Dead Leaves

The leaves were scattered around the tree in the middle of the yard. The leaves looked like crumpled pieces of paper. Maybe they were discarded love letters that had been caught up and blown by the wind. Summer was over and the shadows fell across the grass stretching toward the house but not quite reaching it.

I was standing near the window with a beer in my hand and I kept looking at the dead leaves and the shadows on the ground and I knew I was no longer young. I drank some beer and in my mind I didn’t feel old. I mean, maybe, I felt lost and, maybe, I felt afraid and, maybe, sometimes I felt like I was stuck and there was something above me that kept pushing downward and something else under me and it kept pushing upward and I felt like I was trapped and I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t feel old.

I finished off the beer and tossed the empty in the trash. I heard it clinking against the other bottles that were already there. I came back and looked out the window and I saw Rachel pulling into the driveway. I wondered what she was doing here since the last time I had seen her I thought she had made it pretty clear she didn’t want to see me anymore. But it was definitely her and I watched her get out of the car and come up to the door.

“What’s going on?” I asked her when I opened the door. She looked good. She looked really good.

“Hey,” she said. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Sure,” I said, stepping out of the way. I watched her glide slowly into the room as if she had wheels instead of feet.

“Did you miss me?” she asked, throwing a smile my way.

Her smile splashed against the side of my face and I raised my hand to touch the dissolving layer of heat. Rachel came over and put her arms around me.

“I missed you,” she said.

Now everything was getting warmer and I pulled her into me and tried to put my mouth on hers. It wasn’t much of a kiss because she laughed and turned her head before breaking loose and taking a few steps away from me.

“Hey,” I said.  Rachel laughed again.

“Easy now,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get you all fired up.”

It made me angry but I tried not to let it show.

“So what do you want?” I asked. “Do you want a beer?”

She waved her hand at me. “No,” she said, “I don’t want a beer.”

It was my turn to laugh.

“Well,” okay, I said. “I’m going to have a beer.” I went to the fridge and got me another beer. I came back and looked out the window again. I saw the shadows had reached the house. It was going to be dark soon.

“Have you been thinking about me?” Rachel asked.

I took a long pull from the beer. It felt good going down my throat. Instead of making me feel drunker, the cold beer cleared my head.

“What do you want?” My voice came louder this time and it startled her.

She gave me another smile but I saw in her eyes something had changed. She didn’t come over and try to touch me the way she had before.

“Okay,” she said. “I was wondering if you could give me some money. I’m kind of in a jam and I could pay you back in a few weeks.”

I took another drink of beer and waved the bottle back and forth in my hand.

“How much do you need?” I asked her.

Rachel pulled at the front of her blouse so that the fabric stretched tighter across her tits.  Damn. She did look really good. I turned away and looked out the window again.

“A couple of hundred,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. I had some more beer and then I looked at the bottle. I saw how little was left and finished it off. I took the empty to the trash before going to the fridge for another one.

“You sure you don’t want a beer?” I called out from the kitchen.

I heard Rachel’s voice flare up from the other room.

“No,” she said before she caught herself. “I don’t want a beer, thanks.”

“I’m sorry,” I said as I returned to my spot near the window. “I don’t think I can help you.”

Rachel was doing something with her mouth, and I was just about ready to tell her I was only joking with her and she could have anything she wanted, but then she turned and headed for the door.

“Okay,” I heard her saying. “Okay.”

She opened the door and went back to her car. I watched her until she was gone. Her face never gave away any sign of anger, but I was sure she cursed my name all the way back home.

I laughed again. I stood near the window and looked at the dead leaves. I looked at the shadows on the ground. I drank some more beer and I still didn’t feel old. No. I didn’t feel old at all. I just felt tired. I felt so fucking tired.

Big City Dreams, Part 6

Mr van Alen didn’t waste much pencil lead or blueprint paper on his masterpiece’s netherworld. Polished cement floor, and a labyrinth of plywood doors straight from 8^th Avenue hardware stores. The Chrysler Building’s basement reeked of disinfectant and mildewed mops, but it was a secret agent Shangri-La for Jena Panhard, the rich girl who dreamt of washing dishes.

“Where’s this theater you dreamed up? We don’t have much time. There’s cameras everywhere. Chrysler security guards are watching to see if we do dirty stuff. They’ll call the cops. We’ll wind up in handcuffs. They’ll throw us into separate cells at Riker’s Island. Dyke matrons will rape me with a mop handle.”

