And next to these, a photocopy of a line drawing—the paper folded asymmetrically—hands folded in prayer, hung sloppy with Scotch tape.
With my paper open on the hard, plastic countertop made to look like marble, my eyes never moved from the news on ze Tube.
A young bank clerk set up her boss and made away with quite a sum, like Psycho.
Aaron sat with his back straight at the counter’s bend, his eyes blank on ze Tube, his fingers running along the teeth of a fork.
The silverware there did feel as if it’d been chewed on.
The long counter was usually empty between us except for the small plastic cards: Eggcelent Creations.
Sometimes other men sat in pairs, often silent, like fathers and sons.
A painting of a bowl of fruit hung above a bowl of plastic fruit.
A monkey-sized statue of a bellhop stood at the door like Aaron.
The decorations blended into a singular density which doubled and doubled again in hung mirrors, same size and same wood as the windows.
This density was meant to mask or at least minimize the smears of grease along the tiles behind the hot grill and the bins of bussed dishes left at the far side of the counter, same color as the countertops, the breakfasts, the landscapes, the dirty water.
But the pride of The Diner, and Diana Herself’s principal interest, was the wall of framed autographed photos of local athletes, Tube personalities, and stand-up comedians.
And together, me and Diana Herself were good like good bread is good.
We had a simple understanding not unlike a calendar and the weather.
With so much accrued exhaustion in common, we implicitly promised each other to each keep our energy up as a favor to the other.
And she succeeded at this far more often and more easily than I did.
I played a long, slow game of Take Away the Things She Thinks She Likes About Me One at a Time and See How Long She Still Likes Me but I never settled on a method of keeping score.
We never asked anything of each other, never wanted anything from each other.
I was all hers so long as she never asked.
And she was all mine so long as we never acknowledged all the ways she wasn’t.
Like some old husband or a grown son, a dog or a job, neither of us ever needed much attention, but our keen ability to account for one another’s imprecisions remained impeccable.
My Diana disappeared, vaporized instantaneously, if I ever dared look at her straight on.
But Diana Herself and me mirrored each other, resolving all the simple ways we each differed from our very unlike fathers.
And occasionally, depending on the angle, she was the second most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
CHAPTER 4 Re: Grandfather
The basics of easy internationalism, the air conditioners balanced in The Barbarians’ bedroom windows high over the sidewalks, and the aerosol cans that shoot soft cheese all depend on oil.
And Grandfather saw this.
He and his brothers under the skin knew what Marx knew: The totality of a culture’s potential expressions and manifestations—easy diet, easy clothes, easy entertainment, easy “government,” easy intimacy, and easy easiness—are all rooted in that intersection of material and labor.
A nostalgic cut of jeans; the springs that puncture sweatshop bunk-beds, doors locked from the outside; the dramatic arc of cop buddy films; the rushed hugs at last call: all the outcome of oil and its easy distribution.
Of course, Engels had a trust fund and supported Marx while he developed his ideas about labor and its relations to capital.
And poor Marx died depressed after the death of his wife and the suicides of both of his daughters.
Grandfather was SkullnBones Class of ’16.
And he stole Geronimo’s skull.
Yes, the fucking skull of fucking Geronimo became a piece of his bric-a-brac.
As an artillery officer in WWI, he had to admit to a lie: He hadn’t really saved the lives of The Homelan, The UK, and France’s top military commanders by diving to ricochet an incoming shell with his bolo knife.
His embarrassed parents had already made plans for their local paper to run the story on its front page.
And his dad, as a member of The Homelan’s War Industries Board in WWI, made $200,000,000 manufacturing munitions for Remingtons.
$200,000,000 in ’18 is the equivalent of infinity dollars today.
So same as a chimney sweep is fated to oily wrists, and a gardener predetermined to his soily chin, Grandfather got appointed head of DrSSr.
And instead of competing for oil, DrSSr controlled the technology that makes drilling feasible.
Back in ’12 Grandfather’s bosses The Harrymans partnered with The Ruckafellas to invest $11,000,000 into eugenics research.
That same year Churchill presided over the first international conference on eugenics in London.
In ’32 the conference met in NY.
And The Family’s train line organized the transit of all the prominent Germans from Berlin to lead the conference.
Given the spontaneous and audacious hysteria of investment opportunities at the end of WWI, it’s little surprise that Grandfather helped finance Hitler’s rise.
Hitler had lost the popular eleccion in ’32 to an aging war hero.
But almost 40 German business leaders signed a petition to overturn the results.
And in a meeting with Homelan and UK banks—one Dullis Bro was there, I’d guess the one that famously seduced The Queen of Greece—all agreed that Hitler be named chancellor.
A week later The Reichstag burned, and emergency laws thwacked into effect.
And a year later The German Prez died, and Hitler merged the offices of Chancellor and Prez.
In ’33, Grandfather’s bank conspired with agents of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, The Ruckafellas, and The PuDonts to attempt to overthrow the “Government” here in The Homelan, hoping to install a fascist dictatorship.
They tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley to lead the coup, but they failed to consider that Smedley had ardently stumped for FDR in ’32, so the plan never got past its initial planning stages.
In ’34 Smedley told Congress all about it, and The House McCormack-Dickstein Committee officially acknowledged the existence of the conspiracy.
But no charges were pressed.
And the next year Smedley published his short book, War Is a Racket.
Hovver seized Grandfather’s bank as a NAZI asset in ’42 under the Trading With The Enemy Act cuz Grandfather’s bank represented the Homelan business interests of a German industrialist named Fritz.
The NAZIs were still a radical fringe party when Fritz inherited his dad’s steel and coal empire in ’26.
Fritz bailed out the struggling party on several occasions, was eventually nicknamed “Hitler’s Angel” and even titled his autobiography, I Paid Hitler.
Grandfather also served