Moise and the World of Reason Read Free

this announcement?”
    â€œEighty-seven years old at Bellevue.”
    I tried to figure what could be made out of that as a clue-in. It occurred to me that maybe she meant a great-uncle of hers for whom she had considerable attachment since he was her only relative in the world and I thought she probably meant he had passed away at Bellevue, which was plausible enough since he was a charity case in all senses except that he received no charity except a lot of Moise’s affection, but somehow this didn’t stick as a clue to the nature of her impending announcement. I felt there was danger in pursuing the inquisition but I still was impelled to continue it a bit further.
    â€œDo you mean your great-uncle, Moise?”
    â€œChrist, no.
Patron
, was he a
patron?
How could that old derelict be a patron? A patron is not a parasite, exactly!”
    â€œOh,
patron
, no, you mean a patron, you’ve lost a
patron
to Bellevue.”
    â€œChrist and his mother, yes, yes, yes, I had a patron till Wednesday night at Bellevue where he expired while handing me nine dollars and sixty-two cents at eighty-seven. Now do you understand or do you expect me to accompany this advance notice of the announcement with finger painting on the ass of that catamite you live with?”
    Now these are about as close to her words as I can get now, since I wasn’t equipped with a tape recorder that night nor any other.
    She was shaking intensely and I was thinking intensely.
    Moise had a patron. Well, that figures since she had no means of subsistence that I ever noticed but it doesn’t figure that she’d never have mentioned him to me till this moment. But then Moise. How plausible is Moise? I guess about as plausible as her name, as her spectral beauty and as my own definition of myself as a
distinguished
failed writer.
    Nothing of much action was yet happening at Moise’s, that is, nothing except Moise herself and the slender men in black mohair who were taking pictures of Moise’s few finished and many unfinished canvases with their box cameras while the cold light through the windows lasted. Each time a canvas was exposed by Moise to the cameras she would try to shield it from our eyes, particularly Charlie’s, but his tears, true or false, were now gone and he merely winked and shrugged at her maneuvers. It was unavoidable that my thoughts should drift back to the lover who had preceded Charlie in my life and the vast difference between Moise’s attitude toward him and his toward her from the vibes that existed between her and Charlie. I recalled the night after the loss of Lance, the skater, I had slept with Moise, not sexually but for companionship that night, how neither of us had slept, just lain side by side with locked fingers, and how, at daybreak, she’d turned her head toward me slightly and touched the hair at my temple and whispered, “It is not good but it’s God.” And I was reminded of a time earlier than that when Lance had spoken of Moise and related matters. He’d said, “Moise will go on for a while just like she is, but, baby, you know and I know that just going on for a while don’t make the gig for Moise or no one else. And, baby, you know there’s just a few of us and we got to look out for each other.”
    For emphasis of this wise and important remark, or so it seemed to me then, he clasped my body tight with his long, hard, beautiful legs, then went on to tell me, “My mama in Chicago said to me, ‘Lance, God is going to take care of you just like he does of me.’ And it was just a month later that I got word from Chicago when I was skating in Seattle that Mama had a big growth in her that couldn’t be cut out and that was the way that God took care of Mama and I reckon that’s the way he’ll look out for us if we don’t look out for each other.”
    I was then young enough to cry very easily without records, and