Mop handles are the stuff of wet dreams, for some rich girls.

No alarms sounded as we tried door after door. Liveried Chrysler Corp security couch potatoes snoozed as ghostly images danced from square green screen to square green screen. Soundtrack of snores, an audience share of zero, our late show was a brain-dead sleeper.

Unless Lester Frills was watching. What Security outfit would hire a wild-eyed, flowery weirdo as a rent-a-pig?

Security camera scans might be good meditation material. Zen adepts rack up hours like airline pilots. I lost count of meditation time long ago, but the zen clock never stops ticking. I popped locks, shouldered doors. Jena acted impressed.

There were no secret stairwells, or sliding doors behind the elevator. No hollow floors, no batpoles to slide down. Besides, Jena was wearing a Poiret gown.

During the search, I tried to telepathically transmit Deco dream pictures to Jena’s Deco-radar.

When the Deco Theater case closed, and whatever in-Deco-rous disaster followed on the heels of Lester Frills’ musical ambitions, the next job would be to remove Jena Panhard’s dull-as-dishwater dream life. Figure out how Lester’s dream-projector worked, and give Jena Deco Technicolor Nirvana-dreams. The words and music came from out of nowhere:

“Take my dreams,

Make my dreams,

Come completely true…”

A song for groggy muted horns and torch singer in the Rainbow Room. Jena took up the melody.

“Attractive dreams

moon-light my way/

Banal nightmares will fade away.

Dream me to serenity/

Dream for two in the Big City.”

Piano notes tinkled and trailed off like flowers from a happy childhood. Jena said she had to use the little girls’ room.

The sub-basement grotto had a little girls’ room. The door was suspiciously ornate. Sparkplug inlays sparked and metal-flake comets streaked. Nickel-plated letters spelled out “Little Girls’ Room”.

A Deco architect’s signature on a top-secret collaboration.

The women’s toilet was a small Art Deco treasure chamber. The streamlined stalls were pink shellac. The sea-green tile walls had a waving seaweed motif. Jena hummed a song from intertwined dreams, and hoisted Poiret silk. I pushed panels, rapped for false walls, tapped the mirror over the sink where jazz babies sprinkle their pinkies after they tinkle.

Live, Strive, Dream was etched on the silvered glass. A phony reflection gazed out.

Lester Frills snorts rails of crystal Brain Drano off Deco mirrors, lifts his head, offers the rolled C-note to the next person in line. That was me.

Too late to pull back. The mirror was stuck to the wall with Deco-rative nipple-shaped screws. Jena giggled as I twiddled them. I pushed the glass. No give to it. No choice but to smash the thing. I shrugged out of the jacket borrowed from Jena’s dear departed grandfather. Off with the wig-hat. Off with the pants too, what the hell.

The key to breaking things is to concentrate on the space behind them.

“Stand back, Jena. They hadn’t invented safety glass when this was made. Close your eyes.” Too bad about the last part. I wanted her to see me smash something heavy. But if I messed up, she wouldn’t see a fist turn into a bloody cauliflower.

Hadn’t done kung fu in ages. Take a stance, go into a trance. The mirror image became an opponent.

Before I could yell hi-yah, the mirror slid inwards. The sinks sunk into the floor with a hum and were covered by a trapdoor whose intarsio inlay read, Live Strive Dream. A woman in a pointy-ear bat headdress spread her bat-wing cape in a gesture of welcome. There was a door where the mirror once hung. Beyond was the Deco theater of New York dreams.

“How’d you do it, Zee Gee? Power of peaceful meditation?”

“Uh yeah something like that I guess.” A glimpse of oneself the way one is was the price of admission.

We went in. The mirror door and fake-sink floor whirred shut behind us. Chrysler goons would burst in on an empty Deco Little Girls’ Room.

Jena waltzed to the proscenium. Her gown rustled, her heels clicked. She vaulted onstage. I settled on a gilt-and-black velvet seat.

“Dance,” I said. “Bring the place to life.”

Fresh air blew in from a pine tree forest in the Poconos or Adirondacks. The pressure of Jena’s feet on the stage boards summoned a Wurlitzer organ from the orchestra pit. Jena’s clothes fluttered in a major-chord breeze. A spotlight shadowed her like a moonbeam on a lake as she danced. No underwear, no hair down there, Jena’s silhouette laid bare in bas-relief.

