Blood Never Dries

By Fred Jay Gordon

Haunted by his near-death experience in a violent car crash, Max Star is being hunted by people he doesn't know. Believing religions cause war even though God is good, Max drops out of graduate school and struggles to bring his new Compassionate Judaism movement to as many people as possible. But Max's faith in love, not ideology, threatens some of the religious Orthodox in New York and Israel.
On a hot day in July, Max, charismatic and telegenic, wakes up in his hotel room with a naked, dead woman in his bed. That night he is scheduled to hold his biggest rally in the huge hall of that same New York City hotel. But a few hours later while being interviewed on a national morning television show, Max is overwhelmed by his internal struggles which consume him with guilt and fear. Live on camera, believing he may have killed that unknown woman in his bed, Max faints which causes an immediate, viral sensation leaping Max into a feverish media explosion and his event is sold out.
BLOOD NEVER DRIES races toward the climactic evening rally as Max attempts to understand the parts of his life which brought him to this confrontation. But with his enemies coming closer, he and his wife and his family become more and more unnerved. Max is desperate to understand the consequences of his dreams but most of all, he must discover who wants him stopped.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fred Jay Gordon
• Release date: Feb 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465748492

Fred Jay Gordon

FRED JAY GORDON was born in the Bronx and lives in New York. He owned Pegasus, a red, 17-hand high ex-race horse he rode bareback and taught to jump five foot high fences. When Gordon was 16, he wrote and recorded a pop song, "Bye, Bye, She Cried," which was bought by Atlantic Records. He's swept warehouse floors and worked the delivery trucks for the Budweiser beer factory in Newark, NJ. He has a degree in English from UC Berkeley and received a scholarship from Columbia University in Film. At NBC Studios in New York, he worked as a Tour Guide and, on Broadway, he helped cast and raise money for two smash hit musicals and then worked as a salad boy and a waiter. His plays have been produced in NY, LA, Baltimore, etc, he's a member of the Ensemble Studio Theater, he's taught playwriting and English Literature as well as horse-back riding, appeared as a contestant on various tv game shows to pay the rent, worked the streets of Brooklyn as a city social worker, and done the graveyard shift in the Tombs in the prisons of downtown NYC. He’s a PEN Award winner and was a resident writer at the Edward Albee Foundation in Montauk, NY. He has written, AN AMERICAN FABLE, about the American dream of overnight success, and his newest book is the thriller, BLOOD NEVER DRIES. Reviews of BENJAMIN GRABBED HIS GLICKEN AND RAN: from Library Journal: "One hopes BENJAMIN won't be dismissed as just another offbeat experimental novel. It is an exciting book!" from Publishers Weekly: "...Benjamin's personal story is wild, with an extraordinary made-up language and a pun-on-pun series of sentences... The novel builds to a strong, dramatic climax and the effect is chilling." from The Christian Science Monitor: "Like a child of Zeus sprung full grown from the head of their creator ... this novel has not received the attention it deserves... The novel is operating simultaneously on three planes and finally on a fourth. Benjamin as a character is oddly captivating ... virtuosic ... exacting descriptions of Benjamin's room, physical sensations, and emotions are like a zoom lens bringing one in intensely close to him. Benjamin says of his Mysteries: 'Words are only a small portion of my life... They are weak technicalities which fail... Words are only words. And besides, I lie a lot.'

Book preview

BLOOD NEVER DRIES

Fred Jay Gordon

Published by Fred Jay Gordon at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 by Fred Jay Gordon

Discover other titles by Fred Jay Gordon at Smashwords:

AN AMERICAN FABLE

BENJAMIN GRABBED HIS GLICKEN AND RAN

Smsahwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for your use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you.

BLOOD NEVER DRIES

by Fred Jay Gordon

Chapter 1

From a deep, warm cave, Max Star -- born Maximus Stavitsky -- emerged slowly, drifting through clouds, merging with water, then moving beyond as he went gliding up through space toward the distant, beckoning light.

Eyes still closed, he smiled and breathed in because he was an enveloped, magical essence who was continually self-created and who lived timelessly as a unique representative of God’s reverence.

Half down here, half up there, Max had become an angel.

He was gorgeous and flushed and dewy and sated.

