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I see a few financial brokers selling
investments to the capitalist power structure, but I don’t see any galleries.”
    And what do
you say to that? I wish I knew, but honestly I have no idea, so I ask if by any
chance they’ve heard of any of the owners of said financial brokers,
specifically a Fernanda Shore. Twiggy stops carving to give this some
attention, not that I’m sure I want it. She looks up with that knife in her
hand like she’d just as soon carve me as the table. Kafka too, for that matter,
who clears his throat and stares down at his beer. You can see who wears the
pants in this relationship, and honestly you just can’t believe these pants.
    We finish our
beers with some small talk about the weather and New York City, then Kafka
wants to know if I have a place to stay. He knows a little artist’s hotel
nearby where he can get me a special rate. I’m in no need of special rates with
the kind of finance I’m carrying around, but I figure I’ll drop off the suitcase
and walk around the neighborhood a bit before Fernanda’s show that night. Also,
who knows, there may be something more to be learned from Albania.
    Out on the
street we pile into this old Volkswagen Beetle with a portrait of Che Guevara
airbrushed across the hood. Kafka drives us up past Washington Square Park to a brownstone on a side street just north of New York University. There’s a
greasy-looking falafel shop on the ground floor and stairs that lead up to a
glass door and a buzzer. Kafka tells me to go on in, and he and Twiggy will
catch up with me later. I ring the buzzer and push through into what looks like
an apartment building. A hand-printed sign directs me down the hall to a steel
door that says Hotel Blue, and though experience has taught me never to spend a
night in a hotel with a hand-printed sign, it has also taught me that sometimes
you can’t be too picky. I ring another buzzer and go on in to a little
reception room that may well have been painted blue sometime during the
administration of President William Henry Harrison, the hero of the battle of Tippecanoe. Now it’s color of an ashtray and smells like one too. So ashtray blue, I’d say
to Shore if asked.
    A few kids
Kafka and Twiggy’s age sit around on busted couches smoking cigarettes like
they’re a main food group. They’re dressed like somebody opened a time capsule
from the nineteen sixties and was selling costumes cheap.
    “Welcome!”
says a big broad in a bathrobe from behind a desk that also comes in handy as a
brassiere. Rarely have I seen tits of such magnitude. She smiles and runs a
hand through her hair, which is long and streaked with grey. I tell her Kafka
said she’d have a room. She smiles. I ask if she happens to have one available,
and boy she smiles. I tell her my name is Inigo Montoya and I’ve come to avenge
the death of my father, which gets me the most charming smile. Doesn’t speak a
word of English except welcome, apparently. Story of my life. Lack of
communication. Figure maybe it’s a sign, like maybe English language
instruction was my true calling. Denied it all those years. Professor Willie.
    She shouts
over to one of the smokers in what I figure is Albanian. Sounds like Italian
with engine troubles. “How many nights you stay?” he asks. I tell him I’ll
start with one and try to avoid the second. He nods at the woman, who takes a
key from out of the breastworks and rises to her feet with the aid of some
complicated breathing techniques. She leads me down a dim hallway in her bare
feet until we come to a door, which she unlocks before waving me into a room
smelling of incense that almost makes me wistful for my cloud. The bed looks
clean though, and I figure it will do. I nod to the woman, she gives me the key,
and I listen to her breathe back down the hallway.
    Exhausting,
really. In some Albanian flophouse losing my philosophy. I unpack a few things
and put the gun in a drawer. Then I slide open the window for some