Satori, or as close as this zen garbageman had ever been. I stomped, clapped, whistled like a wolf while Jena whirled, twirled and frugged. “Whoo! Aw, take it off, baby. Strip! Peel! Shake it!”

Nirvana, transcendence, cosmic consciousness, right in your face. Twenty years in pursuit of The Way, and you act like Joe Lunchpail.

A Paul Poiret gown fluttered like a butterfly wing. Where had Jena spent her off-hours from the Hayden? Billy’s Topless? The Baby-Doll? In answer to the koan, a Zeiss projector descended on cables from the ceiling and bombed to life with strobes, red-and-blue laser beams. Jena’s nude body glowed. The Man in the Moon snorted neon cocaine from a magnesium-flare spoon and turned into a banana on Josephine Baker’s Van Allen Belt.

Champagne corks popped, the fizz flew. The music said, Dance, dance, dance, dance.

***

Dazed, Jena and I circumambulated the Chrysler Corporation’s skyrise. The phone rang in one of the last glass phone-booths left on Manhattan Island.

Lester Frills drooled into an over-designed techno-mouthpiece on the other end of the line.

“You brilliant, beautiful Sanitation Department sanitary napkin, you. You found it. They hid a diamond on 47^thStreet. Can you comprehend the genius? I’m ready to take possession. In other words, gimme!”

“Not so fast, Frills. First, I want Rei. And if you harmed a hair on her head, I’ll personally tear you a new one.”

“Slapping Japs ain’t my style, Garbage Dumpster. Wipe the jism out of your mind’s eye and you’ll see where she’s stashed. And you can have her. Man, I’ve had more fun playing parcheesi with showroom dummies. Collecting stamps is Studio 54 compared to her aphorisms. You two’ll get along like a fucking maison de couture on fire.”

Lester’s dream projector blazed a Japanese Living Treasure™ of avant-garde fashion design, suspended from a ceiling in a squalid shopping mall. Rei Kawakubo was a prisoner of SoHo.

“Tell,” Lester rasped. “Give up the secret for entry to my stage. I wasn’t able to glean the proper phrase or gesture from my dream-surveillance mechanism network. Tell me how you got in, or I’ll send 10,000 volts through little Rei’s fashion-puppet strings. She fries like teriyaki.”

“You mean tempura,” I said. “Go down to the little girls’ room. Look in the mirror, and Live, Strive, Dream. See yourself the way you are.”

“Cinch! It’s show time!” Lester crowed in triumph. “Make sure you reserve your banquette seats now, you socially mismatched lovebirds. Attendance shall be mandatory.”

The early-morning Chrysler doorman yawned as he held the door to Jena’s Hudson. Instead of a tip, I handed him a koan. “If you stage a musical and no one shows, does it count as a no-show?”

The key is to never take no for a Noh.

Rei Kawakubo was strung up in the sub-basement of her former flagship store. The place was packed with overpriced sneakers, designer jeans, and T-shirts. She must’ve suffered horribly. I cut her down, pulled the gag from her lips. After a few minutes, I put the gag back on and left it there until we reached the zen diner. Rei broke her fast with edamame, sea salt and green tea.

“Green is most problematic color,” she said. “But look ah-so smashing next to black.”

She handed me a perforated disk of sea-green jade on a string braided from human hair. Hers. “Amulet,” she said. “Protect you from vanity and acquisitiveness.”

The zen waitress misunderstood. She brought Rei a tempe omelette with banana tea and asparagus mist. We laughed, then contemplated uneaten food on the table.

Pollice collared Lester Frills in the Chrysler Building’s sub-basement ladies’ bathroom. Security staff spotted him pressing his face against a mirror, muttering magic mumbo-jumbo from old movies, turning chimp-like backward somersaults of rage and frustration.

The cuffs went on—snap! Entrance to the Theater of Deco Dreams forever denied to those incapable of self-perception. Lester begged the arresting officers to put him out of his misery.

Police dumptrucks carted off his state-of-the-art Karaoke sound system and costume changes.

Every now and then, I head the Hayden Planetarium towards closing time. A pretty lady locks the place up for the night and we walk downtown to take in a show under the Chrysler Building. The show is us, our dreams.