Sighing with the pleasure of being sublime, Max kept is eyes closed in this dim, early morning. He stretched his strong fingers. He glided his fingertips along the silky, high thread white sheets on the king size bed in the very expensive double suite with balcony of New York’s World Hotel.

Then he remembered her.

Inching toward the place on the bed where she would be, he projected the penile tip of his forefinger to the back of her shoulder. Shifting his naked thighs, Max sensed his lower body hairs were slightly stiff and he moved his other hand and scratched himself sweetly. He was sticky and warm and imagined a shower.

Slightly dulled, heavy, not really remembering all of it, Max was a thick slab.

Her name was – ? She was Jewish -- ? She was from last night’s Compassionate Rally staff warm-up -- ?

His wife would be sleeping in their bed in their huge apartment on the twenty-first floor overlooking the green park from Central Park West. Aaliyah had been saved from endless phone calls in the middle of the night from his staff and from him to any of a half dozen people about last minute details about tonight's pivotally important --

Stretching his hand further from his well exercised thirty-two year old body to where her shoulder should be, Max pushed his palm down and pressed his hand alongside onto her skin.

Up and around until he found her….

But instantly: Huh?

She was cool.

Debbie! Now he remembered she was a Debbie.

But she was too cool.

Out from his sweet, enveloping glaze, Max opened his eyes.

The bedroom was dart from the thick, blackout draperies hiding double paned, noise reducing windows. Except for an invading slash of summer morning light which glared pale-yellow through the narrow vertical space, inside the city room the air was eerie and still.

Max turned, peered with sticky, black eyes at the woman next to him. Not since they were married had he allowed himself to be trapped into anything like this.

He listened for her breathing patterns but realized he wasn’t familiar with how she – who she – who was this woman? Not like Aaliyah whose grumbles and air whistles he knew so well he could identify how long she had been sleeping and when she might wake up.

But Max heard nothing except muted hints of a New York summer morning behind the innovative bend of the thick-paned glass of the surprisingly large bedroom bay window hidden behind the beige blackouts of this new hotel.

She was cold!

His brain fired terrorized images of distorted faces as chills leaped through his body and into his heart.

Wrestling down his hysteria, Max murmured, then forced himself to croon pleasingly to a glib, He-e-eey – h-i-iii there -- you awake?

She did what he feared most: she did nothing.

She didn’t move.

Shivers raced over Max again as he rolled naked off the bed. Bare feet on the soft carpet. Crouched and shuffling, he went to her side the bed.

He stood looking down at her. He touched her face: it was cool. He put his ear to her mouth but felt nothing. His fingers reached for her shoulders and he shook her a little but she seemed heavy, inanimate – dead!

Suddenly iced to his fingertips, everything changed. For so long, ever since he could dream, he had had a future.

He covered his mouth and cried, Oh – God! – what have I done? but remembered doing nothing -- or more specifically remembered not doing anything that would have – could have –

Actually, he remembered doing some of what he had done but not doing something that would have resulted in what seemed to be – seemed to have resulted in –

What?

Or maybe – seemed to be -- seemed to have been, well, if not done by him then accomplished by him somehow in some way – ways? -- he couldn’t remember – yet – but –

Who the hell was she?! Is she?

In these first few moments of panic, he felt the nakedness of his body pinging in the cool air-conditioned air of this now terrorizing hotel room.

Brrr-r-r-ing! the bell to the suite started ringing!

The world was coming in!

Twisting through air, Max snatched the unfurled but empty strawberry condom (‘Oh, no!’ thought Max) from the carpet under his side of the bed, leaped into the bathroom and threw the thing into the toilet where it floated on top so he flushed and shouted, One minute!

It was probably Jackie, over-coffeed, slightly plump, arms full of the latest Jerusalem Post and Jewish Daily Forward and God knows what else, most of which she had already read and was prepared to prep him with the hottest details as they cabbed across town so Max could to do that MORNIN’ AMERICA tv show how again with the big blond who pretended to be cotton candy, insouciance, and summer love. And there were two more shows after that all in preparation for tonight’s big Compassionate Judaism rally at the hotel’s massive Diamond Jubilee Ballroom.

And – but – but what about over there? – what about that whoever-she-was her?!

