ATLANTIC CITY - SHIVA LASH MONTALVO (2006)

262. ATLANTIC CITY - SHIVA LASH MONTALVO (2006):

The yellow-handed congressman with the broken leg had just left Trenton for Lower Egg the Atlantic City coastline the cesspool of correspondence and circumstance and luck and coincidence : the fat Mafia boys in their tie-dyed suits were walking two-by-two down the sacred old boardwalk of what used to be : peals of laughter cries of glee and that crazy diving horse jumping precariously - and in each pocket they had a gun and under their suits a very-penny-ante bulletproof vest which sequestered their chests and their sternums pressed - but nonetheless the moment of the day was high-noon and the fair old sky was passing soon - bright golden sunlight arrayed and the spraying ocean high was rising - overall and each a pleasant horizon : and here comes the Boardwalk Goddess herself - one Shiva Lash Montalvo - walking along as without a care and singing a song to herself she sees the black car approaching off to the side and know just knows it's her afternoon ride but first she must preen one more time for the manager fellow in the nearby lobby who as usual will take her up to his office and make sure she 'still has her voice' - likely shot that - and she shrugs off and hates what she does but it's a living to make and make it she does - she enters the Palace at Ocean Avenue where she performs every other day and 7 and at 2 for the warm-up evening crowds and the late-night boisterous few (they know no time and care not to) and she remembers her grandmother used to say (a dancer too in the old days) 'performing each day at 5 and 9 is still better than 5 and dime' - nice sagacious thought she always felt but grandma's dead now some 18 years - and that withered old lady was worrying about her granddaughter and any possible failure or career disaster - whatever that ever meant - but no matter as time went on and Shiva prospered and grew into something actually quite sweet and 'cry me a river cry me a river - I cried a river over you' became just one of the old quaint standards she sang each day and both glitter and nearly nothing : standing straight standing fashionably tall and sexy while in her spare time and on the side studying things - the likes of Henry Chapman Mercer and John Sloan instead during mornings at the nearby community college where she wished to major in art but found herself instead studying phrenology and reading old phrenology drawings those kinds with the compartmentalized sketches of the brain and what part controls this and what part controls that and she read all about Walt Whitman and all that New York and Camden stuff she could find and she tried to learn whatever she could while working and earning too and it wasn't always easy : the roving eyes of men the grand gesture of the stage-lit singer the investment banker's greedy hands - - and now she stares out at the sea thinking of her future self and what it should be - withered and tired and old as slime or happy and joyful and enjoying the time - and she realizes she'll never know no matter until it happens no matter and in the distance she watches the ships roll by with the horizon tethered to nothing at all and the open harbor great steel beach crawling on the level sea and knows her chips are down and it's getting hard to be and she wonders 'what shall I sing when the audience is gone ? what shall I sing what song?' and this talent-house local queen of the labyrinth came out of cattle-call number 11 in the Summer of 'o1 and she never has left - benighted city broken-down garbage heap of false-promises-rubble-trash and junk beat-up hostess broken-down chattel-tramp of siding salesmen and used-car bilkers and matinee-mashers criminal drunks and crooks - and she realizes the mob guys are still out there strolling so she stays put - Elk's lodge and ladies auxiliary bus-rides long trips to sin-city nowhere at all - trashy old women and their dead-to-die husbands together shopping-mall field trip from anywhere loading cranky elders into their one-death to live tramp steamers and stuffing them all in one place to die - the 'Ride and Die' contingent it's called but the new signs say 'Fun' while the people sing and the boats careen and one day along the harbor she hears 'Mommy Mommy I want to sing like that someday too' and the family from Pennsylvania waits in line and they hold the little girl's hand and then someone handing out leaflets approaches them and says 'are you better off without Jesus ? are you better off at all?' and they question the question looking back at the asker cold-stone scared into a mirror of doubt and invisibility and say back sheepishly 'well yes we are - actually we're here aren't we?' and their pale non-answer has to suffice and they all start walking away three abreast while skywriters overhead leave marks in the sky and a small plane trails a banner across the beach reading 'Rocky's Palace - Great Eats Beach Party' but no one says a word for as it seems to her all the world is quiet but she's singing 'the world's a better place...for you for you.'