Old and Cold Read online

  ALSO BY JIM NISBET

  —NOVELS—

  The Gourmet

  (aka The Damned Don’t Die)

  Ulysses’ Dog

  Lethal Injection

  Death Puppet

  The Price of the Ticket

  Prelude to a Scream

  The Syracuse Codex

  Dark Companion

  The Octopus On My Head

  Windward Passage

  A Moment of Doubt

  —POETRY—

  Poems for a Lady

  Gnachos for Bishop Berkeley

  Morpho

  (with Alastair Johnston)

  Small Apt

  (with photos by Shelly Vogel)

  Across the Tasman Sea

  —NONFICTION—

  Laminating the Conic Frustum

  —RECORDINGS—

  The Visitor

  For more information, as well as MP3s of

  “The Visitor” and “The Golden Gate Bridge,” visit

  NoirConeVille.com

  Copyright

  This edition first published in paperback in the United States in 2012 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales, please contact [email protected]

  Copyright © 2012 by Jim Nisbet

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the

  publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection

  with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN: 978-1-46830-187-8

  For

  Jean-Pierre Deloux

  frère, compère, corsaire

  You can do whatever you want,

  whatever you hear.

  —JOANNE BRACKEEEN

  Death nudged him as he lay there. There was an old

  Latin saying about the darkness. Spatien pro morte facite.

  Make room for death.

  —HOWARD FAST, Spartacus

  Contents

  Copyright

  Also by Jim Nisbet

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  ONE

  HERE WE GO AGAIN. IF THE SHIT CONTINUES LIKE THIS, I’M going to anneal the ferromagnesian nest under the bridge and take up smoking. It should be near an internet café so I’ll have access to streaming pornography. There’s deprivation, and there’s deprivation.

  I don’t know how it came to this. Yes, I do. There could have been no other path. It’s the way I led my life. Pillar to post, paycheck to paycheck, and, finally, inadequate Social Security dribble to inadequate Social Security dribble. I took it early, too. The theory was, is, you never know, you could die tomorrow, and then where’ll that larger dribble be, the one you could take if you waited till you were sixty-six, or seventy? Do the math, the smart money said. Besides, the smart money added, with a knuckle chuck to the shoulder with the pin in it, you cut drool with a little dribble? It makes a larger stain on your bib.

  Yo. You start taking your social security when you’re immediately able? At, say, in my case, sixty-two? At, say, in my case, seven hundred and sixty-three spermatazoa a month, with which you are to fertilize the eggs of commerce? After four years, which is the difference between sixty-two and sixty-six, pay attention, that comes to

  4 years × 12 months/year - 48 months × $763/month = $36,624

  In other words, $9156 per year

  Now, if you’re like me, and you’re living under a bridge, or on a weed-bearded Chris-Craft listing at anchor lo these fifteen years in some stinking gunkhole, as close as possible to some fast-food joint so you can walk to it, to where they have one-dollar blue-plate Depression Lunch Specials, you need to be thinking about this shit. Because some people will tell you, no, no, man, keep working. To whom you might say, hey, fecalface, have you ever levered fishheads and contaminated ice with a grain scoop up and out the hold of a purse seiner at eleven dollars an hour when you’re 62 years old? Just keep your head down, they will tell you. Keep working. Hold out. You’ll make more money, period. Cause, you know, like

  $11/hour × 40 hours/week × 50 weeks/year1 = $22,000 per year!

