Randomness and Business

Our hero finds himself almost perfectly where he means to be. His heeled boots click-clack in time with the fall of his cane, click-clack, click-clack. His overcoat is thick, jet black, and if you ask me, rather the mystery. The kind of coat a secret man might wear to do secret things at precise times, moving concealed with only the click-clack of his secret mind to reveal him. His coat obscures what was once no doubt the brightest wool suit you’ve ever seen, the sort one might exclaim was worn by only the dapperest of tick-tock click-clack men. Time has made it more secretly loud, more quietly pronounced. And in the front pocket of his vest, a pocket watch with no tick-tocks left but the ones he gives it. This cleverly coifed gentleman of his own era smiles as he reaches for his quiet companion, the skin tearing ever-so-slightly from his most beautiful Chelsea grin, the knife pattern arcing gracefully from lip to ear to mid-cheek in a loop. If one asked me and demanded my impression, I would perhaps say that it was the brushstroke of an artist on his most personal canvas. Or I might just giggle.

"The most perfect time to be exactly where I mean to," he says with his wide smile, looking up in time to see the grille of the van.

He does not feel the impact, nor does he take note of the way his feet sweep ever so daintily off the sidewalk. He certainly can’t hear the crash of the glass doors, little bits of art tinkling across the stone lobby floor like dancers in a final number. He does not notice the horrified, frozen quiet of these silents, these gallery critics that don’t know brilliance when it lands at their feet. They don’t have click-clack minds at all, just schemes and clumsy knives and smiles full of fake teeth.

The truth is that our hero perceives not a bit of this, as he is much too busy preening for this display, bones snapping dramatically, blood rushing to be in place, skin tearing dutifully for this mad show.

The van skids to a halt and the driver, his stage hand and partner, his enormous Russian man with sad eyes and a rather masky frown, his Dear Alexei, exits the vehicle and promptly goes to work. Opening the rear doors and removing an enormous sledgehammer, long and heavy and loaded with all sorts of ill intent, bearing the faces of his unloving mother and overly amorous father, their theatre now closed. With a swing he rearranges the face of the nearest guard, too conflicted between trying to act and trying to grasp. His body falls in a limp bow, another actor making his exit.

Our hero pulls his body, unbreaking and sadly losing beauty, back together again and says, "I’m looking for the green-eyed man."