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Agreed, and Der heads after her up the steps as if to make to shake her down, and maybe her price along with her, how in shaking everything’s negotiable — grubs up her hands into a hug unintended, she presumes, she has to, now keeping near, coming on with shimmy…she suddenly holds him tightly, to nuzzle, as he with elbows and shoulders makes to pry her off with hands engloved shoves her away, back down into the topmost pew. Wonderful, he says straightening himself, patting himself down to find if he’s lost anything, a pocket’s medal or ribbon picked. If you kiss for business you should later count your teeth. Your bridge and crowns. That and his moustache should deter, and hers, peroxide fuzz. Now, if you please, I’ll direct you to deal with my associate, Doctor Abuya — you two have much to discuss, lives to plan…a wedding, too, she says, as she rises and turns to walk through that first pew’s row to the last remnant of the slippery aisle and up it, shuffling — lucky for you my brother’s a caterer, he’ll deal…sidestepping pallets, planks, and moundings of plastic trashed out to the archway and its escort waiting of Abuya, Gelt, Hamm, and Mada, who too gingerly geriatrically arm her out through the courtyards back to the entrance and its lionized stairs, as she harangues them with inquiries, shtepping about their own questionable statuses with regard to love, kinder, how much they make and yadda.

It’s been decided, then: His decisions are theirs, are ours, His life all our lives to do with what we will — whatever we want Him to be, He is, we’re saying: we prick Him, He’s a prick; we bleed Him and He’s bled; we want Him hitched, and abra my aleph a star appears — out of nowhere. To become betrothed, Ben’s affianced, quite possibly refinanced into the bargain, reassured, reinsured, underwritten. A beautiful bride, the matchmaker’s saying while picking through her linner later that evening, off the clocking into a dunch with Doctor Abuya whose price plus tip will be deducted from her commission, in a manner professionally famished at the hottest Midtown couscouserie whose best silver’s been hidden in anticipation of her arrival: a Queen, she’d said, you should be so lucky, and a pianist, too, concert quality or was it the clarinet, and modest, how she’s so modest she no longer thinks her modesty’s a virtue, that and have I mentioned, how she knows from epic poetry and how to select the best cuts of meat and freshest produce, that that will be ripe tomorrow, whenever you want her breads baked presliced, crusts cut and drooly, O the head on her, looks she got and grace, musing graces, a real manner, with not a flaw on her or in her, until Him, maybe, that putz…the best I’ve had to deal with, ever — and I don’t have to tell you about her family.