Homer & Langley

I assumed it was in anticipation of their departure that they prepared a big dinner for us all to have at the same time. For some reason the front hall was less filled with things than any of the rooms, and so our hippies dug up our candelabra, and candlesticks, and availed themselves of our supply of candles, of which we had many and of different kinds, including candle wax in glass tumblers that Langley had found in a shop down on the Lower East Side, and these were put on the floor in a manner to suggest a dining table, and cushions gathered from all over the house were placed about for our bottoms, and so Langley and I were invited to seat ourselves, which we did laboriously in the cross-legged position, like pashas, while our boarders trooped in with the food and wine. Apparently all of them had worked at this, each contributing a specialty, sautéed mushrooms, bowls of salad and vegetable soup, fondue with toasted points of bread, and steamed artichokes, and oysters, and clams boiled in beer — I assumed that was JoJo’s contribution — and hard cheese and red table wine, and pastries and marijuana cigarettes for dessert. They had paid for everything and it was all by way of thanks, and it was very moving. Langley and I for the first and last time in our lives smoked joints, and my memory of the rest of the evening is a little blurry, except that both Dawn and Sundown seemed to have discovered me at this late date, and they came over and sat beside me and gave me hugs and we all laughed together, finding it funny for some reason as I pressed their ample bosoms to my chest and nuzzled their necks. Toasts were given, and if I’m not mistaken a solemn moment of remembrance for the three great men who’d been assassinated in the course of a decade. I like to think, too, that Lissy may have moved to repossess me for herself during the course of the evening for it was she who led me up to my room afterward, navigating the stairs for me — I was thoroughly stoned, they had moved on from the marijuana to hash, a somewhat more potent drug — and she lay down beside me on my bed, where I had a vision: it was of sailing ships and they were as if etched on a salver of pewter. I said, Lissy, do you see the ships? And she touched her temple to mine and at that moment the ships were as if hammered on a sheet of gold, and she said, Oh wow, they’re so beautiful, oh wow.

I do remember these moments so clearly, my mind as out of control as it was. I have never since taken, or done, any such drugs, not wanting to tamper with what consciousness I have. But it’s undeniable that those moments had their uncanny clarity. I must have dozed off but came awake to find Lissy holding me, and my shirt wet from her tears. I asked her why she was crying but she wouldn’t answer, only shaking her head. Was it because I was an old man and she was overwhelmed with pity? Had she realized, finally, the ruinous state of this house? I didn’t know what it was about — and concluded it was nothing more than the emotional overload of a stoned mind. I held her and we fell asleep that way.

BUT A FEW MORE DAYS were to pass before the exodus. I was at my piano — this was in the evening, I believe I was doing the elegiac slow movement of Mozart’s Twentieth — when other sounds began to intrude and these gradually defined themselves as shouts, and they were coming from all over the house. Apparently the lights had gone out. I at first thought Langley had blown something — one of his most sacred long-term missions being to defeat the Consolidated Edison Company — but in fact it was the whole city’s power failure, and it was as if a time of pre-civilization had come around again to deliver the meaning of night. Oddly enough, once people looked out the window and understood the extent of the blackout, everyone wanted to see it — all our squatters clamoring to get out there and be amazed by the moonlit city. I considered the possibility that this municipal blown fuse was, after all, something for which Langley’s tinkering was responsible, and it made me laugh. Langley! I called to him. What have you done!

He was upstairs in his room and was having as much trouble as the rest of them trying to get to the front door. It was the blind brother who got everyone organized, telling them not to move, but to stay where they were until I came and got them. Nobody could have found a candle — where any candles or candle glasses were nobody knew by now, the chances of finding even one in the blackness of the house was nil, the candles had consigned themselves to our kingdom of rubble as had everything else.