  I had no idea, you say. Pass the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication. That’s why I get the big money, the smart money says, ten percent of every dribble, to figure this shit out for you. So now, bear with me. If you wait until you can take your full retirement, at age 66, they’ll give you $1063 per month. That’s a three-hundred-dollar difference. It’s also a four year difference, you point out. You know what an old man like you can do, the smart money says, ignoring you, with an extra three hundred dollars a month? That should just about cover the cost of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication, you suggest. Not funny, says the big money, not funny at all. I was in proximity to a fancy cafe just this morning, you say, looking to retrieve a copy of today’s paper off an abandoned table, and I nostalgically noticed that a Bombay Sapphire martini cost seventeen dollars in that joint. You got that three hundred bucks, the smart money points out, you can drink 17.65 martinis a month. You roll your eyes like they’re a pair of half-olives in an open-face sandwich. Careful, I’m hungry. How many Martinis does a sixty-six year-old man need? Somewhere between two and five a night, you answer without hesitation, depending on the condition my condition is in. My lower-case g god, the smart money says, that’s a minimum of fifty-six in a leap-year February to a maximum hundred and fifty-five martinis in a thirty-one day month. You smack your lips: hell, you say, it takes the better part of the first one just to wash down the non-steroidal etc., not to mention the spookily sentient open face sandwich. Put another way, the smart money persists, that’s $952 for a relatively temperate leap-year February, ranging to something like $2635 for a balls-out binge any of the seven thirty-one-day months out of the year. That’s depressing. Which provokes a thought. Yes? How much money would it cost to keep on hand enough ibuprofen sufficient to feed the cuerpo 800 milligrams a night? I think they’re about five bucks apiece, the smart money says, the eight hundreds. The smart money shrugs. Generic, you get them a little cheaper. So that’s… A hundred and fifty bucks a month, the smart money interpolates. And where is that money supposed to come from, you ask. Out of your twenty-two kay a year, the smart money replies, restating the obvious. Hey, you say, what’s a progressive writer do? I don’t know, the smart money mutters tiredly, what? She spends all day restating the obvious and all night dreaming about it, you reply gleefully, I love that definition. The smart money makes a little puckered up face like maybe he just caught a whiff of formaldehyde drifting over the ditch. I’m a fiscal conservative, the smart money says. But you know what? you say. What, the smart money says. In order for the payments to kick in at the higher rate when you’re sixty-six to achieve parity with the lower payments you, of all people, should have started taking when you were sixty-two—I didn’t know what time it was, you interject—fourteen point seven years have to elapse. The smart money looks startled. Say what? Let’s do some simple algebra, y
ou suggest. You? the smart money responds. Algebra? Sure, you reply.

  66 years - 62 years = 4 years

  4 years × 12 months/year = 48 months

  I see you’re keeping your units straight, observes the smart money. You keep your units straight, you say, you keep yourself straight. Easy does it, the smart money forewarns, or I’ll smack you with the calculus. One day at a time, you reply. That’ll be the day, the smart money says. So, you continue, how much was that payment at 62? Seven sixty-three, the smart money replies.

  48 months × $763/month = $36,624

  Okay? Watch me now. I’m watching. So, after forty-eight months at seven sixty-three a month you got thirty-six thousand, six hundred twenty-four dollars. What if your doppelgänger holds out, he continues to scoop fishheads and ice for another four years, until he can take full retirement. The question becomes, at what point have you and your doppelgänger drawn equal totals of Social Security checks? That’s an interesting question, the smart money admits. Let’s call that point in time the moment of parity, you stipulate to the smart money, and let’s call gamma the number of months it takes to achieve the moment of parity. Fine by me, says the smart money. Okay, you say, now we need a field of grime. The entire face of this concrete abutment is one big carbon footprint, the smart money says. Okay, you say, lend me your rabbit’s foot. Not on your life, says the smart money. Come on, man, you say, later this week we’ll run it through the laundromat with the rest of your uniform. Unless you got some paper? No paper, laments the smart money. Fork it over. The smart money forks over the rabbit’s foot. A single, tiny key is attached to it by a loop of beaded chain, the key to baggage left behind a long time ago. It’s symbolic. And with its rabbit’s foot, in the grime on the face of the bridge abutment, you inscribe some equations.

