Brunoâs left leg, wrapped herself around his calf. âRestored.â
Retrieving my motorcycle jacket from the peg, I realized that I still felt protective toward my charge: more protective, even, then when Iâd first pulled him from the Hudson. As we ventured through the city, I insisted on stopping before each red traffic light, even if no car was in sight. Noticing an unattended German shepherd on the sidewalk ahead, I led us judiciously across the street. Finally, after a half-hour of timid northward progress, we reached 105 Willow Avenue.
Removing his keys from Craigâs dungarees, Bruno proceeded to enact a common ritual of modern urban lifeâa phenomenon fully documented in the Kaleidoscope video called Safe City Living. Guided by my fingertips, he ascended the stoop, opened the lock on the iron gate, unlatched the main door, climbed one flight of stairs, and, finally, let himself into his apartment.
âDarling, I want you to meet someone,â Bruno said, crossing the living room.
Mina Pearl sat in a pool of moonlight. She wore nothing save a wristwatch and a jade pendant. Her bare, pale skin gleamed like polished marble. A fanback wicker chair held her twisted body as a bamboo cage might enclose a Chinese cricket.
âThis is Susan Fiore,â Bruno continued. âAs unlikely as it sounds, I fell off the ferry tonight, and she rescued me. I lost my glasses.â
Mina worked her face into the semblance of a smile. She issued a noise that seemed to amalgamate the screech of an owl with the bleating of a ewe.
âIâm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Pearl,â I said.
âTomorrow Iâm going to sign up for swimming lessons,â Bruno averred.
As I came toward Mina, she raised her tremulous right hand. I clasped it firmly. Her flesh was warmer than Iâd expected, suppler, more robust.
She used this same hand to gesture emphatically toward Brunoâa private signal, I concluded. He opened a desk drawer, removing a sheet of cardboard and a felt-tip marker. He brought the implements to his wife. THANK YOU , Mina wrote. She held the message before me.
âYouâre welcome,â I replied.
Mina flipped the cardboard over, PAN AND SYRINX, she wrote.
For the second time that evening, Bruno shed all his clothes. Cautiously, reverently, he lifted his naked wife from the wicker chair. She jerked and twitched like a marionette operated by a tipsy puppeteer. As her limbs writhed around one another, I thought of Laocoön succumbing to the serpents. A series of thick, burbling, salivary sounds spilled from her lips.
Against all odds, Mina and Bruno connected. It took them well over an hour, but eventually they brought Pan and Syrinx to a credible conclusion. Next came a two-hour recital of Flowering Judas, followed by an equally protracted version of Sphinx Recumbent.
The lovers, sated, sank into the couch. My applause lasted three minutes. I said my good-byes, and before I was out the door I understood that no matter how long I lived or how far I traveled, I would never again see anything so beautiful as Bruno and Mina Pearl coupling in their grimy little Willow Avenue apartment, the pigeons gathering atop the window grating, the traffic stirring in the street below, the sun rising over Hoboken.
MARTYRS OF THE UPSHOT KNOTHOLE
I SIT IN THE comfort of my easy chair, the cat on my lap, the world at my command. With my right index finger I press the button, and seconds later the hydrogen bomb explodes.
The videocassette in question is Trinity and Beyond, a documentary by Peter Kuran comprising two hours of restored footage shot in full color by the U.S. Air Forceâs 1352nd Motion Picture Squadron, âThe Atomic Cinematographers.â I am watching the detonation of February 28, 1954: Castle Bravo, fifteen megatons, in its day the largest atmospheric thermonuclear test ever conducted on planet Earth.
Red as the sun, the implacable dome of gas and debris expands
Retrieving my motorcycle jacket from the peg, I realized that I still felt protective toward my charge: more protective, even, then when Iâd first pulled him from the Hudson. As we ventured through the city, I insisted on stopping before each red traffic light, even if no car was in sight. Noticing an unattended German shepherd on the sidewalk ahead, I led us judiciously across the street. Finally, after a half-hour of timid northward progress, we reached 105 Willow Avenue.
Removing his keys from Craigâs dungarees, Bruno proceeded to enact a common ritual of modern urban lifeâa phenomenon fully documented in the Kaleidoscope video called Safe City Living. Guided by my fingertips, he ascended the stoop, opened the lock on the iron gate, unlatched the main door, climbed one flight of stairs, and, finally, let himself into his apartment.
âDarling, I want you to meet someone,â Bruno said, crossing the living room.
Mina Pearl sat in a pool of moonlight. She wore nothing save a wristwatch and a jade pendant. Her bare, pale skin gleamed like polished marble. A fanback wicker chair held her twisted body as a bamboo cage might enclose a Chinese cricket.
âThis is Susan Fiore,â Bruno continued. âAs unlikely as it sounds, I fell off the ferry tonight, and she rescued me. I lost my glasses.â
Mina worked her face into the semblance of a smile. She issued a noise that seemed to amalgamate the screech of an owl with the bleating of a ewe.
âIâm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Pearl,â I said.
âTomorrow Iâm going to sign up for swimming lessons,â Bruno averred.
As I came toward Mina, she raised her tremulous right hand. I clasped it firmly. Her flesh was warmer than Iâd expected, suppler, more robust.
She used this same hand to gesture emphatically toward Brunoâa private signal, I concluded. He opened a desk drawer, removing a sheet of cardboard and a felt-tip marker. He brought the implements to his wife. THANK YOU , Mina wrote. She held the message before me.
âYouâre welcome,â I replied.
Mina flipped the cardboard over, PAN AND SYRINX, she wrote.
For the second time that evening, Bruno shed all his clothes. Cautiously, reverently, he lifted his naked wife from the wicker chair. She jerked and twitched like a marionette operated by a tipsy puppeteer. As her limbs writhed around one another, I thought of Laocoön succumbing to the serpents. A series of thick, burbling, salivary sounds spilled from her lips.
Against all odds, Mina and Bruno connected. It took them well over an hour, but eventually they brought Pan and Syrinx to a credible conclusion. Next came a two-hour recital of Flowering Judas, followed by an equally protracted version of Sphinx Recumbent.
The lovers, sated, sank into the couch. My applause lasted three minutes. I said my good-byes, and before I was out the door I understood that no matter how long I lived or how far I traveled, I would never again see anything so beautiful as Bruno and Mina Pearl coupling in their grimy little Willow Avenue apartment, the pigeons gathering atop the window grating, the traffic stirring in the street below, the sun rising over Hoboken.
MARTYRS OF THE UPSHOT KNOTHOLE
I SIT IN THE comfort of my easy chair, the cat on my lap, the world at my command. With my right index finger I press the button, and seconds later the hydrogen bomb explodes.
The videocassette in question is Trinity and Beyond, a documentary by Peter Kuran comprising two hours of restored footage shot in full color by the U.S. Air Forceâs 1352nd Motion Picture Squadron, âThe Atomic Cinematographers.â I am watching the detonation of February 28, 1954: Castle Bravo, fifteen megatons, in its day the largest atmospheric thermonuclear test ever conducted on planet Earth.
Red as the sun, the implacable dome of gas and debris expands
Similar Books
