Godzilla as a nickname gets shortened to just God, which she says suits her fine, although if you think about it, shortening a name is the same as saying it without thinking it about it all. I imagine some guy out there named Shittenhouser or Fucklebukket, and someone close to him calls him Shit or Fuck and doesn't even realize it at first. Most people aren't all that self-aware, sad to say.

So I pick up God at eleven and we head down to the subway, not saying much. But I know what she's thinking. She's thinking about An Amnesiac Does The New York Times Crossword Puzzle, and how angry she's going to get when someone makes an Andy Warhol reference, and how she shouldn't say anything at all, because it's not worth it, if someone is so stupid as to make an Andy Warhol reference then they won't be smart enough to understand her when she explains why invoking his name is the stupidest thing one could do. And she's weighing the pros and cons of saying something anyway. Catharsis. God's no artist, so she has to find catharsis in other ways.

Basically what Init, the artist, did was to go around to hospitals for a year, looking for people who had a tendency to become amnesiacs. Then he gave them pieces of paper, which simply read "If you cannot remember yesterday, come see me." Then he waited. Anonymous Smith eventually showed up, asking what the paper meant, was he in some weird movie like you see directors attempt their second or third time out. Init had him do an old copy of the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, in colored pen. I think a Wednesday. Then he waited for the amnesiac to show up again, and had him do the same crossword, in a different color. And so on. Red for the first one, Green, Blue, Purple, Orange, black with a yellow highlighter, a photocopy blown up, reversed, and then done in white out. And that's what we're going to see tonight-- these finished puzzles, framed, displayed.

We get off the subway and walk up the stairs and another flight and another. Escalators. When they’re broken, they’re harder to walk up than regular stairs, but at least this one’s festooned with bright red caution tape, the kind of red one calls blood red because one doesn’t see real blood very often. Crappy vampire movie blood red. You’d think they’d figure out a way to keep these subway escalators running. You’d think they’d maybe hire some extra escalator repairmen, stimulate the economy, keep people in good spirits which would also stimulate the economy. Happy people buy shit. That’s why I fear for An Amnesiac Does The New York Times Crossword Puzzle. A lot of people are not happy about it. And Init won’t sell it in pieces—he insists it’s a single work, an installation. Some patients’ rights group is calling it exploitation. I, personally, could give a fuck.

Now we’re out on the sidewalk and it’s colder than the breasts on an odd woman who keeps to herself and ends up the scapegoat for failed crops in a small New England village in the mid 17th century. These are the exact words I say to God as we’re walking through the wind, and she says back, only, Breasts? I try to avoid talking like other people when I can, but that means my efforts are usually focused only on finding synonyms and I end up talking about what everyone else is talking about. I am very shallow in my being deep. We pass Abraham’s Grocers, closed now, security gate down, splashed with day-glo green spray paint, a gang sign I think, I’ll have to ask God’s little brother next time we have lunch, he’s a cop.

Breasts? God says again, but I don’t think she’s really paying attention to herself, least of all me. She’s wearing a pale blue sleeveless dress, entirely inappropriate for this weather, barely appropriate for an art opening, but Init is a sucker for sleek women in nice clothes and God loves to flirt with extremely talented, incredibly ugly men. Init is, indeed, incredibly ugly, something to do with lye, something to do with a fight he had with his wife about a short story by Flannery O’Connor. I like to flirt too, and I probably will. I’ll use God to flirt. I’ll approach some blonde and say something then make reference to the beautiful woman in the sleek blue dress and casually mention that we bone one another frequently. And I’ll use the word bone. It’s the kind of word that has a mature immaturity. Under some of the streetlights, God’s skin looks blue too.

We arrive at the studio where the showing is, above a nightclub called Reversi, neon sign in eye-raping purple, long line of people who aren’t boning God, but half of whom probably would like to, including the bouncer, who automatically grabs the rope to let us in as we pass, no questions asked. By this time I am following God, and she ignores the bouncer, walks past him shimmering in the purple neon reflection, to the doorway that leads to stairs up to the loft. Stairs. I heard that they say Paris is the city of stairways so when God and I decide to go someplace on some kind of vacation or something and someone suggests Paris we’ll say, the city of stairs? Fuck you very much.