  (48 months × $763/month) + (γ months × $763/month)

  = (γ months × $1063/month)

  $36,624 = (γ months × $1063/month) − (γ months × $763/month)

  = γ x ($1063 - $763) = γ x $300

  = $36,624 / $300 = 122.08

  122.08 months / 12 months/year = 10.17 years

  4 years + 10.17 years = 14.17 years @ parity

  See, you say, both of you, you and your doppelgänger, will be well into your decrepit seventies. Think fused disks and molybdenum parts. Damn, says the smart money. There’s similar calculations you can do for the difference between sixty-two years and seventy years, and between sixty-six years and seventy years. Let me let me, says the smart money, wielding his rabbit’s foot, and it’s not long before the soot on the groin of the bridge abutment is crawling with figures. Hell’s bells, says the smart money, it’ll take fourteen point six eight years to achieve parity between the payments initiated at seventy as opposed to the lower ones initiated at sixty-six years of age. I just love algebra, you interject. And it will take, the smart money continues patiently, sixteen point seven five years to achieve parity between the sumtotal of higher payments initiated at seventy years of age as opposed to the lower payments initiated at sixty-two years of age. You’ll be almost seventy-nine years old, the two of you point out, in unison. If you’re still alive, again in unison. Say, the smart money adds, what if you take simple interest on these figures? How’s that, you say. You know, you get seven sixty-three on month one and put it in the bank at so many percent compounded monthly. What are you to live on? We’re not talking about living. Oh. So the next month, when the next seven sixty-three comes in, you add it to the first seven sixty-three, only now the first seven sixty-three is, say, seven seventy-two or something, so you have what they call over there in accounts receivable an aged total. I see what you’re getting at, you say. You’ll never catch up, the smart money says. It’s kind of like an investment, you say. That’s it, the smart money says. Highly theoretical, you point out. How’s that? the smart money asks. Like all investments, you reply, it’s highly theoretical. You mean, your personal investments, the smart money says. That’s right, you say. All my life, all my investments have been highly theoretical. Take that Apple stock I should have bought, way back in 1985. Which gets us only a little anterior to taking up smoking and living under a bridge, the smart money says. That why you get the big money, you point out kindly, along with the occasional pubic louse. Mallophaga or Anoplura, the smart money asks without hesitation. I’m not sure, you admit readily, arresting the urge to scratch. You got a itch, the smart money says, you oughta scratch it. Is that what the smart money says? you say, scratching. They won’t send that check to a post office box, the smart money reminds you. Another goddamn cost-of-living expense, you grouse, there oughta be a pleonasm. Is this circling back to the notion of progressive writing? the smart money asks. No, you reply, albeit with some uncertainty. Good, the smart money says, because I’m a fiscal conservative. What’s that mean, anyway? you ask. In what context? the smart money hedges. What context? You wave a hand. This goddamn context. The smart money looks around. Pretty grim. A lot of gravel and Scotch broom. Gravel is ubiquitous, and Scotch broom will grow anywhere, you point out. It would appear to be so, says the smart money. No use taking up smoking, anyway. How’s that, you say. No cigarettes, is the reply; besides, while orally they may be equivalent, numismatically they cost more than martinis. You’re not being helpful, you say. Lay off them cigarettes, the smart money points out, maybe you’ll achieve the parity before you achieve the lung cancer. Got to get a fixed address first, you reiterate, then start to get the checks, then worry about the lung cancer, you hear what I’m saying? Is this circling back around… To fiscal conservatism, you’re exactly correct. That’ll be the day, the smart money says. Say, you say, which side are you on, in this equation? The side that’s going to come up with lunch. Why, just the other day, a man handed us his lunch. Just the other day? That was… We were looking more pitiable than usual. That was… Pitiable? You