she had heard the door opening, she exclaimed, “shit!”, because, most probably, she had thought you were him, and the surprise she had planned was ruined. She pouted as she came out of the kitchen, eyes closed, and then she had opened them as she entered the living room. Startled, her mouth half open with questions, that by your very presence, were answered. Her hands were tight against the texture of her slacks, the smoothness wrinkled by the pressure of them, her eyes never strayed from the volume of space that your standing in the living room entailed. You were amused. She had been as recently as yesterday, with another woman and now was baking a cake for the man that she claimed had her heart. There is much you know about the wife and the target, enough to have you here, enough to have withdrawn the gun from the long coat pocket, deep and comfortable pockets, and aim. She bolted back into the kitchen, you heard the clatter of stainless steel utensils, then the thumping of hurried steps, going up. There is a staircase in the back of the kitchen that leads both up and down. A spine leading from the second floor down to the basement. To your left there was a staircase also.
You do not normally kill women, but your knowledge of her, that she knows what the target does, a child pornographer, even helps him, brought you to the foot of the first step and evenly, steadily climbed up. At the top of the staircase, directly in front of it, was the bathroom, to right, the bedroom, both doors open. The back staircase gave access to the study on your left. You did not hear any movement. The door was also open. Walking down the hallway, you marveled at the irony of the events that were unfolding before you; you had planned to wait for the target in the study. Pausing at the doorway, again you listened. You then quickly entered the room, without apparent caution, stopping in the center of it.
Her mistake was not running down to the basement, where she would have had the dark to hide in. You had removed the fuse for the bottom half of the house the night before, but did not kill them for this reason: you were not paid for the woman. Since both were in bed in the early hours of the morning, and she a light sleeper from what you understood, you had decided to wait, fuse still in your pocket.
She screamed, charging at you from behind the door, where you had heard her rapid, shallow breathing. You turned. There was a clean, sharp knife in her hand, high above her head, the blade wide enough for the rays of sun to glint off of. The knife was in her right hand, so you sidestepped to the left, alongside it, it is almost impossible for anyone to swing their arm in a downward arc away from their chest. The gun was less than a foot away from her neck, your arm just underneath her elbow, knife safely away, useless. You fired, pulling the trigger just as the barrel made fleeting contact with her throat. The soft flesh of neck ripped open, you ducked as she spun violently and back, swinging above you, her head loose, the left corner of her jaw hanging off its hinge. She landed with a heavy dry thud, where she has bled since then, hidden now by shadows, as you have been waiting.
You hear the door open downstairs. The target is here. You imagine him taking off his coat, and as you do so, you hear the rustling of hangers and the creak of a door closing. There is silence, the target is probably expecting her to be in the house, it is his birthday after all, you know he is glancing into the kitchen. Thinking that she is in the bedroom, he will ascend the steps, after noticing the flour and powder on the cutting board in the kitchen. Several seconds go by after you have made your assumption. You hear him coming up the back stairs. Directly in front of you, because you have positioned the reclining chair that way, is the door that the stairs lead to. The target is bounding up and almost rushes practically onto your lap. He stops dead before you, perfectly still, perhaps thinking that he is dreaming, having a nightmare. He knows who you are, realizes that this is not a dream, he will not wake up again today. His lips tremble. You are wondering if he is thinking something as hollow as, ‘no, not now..’
In a whisper, you say, “..hello.”
He mutters, eyes filling, watery, his fingers beginning to shake, managing to ask, “wh-who?”, swallowing.
You stand, place a hand on his shoulder, feeling the tremor of his bones, the raised hairs close to his neck. Leaning forward, inches from his ear, slow and clear, “..birthdays are for children.”
He collapses in front of you, broken, sobbing. He begins to beg. “PLEASE-“, on his knees, arms wrapped around your legs, whimpering. Snot and tears begin to slide down the cheeks and mouth, lip curled back, yellow teeth pressed together. He tilts his head back, looking at you through small, pressed jelly eyes, choking, dribbling “-PLEEESE NO-”
You carefully place one hand behind his neck. The gun is in the other. You press the muzzle against his forehead.
“-PLEEESE OH GOD NO PLEEESE PLEEESE-”
You steady your grip. “..hold still.”