Lester can’t interfere with our dreams from his cell at Riker’s Island. He wouldn’t be interested, anyway. His life has changed. He got married. His husband, who’s built like the Sears Tower in Chicago, claps, laughs and shakes his head whenever Lester performs, “Drag Me In! Drag Me Out! Drag Me Off!”

Jena said she dreamt of a wooden house near a beach, set among dunes covered in waves of sea-grass. The house was full of happy mixed-race children.

Rei Kawakubo opened a new store at an undisclosed New York location. The phone number is unlisted. No one is allowed in to shop. There’s no merchandise on display, nothing to buy.

fin

The Job

I was waiting at the usual spot pretending to enjoy my drink; it was the same venue as always but as that icy December winter wind blew the door open I could see that it wasn’t the usual agent walking in, as he brushed off his coat and scarf I could recognize that it was one of our top guys. This either meant one of two things: One of us was going to end up with a fork in his neck by the end of this meeting, or there was going to be a very important “mark” in my future. The agent sort of slithered over to me with a haunting look of trepidation in his face; I immediately readied my fork which was already in my hand beside my thigh, but as the gentleman arrived at the table he just tossed an envelope in front of me, turned, and made a beeline straight to and out the door.

I was a bit taken aback as the whole nuance of that encounter left me with a macabre sensation, and an insatiable urge to find out who I was going to have to murder this time. The envelopes were always quite thorough with photographs; residences, behaviors, family and friends, a full chronological history, and of course the best way to locate the mark. As I teared open the envelope with great anticipation, I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes, I couldn’t believe what I was fucking looking at.

Fucking Santa Clause? I’m supposed to motherfucking kill Santa Clause? What kind of fuckery is behind this demented lunacy? He’s not real, he’s not fucking real. I started to peruse through the contents of the envelope and they had all sorts of shit on this guy; photos of him in a sleigh with fucking reindeer pulling it through the sky, blue prints of his house up in the north pole, locations of all his toy warehouses, connections with disgruntled elves willing to sell out the fucking fat guy at the drop of a hat. It was all there; his whole fucking profile, with copies of all his I.D., I was completely dumbfounded, I thought I was going to shit myself, Santa Clause was real and I’ve got to murder the bastard.

I payed my check and left the pub, I scurried home as fast as I could, almost bailing on the icy sidewalks. I immediately went over to my desk to give this another more extensive inspection, Jesus fuck! This guy was a fully-fledged whack job, some of the photos were so fucked up that even I was disgusted: Fucking around with elves, whips chains and all sorts of dildos, he even got in there with the reindeers “and I mean GOT IN THERE”, “my fuck those poor animals”. What kind of an abominable organization was he running up there?

“Up there” Jesus fuck! I was going to have to go all the way up to the fucking North Pole, how could I survive those temperatures? How could I even get up there? There’s no airline that lands next to Santa’s village, what am I supposed to do, rent a fucking dog sled? Piggyback on Frosty the fucking Snowman?

As it turns out, the Agency had already arranged transport on a Soviet submarine that would take me close to my destination; it would break through the ice about a mile away from the coordinates, then I was to meet some agent with a ski-doo to take me the rest of the way. “FUCK ME” this Agency’s got everything covered, it sure beats working solo; I mean, a fucking “SUB” man, agents working in the North Pole, they’ve really got their shit together. The only drawback really was that they’d eventually kill you, no one leaves the Agency.

My luxurious journey in that fucking under water tin can was a lot less than settling; a left over from the cold war, Christ! It was older than I was; I couldn’t believe that people actually spent months in these fucking metal tombs. After about six days or so, I’m really not sure; these sailors sure knew how to put it back, Vodka seemed almost required amongst the crew, they were pissed the whole time, and when I thought I heard someone utter the words nuclear and problem, so was I.

We cracked through the ice right on the coordinates; I think my head cracked a little too. I crawled up and onto the top of the sub and saw absolutely fuck all; the sun was fucking blinding me, all I could see was white nothingness. I felt a tug at my leg; it was one of the boys tossing up a bottle of vodka with some goggles, after my eyes adjusted I could see the agent within a few hundred meters, I waved goodbye to my friends who I really would have killed if I had to be locked up any longer, the only problem would be driving the sub, thank fuck it never came to that.