mean feedable. A pity-feed? …several years ago, it seems to me. Another thing, without those social services, you couldn’t tell if you had the lung cancer or not. Really? Doesn’t it make it hard to breathe? I wouldn’t know. You should take up smoking and find out. Why not take up social services? You know, cut to the chase. I spent my whole life chasing. You haven’t stirred a finger. Not a dactyl. Forswear. I’m serious. Everything’s serious. Compute. Seriously? Renounce. What’s left? Decline. Done. Parity? Repertory. Ah, repertory. The repository. What’s left? Not a gimmick. Nary a trick. Sub-par chicanery, below the bottom of the hole, underwater, submerged, under obscure glass. See the way that woman is looking at you? Me? She’s looking at you. Stand up straight, she’s wondering when you’re going to achieve parity. She’s wondering whether she should cross the street before she gets here. There she goes. Nice legs. Nice legs? You’re one to speak. If there’d been any design changes in women in the past twenty years, you’d be the wrong person to ask about them. I think I’m a little more informed than that. Am I hurting you? You’re hurting me. Not like a good woman would. A good woman would come between you and death. That would be about a temerarious vixen. I reiterate my earlier position. You mean I wouldn’t even know the love of a good woman? You wouldn’t even know the love of a bad woman. It has been a drought, of late. A dearth. A paucity. A veritable famine. Though doth calumniate me. Prove me wrong. This hip is hurting again. You’re changing the subject. I’ll need it to sprint after one, after all. One look at you, they’ll rediscover the afterburner. You’ll catch naught but phantoms. You’re the phantom. How so? You saw her cross the street. There are both a bar and a taxi over there. You’re demoted to the mere third possibility. At least she didn’t roll us. She doesn’t look the type. I reiterate my original position. I beg your pardon, but I was rolled by a woman, once. There you go, you must once have achieved parity. Otherwise I’d be dead. If we still had a newspaper in this town, we could check the obituaries. You don’t follow the obituaries, the smart money intoned, they follow you. You‘re repeating yourself. Really? When did I ever say that—today, I mean. You shake your head. The only thing, t
he one thing, you were ever smart about was money. That’s why… Yeah yeah yeah. If this hip gets any worse, it’s going to take all day to get this rabbit’s foot to the laundromat. Now you’re talking about one of the big problems of the geriatricon. When the bog coughs up your mummy, will you still have your rabbit’s foot? Sans doute, mon frère. Le pied de lapin. Good name for a bar. That is the name of that bar. Let’s go in there, work on the old ethylcephalous condition. You mean the balance of martinis? The very same. You need money, to work on what you said. I thought we were chasing parity. Parity or women? That was a sad shake of the head. No money, no parity, no alcohol, no women. Chasing nothing. Pseudo-senility, this ain’t. All too aware. Dementia in reverse. The floridity of your vegetative process. Confusion as regards sedulity. A calmative. Sip, rest, small talk. Sip, rest, small talk. A second drink, eventually. Soon enough, a skewing of the coronal plane. They’re quite irresistible, martinis. Especially when you’re old, out of work, trying to live long enough to achieve parity, when only a properly made martini is colder than you are. You’re mighty opinionated, you say. I’m tired of staring at the barroom door, the smart money said. Having the economic wherewithal to make a stab at the pickling of ye perimysia in a civilized if extremely modest premises is one thing. Not having it is something else. Which is why you get the—. Which is why I’m bored with having been standing here on this bum hip for—what, half an hour?—staring at whatever modest premises… You’re the one, who lost the walking stick. They’re not irreplaceable. Not like the mind. That’s rather an elevated opinion. Soon enough, soon enough… Can you tell where this is heading? Le pied de lapin? You’re talking about a job, aren’t you. No lamentation. A better suggestion, the smart money declares, though a long time coming, is always welcome. The note of challenge unmistakable. I fold my pair of tens. I think it’s sevens.

