Barbershop Quartet

"Flesh was the reason . . . "

—William de Kooning

What better? The Arab stood perfectly rigid before him, wretched (of the earth), dead eyes dreaming of gold at his stainless steel cash register, some other-than-pulse replica on grand display inside a smudged, smeared glass cubicle. Still life. Ticket holders point across history at the shiny wax stand-in for a long extinct race. No hovercams making their high rounds above the aisles, no grocers working in teams of twos and threes, someone behind the counter, someone holstered and strapped next to it. Every light inside the store burned, tiles and walls glowing to keep the fog outside, but it could not be so easily deterred, covering the windows, excessive, white and sticky, cotton.

Pop mashed his fat body against the glass, a timed and rehearsed gesture signaling Marty into bold high-stepping action. (The communication between roots and leaves.) Chin up, shoulders back, Marty wended his way towards the food stocks, paraded up and down aisles crowded with shelves sagging under mounds of potato chips and canisters of beef jerky, until he found the opportunity to slip undetected into the liquor section. A purposeful exaggeration. (He was white and above suspicion.) The Arab lifted his gaze from the cash register—the little terror of waking—and eyed Pop suspiciously. People often felt an extraordinary revulsion when they saw him coming towards them in the street. Closer up, these same observers would shoot him a gaze of head-shaking pity. But for the grace of God. His face required close and patient examination, as you weren't sure what you were looking at. The Arab smiled, almost in shame. Firm face, firm figure, the bulletproof glass distorted his limbs, his arms dismembered and floating free of his body, his head drifting up toward the ceiling. Pop experienced a slight astonished sense of dizziness—hands shaking, a hesitation, a holding of breath. (In man and in creatures related to him, expulsion from the womb is the initial experience of anxiety.) He commands them still. Bursts into a tumult of speech, reeling off a breathless list of facts about the vanished Holy Lands. Marty re-emerges, fisting a gallon of liquor by its stout neck. Strategizing—put it in the plan—Pop spills a smattering of coins into the steel collection drawer, which causes the greedy portal to dilate just enough for the thieves to squeeze through to the outside. They hit the sidewalk, gunning. Should the grocer give chase, they have a white ally in the vision-canceling fog, sprouting up from the ground itself, a strange harvest. Morning cannot break free. (Sing the sorrows of light and air.) Though he tries, Pop finds it hard to keep up with his lighter quicker companion, his gravity-determined breasts sandbagging him down, meaty buttocks and thighs resisting wind and speed, but he has all the motivation he needs to push his body along. Desire is hope. Luckily, Marty slows up after a three or four block sprint, throws his arms about a lamppost and leans his back against it, sucking air. Pop slows to a stop too, doubled over, coughing violently, clutching his knees as if to squeeze oxygen back into his lungs. They breathe in, digest the thick membrane of the air.

Presence of mind restored, Marty turns to Pop with a look of disgust. You know something, he says, I can't stand them A-rabs. Son, them niggas ain't got nine acre of land to shit or piss on. Some sorry motherfuckers. In appearance, Marty is babyish in his features, a sixteen-year-old chubby-cheeked foul-mouthed infant looking out scornfully at the world from a bonnet of black lustrous hair. His smooth skin—difficult to give a description of the splendor of his coloring, some mixture of white and gray closest in tone to semen—a soft shell he must cover up with suitable kick-ass attire to out his hard insides. Day in day out, he noisily shoves his knobby angular body into a desert camouflage blouse, jungle fatigue pants, and military-issue combat boots. Keeps Pop...