Max! Jackie was shouting softly as she knocked discreetly on the door. Up and at ‘em, it’s 7:08. Time to shine! Max?

Grabbing the sheet off the bed, Max draped himself, closed the French double glass doors to the bedroom, ran across the artfully arranged sitting room with ice buckets and faxes and leather bound hotel information booklets, and cracked open the door to the very brightly lit hotel corridor.

Mornin’, sunshine, he said, carefully positioning his head in the space so she could see he just woke up and wasn’t dressed.

Was Elohim watching?

Missions are waiting, Max, barked Jackie, not surprised he had overslept. He looked tousled and cute and helpless and sweet and puzzled and pinky white. And he had a musty smell. He shoulda brushed his teeth.

Max tried to remember normal. He relaxed his knees. Sheepishly smiling his Time Magazine smile, he aw-shucks silently to her but his chest and the space behind his eyes were dumb-numb. As if television cameras were about to flash red lights and go live for Max to deliver his charismatic message, Max did his cute I-need-you mumble to his Numero Uno and made a wink. Give me ten, Jackie, and I’ll meet you down in the coffee shop.

We’re late-late, she grinned back, her cocoa brown skin beaming in the corridor light.

Wearing pressed GAP blue jeans and a white blouse with a wide lace collar and pale blue buttons, Jackie Baadogo, in her new, blue and white Nike running shoes, Jackie, efficient, keen edged, and passionate, was ready. Readjusting a black shoulder strap carrying her laptop in its padded case filled with computer printouts, she turned from his closing door with a huge, satisfied grin and raced toward the elevator.

Her parents had been air-lifted out of Ethiopia to Israel when she was eight and her name was still Tsabi which she changed to Jackie (I’m going to live in the United States of America! she declared with the ferocity of a nine-year-old who knew everything and revered the American star, Jackie Kennedy.)

Smart and focused on education and hard work, the Baadogos refused to be settled in Afula or Qiryat Malakhi like many others from Operation Solomon, lived at first in one room in Tel Aviv, worked hard, studied computers which both her parents believed were the future, and surprised their Israeli neighbors by continually fighting for their tiny but incremental successes. Nights, Jackie’s father went without sleep until he learned enough about computer programming to get a job in a internet start-up. He taught his wife who taught Jackie and her brother. After high school, Jackie served proudly in the Israel Defense Forces, traveled through Germany because it made her uncomfortable, had several boyfriends, rode the highways in Greyhound buses up and down the west coast of the United States with two girl-friends from Stanford, and read and re-read Gone With the Wind.

She received a BS from UC Berkeley in World Economics/Agricultural Underdevelopment, got a partial scholarship for an MBA from Stanford, was heavily in debt, and was still looking to really connect with God.

In Los Angeles, Jackie first heard about Max Star where he and his troupe were finishing a whirlwind sweep of the West Coast. Jackie Baadogo didn’t believe all the dictates of Judaism but she did believe in Max and she still passionately believed in the gift and mission of Israel.

Got you coffee and a flat sesame bagel with an extra-extra cream cheese, she said, sticking a white paper bag next to his face. Let me in, go shower, I’ve got some calls to make, we’re only about half sold out, we’ve got to sell-sell-sell today. Max?

He could smell the coffee, feel it warm from the paper cup, suddenly realized how dry his mouth was, how cold that body on his bed was, how genuinely terrified he was. Suddenly, he hated his penis – but only wistfully. Jackie, I got – gee willickers – I got gas, Jackie, and it’s kinda embarrassing so meet me downstairs -- okay? Later, Jackie, thanks. And don’t eat my bagel! He closed the door and leaned back. Hashem must be testing him. Again.

The sheet slipped off his shoulders and fell to the floor as shivers swept him like electric eels slithering over his skin and he stared at the closed French doors wishing he could see through the panes of glass to see if her body were still lying there on the bed.

Did his mantra: Think you up: Project you out: Embrace Him now!

But Max, all naked and jittery jelly, gave over to the wracking fires and fell in a slow motion down to the carpet where he landed in a flesh-heavy puddle.

But -- but, as much as he wanted to, he didn’t black out.

He didn’t disappear the way he used to dream of disappearing when he was just a skinny kid and desperately wanted to be invisible and huge so he could see everything everywhere all at once. Especially when he parents were screaming and raging at each other.

