NOVEMBER 2008

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Plans
By Sean Ruane, Oct 06, 2008

You found me ridiculous and I shrugged it all off because of my appointments, my places to be, but in the mauve suit of my dead grandfather, you asked? Yes; it bespeaks business and strikes notes of old world hauteur. Why do you blow such bubbles? There is laughter in each one. Your laughter could fill mason jars, bell jars of ringing preserved disregard. You said that I will never convince the bank to give me a loan, drunk on gin as I am. How else to un-fray sleeves and reconstitute ambition than with free bank money? Your father manages the bank. He has sideburns. I have sideburns, yes, prosthetic ones, you keep reminding me; I lack the facial hair for modern business. Leading my giraffe around, high-stepping her in a wide circle, blending big-top showmanship with Broadway arrogance, I convince you that, despite the gin, I am still sober as a Briss; you say so yourself. Your eyebrows are so unkempt it is hard to see the sarcasm on your face; you are a conspiracy of hair. It crawls up your thighs like ivy, nearly choking the rose tattoo that once took bloom on your ass, the one you got after we ran through the bladdernuts smeared in marmalade, erratic as rolling apples. I will not now or ever, for the record, note the impropriety of your sheer white bikini. Bubbles stick to my hair, bursting near my ears—wet soapy laughter. The giraffe, distracted by the ontological skepticism invoked by your bikini, walks into a power line (in its defense, it was too low). And you call rubber leashes absurd! Gin you say? All gone, but when the bottle stops spinning we’ll head in the direction of its stale socket, the one that smells of my pipe and your chewing gum. We’ll get more after my appointments, my beloved; we shall make it part of our plans. Your giraffe is atwitch beneath the tarp; I told you he wasn’t quite dead, but you spent good money on a tarp and you are set to put it to use. We roll it up in the tarp and start dragging it behind us, towards the bank. Put on some pants, you hirsute thing! Do you want to startle the tucotuco!? I will stand in your father’s office. I will jog in place. I will do Thompson’s stretches against his desk. I will perform other feats of credit worthiness. If your father doesn’t approve my loan I will ball up my fists and make wild cloud noises, perhaps diffusing through the ceiling. Will she marry me, your daughter, I’ll ask, looking over my shoulder towards where you’re sitting; you rise and fall to the cadence of an unconscious giraffe. He just might pull through. He smells of jerky near where he was power lined. You are sitting side saddle across his belly, blowing bubbles. You are my dream. I’m on the rise, my stock in its ascendancy, I’ll yell, when the henchmen arrive. Love is what keeps your daughter from being overrun by weeds: my love.