Motherless Brooklyn

For every tic issued I squelched dozens, or so it felt—my body was an overwound watchspring, effortlessly driving one set of hands double-time while feeling it could as easily animate an entire mansion of stopped clocks, or a vast factory mechanism, a production line like the one in Modern Times, which we watched that year in the basement of the Br

“So guy walks into a bar,” I said again. “With an octopus. Says to the bartender ‘I’ll bet a hundred dollars this octopus can play any instrument in the place.’”

It was a place made out of leftover chunks of disappointment, unemployment and regret.

Tugboating was most of all a dysfunction of wits and storytellers, and a universal one: Anybody who thought himself funny would likely tug a boat here or there. Knowing when a joke or verbal gambit was right at its limit, quitting before the boat had been tugged, that was art (and it was a given that you wanted to push it as near as possible—missin

Consensual reality is both fragile and elastic, and it heals like the skin of a bubble. The belching man ruptured it so quickly and completely that I could watch the wound instantly seal. A Touretter can also be The Invisible Man.

“Let it go,” said Minna, and now he returned my shoulder taps, once, hard. “Don’t tug the boat.”

drop. Backs up, squints at the bagpipes. Guy gets nervous, comes over to the bar says to the octopus—Accupush! Reactapus!—says to the octopush, fuckit, says gonnafuckit—says ‘What’s the matter? Can’t you play it?’ And the octopus says ‘Play it? If I can figure out how to get its pajamas off, I’m gonna fuck it!’”

“So the bartender points at the piano in the corner says, ‘Go ahead.’ Guy puts the octopus on the piano stool—Pianoctamus! Pianoctamum Bailey!—octopus flips up the lid, plays a few scales, then lays out a little étude on the piano.”

I didn’t ask him to specify, since if I had he’d surely have said he meant me and the octopus both, for the étude. “So guys says ‘Pay up,’ bartender says ‘Wait a minute,’ pulls out a guitar. Guy gives the octopus the guitar, octopus tightens up the E-string, closes its eyes, plays a sweet little fandango on the guitar.” Pressure building up, I tagg