He opened his eyes. He was still on the floor. Iced and terrified. And, picking up his head, then pushing down with his arms, then standing up on his legs and body, walked and pushed open the glass doors.

Peering in, Max saw that the she was still lying on the bed coolly immobile.

Clearly, even in numbness, Max knew he needed an Ariel Sharon to get him out of this ambush. Or, at the very least, needed his much professed God-stream.

Max – only child of an rural born alcoholic mother who accidentally succeeded at suicide at thirty-eight in the Bronx when Max was five and a Southern father who had already died in denial from crystal-methamphetamined AIDS at thirty-three – Max – who gave off an aura of continual, personal cleanliness – who was symmetrically pleasant of face -- six feet tall – athletically muscled with a full head of curly auburn hair – whose deep, black eyes flew out from enormous stillness to embrace you and the world –-- Max slowly rolled up to his knees, precariously stood, became conscious of his heavy, sexual, dangling parts above the beige carpeted floor and, shaken and overwhelmed and disbelieving, Max – alone again – two years older than when his father died – Max forced himself to walk back into the bedroom.

I look to you now, prayed Max with his eyes closed and his mouth open, to come to me now in my time of need because I have sinned again and I need Your merciful love. Please? Please?

Then he thought, God, I need to be mikvahed!

But Jackie didn’t go down to the coffee shop. She was puzzled. Max had been charming, mildly confused off his pulpit of religious passion, almost wormy. Nothing unusual. But he had also been reticent. Which was not a description Jackie or anyone would ever use for Max who was always bursting out of his well-made body, embracing, passionate in a containable, brotherly sort-of-way. Something like: fiery but without sex. Everyone could see the umbilical between Max and Aaliyah in her light blue, straight, one-piece, simple appearing but surprisingly expensive and subtly stitched sheer silky threaded choir-like dress flowing deliciously around her. Arm and arm, together, up on the podium as usual last night after he had called out his chants to them and the assembly had answered, after Max had challenged and they had accepted, after Max had dared them and they had vowed their love of Israel and commitment to Compassionate Judaism and Our Great Way To Joy. Max and Aaliyah: proudly familied, circled into and with each other, engaged publicly and sexually with the majesty of Hashem.

But this Max, thought Jackie, this morning seemed – seemed, well, he actually needed a shower and she didn’t know him like that. His hair was always squeakably clean. His cheeks smooth. His eyes clear. His penis tucked in and safely flaccid behind his zipper and available only to Aaliyah (Jackie couldn’t help that last thought – that image, really – well, actually, that nervy/giddy full flowing animaled feeling that usually left her confused in a warmly physical rushy dumb-sweet EAT ME! sort of way).

Jackie lifted her finger to the buzzer again so she could just check and make sure he was okey-dokey and – and -- but: no. Max was the one since he had been chosen and she was only a disciple. Smart as she hoped she always was, committed deeply to cause and country, thoughtful, wanting to be loving, Jackie knew – and was comforted by the realization – that she was not at his pinnacle. Few were. Max did have some other connection that all who knew him recognized. And clearly transmitted on television. Comfortably disappointed, reminded of her limits, Jackie turned away toward the elevator.

She worked with the most revolutionary religious person in America. Who, after modest living expenses, gave away all his money. Her steps became springy until, standing in front of the elevator, pleased again at her good fortune, Jackie smoothed down the front of her well tailored, dark blue pants and shook her short hair free. She loved being on the trail with him, and the organization, and with her very best self.

The elevator door opened revealing a tall, curiously silent and contained man in his late twenties. Strongly built around his shoulders and chest, with a shockingly thick neck, dressed a in powder blue suite, bald, with a tiny diamond stud in his left earlobe, he liquidly stepped out and instantly moved close to Jackie. Negroid features but pale white skin: the one and only: Stackerlee Butt-Butt Bomber.

Jackie’s blood rushed in hot flushes. Stacky, in the name of God, she stammered, what are you doing here?

He smelled of limes. His teeth were very white. He had a gold tooth that shined whenever he smiled but he smiled infrequently. This time his smile was small, tight, closed, she didn’t see a gleam. Stacky said, He’s trouble.

