London fog, London fog, no one’s whom they seem in a London fog
“Hello, Mr. Soiree.”
“Why hello there, Franz! A Sehr Gut evening, isn’t it?”
Soiree keeps moving, applying his leather-soled shoes assiduously to the broken and uneven pavement that is Neezhnee Val. Here and there are cold and dirty puddles, which he skirts with little difficulty.
“Buenas Noches, Mrs. Diaz. Out for some last-minute shopping?”
“Oh, yes,” she tee-hees. “I need to buy my husband some new alligator shoes.”
“Don’t let them bite off his toes.”
“Oh, I won’t, Senor Soiree. I would never do that,” she tee-hees some more, and then her eyes grow big and thoughtful.
It really is a bleak day, today, but that’s just grand, Soiree thinks. Good for the mood, you know, the mood. Soon it will be dark and I can take my after-dinner constitution. Maybe it will rain for effect, he smiles.
Oh look, a cigar bar… with none other than Che Guevara serving as an image of outdoor advertising. I must pop in for a cigarillo one day, and do hope they carry my brand.
Yes, indeed – the cafes and eateries, office space and improved shopping – gentrification is taking root across Podil! It is.
He stops in front of a storefront window to tuck up the tails of his saffron yellow turban. It’s one of those dingy grocers (yet to be gentrified) where most of the food items have passed their expiration date, and the worn-out women who work there keep busy selling small paper cups of coffee or vodka to red-faced men in stained trousers.
A young woman manning the deli section, her temples already cracked by crow’s feet, stares blankly at the turbaned curiosity, and he looks back.
Poor dear… with your fingers all smelling of liverwurst, and your hair dyed to that unhealthy hue. I bet she doesn’t make much money. Maybe they don’t pay her at all. I can imagine the state of her underwear, I can…
Soiree feels someone tugging at his shoulder and turns to confront a sun-burnt alcoholic with eyes so small they don’t blink.
“Give me some change for a bite of bread, won’t you please?”
And Soiree is off once again. He moves fast, this time looking about as he goes. There’s that stupid sex shop several blocks ahead, and he’s just passed the Rhinoceros Club for Gentlemen. Not far from that is an English school that’s he’d never noticed before for some reason.
The day has all but faded. O, rambunctious traffic, shameless city lights. What’s that? A cock call from lusty street lads. Makes a man moan for more of what he no longer gets.
But he, Mr. Majestic, has got a lot of late, notwithstanding the grievous misfortune he endured not so long ago at the hands of an indifferent fate that delivered him most deliberately into the clutches of a deadly but all too human malevolence.
He now wears the turban with pride, a beacon of rakish grace in a country of brutes and boors. His clothes are fine and his feet feel good. It’s pluck, not luck, that makes the man, he now believes. A man is a deep and impenetrable grove that might as well be a forest. Oh, the pain of one lost tree, cut down in the prime of its life. It could have lived a hundred more years, shown off in circles etched into its spine. But it’s gone now, felled from the earth that gave it life and then left to rot on the ground.
“No matter, man, there’s more where that came from,” he laughs with eyes smiling under arched brows. “I lose an ear, and so take one from another. It’s called karma, a subject that I have learned well enough to teach. The Jersey shores are now a distant and quite frankly dismal memory. What was I supposed to do, become a wise guy? A one-eared wise guy?” he laughs, and the whole street appears to shudder with him.
Back at the offices of the Silver School of English, Soiree has once again resumed a professional demeanor.
“Now, Kate, I’m afraid that I can’t help you unless you’re totally honest with me.”
“Ok, I was recently canned by the television station and have since been trying my luck as a two-bit street whore.”
“So what exactly has changed in your life?”
“Well, for starters, I no longer dress up like a rubber chicken, but instead have taken on the guise of a pink flamingo, to include a brightly colored feather or two protruding prominently from my asshole.
“Oh my, you are a salacious old tart.”
“I am. But that’s not the half of it. You see, I’m also still the same sour-pussed bitch, which makes roping a client no easy matter, as I’m sure you can appreciate, Rico.”
“Indeed, I can. But surely you didn’t come here to tell me that.”
“No. I came here because I learned that you too have undergone a career change, or at least expanded the portfolio of sleazy services that you provide. Now I don’t buy into magic tricks for a minute, and hypnotists are for the birds… of a feather I would disdain to display. But there’s something in the way that you brutalized that chinless slob last night – in his own club at that. I slap around clients myself, and sometimes am paid in kind.”
“We are two of a kind, are we not?”
“We are not. You, Rico, are a maimed debauchee, plying the only trade you know in a different format for a wider audience. You’ve gone from educator to manipulator, with a brief but painfully unsuccessful stint as a bootlegger along the way.”
“A lesson I shan’t soon forget.”
“Please don’t, Mr. Majestic, I’m in need of your instruction.”
Soiree, eyes ablaze, gropes blindly into the top drawer of his desk, pulling out a paddle marked “The Principal.”
“You cheap bitch…”
“Bawk bawk bawk… Baaaawk!”
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, for the I’m All Right Jack Inquisitor, Sunday Morning Supplement, November 24, 2013