  TWO

  IN THE MOVIES, I’M TOLD, GUYS ON THE WAY TO A JOB DO IT against what they call a bed of music. It doesn’t work that way with me. Not that I can remember, anyway. If the moviemakers—my dictionary tells me that moviemaker is an acceptable compound; it’s nice to feel acceptable once in a while, it’s like finding an ort of succulent lardon in your gruel; and like that bit of flavor, you don’t want to overdo it; another acceptable compound; boatwright, on the other hand, is not acceptable; and there you have it, the entire twenty-first century, in a nutshell, which is yet another acceptable compound—want you to think you’re right there, in the guy’s head, identifying with his point view, he’ll be wearing earbuds, an accepted compound not yet in printed dictionaries, maybe even squinting at the screen of his personal digital device as the French horns on the Gill Evans track thunder out of the surround-sound. Hm, what’s with these guys, that’s not an acceptable compound, even when hyphenated. This is what I hear, anyway, or imagine, at this point, since I don’t talk to other people hardly at all, unless they want to discuss acceptable compounds in some kind of sensible manner, and not, as one fellow made the mistake of doing, waste my time with an off-color quip about my being an obstetrician. Off-color is an acceptable hyphenated compound. How do I know this, you may ask? What’s a personal digital assistant for, if not as a tool to assist a person’s awareness of his native language? The French horns of Gill Evans, may be a sensible response. But it’s been a long time since I had to scoop fishheads—another unaccepted contraction—and scale-flecked slush out of the hold of a purse seiner at Fisherman’s Wharf—all wharf and no fishermen, these days, for one thing—but the smart money learnt me a better way to make a living. It’s an excellent mode, too, episodic, finite, well-paid, cash on the nail under the table, so as not to interfere with the potential drip of Social Security checks. Scooping fishheads and scaled-flecked slush out of the holds of purse seiners was episodic, too, but it never paid well and, while you’re actually pursuing it, it takes on all the aspects of a sordid infinity. And before I know it, me and the smart money find ourselves immediately behind the job, which is walking down the street minding its own business, if talking to somebody nobody else can see counts as business. I don’t know, the job is saying as I get warm, really, what’s the difference between apathy and ignorance? I don’t know and I don’t care! the smart money responded aloud, but the job doesn’t hear the response because he is listening to some other response, and in any case neither response seems to affect him one way or another. It seems clear enough that he is waiting for what or whomever is on the other end of his earbuds to wind up this diversion so they can get back to business. Dude, he abruptly is saying, my 401(k) is like, ripped. I didn’t give it to you to get it ripped. I gave it to you to grow. So I could retire in a timely and comfortable fashion. Now I’m going to have to, like, work until I’m a hundred and two. That’s a good thing, the smart money pointed out, because there’s very little extra space under that bridge abutment. Dude, the job is saying, you’re not hearing what I’m telling you, you gotta pay me back for your unfortunate misjudgment. You think I gave you my 401(k) to go to school on? I did not. That’s what college is for. Don’t you broker types go to college? Don’t you all go to the same college? You hear me. That’s right. You can’t fool me. I know you went to college, and I could probably come to within a hundred-mile radius of where you went to college, because if you hadn’t gone to college within that hundred mile radius the government wouldn’t have bailed out your stupid mother-fucking brokerage house and if you take that other call I’m gonna take a cab downtown and kick you in the balls. Wait a minute, somebody’s trying to tell me something. Snap, the smart money tells him. And down he goes in a flutter of earbuds. Despite which trauma, he clings to his communications device. The smart money and I keep walking and it’s easy because, as you know, nobody notices old people. Chicks, especially, they just look right through an elder person, sir or madame, unless they happen to be among the handful of movie stars who affect gray hair. Some pigeons will recognize the elderly, of course, if they’re lovingly trained with day-old bread. The pigeons, not the elderly. Funny there was no blood. Just the earbuds. I turn the corner at the end of the block and the job is effectively over. The sun shines brightly in San Francisco today. But the streets are still fairly deserted, a symptom of the upper-case D Depression of ’09, O’Dear. Eighty years between Depressions. One thinks about these things. None of the economists bloviating about this one is old enough to have experienced the last one. My dad was raised on a cotton farm in South Carolina. He was twelve in 1929. He told