Devestation—The One Where The Boy Dies

There are 523 people in front of me, though eleven have fainted from exhaustion and been nudged mostly out of the way. And there is also, of course, the hook-faced coat-check boy. And although I am rather confident about the number, there are perhaps some shorter people filed away further up that have escaped my notice.

The man at the front of the line takes off his overcoat and hands it to the boy. Then his shirt. As he is taking off his pants a security guard barrels in from the right, diving into him. They spill the floor like lovers; like that movie with the dying people who are lovers, who make love as they die. No—what I mean is—that is to say—that their dying is making love, or vice versa, or both.

There are line-talkers scattered around me. Scanning for one other but tragically sparse, they cast their lines desperately:

"This is my third time: he's truly one of the greats. One of the absolute greats!" says a lady (+4) in a full length fur coat (clearly slow to doff). "I always tell my friends: Must see. Must see!" After speaking she looks around to determine who she is talking to.

A separate man (-12) in a tweed long coat: "Yeah I've seen him before. When he was younger. Just startinout. Opening for a certain already white-dwarfing pop star. He was better then, too, the way some geniuses—most—are". And he says this as though he said some, just so that he could correct himself with most. "A little more reckless, ruder even, but even his mistakes—subtle hitches—were a thing of beauty, which I've always thought the sign of true gift: when you can fold error into something more perfect than the truth. He had it" (and this word he emphasized as though it very-much-so did mean everything) "—you could tell he did, but also that he wouldn't hold on to it. That he'd be bucked by his very beauty, reworked, over-ironed by his own gift."

A skinny man (-17) (pinched face, round glasses, dainty tea-cup-handle ears in a Harley-Davidson bomber) poking the man in front of him: "Excuse me, but how long have you been waiting?"

The man in front of him (-16) (a used tuxedo with an aubergine cummerbund): "Hmmm. HMMMMM," then taking some time to gather his thoughts, scratching his belly through buttons 4 and 5, as though rousing, inside himself, some mind-shepherd to gather his flock of thought-bubbles. "I'd say a little longer than, let's see... him," the poked-man says pointing to the man in front of him (-15), "and just a little longer than...well... you".

In such lines, I often think of that parable about the assassins in a traffic jam where each murderer is set to kill the person in front of them. Not that I’m thinking of killing the person in front of me; that would be stupid because there is a person behind me.

I’m just thinking about the story to kill time while I admire the coat-check boy. His two hands dip slightly as coats are handed to him, and he hooks the coat hanger delicately into the shoulders of a jacket. All this as though this is what he was born to do. And it is always beautiful seeing someone do what they were born to do.

Then, as I watch intently, I see him, and it is almost comical, I see him repeat the exact gesture twice, then a third time. He reaches onto the counter, extends and pins his pointer, sweeps his thumb and pinches it against the base of the final phalanx of his index, and twists his wrist, simultaneously bringing his hand in front of his chest. He brings his hand but there is no ticket in it: this is why he, his body confused before his mind, loops the gesture. Only after the third repetition, does he look on the counter and his face—oh his face!—it is like his hook-like features have annealed, his eyes opening and the sharp curves all flattening at once.

And though I did not know it until then, more beautiful than seeing someone do what they were born to do, is seeing them pushed beyond their immodest abilities. Seeing them forced to realize that genius itself has a breaking point. That there is such a thing as too many coats.

So when the coat is offered to him, he says meekly, though I am too far to hear him, he must say meekly: "I am sorry, but I cannot take your coat"

And I think, I really do, had MS (+521) simply shrugged, said "I understand, thank you for your service," and walked away, then we too would have sighed, plunged our knuckles deep into our coat-pockets, scowled a little, and drag-footed into the night.

But instead, MS: "No, no, no. That's impossible. Look. Look, I've been waiting 16-20 hours. I simply can't. No. You have to take my coat".

And then MS, you can tell, is struck by rare genius. And they must have only metal teeth and many of them, because suddenly a golden light falls on coat-check boy's face.

"Look, look, my coat is the only one without a number," they say.

And before he has a chance to protest, MS tosses the coat at him, as though to cover their escape.

By the time coat-boy has recovered, peeling the coat from off his head:

The numberless green one,
The numberless silver-button one,
The numberless leather one with a dragon on the back,
The fur one,
This one has a little hole in the right pocket
Take good care of this one it belonged to my great auntie
I have tied the sleeves of this one into a knot
Here’s one got the initial X.O in the nape
This is the one without a description

It is like at a streetlight, when one brave pedestrian sets forth, breaking the frail red spell that kept everyone on the sidewalk: instantly inspiring some, leaving others teetering briefly but anxiously aware they will lose their chance if they wait too long, and others waiting, more confidently, ever so slightly, to see whether there will be consequences before boldly striding out like it was their idea all along (perhaps leading a new wave).