Who?

Your Maxie boy.

Even though Jackie had been in the airlift from Ethiopia when she was only eight, she remembered it fully and her parents had spoken about it so often that what she didn’t remember, what she heard later, meshed to actual experiences in her mind which meant she always carried the residuals of terror, guns, dislocation, hope and tears inside her heart always ready to burst. Along with enormous relief that she and her family had escaped. Operation Solomon and they were officially designated: black Jews. They had been almost 1200 Falashas from Gondar crammed into the Israeli cargo jet, sitting everywhere -- on the floor, in the aisles, on top of each other -- smelling everyone and crying crazy with fear that at the last moment, they’d be stopped by the rebels, yanked off, and shot. But, oh!, the plane took off. The relief was shocking. All of one mind, they were stunned and amazed, humbly grateful to the world-wide community connecting them as primordial Jews, and free!

Two babies were born during that record setting flight on the packed, Israeli 747.

Nothing quite fazed Jackie after that.

She zapped Stacky: You’re so jealous, your teeth are green. She loved hitting and then watching people fight to recover.

Stackerlee came even closer. He stared down into her with his small, deep blue eyes. He was all muscle and halos and his eyebrows were shaved. Remember, he whispered. I’m watchin’. Real close.

Then you’ll be arrested for trespassing and thrown in jail which is where you belong. Move away, Stackerlee, God loves you, too, don’t worry about it.

It’s different now, Stacky said, not moving. After last night. After what he did to my momma.

All he said was that Israel is waiting.

No one trucks with my momma. Humiliated her.

She loved it – told me over and over again at the party afterwards that her heart was happy and her mind was as clear as God’s Heaven.

Hear me, Jack-o: I had to take my momma to my place last night. Comin’ back with that picture of him and his wife and puttin’ it on my fireplace where I had to look at it.

Jackie almost asked, Where do you live? but she kept her face neutral. I like that picture. Actually, I took it and I gave it to your mother last night – both of them look good. Especially Max. Well, she does, too, actually.

He glared at her. My momma cried till her eyes almost fell out and I couldn’t stop her. Wanted to give her whole life all away to your bimbo. Not gonna happen, Jaclyn, tell your boss: ain’t gonna happen.

You graduated Rutgers, don’t give me this pseudo jive talk, Stack-o. And, Stack, don’t get stuck in the road because your caravan’s crossing on and you’re about to lose your seat.

What’re you sayin’? Nothing! It’s bullshit, Jac-o-lyn, total fabrication with those evangelical sales pitches: I’m tellin’ you and that little fruit-cake: leave her out.

So where did you sleep?

On the couch – but that’s not the point.

But it is sweet, she thought.

Only gonna give you both this one warning so hear me Jack-off: tell Max the pseudo-Star to leave her alone. She’s not giving away family accounts to some fraud-fuck for his version of glory.

THAT IS NOT THE WAY HE WORKS! And don’t you talk to me that way, she said, now furiously glaring back at him. And don’t you ever talk about Max Star with anything but absolute reverence.

He’s a mouse, he’s a scam, you been duped.

She threw a few droplets of the now-cool coffee toward his face. I’ll have you arrested for assault and defamation.

Nothing’s legal about any of you, said Stackerlee, as he pulled out a blue handkerchief and wiped his face. You’re all cream-puffs dreamin’ in the sky. Hear it now, Jackie: leave my mother be!

She slapped him.

He grabbed her hand and held it away from his face. Mosquitoes, he said, and stared deep into her.

She winced. But she had served her two years in the Israeli Defense Force before going to Berkeley and then on to Stanford and now, slowly, Jackie moved closer to him, centered herself, and held his glare.

He came closer to her, his huge face like a blanket.

She almost relaxed.

He kissed her on her lips with his huge open mouth.

She wanted to scream but he was covering her like a volcano.

Gently, he took her shoulders and held her away from him. He was in her face and he was gigantic.

I’ll be watching tonight, he said, breathing in her licorice and spice. Tell my momma you changed your mind. If you don’t, I’ll change yours. Good morning, Jackie.

Her mouth was still open. She raised her hand and covered it.

He bowed, he growled, he turned around like liquid mercury. As if on ball bearings, he glided erect to the elevator which magically opened and he stepped inside and turned back around to her.