me they raised almost everything they needed on the farm and traded for the rest. A wagon would come across the river once a week and they would trade with it. A huge truck garden overrun with tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum) all summer long. Tomatoes are new world, you know. Spanish tomate, as well as tomatillo (Physalis ixocarpa, different but also new world), but I mention them to make a point, come from the Nahuatl tomatl. What do ya think of them apples, quips the smart money. I don’t know and I don’t care, I responded. It’s etymology, etymology turns my crank at the far end of life, it comes from eutmon, Greek, which means the true sense of a word. So there. It’s an anagram for Et tu, mon, almost, says the smart money, it’s more or less—what Caesar said to Brutus, I interrupted, putatively said to him anyway, from the Latin for prune. At the light I take a right and cross the street, job putatively over. A pigeon swoops down, not ten yards away, and back up. For a minute there, I think it, the pigeon, recognized me. Didn’t the Aztecs surrender to the Spanish in Nahuatl, which the Spanish transcribed, wonders the smart money. So it would appear, I says to him. That pigeon was an unusual color. That’s true, says the smart money, white shot through with flecks of black on the body and wings, but dark gray on bluish black at the neck and tail feathers. One leg. You see that a lot. Why do you ask. It seems to me that we’ve seen this pigeon before. Achieving the middle of the block I jaywalk against traffic. An antique F Line street car rang its bell at me. One of the ones from Philadelphia, I believe. Achieving the curb, I maintain my direction, east, on the other sid
e of Market Street. You’ll recall that Elmo never jaywalked without his aluminum walker, the smart money observes. And he still got run over, I remind him. Elmo got run over? The smart money was suddenly all befuddled. But then the fog lifts and he says, oh yeah. I remember now. After they got him disentangled from that truck chassis, they had to cut him out of the aluminum tubes with the jaws of life. For all the good it did him. Yeah. Too bad they didn’t cut George Bush out of his own aluminum tubes with the jaws of retirement. Man, snaps the smart money, are you never going to let that one go? It, be, like, later, now—you, know? Oh, I forgot, I declaim lamely, you’re the fiscal conservative. He had bad intell, the smart money insisted. Now who’s not letting it go? I pointed out. That guy over there. Where? At the cable car turnaround. And there, beyond the chess players, an electric blues guitarist, two mimes and a long line of people obviously from somewhere else, sit an elderly couple in nylon-webbed aluminum lawn chairs, green warp and dirty white woof. More elderly than me? Naw, says the smart money, they just look it. It’s all down to diet. Diet, and television. One holds a hand-lettered sign that declares, SarA PaliN Is A BabE. HoT. BRinG oN 2012. The other holds a sign that reads, Immigrant Go Home, in one hand; in another hand another sign reads, Marriage Is Between One Man And One Woman Before The Eyes Of God. How’d he get all that dense information on one sign? I wondered idly. The First Amendment, the smart money remarks, it makes me proud. Shall not we loiter near them? I suggest. Maybe the smell will drive them away. They’ll just go to another cable car turnaround, the smart money says, hey mister, where you from? The man ignores us both. What’s the matter? the smart money says, don’t you know? Or does the question make you uncomfortable. Relax. You’re in San Francisco. In San Francisco, everybody’s from somewhere else. You been here five years? You qualify as a native. Hey, what’s the difference between apathy and ignorance? Now the woman looks at us, adjusts her sunglasses, then nudges her husband. I don’t know and I don’t care, he says without looking at us. Go away. How can I go away? the smart money says, I live here. Ask him when’s the last time he had a bath, the woman says to her husband. Madame, I stipulate, lofting to the altitude of my dignity, when George Bush the Second floated that horse-pucky about Saddam Hussein trying to buy aluminum tubes and uranium yellow cake from Nigeria on top of the supposed secret meeting in Czechoslovakia between the head of Iraqi Intelligence and Muhammad Atta buoyed in their turn by the mythological weapons of mass destruction, I quit bathing in protest. It worked, the woman says. You stink. Don’t you just love the First Amendment? the smart money asks her. Not like the afore-listed horse pucky, Madame, stank and, I hasten to assure you, stinks, present tense. The woman frowns. Which one’s that? she asks, her curiosity apparently overcoming her reluctance to speak to strangers. That’s the one about free speech, the smart money replies. What we need, the husband abruptly expostulates, is the amendment about one man one woman. He let one of his signs droop in his lap, slogan up, as he covers his wife’s hand with one of his own. Like