A thief breaks into a house with her only exit being the way she broke in. Inside the house is everything she could ever want. For each item she puts into the bag she is carrying, the exit shrinks…
“I sit and write about worlds that only have meaning for me,” he pauses, regards the interviewer. “Is it any wonder that my books do not appeal to anyone?”
She called him and had said, after the scene in the restaurant where she threw the ring in his face, “Okay, I’ve thought it over. I’ll marry you.”
“I only want one thing.” She says, rolling the lit end of her cigarette along the edge of the bench. “A friend that I can fuck every once in a while, without further attachments.”
“Daddy, why do you get mad when the tv doesn’t work?”
“98 percent of men just want to go in there and bust a nut as quickly as possible.” He opened the door and they stepped out onto the street. “The other two percent make her cum before they even stick it in.”
“And it was okay to put my father into a nursing home?”
…Even when she takes an item out of the bag, the thief finds out that the exit does not go back to its original shape. When she puts the item she just took out back into the bag, the exit closes even more…
“After work, Daddy needs a little time for himself, son.”
“Good.” He said and then hung up before she could say another word. He turned on the lamp and looked at the engagement ring, smiling to himself.
“She can’t have much time left anyway. What’s the big deal?”
She eyes a black man crossing the street when she adds, “Why do men always want more than that?”
Outside, near Times Square, he said, “And anyway, all these women that bitch about these losers they’re with deserve it. The ones that fell in love with the jerks that just want to get themselves off.”
The interviewer scratches her head. “Do you mean to tell me that you have bought over ten million copies of your own book?”
…The thief approaches her exit and with every step she takes, there is a humming sound which grows louder. Before she is even close enough to touch it, the sound is a piercing wail. She jumps back into the center of the room…
He then went off in a mocking tone, high pitched in the middle of Times Square, ” ‘He doesn’t take his time, oh, He doesn’t know how to please me, oh, I love him but I’m not satisfied’, oh GOD . . . they make me sick.”
“Yes,” he replies, embarrassed smile on his lips, “Yes, I have. They’re all in this warehouse I bought with the royalties.”
“The woman survived getting hit by a car when she was eighty! Who’s to say she won’t live for another five years?”
“But Daddy, you fall asleep after tv.”
He rubbed the ring against his forehead until the diamond broke the surface of his skin. He couldn’t have been happier.
She puts the cigarette out on the bench as she turns to him and asks, “Well, what do you think a relationship should be?”
…In the center of room in a house filled with everything she could possibly imagine, she whispers, “I’m fucked…”
“Well, that’s because Daddy’s tired son, and he has a long day ahead of him tomorrow.”
“I find that rather hard to believe,” the interviewer says, “I’ve read your book.”
“I don’t think you want my opinion on that,” he says, avoiding her eyes, watching now a blond woman pass right in front of them. “You really don’t want to hear it.”
They started to cross Broadway, but the light changed. Stranded on an island in the middle of Broadway and 6th avenue, he said, “The funny thing is, that women would rather blame men in general and not accept that they themselves are at fault. They picked these assholes and decided to fall for them. They can’t accept that they’re bad judges of character.”
He sat up and a drop of blood from his forehead fell onto the ring.
“I know honey it’s going to be hard, but she has no place left to go. Your father at least had your sister.”
…The thief hears her own voice echoing throughout the house. Drifting and getting fainter and fainter each time: I’m Fucked, I’m fucked, i’m fucked…
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I believe you,” he says, “but tell me the truth: You picked it up only after it was on the bestseller list, right?”
Not bothering to wipe the drop off, he picked up the phone and called her, holding the ring gently.
“My sister? My sister? My father had not spoken to my sister since she eloped! You knew that and still you convinced me to put him into a home. ‘We can’t afford it, Who would stay home and take care of him?’ Do you remember that? Do you?”
An older Hispanic man stops and asks for a light. He gives the man a book of matches. She then insists, hand on the bench as she leans closer, “Come on, tell me. How do you think it should be?”
“They would rather be treated like shit, than have someone that not only cares for them, but expects them to believe in themselves.” He said. The light changed and they crossed 6th ave.
“Are you going to play with me since the tv doesn’t work?”
…A minute or so after the echo of her voice has died down, the thief hears: who’s there, Who’s there, Who’s THERE…?
