The Poser Read Online Free Page A

opened directly into the kitchen, and he motioned to what must’ve been the kitchen table, though drowned as it was in magazines, brown banana peels, coat hangers, and, strangest of all, a lady’s green pump, its surface could not be seen.
    Two green socks, soaked black at the heel, occupied the nearest chair. I gloved my hand with my sleeve, removed them, and sat. Many of the kitchen cabinets swung all the way or partially open, revealing amorphous garbage bags and what looked like deeply used athletic equipment. There was no other room, but a small bathroom, and no bed that I could see, just a mat of towels with a pillow behind the refrigerator. The man lived in the kitchen.
    â€œBeer?” He pushed open the window above the sink.
    â€œNo, thank you.”
    â€œI was right, huh?”
    â€œI’m sorry?” A delicacy of politeness:
I’m sorry?
    â€œAbout the place,” he said. “It’s a mess?”
    I didn’t know what to say.
    â€œDamn right!” He grabbed a glass and turned the handles above the sink until the water burped out over his hands. Pipes came alive in the wall, and he poured a lengthy stream of green dish soap over the glass, rotating and scrubbing it under the brownish water. “La dee daa dee daa.” It seemed to bring his hands such pleasure I had to sit on mine, or else I would’ve leapt to his side and scrubbed along with him. This jubilant, bearish man—I’d never met a person so preoccupied with the business of his body. I stared again at the table.
    Littered over it was a landscape of crumbs and dishware and almost every forum for the printed word:
The Evening Post
,
The City Times
, splayed hardcovers, yellow notebook paper, not to mention a pale thigh outlined by a garter belt, though the rest of the image—the woman’s midriff, bra, and ruby lips, presumably—was obscured by a basket of rotten bananas. An excitable hand decorated every page on the table, circling words, adding phallic exclamation marks, the notes swarming like ants in the margin: “Exactly!” “Memorize.” “Money?”
    â€œSome orange juice, young squire,” Max said, standing over me. Sweat ticked out of my armpits.
    â€œThank you.” I took the still-filthy glass and rested it on a relatively flat pile of magazines. I then scratched my nose so as to make returning my hand to its initial position less conspicuous.
    â€œAwfully glad you could make it,” Max said, walking to the refrigerator. He swung open its door and grabbed—violently—a beer. “Glad as hell.” He tilted the bottle at a decisive angle and then decapitated it against the kitchen counter. After batting away whatever occupied his chair, he collapsed into a reclining position, wiping his brow. “This goddamn heat. There are things going on in my body no man should know.”
    I shook my head though I meant to nod. This could happen. Sometimes at the station, when tired, I said “Please” instead of “Thank you,” winked when intending only to smile. Max hadn’t noticed, though. He leaned back in that poor bursting chair. “You’re not a talker.”
    â€œOh, sometimes.” I smiled my ticket-seller smile.
    â€œFine with me. Talkers, nontalkers. I don’t distinguish. Hell, I don’t distinguish at all. People are people. That’s what entertainment’s about.” He swigged his beer. “The best performers—the ones who can perform anywhere and get a self-respecting girl to drop her panties and grin
while she does it
—they don’t make distinctions. They say, ‘Distinctions—’” He blew his thumb, making a flatulent noise, raised his middle finger, and planted his beer on the table. “Look at Shakespeare. His genius? You want a madman? Okay, I’ll show you a madman. You want a king? All right. You want a pauper, pixie? Fuck you.
    â€œBut as