us. Fiscal conservative or not, the smart money says, I think I’m gonna puke. A cable car arrives. Both mimes, the blues musician, and one of the chess players course up one side and down the other of the queue of tourists, each artist bearing an upturned hat or, in the case of one of the mimes, a George Bush lunch box. An ambulance, its siren easily 120 decibels, turns the corner at Montgomery Street, Dopplers past the cable car turnaround, deafening us all, and herds cars in front of itself until it can perform an illegal left turn onto Sixth Street. Two equally loud black and white police cars follow suit. And then a hook-and-ladder fire truck. Damn that’s loud, the woman says after a moment. What’d you say? her husband asks, turning his head. Damn loud, she shouts into his ear. Damn straight, he nods, even I heard it. I’m beginning to like these people, the smart money enthuses, they’re old and they’re conservative. Pretty amusing, I agree. If I had my portable tomography machine along with me, the smart money lasciviates, I’d enlarge their respective trigonum cerebrae just enough to make raving faggots out of both of them. They’d still be married, the smart money adds. And they’d still be conservative, I point out. Is there such a thing, is wondered aloud, as a conservative queer? Are you kidding me? the smart money replies in kind, let’s start with Roy Cohen and J. Edgar Hoover. Why those hectoring homewreckers, I reply archly. I hear you, the smart money says. What is he saying about them great Americans, the man asks his wife. I can’t hear him for the smell, his wife replies. We’re going to be late, the smart money abruptly recollects. You got a point, I reply. Sir or Madame, as the case may be, we bid you adieu. Phew, the woman declares brusquely, riddance. As goes the odor, so goeth the politics, I offer anodynely, and roll my eyes skyward, look out for the giant California flies. Both of them look up. Gotcha, says the smart money, and we take ourselves away. Away being up Powell street, toward Union Square, which is thronged as usual, including two additional mimes, at least I think they are additional, a good thing I suppose, not that I embrace benevolence, and, once arrived, sure enough, nobody notices me ask a man if I could have the newspaper he is about to throw into a trash can, because, as I keep telling you, I’m sixty-three and therefore invisible. On the contrary, people probably expected me to ask them for things, any sort of thing, and they’re relieved to see the pinch fall upon another. He, on the other hand, refrains from jocularly inquiring as to whether I want a newspaper to wipe my ass with, as a man with a certain cut of jib might well have thought to do, given the cut of my own jib. Certainly, he rather replies, sharing a newspaper amongst readers, plural, is a bloody green thing to do. I couldn’t agree more, sirrah, I respond, taking the paper, and it will pass an old man’s time most agreeably. Plainly then, he declares, you haven’t read a word of it, else you’d revise that opinion, and with no more ado we go our separate ways, he down the steps at the northeast corner of the Square, debouching to the intersection of Stockton and Post Streets, and I to a bench facing south and the midday solar entity, beaming most friendly over the roof of Macy’s, across Geary Street. Always the same bit with the newspaper, the smart money observes, never the same guy with the bit, and that’s far and away the most conversation we’ve ever gotten out of any one of them. If you call it a conversation, I put in, my eyes closing against the sun. It really is warm, and I am over-ragged. I’m either going to have to remove a blanket or two, I think to myself, or I’m going to have to retreat to my chill cavity beneath the bridge abutment. Tonight we do without the hole, the smart money reminds me, unless we’ve been had. I forgot about that aspect of futurity, I admit, opening my eyes. Let’s have a look. As Cities Go From Two Newspapers to One, Some Talk of Zero, a headline read. That’s going to put a crimp in our style, the smart money suggests. Man, I point out, you are such a worry-wart. You think that’s just them walking their solipsism? the smart money says, somewhat hopefully. That’s exactly what I think, I reply, turning to the Sports section, from which I retrieve a thickly padded plain white envelope. Gives me the creeps, the smart money says, wondering who licked that. Maybe they use a damp sponge in a saucer, I suggest, you say that every time. So do you, the smart money says. It’s the right thickness, I surmise, and squirrel the envelope into a slit in my rags. It will be five grand in filthy C-notes. I don’t count it. If were to do this every two weeks, the smart money says, we could afford to live in San Francisco. Yeah, I point out, but then we’d have tax problems. I wonder where they get all those dirty hundreds. Religious Leaders Fight Bill to Open Abuse Cases. Same old, same old. I turn a page. Damn, lookit that anaconda. Probably the last one, the smart money says.