“That’s not the point. You just don’t want her because she never did approve of you, right? The woman is ninety-three years old and you’re out for revenge, right?”
“Daddy’s got to go to sleep now son. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Well,” he looks at her. Pale face, small round lips, little blush, brown eyes, black hair full of curls. “Isn’t it supposed to be two lovers that can also be friends?”
It was her answering machine that picked up. He slipped the ring on during her message. At the tone, he said, “Where are you?”
The interviewer says defensively, “But it is a good book.”
They reached the other side of 6th. He added, “So fuck them.”
…Pacing in a narrow circle, the thief wonders if she should reply or not…
An Asian couple kiss as they signal for a cab. An older model stops for them, but a man swipes it. The couple laugh, kiss again, and wait for another. “So you agree with me?” she asks.
He leans forward. “Only because 10 million copies were bought. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this interview.”
“Do not try to turn this around. We can’t have your mother here. It is the same thing as it was with my father. We couldn’t then and we damn well can’t now.”
“Are you going to fix the tv Daddy?”
His friend asked, as they walked further west, towards 7th avenue, “So what are we supposed to do?”
It was a long time before he hung up the phone. The ring just fit on his pinky.
…On a whim, the thief puts one leg into the bag. She hears heavy steps approaching. The exit widens by half a foot…
“What are we supposed to do?” he laughed as they came up on 7th, “Crash and burn baby, crash and burn until we find the right one.”
“Your mother is going to call the electrician in the morning.”
“I can not believe you are saying this. How can-” RRRINNGGG
“It’s one thing to want to fuck your friends,” he says, watching a young black woman sit a few feet away. “And it’s something else when the person you think of as your lover is also your friend.”
The interviewer asks, “So you’re basically saying that the literary public consists solely of mindless sheep?”
“No,” she replied, “I was home. I just didn’t hear the phone.” She told him this after he had been waiting for three hours. The engagement ring was still on his finger.
…Inside the bag like she was in a potato sack race, the thief hops to the exit. There is no hum, but the door bangs open as the owner bursts in. The thief waves good-bye as she jumps through her exit and it magically seals shut behind her.
He called her a liar and slammed the phone down despite her pleas. After noticing how well the ring looked on him, he decided to keep it for himself.
“That was my aunt. We don’t have to argue anymore. She died.”
“You can’t be my Daddy. You’re a couch potato.”
“Yes,” he nods his head. “That’s exactly what I think about the quote unquote literary public.”
“You’re wrong. There’s no such thing as love, and since there isn’t, then there’s no such thing as lovers,” she also checks out the black woman. “That’s all bullshit. There’s sharing, there’s intimacy. That’s what it is when it’s between friends. That’s real.”
As they turned up 9th avenue, his friend said, “Not much of a choice.”

Ahasuerus found the keys just sitting there on the subway seat and took them home.
He had seen much in his life, after all, his life was nearing two-thousand years. Nothing really surprised him anymore, human complexity only went so far. Just as Saussure had proposed that any language, from a distinctly finite set of phonemes, appeared to be infinite in the combination of the such, there was still a limit, a threshold that broached all other languages. In other words, for the exception of himself, which even this he knew was not true, all arrangements found themselves doubled, all originals become copies: history, in time, repeats itself. Despite what has been written about Saussure, and the subsequent sciences that have sprung from his philosophical pondering and the names that have muscled themselves onto the same page as himself, particularly in the twentieth century, Derrida, Barthes, Chomsky; many during his time ridiculed him. Ahasuerus remembers distinctly the mad method Ferdinand taught his classes, the fervor and passion and the glazed look in his student’s eyes. Ahasuerus was impressed then, he still had it in him for such things. Until the Holocaust.
After almost two-thousand years, after being damned to walk the earth by Himself until the Day of Reckoning, Ahasuerus was still not ashamed to be a Jew. He held it to his bosom as the Inquisitors held their rosary beads during the Inquisition. But now, now his grip was not exactly weakening, but his bones were stiff, the marrow of his knuckles were tired. Quite simply, he was bored. Even this, entering his apartment building, even the cities with their cramped cement towers and push of bodies, living in little apartments that reminded him more of the prisons they had in France. Many have said that the world is growing smaller, and Ahasuerus felt more as if the world was not growing smaller, with global networks and “letting your fingers do the walking”, but instead, the world was decompressing, simplifying in an exponential manner. All the lines of the world’s palm were disappearing and the hand itself becoming more cartoonish. He liked the idea and found himself smiling when he entered his apartment.
