Progress

Progress

       D. Upbyhisbootstraps-Reimer

                        lots of money

                        lots of girls

                        lots of work

                        lots of talk

                        lots of networking

                        lots of ideas

                        lots of opinions

                        lots of at least an acre

                        lots of fear

                        lots of taking

                        lots of not giving

                        lots of salt

                        lots of pillars

                        lots of wild plum jam

                        lots drawn

                       

                        lots of  lotus

Casual as sin, Simon laid his hand on the ruby and stepped from the room where he had dreamed this. Nothing now lay in his way. Sal waited for him at the rendezvous point, but Sal would wait there till doomsday and more. His parents both dead, they would not long for his arrival and that eliminated such a vital set of influences on the burglar's progress. Now, Vidal meant something else altogether. Her concern always made his disappearances matter for discussion and parley. But she fostered his world regardless in the end, and that kept her his. His wife. Of thirty years. Plain. Good. Too good for him. Casual, too, he made his way to Stairs and down to where Wiley and the Mercedes stood point.

       Which brings us to Mathilda. Her oeuvre being poetry, and her nature the shy, she fell on evil ways early. Why, you ask? Simple, really, and sad, too. Her father's poetic mantle had fallen on her. Whitman. Does that ring a bell? For myself, not much, but you may have heard of him. He stands in America for a high order of art, the pinnacle of the New World's achievements in the writing of love and longing. Whitman himself generated no official biological offspring and so the grand sireings of his pen have to stand for the conceptions many of us are heirs of and slave to.

       But he did have a daughter and that is the subject of this story. Simon's love for Whitman's offspring spurred him to even attempt the heist with which we began. Having procured the ruby, valued at sums that wildly differed and similar only in that they suggested wealth beyond estimate, with jewel in hand, Simon hurried to her garret in a house on an odd little corner of Time Square and knocked her up. When she eventually answered (her reticence keeping her reclusive and lonely), he lifted the ruby toward the window and she, from the third floor, recognized it at once. She gasped, raised her hand to her mouth in that time-honored gesture and pointed immediately at that which Simon most wanted about her. He sighed, weary and relieved, knowing from the impetuosity of the act and the general direction of her pointing that he had finally been let in where none till now could legitimately stake claim. Ah, the honor! Oh, the joy! Lord, the pleasure that awaited him! Let the others languish and hang in there till the second  coming. He need tarry no more. His hour had come. In he would go. In again he would go. And in and out he would now repeatedly go till his and her rapture had redounded from the walls of the Square and even the baroness Roskolnichnia at the most eminent corner in the park would have to shut her ears, close her French doors, and draw the blinds.

       Mathilda's poetry had never been published. No one knew what she had written, only that she did. The precise words themselves mattered little. Her infamous virginity, mixed with her father's fame, her own demur personality, the rigor of her morning schedules, and a carefully husbanded unapproachability secured her reputation. When Simon entered her rooms, all these rang up his desire. Without further ado, and with an alacrity that surprised even the staid maid, he leapt from his trousers, bounded to the bed, tied her hands and feet with the ropes and shackles  to which she had made frequent and eloquence poetic reference, and forthwith plunged into her until she and he came together.  The leaves of her most recent poem scattered over the Turkish rug. The forplinias, purple and pink and yellow in a vase of great beauty, shivered with the thumping, her cat, Adelade, stood pressed face-first into a corner of the bedroom, and the large picture of her father, next to her dressing mirror, shimmered with rich embarrassment.

       When they were done, they breakfasted on bacon, eggs and potatoes and then spent the rest of the day in the attic naked, sipping cool drinks, winking at each other. Ah, the progress of burglary, thought Simon to himself. Oh, the burglary of progress, thought Mathilda to herself. Oh! thought Walt.