They come, not even concerned anymore by the originality of their description and suddenly ruthlessly efficient: everyone just hurls their coat at the boy, drowning him in fabric.

Soon, the line, too, has annealed: a phalanx, pressed against the counter. Many shaking fists full of fabric vying for the coat-boy's eyes.

And the coat-boy, still in no uncertain terms, a genius. Still moves gracefully. Still snatches, grabs coats, often out of mid-air, but there are also many landing on the ground beside him, or clipping him in flight, or knocking the neat sagging gibbet behind him.

And he is tripping now, slipping on coats, barely returning to his feet before re-falling: spilling on thick liquid fabric.

. . . .

Alexandrew's mother had seen his long fingers and decided he would be an artist. Any charisma he had was rather requiem, was in those long slender hands full of hooks. So artistry would be good for him: would let him transmute tears, smoothly, into purpose. So she taught him: taught him those certain things people need to remember. Certain things that, even if they don't have much money, they would pay it to remember.

He spent many days waving people into a room, then suddenly changing that wave into a stop; scanning people with metal detectors; making espressos with those old, trembling, howling machines; listening and typing with a glazed expression; scanning items from a conveyor belt.

They were all his mother—the people he scanned, and ushered, and spoke to—, of course. She wore different costumes, and moved differently, and spoke differently: so sometimes he nearly forgot. But it was always her.

And though she could move and speak like anyone, he was slow to learn: fumbling items, making the wrong amount of eye-contact, misjudging the heft of his smalltalk. It took time, longer than it should, for him to master each motion: become an artist, so to speak. And even then, he was good in that way that leaves little room for greatness.

Until one night when his mother saw him hang his clothing in his closet. Watched him slip the flat disembodied shoulders of the coathanger into a white dress shirt: the motion like the shoulders were real, full, fleshing the shirt. The shirt unmoved in midair: as though occupied by the platonic ideal of a ghost. It seemed like he could take someone and clothing and ignore the "putting on". Could push them through it, into it: could make them appear inside what they wore. Until you realized there was no one. Just a coathanger, with its little question mark head sticking out.

At 24 years of age, he "made it". They called him the Pavarotti of Coathangers. He worked only with coathangers, performed only with coathangers.

. . . .

"Stop," Alexandrew shrieks, but they can no longer hear him, no longer even see him, it seems. Like he has effaced himself with the smoothness of his motion. Like his performance is too good, so good that he is no longer a performer but the vestial security guard keeping them from something unimaginably beautiful. Something that, if that they could only get to it, would make all this misery worth it.

As though his art is so great, it has made them forget that it is art, has recalled them to whatever they are trying desperately to remember. That he has simply, always been just a gatekeeper to what he is now returning.

And Alexandrew, stunned that his performance has transcended itself, transcended it all, says something trite like: "Alright show's over" or "Do you know who I am!" As he is hit by coat after coat, tripped by the flaccid tangle of hollow arms.

Drowning, he thinks of the devil, of the dream he had once, some time before his mom caught him hanging his clothes. Of the man he thinks is the devil.

The man with infinite coats who peels them off one by one, exchanging a suddenly too-small coat for a ticket, but not with hands: extending, instead, a thick infinitely-runged trunk of layered sleeves that, stretched out, takes up the entirety of his vision: takes up, what must be, the entirety of the world. Before taking the ticket, sliding it into his newly surfaced jacket and then shrugging off this coat, as well.

. . . .

We are all naked now. After the line collapsed under its weight, after running out of coats, we threw the rest of our clothing at the coat-check. I will never forget how the coat-check boy caught my coat, of all the coats, and looked into my eyes before slipping for the last time into that dense swirl of cloth. Resurfacing, after, only in pieces.

The hall is cold and filled with longing. And we look at the mound of clothing without horror. It was never frenzy: it was only ever longing: coming and going, making its own currents.

Then someone shrill jumps on the counter and screams: "Post haste to the vestibule, the coat-check boy has cracked and is recklessly dispensing his cortège!"

And nobody moves.

Someone responds: “What?!”

And a small cloud of clothing floats down upon us like fish-food, and we snatch pieces up. Try to curl them into our bodies, running towards the double doors of the building with our packets of fabric. Sleeves breaking from the balls packed into our chests and flailing behind us like flags.

. . .

They slowly peel back this mausoleum of cloth like the cuffing of too-long pants, until the coat-boy's unmoving hook-like hand surfaces, all fingers folded into his palm but his index which curves, more vicious than anything you've ever seen, like if it touched you, you could never, ever, get it out.

But we do not want the boy anymore, we have used him up. We want only coats now.