The keys still in his hand, he walked over to the window, where his desk and typewriter were. A stack of paper neatly beside the gray machine, a chair whose age he tripled, wooden and sturdy, and a desk that was uncluttered and everything set on it in straight lines. Ahasuerus read through what he had written the night before. He was writing an autobiography, it seemed the right thing to do, before he lost all taste for memory, which he found plagued him less and less these days. It would be a long one, and even now this truth soured in his mouth. He placed the keys on the desk and sat in the chair, turning on the typewriter and slipping in a blank page. He was now in the early days of the Middle Ages. Hands ready on the keyboard, he looked at the page.
Ahasuerus stared at the page for a few moments, then leaned back. He looked out of his window. The noises of a lazy summer drifted in and out, caressing it seemed to him, from the streets just outside. A siren from only a few blocks away, wailed as if it was stretching across time. He got up and went throughout the house, walking from room to room. Three and rather small, but still all there, all his for the time being, filled with dazzling shadow and light as the summer sun sank. When he walked back into the living room, he paused for a moment before returning to his seat. The sun had caught a dozen or so particles of dust in its light. Suspended as if the room was made of amber, sparkling, twisting so slowly in air. He sat back down, turned his chair back towards to the window and watched the sunset. Radiant yellows and oranges and reds. The streets were dark blue and getting quieter. A number of apartment windows across from his were blinking out, one by one.
He looked at the typewriter.
He turned it off and examined the keys from the subway. Ahasuerus jingled them. The Middle Ages reminded him of the Holocaust, as did the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Ahasuerus had not waned to die when they had huddled him into the gas chambers, he still had a tenacious hold on life, and he had been terrified that God had finally forsaken him. Even though he had been starved more than the others that were crushed with him, he could not eat after most of what he had seen, he only felt an ebbing of strength and a growling pain where his stomach had been. Ahasuerus had assumed that his body had begun feeding on itself for him not to have even gotten deathly ill. He truly expected to die and he shook against as well as with the others there with him. It had taken him years to write anything other than, ‘Do you know what it is like to be skin pressed against bone?’
He hadn’t written anything that night.
***
He awoke the next day and found himself still at his desk, clutching onto the keys.
Sweating, he let go of them and slowly got up. Ahasuerus wiped the sweat from his brow. He had dreamed again the same dream he had dreamed off and on for almost a lifetime: surviving as the others clutched their throats around him, crowded against him with no room to fall, reaching for him as if he had been the Messiah Himself, just as Christ had reached for him a thousand years before. Even though they could not speak, they gasped, their eyes bewildered, jealous, why was he still standing on his own two feet as they swayed and crumpled against one another? The hiss had been so silent but it suffocated their screams, those that had the strength to still scream. But the prevailing sound had been the moans, a din of voices moaning as one and a sea of heads lowering all around him. He blinked a number of times before he straightened his back, his back cracking a few times, slowly, as if it had not wanted to be bothered. Walking stiffly into the kitchen, he frowned with each step and ache. He poured himself a glass of orange juice, put the container back into the ‘fridge and walked back to the desk.
Ahasuerus touched the keys he had found. He remembered being shoveled along with a pile of bodies into the ditch; he remembered bitterly how much he had wanted to live.
He left with the keys snugly in his pants pocket.
Ahasuerus, no matter the time period, always found himself working. It was the one steady thing in his life, the one thing that he could not fail to find. Lovers had come, grown old and died, wondering how he had kept himself so well together through the years. They could never see that he had not aged at all, imagining wrinkles accumulate on his face that were either never there, or already were. “How could any mind accept you as indeed being the Wandering Jew? It is all a fable.” Sartre would wave his hand, dismissing the thought. Although doubting, Sartre had understood, even perhaps considered Ahasuerus a friend being the only that had known. This before he had introduced Sartre to Genet, whom Sartre adored thereafter, and Ahasuerus quietly took his leave.
