Kathleen Rooney

the ideal city building itself in his brain. Is this mile magnificent? He’s lived here a while, but the mile feels unreal. Robinson’s training himself to act blasé. Do museums amuse me? Yes, but not today. Would he like to be in one? Of course. Why not? An object of value with canvas wings, an unchanging face in a gilt frame, arranged— thoughtless, guilt-free, & preserved for eternity. Robinson doesn’t want to be exceptional. He knows he is. He wants to be perceived exceptional. Trains plunge by, steam rising from the grates. Sing, muse! of a man ill-met at the Met. A man on his lunch break, heading for a heartbreak, a break-up with Time. A break-up with time? Feeling filled with ice, the way you chill a glass, Robinson passes the National Academy. He craves a sense of belonging, not to always be longing. To be standing in a doorway, incredibly kissable, not waiting at the four-way, eminently missable. Is this mile magnanimous? He wants it unanimous: that this is his kind of town— up & down & including Brooklyn. The sky is clearing, but the isolation sticks. Robinson’s not sure what a camera obscura is for, but he thinks he should have his portrait done with one. Faces blur by as he heads toward the Frick. Something used to photograph the obscure.

the Tuesday after he was last seen. A policeman is there to pick the shrill thing up. Who is it? the couple of friends present ask as he cups it to his ear. Then hangs up. There was no one there. They have come to recon a vacant property—a mise en scéne: Knoll butterfly chairs—a pair of them— two red socks soaking in the white bathroom sink, a saucer of milk for the cat to drink, a stack of reel-to-reel tapes, a matchbook from the Italian Village where he ate his last spaghetti dinner, & two books he’d been re-reading, or wanted someone to think he had: The Devils&The Tragic Sense of Life. Preoccupation & a certain mode of self-presentation. Even when absent, Robinson has a style. No wallet, though. No watch, no sleeping bag, no bankbook. The apartment looks the way it feels to read a newspaper that’s one day old. The policeman wants to go back outside, among the lemons & fog & barking dogs. Out where the sun can copper their faces. Writing takes space, recordings take time. The place puts the policeman in mind of something he read recently, about the collapse of a dead star. About how it takes ages for the light to become motionless. Seven years after a disappearance, a person can be pronounced dead. But that’s nothing compared to the size of the ocean.

O little-know facts—how Robinson attracts them! Pilgrims rocked ashore here, before Plymouth Rock. The word scrimshaw is of unknown origin. The stock name of the archaic two-lane main road? Route 6A. Really it’s Old King’s Highway. Some facts are useless: the paper bag was invented in Dennis. Some facts are not: Wellfleet’s town clock sings out ship’s time. 19 th century Americans observed only three holidays. The Fourth of July was one. O witty aperçus—how Robinson accrues them! Good food is self-made, like a good millionaire. Don’t just do something. Stand there. It’s got to be the weekend somewhere. Robinson is crisp & perspicuous. His wife stands next to him on the sand. Democracy could be a lot more sexy if . . . this one fades in the rockets’ red glare. Ann blushes, runs a hand through his hair. Robinson looks up, concussed. Fireworks percuss.

It is a tragedy, yes, but a confusing one. What happened to the wrestlers and where have they gone? Loulou the Pomeranian would love to know. Outdoors the hills are buried in snow, but inside a rose, a rose full-blown, a roomful of rose. The bloom and its shadow overtaking the space. The bloom proposing an impossible tomb. Of the Tachists, the master said to his friend Harry, “They paint white on white, and they believe that this is an achievement.” Harry said, 
“I dare you to paint a white rose in a white room with a window looking onto a landscape covered with snow.” Now this — which even Loulou, color-blindish, can tell is red — is the master’s grandiose response to an intoxicating challenge. Synesthetically, the rose fills Loulou’s pom ears with the echoes of torch songs, longing for the wrong. Loulou is practically drunk from the smell: a heady pink, and juicy, and almost obscene. Like crushed up candies, lingering and sweet, but with an adult musk at the core: a powerful flower. In looking, Loulou’s heart becomes a house at dusk about to force 
something to happen.