The Next Great Old-School Conspiracy
 
 
 
 
 
Keith Gilyard
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1
Upon hearing the screams I rushed to the window, fully open because of the premature summery day in May, and looked down at the deadly dance. Adina Little slashing at Al Walker. He was bobbing and weaving, just close enough to bait her to lunge with the knife. Then he would quickly elude harm. He hadn’t yet found the opening he was looking for. But his words were getting in.
“Yeah bitch, I’ll take the muthafucka. I’ll take him any time I get ready.”
Him was their three-week-old son asleep in the blue baby carriage. Al made a tentative move toward the carriage but was chased away by the fierce arc of the blade. It’s all the talking Adina was doing.
Adina’s mother, who was the screamer, was gasping for air and leaning over the hood of a car. She clutched her chest with one hand.
I muttered something about Negroes and hot weather and turned from the window to dash to the rescue. I chose not to stop for my sneakers, which I realized was a mistake as soon as I entered the hall. Trying to pivot swiftly to my right, I crashed to the floor because the super had waxed the floor for the first time in my eight months in the building. I banged my knee hard, scramble upright, and took off with a limp that became speedier as I moved along. The elevator was out of the question. Too slow. I bounded down the stairs, through the delivery entrance, and out into the late afternoon sunlight.
A band of spectators had gathered and I charged through them into the middle of the asphalt arena, sweat already flowing profusely under my gray New York Knicks tee shirt. My guts churned with fear and excitement, like entering the ring as a teenager back in the boxing tournament down at the lodge. I did fantastic until the finals when, in front of the largest crowd, I got stopped in one round. The problem was I couldn’t see. Not that my eyes couldn’t register light, shade, shape, movement, depth. It was that I couldn’t see myself, and I think that to be successful while rumbling one needs to be outside himself, like old Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, and be able to look in on the scene in which the physical self is a character. If you’re too much in the crucible of competition, the crowd roar, you lose yourself. I told myself not to let that happen. Couldn’t stand a knockout at this stage, or on this stage for that matter, right out in the middle of Queens. I’ll never be light-heavyweight champion of the world, but no average out of shape lame who didn’t possess at least a passing knowledge of the sweet science was supposed to be able to fuck with me straight up. I think this is how most of the people on my block saw it.
“So what you want, muthafucka?” Al closed in and I placed myself between him and Adina. I didn’t exactly go for his tone but decided that one of us should try to use his head. So I chose myself. Was going to come off rational, intelligent, articulate, and compassionate---everything a Black man couldn’t be in most stories.
“Look, my man, I don’t wanna see you jam yourself. You out here gittin all slashed at, you know. You might get your nuts cut off or something. Or you might seriously hurt this girl here and live to regret it.”
“He ain’t gonna hurt me,” Adina protested from behind my back. “I’ll kill that nigga ‘cause I’m sick of this here mess.”
I half wanted to turn around and smack her myself because I knew she wasn’t exactly no innocent little lamb. She’d accumulated a lot of bad habits in only seventeen years, one of which had been skipping school to spend her days with Al, who at twenty-six didn’t seem to do much more than chase drugs and young girls. Adina never knew him fully until he knocked her down a flight of stairs when she was seven months pregnant because she wouldn’t give him money to buy that resurgent hydrogen bomb of drugs---crack. A guy once told me that crack was better than pussy. I told him that guaranteed I would never try it because I had paid enough dues dealing with the latter.
I peered into Al’s glazed eyes. They rolled and settled like stingy fruit in a casino slot machine. Crack had him hopped up all right, or so it seemed. I think understood me enough not to push my button under normal circumstances. But now he was mashing real hard.