The agent was like any other agent; faceless and foreboding, he had two ski-doos with him and my usual kit: fire arms, knives, explosives and the like, he also provided me a fully detailed satellite picture of Santa’s compound. He said security was no problem and the only trouble I might have would be the elves; they’re hard to spot and they’re quick little fuckers, but they’re not armed.

The other agent took me about half way then he veered off into what looked like nowhere; actually everywhere looked like nowhere out here, and it’s really hard to drink from a bottle of vodka on a ski-doo while you’re trying to take compass readings. I finally came up to the top of a precipice that looked like the agent had described; I got off my ride and scurried along prostrate to get a better view, and there it was, motherfucking Santa’s village, and it sure as hell didn’t look like Christmas, it was more like the images I get when I read fucking Kafka.

It was like a shanty town; with shacks upon shacks and it was all covered in what I assumed to be reindeer shit. The elves didn’t seem to be doing well at all; their clothes were all torn, their faces looked frost bitten and miserable, this was no happy jolly fucking place by any measure, I got a good glimpse of what might be Santa’s castle, it really wasn’t a castle it just looked like one against the rest of this dilapidated monstrosity. I spent a few days on reconnaissance; the compound was easy to get close to and I found that I could get into some of storage shacks, I couldn’t believe what I was uncovering, this place was rigged up to be a full on fucking sex dungeon.

Most of the shacks were piled to the ceiling with all kinds of cash, all nations and denominations were represented in 5ft squared cubes wrapped in plastic and loaded up on top of one another. I came across a few creepy corners and got myself lost, it was a fucking maze of shit being built over the shit that was built before, I opened a few doors that I wish I hadn’t, the fucking carnage left over from a slaughter that was quite obviously sadistic slow and painful, and done with the most frightening blood soaked machines, none of which I’d ever seen before or even imagined. Scattered around these terror shacks I could see all the torn and shredded pieces of what were once the elves, just lying there rotting, the fucking stench was insipid like these shacks had been used for this evil fuckery for decades.

I fucked up; it was one night when I was working out how I was going to get in to Santa’s place, I heard a stirring sound so I ducked into the closest door. The place was full of fucking elves, all chained up, some in these little cages and even ones strapped to the goddamn wall with barbed wire. They all started fucking talking at once; I immediately pulled out my assault rifle and educated them on what could happen if they didn’t shut the fuck up, NOW! One elf quietly asked if I was there to free them, and then a few more started in with “please free us” and “please take us off the wall”. Jesus Fuck! I wasn’t there to save any fucking elves, man; it was going to be hard enough hauling those bundles of cash out of there, I didn’t need a community of malnourished and half dead little people with pointed ears following me out of this shit hole, I wasn’t fucking Moses, there was no mass fucking exodus going down here. Anyhow, I told the elves what they wanted to hear; I’d come back for them after I get the big guy, which seemed to bring some form of hope to their collective misery, so I booked, the time had chosen itself, there’s no telling what those elves will say under torture, it’s time to murder Santa Clause.

I had to enter through the stables and those reindeers stunk with a fucking funk that made me wretch as soon as I got in there, JESUS FUCK! It was unbearable, but I did catch a glimpse of who I thought to be Rudolf, half of his fur was fucking falling off, and that shinny glowing red nose was nothing more than a strange type of fungus that had infected his face. I was in; I could hear screams and whips and some boisterous howls that dominated over the other noises, as I approached the room I could only imagine what I was in for, different marks get different deliveries, and this motherfucker’s going to get a straight razor for sure.

Opening up that door changed me forever; Santa was in full on garters, although, retaining a nuance of that Santa I once knew and loved as a child, he was still sporting that fucking red and white toque, while he was sodomising a baby reindeer while the reindeer was sodomising a fucking elf, there were about four elves tied up with rope all fucking beaten bruised and whipped, they’ve obviously already had their turns with the big guy, and he really was a fucking huge motherfucker. As the ferociously malicious degradation of these weird little fucking elves and the baby reindeer took place, I hesitated in awe.

As it turns out I hesitated for too long; Santa spotted me out of the corner of his eye and pounced like a cheetah, he had me on my back in seconds with all 300 pounds of him on top of me, no way this was going to be a fucking bear wrestle, that fucker would crush my ass. Within a few moments Santa stopped moving and the blood started pouring out and all over me, I went half way through his neck with the razor and I was drowning in it, but I couldn’t get the fucker off me, finally I kind of rolled him over to the side and sort of squirmed my way out.