Ahasuerus had tried to make a family long before then, but the Plague had taken his only son, and Ahasuerus did not want to make that mistake again. When he clutched onto his boy’s corpse as they dragged it onto the carriage to be taken away to the square to be burned with others, it struck Ahasuerus that he was lucky; he’d never have to watch his son’s hair shoot into a red wiry shock, or see him grow as a tree and become burly and stout, or curse other men and trip mid-stance over women, he would not live through his son’s successes and failures, and then see his son grow old and wither and die. After that, Ahasuerus felt a burden lift from his shoulders, he actually felt relieved to be unencumbered with the mandates of lineage and heritage. He had let go of the corpse as they began to beat him and he had gotten to his feet, watching the cart bump along the cobblestone, taking with it all the possible children he would ever have.
At work nobody noticed him play with the keys during his lunch break. Nobody paid any attention to him staring at the groves, rubbing both sides of each key, tapping them against the elevator walls and glass, listening to whatever sound they had made. Nobody thought it odd that his lunch reminded him of the day, almost two-thousand years ago, when there had been agony on His face and He had asked for a cup of water. Just at the moment Ahasuerus would turn his back and close his door to Him, the spear that the Roman held against His side to prod Him on caught a ray of sun in the same manner as the keys now did.
Others in his department thought the old Jew had fallen in love.
***
On the train ride home, Ahasuerus was careful not to let the keys make a sound. He often looked to his left and right, up and down, hand tightly around the keys. He had even gotten into the train car on the opposite end of the train from where he had been yesterday. This was how he had felt when he first came to New York, after he had dug himself out of the ditch back in Poland, and made his way to a camp of Allied Forces The soldiers could not speak to them, he could not find the words, and his throat was too dry, he felt that it would crack open in his mouth if he even attempted to speak. The doctors that they had taken him to were disturbed by him. They took almost as many pints of blood as the Germans had. He was an anomaly and he caused quite a stir in the camp. By nightfall, he had snuck away and boarded a ship by the end of the week.
He got off the train. He walked up the staircase. He walked up another onto the street. He reached his building and finally felt relieved; Just as he did after he had gotten his first week’s salary in America.
“Those are my keys.”
Ahasuerus turned around slowly.
A red headed little boy with dark eyes and a hand outstretched. “Give me my keys.”
“What?” he smiled. The child reminded him of his own son, and the cart that had taken him.
The boy kept his hand steady. “I have to go home.”
He kneeled down, his palms sweaty. “What keys?”
Small hand outstretched. “My father is waiting for me.”
Ahasuerus laughed, the nervous laugh that came to his throat when He, Himself had damned him to wander the earth. He could not believe it then, until decades would go by, and all that he knew eroded around him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I am supposed to have the keys”, the boy said quietly, “I know that now. I was just tired but now I know. I have to go home. Lots of people are walking around wondering why they’re beginning to spoil.” The little boy still had his hand outstretched. The boy’s eyes were very, very still. “Give me my keys. My father is waiting and so are lots of people.” The boy frowned. “They are not for you to play with.”
Ahasuerus’ lip trembled and he felt within him a long sense of regret and irony. He pulled out the keys. He looked at them. His eyes began to swell for the first time since his had broke through the press of corpses that were both impossibly hard and soft, often his fingers finding themselves caught in someone’s jaw, pulling himself upward.
“People are walking…” the boy said, hand outstretched.
He gave the boy the keys, sobbing.
The boy took the keys. The boy lowered his arm.
“I am sorry,” the boy said, “it is not my fault that you will walk until the end of days.”
“I know,” Ahasuerus said, looking at his empty fingers.
“Maybe you’ll get a chance to speak to my father again.” The boy looked at his keys. “I can only wait for you.”
He slowly stood, eyes downcast.
“Have comfort in that.” the little boy said. “Have comfort that someone will always be waiting for you.”
Ahasuerus closed his eyes and saw nothing.
“Goodbye…” said the boy.
He took a deep breath. He opened his eyes. The boy was gone.
He turned towards his building. He went to his apartment and unlocked the door. Ahasuerus went inside but didn’t turn on any of the lights. He went to his desk and sat. About an hour later, the sun began to set. Radiant yellows and oranges and reds, and eventually dark, very dark and deep, blue. The streets grew quieter, a number of apartment windows blinking out, one by one. Ahasuerus looked at the typewriter.
He could only remember the empty space of where the keys once were on the seat, in the subway, yesterday.