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pulling 35¢ slices of pizza (that would probably cost $1.25) from the big Grimaldi oven, filling the
sugar jars, carrying cases of Coke syrup downstairs to be stored, the dreams losing their color,
gravity pulling it all down.
Then he realized he might still be on Times Square, ten years from now. The pity backed up
in its channel and washed over him.
The 7-Up sign winked once and began pulsing. His chest spiral picked up the beat. Pain hit
him. Roger looked up and the sign was flickering on and off. His chest spiral had changed color,
now pulsed deep blue in sync with the 7-Up sign, right through his shirt. The girl on the sign moved
smoothly and directly to stare down at him. Her mouth began moving. Roger Charna could not read
lips.
“Caruso.” The counterman turned from reloading the hot dog broiler and smiled. “Huh?”
Roger pointed across the street, up at the 7-Up sign. “Take a look over there and tell me what you
see.” Caruso moved to the end of the counter and stared up. “What?” Roger pointed to the sign.
“The sign, the 7-Up sign.” Caruso looked again. “What am I supposed to see?” Roger sighed and
finished his hot dog. “I think I’ll go see the doctor tomorrow morning.”
“You got to take care of yourself. You been a very sick guy, yeah?”
Roger nodded and laid out the coins in payment for the dog and papaya. Caruso pushed them
back with the heel of his hand. “Iss onna house.” Roger found himself still nodding.
The coins back in his pants pocket, he walked up Broadway to the bookstore, wishing the
New York Times still had its neon newsservice on the island at 42nd Street.
It might all come clear if whoever was trying to reach him had free access to unlimited
language.
By this time Roger knew either someone was trying to talk to him, or he was going insane.
Odds were bad.
He was invited to a party. He went because they asked him. He paid a dollar at the door: a
woman who had had her left breast removed for what he found out later were non-carcinogenic
reasons, took the money. She was topless; she smiled a great deal. He also discovered, later in the
evening, that these people had answered an advertisement in an underground newspaper. It had been
headed with a photograph from Tod Browning’s Freaks--pinhead twins joined at the rump. Roger
did not feel at ease with them.
In the group was a man who sought carnal knowledge of blimps. He had been arrested three
times for trying to fuck the Goodyear dirigible. Even among his own kind he was looked on with
distaste; unable to find the species of sex partners his pathology demanded, he had grown steadily
more perverted and had taken to attacking helicopters; the mere mention of an autogyro gave him a
noticeable erection.
He was offered a sloe gin fizz in a pink frosted glass by a young woman who removed her
glass eye and sucked on it while discussing the moral imperatives of the sponge boycott in
Brooksville, Florida. She rolled the eye around on her tongue and Roger walked away quickly.
“The dollar was for the spaghetti,” explained a man with a prosthetic arm and a leather cone
where his nose should have been. “My wife would have told you about that when she invited you,
because you’re a celebrity and we certainly don’t want to charge you, but if we made an exception,
well, everyone would want the dollar back. But you can have as much spaghetti as you want.” He
pulled the cone forward on its elastic band and scratched at the raw, red scar-tissue beneath.
“Actually, I’ll tell you what: come on in the bathroom for a couple of minutes and I can slip the
buck back to you, they’ll never know.” Roger slipped sidewise around a bookcase and left the man
scratching.
The room was rather nice, large and airy, filled with kinetic sculptures and found object
constructs that covered the walls and dominated the floor space. There were half a hundred light