She wondered how big his couch was. Wondered if he changed his sheets and his pillow case for his mother. Wondered if he gave his old mother warmed milk to help her sleep.

He smiled because, of course, only 50% of it had to do with his mother. And just because because and just because she was there and just because she was watching him and he was watching her, he kept smiling at her even though he wasn’t quite aware he was still smiling but he was aware and it wasn’t that he planned to smile at her but, anyhow, he kept smiling.

Jackie couldn’t miss that gleam.

Whoever she was, Max saw she was still there! Lying on the bed all female curves and skin and secret passageways. Max remembered now when she pushed herself over to him last night as he was working his way out of the hall. Hands and fingertips of all sizes and strengths were pressing onto him -- into him -- adulating, dazed, as Max, high on Elohim’s great gift, spent and full and humble and knowingly united with earth, sky, and flesh, Max was as full as man could ever dream.

And the greatest gift: that after tonight’s extraordinary mission of faith and humility, he and Elohim, at heart, were One and Max could believe that he was not only righteous but that he was also a contributor.

In the cool air-conditioned room, silent and dark on the 23rd floor, she was stretched out so very still on the hotel bed, her lips puffy, pale, and her black hair spread over her face in thin strands like octopus-inked, angel-hair spaghetti.

It couldn’t have been him! Max had no moment in his being where he remembered he hurt her. Or even wanted to! She was rapacious, she was cooing, she was open and lava and he rose light-years into exploding universes with her.

He couldn’t remember.

Then he flashed: ‘Why was she – dead?’

He had to get her out. He had to be at the television studio. He had to do something to make her disappear.

He kept looking at her because she was beautiful but shockingly inert, weighted mass but no soul, and from somewhere he hear her saying: You cannot disturb me. I am no longer I. I am other.

Without knowledge , Max pushed himself against the wall, closed his eyes, breathed.

Everything, now, was different. He would be hunted.

Slowly, fighting shock, Max moved across the little suite to the front door, twisted the handle, and pulled. With all eyes watching, he leaned his head out, peered to the left, peered the right. No one there. He kept his naked feet very still and, slipping the plastic Do Not Disturb sign around the outside doorknob, Max held his breath and released the door. It closed. It clicked very loud electrifying Max who froze in the refrigerated room. He leaked into his pajama bottoms and grabbed himself. Heart pounding, sweat icing his face, Max turned and looked through the boxy room and back at the woman who –

Still hadn’t moved!

He should – cover her.

No, move her.

Hide her.

Under the bed!

Max ran. She was still lying there, facing him, horribly silent, and Max slid one hand under her leg, slid the other hand under her shoulder -- his fingers dug into her and she was cool but warm, heavy but flexible, and he curled and was just about to pull her toward him so he could ease her down onto the various florals on the carpet and – but – !

But he saw the frame was solid wood to the floor and nothing could be hidden under the bed!

Max wanted to die but he was awake and Jackie was pushing him onto his schedule with a tv interview in an hour and radio and the big one tonight -- and Jackie would be back in a moment!

Looking down at her in the slightly swirling cool-conditioned air, he saw her and felt her lying so still on top of his hands.

What had he done?

Could it be that he was Elohim’s new Job just as he was on the runway and beginning his ascent?

Would this inexplicable event now be Max Star’s burden to carry in his heart and weigh his soul down – down – down?

Privately or publicly?

Standing directly in front of the elevators off to the side of the black marbled and Dale Chihuly chandeliered New York’s World lobby with its gigantically voluptuous glass globes of lime, blue and white cascading down in spirals from the center of the ceiling, Jackie, tapping her toe inside her soft leather black shoelaced Walkabouts, waited for Max.

Two of the three elevator doors opened simultaneously and a white standard bred Poodle with teased hair stepped out on a long blue leash. Stepping out of the other set of bronze doors, Max, chest up, smiling, was ready to be photographed, thought Jackie watching him with flushingable pride which pounded her eyes and edged tiny pulses into her groin which she denied.

Striding toward her, Max handed her the empty Beano paper cup and slipped her his special grin. Ready to set!?

And up to go! she responded, automatically and with special familiarity, not quite as intimate as she’d like but intimately knowing in a secret one-on-one, just-between-the-two-of-us sort of way.

