Last night started in the afternoon. I left the office earlier than usual. The security guard, Kenneth, who preferred to be called Black, gave me the brother hug which was unexpected yet nice when I left the fruit stand at 2pm. I rode the Path train back, surprised to see as many people riding at midday.
Bill phoned to let me know the cabaret was starting at 7pm instead of 8pm which was a source of consternation. I was planning on heading out around 6:30 or 7;00 and this changed things. I rallied though and was waiting for the bus at the proper time. The ride in was uneventful as I sat and stared out the window.
I did not anticipate the crowds once I was on the streets. Walking up Eightth avenue was maddening. So many tourists and me, walking behind them with steam coming out of my ears and belly button. I did make it to the sheep farm where Bill was performing. The building was locked so he had to come down and let me in.
The show was earnestly entertaining. They are good people, their hearts are in the right place and mostly have been doing some type of entertainment schtick for years. Bill had angled to be set towards the end and was third in the lineup. He played piano and sang Tom Waits ‘Picture in a Frame’ which is basically ’our song’
One of the performers sang Autumn Leaves, the French original song and the English version. My memory of the song is my Mother laughing hysterically when on the Uncle FLoyd SHow, there was a fake spider playing and singing Autumn Leaves on the piano.
He amazed many of his fellow members. I was introduced to some of them and apparently they thought I was British. And I told them I was actually Irish and one insisted that I was Scottish. The first time Mike met me, he too, thought I was a Brit. I noticed that sometimes I slip into some UK accent. Perhaps it’s from watching British movies and television. Or British music. Or UK music magazines.
I was just distracted by the past. Marsh and Mcllellan how Eric Edelman strung me along thanks to his ineptitude. It was a job I was willing to low ball my salary. I passed the criminal background but they never said anything about the drug test which I failed due to studying too hard.
Then there was the Shannon O’Connor yoga hole. The first time I met her I had remarked that we could be related since I had O’Connor blood in my veins. She was nonplussed. She lived in Hoboken and one time I went out of my way and did her a favor. There was another Shannon in the office and the guys in the office differentiated between the two Shannon’s by calling the other Shannon, Pretty Shannon
I don’t think Shannon O’Connor knew, but I was offended on her behalf. She’s still around, taking the Algerian teat. I am grateful we have never crossed paths, though I do feel sorry for her
The Google Gemini rewrite William S Burroughs
The shift came early. 2:00 PM at the fruit stand, surrendering the day before the daylight could completely rot. Kenneth—*Black*, he insists, floating through the lobby security perimeter—dispenses an unexpected brotherly contact, physical code transferred before the turnstile clicks shut. Down into the PATH tube. Midday human cargo packed wall-to-wall. Unscheduled volume in the subterranean veins.
Then the phone crack. Bill’s voice through the speaker matrix: *Cabaret shifted. 7:00 PM, not eight.* Consternation in the nerve terminal. The timeline buckles, routine scrambled on short notice, but the organism rallies. The bus arrives on schedule. Outside the glass, Manhattan slides past in grey, inert blocks while I sit static, staring through the reflected image.
Street level, 8th Avenue: an uncontrolled swelling of foreign tourists moving in slow, mindless formation. Steam venting direct from the ears, the belly button, internal pressure rising dangerously close to critical mass. Pushed through the drift to reach the sheep farm venue. Front entrance sealed shut. Bill descends from the upper levels to unbolt the iron door and pull me inside.
The performance: earnest, antique schtick. Veterans of the small-stage circuit running their routines with genuine heat. Bill engineered his placement third from the end—takes the bench, strikes the keys, releases Tom Waits’ *Picture in a Frame*. The anchor tune. The old frequency.
Another voice takes *Autumn Leaves*, slicing back and forth between the French blueprint and the English text. The brain triggers an automatic flashback loop: the living room, Mother doubled over, uncontrolled laughter while the Uncle Floyd Show plays on the screen—a rubber spider sitting at a toy piano, singing the exact same melancholy tune.
Post-show introductions. The room reads my vocal cadence as British. I issue a correction—Irish—only for a secondary voice to insist on Scottish. Old Mike ran the exact same diagnostic the first day we met. The accent bleeds through unprompted. Synthetic residual drift picked up from decades of UK celluloid, imported vinyl, and ink-stained music weeklies.
Then the old memory banks leak open, spilling degraded film from the archives.
Marsh & McLennan. Eric Edelman holding the purse strings, dangling the slot while I offered the low-ball rate just to secure the desk. Passed the criminal sweep clean, but the urinalysis went silent—failed the chemical scan from studying the substances a little too hard.
Then the Shannon O’Connor file opens. The initial meeting, offering up the shared lineage—*O’Connor blood in the veins*—met with dead-eyed indifference. Hoboken neighbor, beneficiary of a unreciprocated favor. Back at the office, the gallery of spectating males assigned designations to separate the names, tagging the secondary girl *Pretty Shannon*. A covert insult offered behind her back; I felt the sting on her behalf, whether she registered it or not.
She’s still out there somewhere, feeding at the Algerian teat. Grateful the lines never crossed again.