My grandson, god forbid, wants to be an artist.

I repair video cameras, heaps of plastic carcasses piled in my shop, exoskeletons shed as they purify themselves to the platonic videocamera. Bulky, tumorous things, disgustingly mortal. Nobody fixes video cameras! Buy a new one. The cost of a repairman,the cost of people. I am almost pushed out now, as the shiny armatures become tinier and more delicate, and my fingers become drier and stupider. The cameras are actually pushing me out of the business, I am a parasite that cannot shrink itself quickly enough, a giant fumbling flea in a room full of tiny dogs. I am shrinking, though. On schedule my bones are perforating, bowing. Muscle is becoming tendon. I have just reached the top of the stairs between my shop and my apartment, forced into my musty bed by a gripping pain in my chest, my good friend heartburn, the reason I was able to quit smoking, buying antacid instead of cigarettes.
Fuck my body! The death of my usefulness, dead professions. When I was young I promised myself I wouldn’t complain about my aches and pains. I realize that I am going without much grace. I can look down the length of the bed and see: I am a bitter, shitty little man.
“You never talk about what it was like when you were little.” Complains my grandson. Artists are terribly unhappy people. At best.
“Pick a trade.” I tell him. “Start a career young.” It is the most absurd advice. A career is death, repitition is void. My wife is dead. This comes to me as a revelation, five years later. A law of physics has changed. The law was, “My wife is alive”. It still feels like gravity is broken.
“You talk about death constantly.” My grandson says unabashedly. At least he lacks tack. He will confront me when anyone else in the family would look at the floor. Art is a desperate religion with no bible. Multimedia. Blasphemy. I sit up, cough a juicy cough, consider buying some pall malls, and head back downstairs. I sweep off the tabletop, piles of sightless eyes. I waddle out to the frontroom, a closet that leads to the street. A twenty two year old girl is at the counter, using my money to stand there, bored but enjoying the lack of business. She doesn’t bother to hide her celebrity magazine from me. When her friends stop by, sometimes for hours, they talk about waxing. I let them push me around, there is no point in hiring different help. I like letting young girls push me around. It is pathetic and sexy. I stand in the doorway, and neither of us looks at the other, or says a word. The only good business is money, the only currency is currency itself. My cameras were once bricks of gold, intricate poems of wire and plastic. But I refused to let go of reality, of tactile objects. I am a fool, a caveman who cannot let go of his spear. My wife was a painter. She had no sense of smell, and I have always had bad gas. We were never madly in love. It was perfect. Women should not die before men.
“You can go home. I’m closing for the day.” I tell the girl. The wieght of my life is crushing me. Soon my family will force me to move to the country, where the city noise can no longer penetrate, and the silence of memory will engulf me.