Sporting his Italian leather attaché with the long strap over his shoulder, Max fingered Jackie’s elbow and wheeled them toward the lobby entrance.

The pink marble floors were freshly waxed and were shining, the staff was uniformed, smiling, nodding, saying, Good morning, Mr. Star, the black limousine was waiting for them as they emerged from the revolving doors, and Max, suppressed panic, was at least hot fire red and ice blue cold.

Jackie gave the daily update and overview as they drove across town to the television studio with the floor to ceiling glass windows in Times Square where throngs would be waiting behind ropes.

Max nodded, grinned, Uh-huh-ed. He knew that focus was all. If he couldn’t focus, he’d simply be dead. Like her. Maybe he’d exercise later – when? – sometime – or run. Or push-ups at least. Had to. Had to.

Aaah! he cried. For a moment I forgot that we’ve got this – what’s her name?

Sophie Sailor.

He blinked. Quite a woman.

Yeah. This is really going to be really important for us – really big break, Max, so do your most blessed.

I need to watch out for – what again?

Jackie peered into him. He usually told her. Cotton candy and cyanide, she said, quietly, watching him stare out the window at the city. He was very photogenic.

Right! All those studio lights would be on him. All those eyes. And that vast unknown electronic audience watching on tvs & on ipods & cellphones -- & -- & -- all that global human connection invisibly out there and huge on multiples of up-to-the-minute devices peering in on him. Getting his message. Messages. Fabulous, he thought, but burst his head and his heart with snakes. Dead. She was dead.

Max? Hello, you here or where?

Got all of it, Jackie, I’m right here.

So okay, then, repeat what I just said.

Staring out at the passing city streets and remembering the time when he traveled the city on his neighbor’s unfashionably fat tubed bicycle, Max was still amazed that he was still amazed by New York. Its continual movements and its solidity, always New York City always being carved into by jackhammers. New York city’s air blowing down, into, and through Max: hot, invisible waves during summers like this one. Icing him with freezing winds eating his eyes in the winter. Sweeping across endless blocks of huge inanimate buildings housing layers stacked up on layers of people separated by floors but united by common walls whose inhabitants were blocked from Max’s view, unseen people who were – hiding under blankets in their beds? – sitting in old chairs? – eating microwaved food? – dancing naked with closed eyes in small rooms?

Staring out at cars and July colors and people as if he were a dream.Always the orphan who was taken in after his mother passed by his great-aunt on his mother’s side. Rose Rosenstein (pronounced in a self-tutored I’m-getting-the-hell-out-of-immigrant-Brooklyn accent by Rose as Rosen-steen and underscored with a stern but knowing smile), Rose was his frenetically happy maiden aunt of fifty-eight who taught high school English in the Bronx, went regularly to the ballet (baaa-lay) at the massive rococo City Center Theatre on 56th Street, lived alone in Chelsea with two Siamese cats, and loved Friday night services uptown at Temple Emanuel. Rose Rosenstein’s use of the word passed was the first of many mysteries swirling around her because Max, after two months in foster care and taken in by Rose when he was almost six, Max couldn’t figure out where he thought she thought his mother had passed to. And as Max grew in that little space off to the side of the little hall where just his small bed and a table and lamp could fit, Max, always bewildered by his mother’s disappearance (passed to where?), lacking a father, having no answers, Max determined that he was going to be special, brilliant, and be able to walk unscathed through walls. He was blessed with a now-famous, almost-photographic memory and had emerged fully muscled from skinny city orphan to Rose’s cherished, lavished, and handsome ward (Bubbie-boy-boy, you are magnificent! she’d croon to him when she tucked him in at night). Max, who graduated in the top three in his class at Peter Stuyvesant, an insanely competitive public high school filled with kids from Asian families and Brooklyn Jews from the former Soviet Union who never slept and always studied especially on weekends and were determined to enter the guaranteed futures from Harvard and Columbia and Yale and a select, few others. This same Max who had won a full scholarship to New York University with a part-time data entry job at the library. But under his gleaming surface, he was still little Max haunted by the inexplicable facts that his mother had passed and his father had passed and he didn’t know who they had been or why they had been or where their souls were now. (Who was that Bubbie-boy Aunt Rose loved so much and believed so much that he was so magnificent?) When Twenty-First Century Magazine had described him last year as one of 50 bright-young-professionals-on the-rise, he had explained to the Village Voice just after his first Call and Response Jubilee in Washington Square Park on a summer night, that his continual unknowing and complete ignorance in the methods of living were probably some of the mysteries of self that led him to his calling.

