Koko

1

On West End Avenue the old lady nodded at him from a window in an apartment building across the street and he waved up at her. The doorman, in an ornate uniform of blue and grey with gold epaulettes, was also looking at him, but in a far less friendly manner. The doorman, who had known Roberto Ortiz, would not let him in, though inside was where he had to be. He could still see the Ia Thuc photographs he had looked at in the library, and the darkness at the center of those photographs, which had made him shake, pressed him toward the inside, the harbor that inside was.

You crazy? the doorman said. You outa your mind? You can’t go in there.

I have to go in there.

The world had given him Pumo the Puma, standing in the Microfilm Room like an answered prayer, and Koko switched on the invisibility switch and followed Pumo-the Puma down the corridor and up the stairs and into the vast room filled with book cases in tall rows, and then everything had gone wrong, the world had tricked him, the Joker jumped out of the pack cackling and dancing—another man died in front of him, not Pumo the Puma, and it was Bill Dickerson again. The getting away. The escape. So Koko himself had to hide, the world was slick and savage and it turned its back on you. On Broadway mad old shapes in rags with bare swollen feet rushed at you, speaking in tongues, their lips black because they breathed fire. The ragged mad shapes knew about the Joker because they had seen him too, they knew Koko was going astray, astray, and they knew about Koko’s mistake in the library. This time he had won the wager again, but it was the wrong wager because it was the wrong man. Then Puma had melted away. When the mad ragged bums spoke in tongues they said, You’re making mistakes! Bad mistakes! You don’t belong here!

I can’t let you in here, the doorman said. You want me to call the cops? Get away or I’ll call the cops, get your ass out of here.

Koko was standing now on the corner of West End Avenue and West 78th Street, the molten center of the universe, looking up at the building where Roberto Ortiz had lived. A vein jumped in his neck, and the cold bit his face.

The old lady could come down and lead him into the building, Koko thought, where he could ride up and down on the elevators and wear Roberto Ortiz’s clothes forever. In warmth and safety. Now he was in the wrong world and nothing in the wrong world was right.

This was one thing Koko knew. He was not supposed to live in a small bare room next to the crazy man at the Christian’s Association.

He had the address book all laid out on the little table. He had the names and addresses circled.

But Harry Beevers did not answer his telephone.

But Conor Linklater did not answer his telephone.

Michael Poole’s answering machine spoke in Michael Poole’s voice and gave another number where a woman answered. This woman had a stern, unforgiving voice.

Koko remembered, I always liked the smell of blood.

Koko felt the cold tears on his face and turned away from the old woman’s window and began to walk down West End Avenue.

The crazy man’s hair was ropes and his eyes were red. He lived in the room next to Koko and he came in and he laughed and said—what all this shit on the walls, boy? Killin’ is a see-yun. The crazy man was black and wore exhausted black man’s clothes.

Things were going fast and Koko was going fast down West End Avenue. Frozen bushes burst into flame, and across the street a tall woman with red hair whispered, Once you kill ’em, they your responsibility forever.

The woman with the hard voice knew that.

On wide crowded 72nd Street he crossed over to Broadway. And behold darkness shall cover the earth. Yet once a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth.

For he is like a refiner’s fire.

If he said that to the woman, would she know how he felt in the toilet after Bill Dickerson walked away? In the library, when the Joker jumped out of the pack and jigged and capered between the books?

I didn’t start off in this business to accept substitutes, he said to himself. I can say that to her.

Time was a needle and at the end was the needle’s eye. When you passed through the needle—when you pulled the needle through its own eye after you—

a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief were you.

A man in a golden fur coat was staring at Koko and Koko stared right back. I am not troubled by the hostile stares of strangers, I am a man rejected and despised. “I am a man rejected and despised,” Koko said to the staring man, who had already turned his back and was walking away.

Koko walked tense and haunted down Eighth Avenue. Everything between West End Avenue, twenty blocks north, and Eighth Avenue had passed in a blurred moment. The world glittered as a cold thing glitters. He was outside not inside, and back in his terrible room the black man waited to tell him about sin.

The grinning demons loved the men and women they escorted through eternity—demons had a great secret, they too were created to love and be loved.

“Are you speaking to me?” asked an old man with a polished face and a dirty black beret. The old man was not one of the ragged shapes sent to torture him: the old man spoke in English, not in tongues. A jewel of snot hung from his nose. “My name is Hansen.”

“I’m a travel agent,” Koko said.

“Well, welcome to New York,” said Hansen. “I guess you’re a visitor here.”

“I’ve been away a long time, but they’re keeping me busy. Keeping me busy in all directions.”

“That’s good!” the old man chortled. He was delighted to have someone talk to him.

Koko asked if he could buy him a drink, and Hansen accepted with a grateful smile. The two of them went into a Mexican restaurant on Eighth Avenue near 55th Street and when Koko called for “Mexican drinks!” the bartender placed two fizzy-looking, frothy-looking, soupy-looking drinks before them. The bartender had frizzy black hair, olive skin, and a drooping black moustache, and Koko liked him very much. The bar was warm and dark and Koko liked the silence and the bowls of salty chips placed beside the red sauce. The old man kept blinking at Koko as if he could not believe his luck.

“I’m a veteran,” Koko said.

“Oh,” the old man said. “I never went.”

The old man asked the bartender what he thought about the guy in the library.

“He was a mistake,” Koko said. “God blinked.”

“What guy?” said the bartender, and the old man wheezed and said, “Newspapers eat that shit up.”

To the bartender and the old man, Koko said, “I am a man despised and rejected, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief.”

“I am the same,” the bartender said.

Old Hansen raised his glass and toasted him. He even winked.

“Do you want to hear the song of the mammoths?” Koko asked.

“I always liked elephants,” Hansen said.

“I am the same,” the bartender said.

So Koko sang the song of the mammoths, the song so ancient even the elephants had forgotten its meaning, and old Hansen and the Mexican bartender listened in reverent silence.

PART