Dead is dead and Santa was as dead as they come; the blood from that fat fuck pretty much filled the room, I released the elves against my better judgement, who knows what they’re going to want from me? Christ, they’ve been sex slaves and presumably beaten all their lives, what kind of jobs are they going to get? How’s modern society all of a sudden going to deal with 4ft high pointed eared little people walking around with P.T.S.D.

Ah! Fuck it! The elves started to free each other and I beelined straight into one of the cash shacks, gabbed what I could, and got the hell out of hell. I speed off in my ski doo to meet up at my extraction point; this time there was an airplane pick up, I could see the agent who looked half frozen, then I thought of how I looked, completely covered in blood carrying Santa’s toy bag which happened to be full of money, he asked me how the “JOB” went, I just gave him a cold hard stare.

Big City Dreams, Part 5

When I woke up in Jena’s Donald Deskey platform bunk, she’d already run off to her Planetarium guard job. I skipped meditation, hit the Panhard mansion’s private library.

William van Alen designed the Chrysler Building. Acrimony arose between the architect and his automotive client. Motown hicks insisted on mock-Tudor furnishings for the Cloud Club. Mr van Alen tried to set them aesthetically straight. Unpaid bills and breach-of-contract lawsuits eventually fade away. Businessmen die, and their suits and ties end up at the Salvation Army. But gleaming towers scrape the star-filled sky forever, or for a long time, anyway.

There are no stars visible from the sidewalks of New York.

Stars form the van Allen Belt, which anyone who pays admission can admire at the Hayden Planetarium. Jena was there. A looming Zeiss projector whirred to life somewhere. Lester Frills’ remote-control dream machine beamed a reverse-time telescope vision of William van Alen and Edward Durrell Stone in a meeting. The men had already downed too many mar-toon-eyes at the Stork Club.

Stone was flush with cash from the colossal success of his Radio City Music Hall. William van Alen was embattled, embittered. His Big Auto client pinched pennies till they bled. The only thing Detroit cared about was owning the world’s tallest skyscraper. They couldn’t see his creation as a world-wide beacon of Deco-American optimism.

William van Alen gulped dry gin and rumbled, “Stone, those Detroit gangsters and Texaco cowboys screwed my Cloud Club. Now they’re trying to stiff me out of my fee. Help me screw them back. I’ll siphon funds out of Chrysler and Texaco, clear out space in the foundations. That’s the last place they’ll look, even though it’s strictly bottom line, with them. I hand you the dough and carte blanche on the design. We’ll get Donald Deskey involved, bring in all the hot boys. We’ll create our own theater down there. A stage for you know what.”

Edward Durrell Stone’s hands twitched. He knew exactly what van Alen was talking about. It was a show he too desperately wanted to see. As soon as he was sober again, he’d hit the drawing board.

A waiter in white tie brought a fresh bottle of champagne from gay Paree, in a Dunand ice-bucket. Pop went the cork. Splish-fizz went the bubbly. Stemware clinked, Deco architects drinked…drank…drunk to a Deco deal, done.

Stone said, “We’re too good for them, Billy. They don’t deserve our sparkling diamonds.”

***

Paul Poiret will run up the costumes. Cassandre will design the posters. Donald Deskey will handle stage design. Dave Tough will slam down syncopated Synthetic Cubism on the drums. Django Reinhardt will jangle a D’Angelico guitar with ivory inlays on the fretboard. Nijinsky, all thumbs, and Josephine Baker in her G-string of rhinestone bananas will fling themselves across the intarsio parquet.

Lester Frills struts onstage in ostrich plume drag and lip-synchs “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

The injured Chrysler Building folds in on its chrome-molybdenum girders. The spiky headpiece, the eagle-head and flying-hubcap flanges sink into a cloud of cocaine, plaster dust, gilt and glitter. Looks like Lady Liberty’s flashier kid sister being sucked slowly down into the New Jersey swamps in a blizzard.

The disastrous vision filled me with horror and grief. Whatever ghoulish spectacle Lester Frills was planning had to be stopped. But first I had to find him.