Unquestioned until this morning. Until he woke up to the fact that he had killed another human being. That he was a murderer. That he was even worse than his parents. That he had failed his extraordinary Aunt Rose and would now lose all the dreams he had for himself.

Max! Are you listening?

Blinking, Max turned to her and smiled his big and easy affable grin to this estimable Jackie whom he genuinely liked because she was loyal, nervous, very smart and practical, and uprooted in the world like himself. Insinuatingly, he nodded and purred, Sure I’m listening, and softly repeated his day’s schedule back to her word for word. In every detail. Showing enormous equanimity and respect toward her.

Then he patted her hand and looked out the window again up into that limiting sky.

Driven like his father. Haunted like his mother. But both more like figments now and maybe more dangerous as memories. Bigger clouds to choke in, thinking: They’re not gonna get me.

Hey, Max, you patronizing me?

Never, Jackie – we’re fine, Jackie – thanks – really thanks for checking – ‘preciate it. Really do. Because even more powerful than residual parental smoke were the blood’s reverberations from the crash.

Sudden flickering images still seared him from all those years ago.

The unheard sounds from the impact. The inner calm of catastrophe before and after but unknown at the moment of contact.

Twenty-one and Max was young stud hot eyes and constant erections.

Snowy mountains in Pennsylvania driving during NYU’s freshman year’s Christmas vacation with his friend, Henry, in Henry’s friend’s friend’s rusty Volkswagen Bug to go skiing for the weekend. Invited by Kathy Pontoon’s family – Kathy: shiksa goddess of Introduction to Shakespeare and His World, (if this is the world, Max will engorge on it!). Blond pony tail, round breasts under a yellow sweater, white teeth, blue eyes, o o Kathy was instant UP.

Jewish city boys learning to ski and being taught by the Princess of the Slopes! Couldn’t get much closer to Heaven.

But they got lost in the Adirondacks, couldn’t find their way even with Google maps, called her, were re-directed, the snow began flaking down in layers of feathers that blinded. And Henry had never actually driven a VW Bug before despite his explanations and so bug was a stick shift and Henry pretended as if they both at NASCAR. The heater suddenly stopped which added to the boy’s adventure and their toes and fingers shivered as the little two seater on its four, small, balding tires crept up the biggest mountain’s straight snowy road in second gear. Henry shifted to first near the top, they went up, up, flattened out briefly at the summit, then over and then they began going down. Down was way down, steep and ski-slope-straight, and neither Max nor Henry said a word.

The road was iced. The tires rolled forward, slipped, regained control, their little buggy basket was a rolling dot on the side of the mountain.

From the bottom of the mountain road, just beginning its ascent toward the top, was a 15 ton garbage truck, solid and large and confident in the snow. As Henry wrestled to keep control, both of them saw the truck and, as the VW swerved left then right as it lost its traction and began skidding down, Max looked through his windshield toward the truck which was closer and closer, bigger, darker, solid where he and Henry were feathers. Max knew they would crash. He looked over to Henry, now panicked and opened mouthed, and his thin-framed black glasses jittered on his face as the car swerved again.

One more look through the snow covered windshield with the scraping wipers making small see-through fans on the glass and Max saw the truck looming as large as a meteor and, most curiously, Max gave in, quieted every part of his being, eased himself into inaction and, with an almost smile, almost beatific, Max thought, We’re going to crash, and then he passed out. Which probably saved his life.

He woke up in an elevator seven and half hours later. He was on his back with tubes in his body and something around his head and he was very happy because several women were looking down at him.

He said, Hi, but he wasn’t sure they heard him. So he reached out to touch the starched blue and white skirt of the smiling young woman who was closest to him, thinking: Did they get me? Am I gotten? and young, battered Max, bleeding, was still grinning when he lost consciousness again.

Henry had lost control of the car which crashed head-on into the