This Game Is Best Played For Soup

fig.6.54) Father, say hey. So say, yeah!

I'll say it, I miss the downtown diners, just not this one. It should have aspired for something more. Instead, it lingered in the center of the road, where it waited too long. In the 90's, I worked there waiting tables and the whole staff was dismissive of the owners. They were always hiring people, posting ads for Help in the free weeklies. But in the end, the timid and habitually lost wouldn't save them. Their food was fair but pricey, particularly for us students or anyone answering one an ad for one of their jobs. Once upon a time, when the theater outside was still an arthouse or even before that when artists lingered in the studios upstairs; you might find a decent bowl of soup here. 

There goes our honeymoon, now it's back to work. We've got to reduce those taxes, create extra arcane loopholes for the corporate shills coming from the dark office. Remove the services, sell the resources and make up the shortfall with fines or incarcerating into the zombie army that's scraping, or digging the shits from your caked up hole. It's time to get back to work denouncing the Machiavellian Maoists wafting in on the miasma as seeps in through this open door. It's time to unpack the tricks from our old carpetbags, the lipstick, the pig, the poke, the silk and the sow's ear too. It's time, it's time, time, time, time...

Yes, the chairs are for closers. The radio plays the same six songs all day. Each one is separated with a commas followed by a color coded ad for togas or diet togas. Then there are togas for men on the go, togas for sprouting new wings and of course a medley of other toga waiting to be scooped up from a buffet near mine and ours.

There are empty bottles between them, a few are broken and their glasses look greasy. They've been here talking for a minute, there's meat on both hands but their forks are bent from holding. "I've been voting for years." Bobby looks around, he likes having sugar with his water. There are lemons in a deep bowl on the side table. There's also the jasmine he needs, "eight or nine ounces, but not more." All of this and some cumin can turn sour really fast. Even as his glasses cloud over Bobby gets up, walking away. The chair he's left is bloody. His boots are still under the table and they're covered in gore. The windows seem to fill with the fog of regret as he tries to elaborate, "you see why I can't get behind this?"

"I still don't like it," Annie slides a thumb inside the seam of her bra. She's silently counting tattoos while watching Bobby pace, letters and angels, blotchy lovers, present but not too much involved, a couple of birds and some toast. All of it a victimless code. "This has to be over, everything's happened. There's no more left in the tank."

"Well, I'm going soon enough."

"Bobby," she lifts a short square fingernail as though she's about to threaten a pinky swear. 

He looks at her, "Annie, I'm the guy jerking you off right now. Don't pretend you can't see that."

Loose bullets, stumpy cold jacketed things with smiley kisses on each one. He calls them, Some. As in, "I'm gonna leave me Some right here tonight!" There's ransom in the drawer with the leather smelling holster. His pornography is in the drawer that's underneath it. All of tis moved down to DC in a cab, a green mess of smoking street trash. The other drawers have a stack of soft white tee's, a mother of pearl cross and some picture puzzles. The cross is carved from the lump of plastic left by a melting baby blanket. It had been painted gold before but that's gone now. "Inept, I made this for you. It represents my inability to separate myself from this constant state of nurture. That I blame my mother for who I am, which is probably ironic. Irony isn't easy for me to do. You should feel lucky that I'm trying it all."

"What's this about Nancy Spero, you ask? It's her lugubrious interpretation of vulgarity, the flaming eye that directs; not wandering so much as lunging, embedding it's humors into the thick tissues living behind our nerves. The whole century stinks of arts commodity. It's in our eyeballs where it waits for tomorrow to start over again. So let's talk about the future and the fastness of its cars. Let's call the future, I think it'll hear us. We can put on our blue glasses and fuck the fears we have now. We'll call each other purposeful candidates when we get there." 

"Outside, closing the iron door behind us, the pigs will tuck us in. In the morning, on a lazy tide of torn band aids and cigarette butts, chest high in the reeds. Let's believe, I'm laughing and writing this down. I'm laughing out loud, looking backwards and seeing you as I do, or will."

People have this hang up, it's not dire. But it is constructed, this thing, believing in ghosts. That ghosts can only travel in straight lines. It's like they're bishops, bumping corners, sharing their angles while crisscrossing the entire range of the map. They're uninterrupted geometry, mixing up theorems with all the classroom solace of a well tempered vampire. Darting streamers, visible only by the trails they leave, or the invisible ticks and tocks from invisible clocks, we've dreamt about. If you see the mirror, then you can stop the ghost and they'll never see you coming.

"Why?"

"Ghosts don't see mirrors, because they're both invisible," he says.

"What's it like to even be up and running around Bobby? Are you asking yourself, where's mah baby? Where's baby ever at Bobby?"

"I think you mean, the radical sense of ownership, right? Your language, with its aggressive indifference isn't a nothing I happened to miss. There's a harvest of hips in your words Annie, of deep lust and the will to snake the drain like it's swallowed a whole peach. It's the end of intention. We're breaking up but there's still vice and singing enough for both of us in what you've said." 

"Oh salad, Oh Salad, you say." 

"This is going to sound like I'm judging, but it's like someone was named, Anne. The only Anne in this small town of ours. Now, they've shuffled Anne into something that's like organza, but it smells like a new tire. You're still a keeper, Anne. You're as cordial as they come."

"I have to be," she laughs. "I'm not syndicated yet, so I need to last another season."

"I think I'm agreeing when I say, it's been a good warm. Ha Ha... Ha Ha... There've been shifts in the atmosphere of air and pressures. Where minuscule joules keep until they're needed. Ha, you're welcome to join me later. I'd like your help finding something. I think I might have lent it to you, but it's been many years. I hope you have it. It's a very large panel, birch. I spent days working on its finish."

"It use to sit inside in the back of my room at the Watergate. I spent years, developing routine patterns and draughts, continuing to elaborate its form. There was a short series of lines and dashes tumbling across dozens of heavy paper sheets. Then even more cartoons followed that. There were sketches, and mock ups that were executed on even more paper with good pulp and plenty of tooth. Of course all of it was an expression of simultaneity. Experienced en masse, it was a bit like spooning a softly supple rosy cheeked question mark."

Let's share some notes about the spiritual adviser sitting behind the counter. They're talking Pirates and listening to the other six songs the radio won't play. They keep talking and taking more orders. The commodification of politics is happening while they're smoking loose cigarettes in the hot air. The heartbreak of it is like dust that's settled in the seats of the booths. There's mud and long hairs all over the blue shelf that folds down. 

They're sitting on a tall stool by the heat lamp. There's a little silver bell, a very handy little prop, when they talk about replacing our morals with principles from a coloring book or something closer to general chancery. "Combine this," they'll say, "Combine it with the reduction of publicly available education opportunities. Those only help to normalize our means of control. Ding Ding, our bosses will love you even more!"

Now we've coming to it, the end. Where the lids of her eyes are the same color as old grass. They're deeply mystical affording her gaze an unwritten quality. I turn around and she's watching the sport on an overhead TV. She's like an old pornography but her voice is much stronger and it's more clear than that. She cheers for all of the gold to be returned to the people and then weeps openly. This Agent now smells fear like there's dead hiding behind his eyes. I turn away frightened of what I'm about to become.

Here's a cartoon picture from the end of the world, it's a clever man standing in front a bold pile of salt and ash. Can you guess who's reading their book right now? Who's all alone, maybe it's Mary Boone. Is she lonesome tonight? It seems like someone's throwing their money at these problems, they should resolve speedily but the don't. I'll bet Mary Boone misses her money very much.

THE END...