New York City absorbs flamboyant macaw-men and bird-of-paradise babes such as Lester and his gang of Black Zen boys and girls. A flaming tiger slips into a fake-fur warehouse and disappears.

Lester would emerge from his spidery hidey-hole when I found the theater. Hand over the keys in exchange for quivering, bound Rei Kawakubo?

Peel the bandaid gag off her lips.

She whispers a fashion koan.

What happens after that? No insights occurred. I went out to look for Lester.

A once-admired shop-window had been raped. Showroom dummies with glass eyes, fake eyelashes, erect nipples had taken over. Over-designed furniture was jumbled together for a backdrop. An amphigory of useless accessories, plastered with corporate logos, burst in hideous fireworks over a compulsive-shopping soundtrack that thudded like the sex-and-torture moans from grindhouses on the Deuce. Come inside for a $3 thrill! Seats the color of rotting liver, floors sticky with spilled sperm and soda pop. Furtive figures fumble, feel, find each other in the fug and flicker. 42^nd Street was the black belt on Manhattan’s waist.

No belts needed, for the clothes that once hung suspended in SoHo thought-space. You put them on, they stayed put. They fit, no matter your size or shape. They looked right, gave the wearer confidence. Such clothes exist only in the mind. They once existed in a shop-window. Rei Kawakubo showed the world another way of being dressed. In other words, not naked.

A 7^th Avenue dumpster yielded discarded bolts of gray worsted and navy blue cotton jersey. Look, you can make your own clothes. Sewing requires patience. Cover your body thoughtfully before you enter the outside world for the day. The world is thought made visible. A skyscraper’s an idea dressed in steel and stone.

***

Jena, a red-headed panther with a flashlight, opened the Planetarium’s back door. We sat through the spacy matinee together. There was no other audience.

When she punched out on the streamlined Burroughs wage/time tabulator, we had a theater date. The show was at a theater only a few people ever knew existed, and most of those who knew were long dead.

The usual zen rags wouldn’t do. Jena knew people in high corner offices at the Chrysler. She was welcome anytime. Passing as her spiritual adviser was implausible.

Jena’s auto executive grandfather’s business suits still hung in one of her walk-in closets. Jupiter Panhard was a huge man. Jena got busy with the safety pins. We only had to get past a sleepy doorman.

Being driven around Manhattan felt wrong. When you’re used to walking, machines powered by dead dinosaur ooze are bizarre. When Zeta Centauri aliens train their Zeiss telescopes on the Earth, they see dinosaurs. Light travels at a constant speed in all directions. On Earth, we stop at red lights, emit engine noise, heat and toxic fumes. In Buck Rogers movies, and in William van Alen’s dreams, Deco spaceships built like flying skyscrapers buzz around the Van Allen Belt in silence, with no exhaust.

What would a zen skyscraper look like? Does an architect have Buddha nature? Should a zen buddhist belong to a Cloud Club that would have him as a member? Jena was so beautiful, the traffic lights turned green. While I dreamed up ridiculous koans, she let the Chrysler Building doorman help her out of the car.

She handed him the keys. They jingled like money. “Any space you can find, Reeves, as long as it’s within a block or two. Me and Daddy Warbucks here might have to make a quick getaway. There might be gunplay. Oh I would not entirely rule that out. Come along, dear.”

Chrysler Building doormen dream of roaring-30s scenarios. They accept packages, sign in surly bike messengers, hail taxis for rude businessmen in the rain. No tips, no thanks, no appreciation, no respect. Then the lady for whom glorious confections of steel are hurled skywards materializes out of a dream. At the wheel of a gargantuan American automobile—who cares if it’s not a Chrysler?—dressed in a gown that turns life into an endless party. So what if the shmo in the shotgun seat looks like he’s never stepped out of a car or worn a suit or leather shoes with hard soles, fer chryssakes.

Jena danced across the lobby. Red-eyed security cameras stared as a dream went by in real life, but nobody was watching the show.

Silver okapis with horns like narwhals’ tusks grazed spear-grass under stylized clouds, rainbows and lightning bolts in a geometric elevator jungle lit by interpenetrating diamond sconces. Jena bubbled over. We were in.

How cool, to be a pretty lady who snaps her fingers and the world does whatever she wants. She pulled me into a clutch. Crinoline crunched against chrome. She hit the SB button. We went down.

The sub-basement service elevator went down even further.

***