The peeling orange wallpaper in the stairway makes me think of oranges, a fruit named for its color, in every language I know a little bit of, and I am suddenly desperate to know if the fruit did get its name from the color, or the color from the fruit. It’s a very pure color. This stairway is steep, but God’s dress is very long, so all I can see as she ascends above me is her unhappy heels in strappy shoes and a flash of calf, left right left right. Breasts, I say, yes, how cold it is, you know the old saying. Tits, God says back. It wasn’t that cold. I shrug, which she can’t see behind and beneath her.

Now we’re in the studio itself, walls painted black with yellow trim. This makes the room dark, and the spotlights that pick out the pieces make them glow. There’s a buzz of conversation going on, ebbing towards noise but then backing off again, people talking in husky whispers. God spies Init and makes a beeline. I spy a tidy little blonde and begin circling. The six pieces are on two walls, and no one is paying them any attention except for one confused looking man.

He’s dressed in a white tuxedo, and his skin is black, a deep black, Ivory Coast black, Miles Davis black. Anonymous Smith. I feel a twinge of shame because I assumed he was an old white man. He’s enormous, too, football player enormous though, not basketball player enormous, and I feel another twinge of guilt because I realize I’m using geography, jazz and sports to describe a black man, which is patently racist. To make up for it, I decide to eschew the blonde for the moment and actually look at the art.

I can do the Wednesday New York Times Crossword Puzzle in pen, but I usually make a few mistakes and it takes me about half an hour. This guy averaged about 15 minutes for the six pieces. The first one, the one in red, took him about 18 minutes. He only made three mistakes, judging from where he’d written over his own letters, such as 4 down, “Lots and lots,” which he originally wrote as “many” but then changed it to “tons.” The next one, in green, took him only 16 minutes, and he got “tons” right the first time, but made a few other mistakes elsewhere. Then when he did the one in blue, he got “tons” wrong again, but finished the whole thing in only 12 minutes. I learn all of this from the little placards on the wall next to each piece.

On the other wall I’m looking at the one in purple, and “tons” is right the first time, he finished it in fourteen minutes, and a smell that reminds me of bananas distracts me. The blonder, leaning over, staring intently at the placard. Banana perfume. She glances at me when she finishes reading, then moves to the one in black with yellow highlighter, and I follow. 17 minutes. I can hear God behind me, either laughing at something Init said, or laughing at something one of his sycophants said, showing to Init that she got the joke, and although I can’t see her, I know by the way she’s laughing that she’s touching his arm when she does it. That’s how she got me. The blonde says Fascinating, and we move together to the last piece.

We walk around Anonymous Smith, who has spent the entire time staring at this final piece. The one that was photo-reversed, black squares in a white-grid, the one Init had Smith do in white out. Despite having to paint each letter rather than write it, he finished the entire thing in thirteen minutes, and made no mistakes. I’m looking at it, Smith on my left, blonde on my right, he smells like Campbell’s soup, she smells like bananas, and I don’t know what I smell like, but we are a tableau. Then blonde says:

“I heard it took three years to finish all of these. His amnesia was infrequent, and he was getting better. But look at this last one. He doesn’t consciously remember having done this five times before, but there’s a confidence in the brush strokes, a boldness, like he’s daring the puzzle to give him answers, taunting it. See there? 20 across, 38 across, 45 and 56? The theme clues, the long ones? See how consistent the lettering is? He didn’t need the down clues answered to guess at them, he figured them out straightway, which is probably why he was able to finish this one so fast—once the long clues are answered, the short ones that intersect it are easy.”

Exactly, says a voice, and we turn around, all three of us. Init. Standing with his arm around God, who’s shivering, but smiling. I think it’s my greatest work yet, Init says.