“Aw, fuck what you talkin about. I’m gonna kick your ass first and then beat hers anyway.” He took a clumsy swipe at me with his left fist. I pulled back with my hands held low, you know, Mayweather-like, which is Sugar-like, which is Ali-like, which is like Jack Johnson. I started to snap a light jab in there to print a little reality on his chin. I held up though, which was another in what was rapidly becoming a series of errors on my part. For Al raced over to the row of garbage cans on the curb in front of the building and pulled out a worn, chipped, baseball bat. A bat I had run right past on my way into the street. I searched frantically for an equalizer, bottle, brick, anything. No luck. And Al was fast approaching. Time to switch off nice guy mode and get tough.
“You only get one swing, punk,” I intoned with somewhat shaky bravado. “After that I’m slammin that wood down your throat.” This halted him just short of me although I wasn’t sure why my threat would make him hesitate when he held the clear advantage. But then communication and image are powerful things.
“So you think you bad, hunh?”
“Nope. I just keep the bad ones off me.” Adrenaline and heat forced more sweat from my body.
Al drew back the bat and began a swing. I skipped backward, trying to measure distance so I could find the point just out of range. This way, as soon as he missed me, I would be close enough to nail him before he could reload.
Turned out he wasn’t coming after me. Adina had dashed around me to my left with the knife in a two-handed grip in front of her face and was charging in for the kill. She was a mad rhinoceros who had had enough. By he time I was completely aware of what was going down, Al had bashed her on the side of her neck and sent her sprawling to the pavement.
I moved right in on top of that, landing a straight right to his jaw. He staggered two steps and tried to swing the bat effectively. I stopped it with bot hands and started to bring a knee up into his groin. I wasn’t there, however, to wipe the brother totally out. I’m pondering this while he recovered and kicked my feet from under me. I fell, now clutching the bat in ultimate desperation, yanking him down with me.
We began rolling around the street, brown flesh grappling with brown flesh. The crowd growing larger, pushing in on us. I heard a car’s staccato honking. And I could see! So I knew I would be a winner. I was outside of myself looking down on me, writer turned fighter, main entertainment on an overheated Friday afternoon. The crowd, sweaty gleaming faces of various hues, shrieked encouragement.
One of Adina’s friends yelling, “Git him, Eric. Git that bitch ass.”
Another shouting. “Get the baby.”
The baby was still asleep. His wounded but very resilient rhino of a mother had regained her feet. Her own mother now slumped over the hood of the car and being attended to by a young woman in thick dreads while the woman’s male companion summoned an ambulance.
I could see it all as I wrestled the bat from Al and sprang to my feet. I turned just in time to seize Adina by the wrist and wrench the knife from her hand. I scooped it up from the street and turned back to feint at Al, who was on his feet also. He began to weave a retreat through the crowd, of which I was glad, because I wasn’t that anxious to continue. Al hollered back over his shoulder.
“So you fuckin him now, hunh bitch? This ain’t over. Both of you are finished, and I want my son.”
The traffic had backed up to the corner, and then another car took the corner too fast and banged in to the rear of the last car on line. An irritated man’s voice boomed.
“YOU EVER HEAR OF BRAKES, YOU KNUCKLEHEAD MUTHAFUCKA?”
So maybe there was another show coming down on that end. Adina ran toward her mother, who, as it turned out, wasn’t suffering a major heart attack after all. Though I imagine a few more episodes like this will do the trick.
I cut back into the building and entered the stairwell. Sat down to collect myself. My knee throbbed with pain, as did my left elbow. I rotated my arm inward and saw that most of the skin on the elbow had been scraped away. Dirt and tiny pebbles were stuck to the wound. I wiped the loosest sediment away and stretched upward to begin the trudge back up to 7C, back to what I was doing before being interrupted: writing a perfect novel.
Actually, I could settle for no less. I had been divorced by my wife, fired from my job, and had defaulted on sixteen thousand dollars worth of student loans used toward obtaining a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from Wilson U. Therefore, I needed something to balance accounts. On top of that I felt compelled to present the correct message to 40 million plus African Americans and escort them into a literary dimension devoid of bitter debates and full of easy theory. Worst thing anybody could say about my book was that it was the best ever. I desired unanimous acclaim, though I’d settle for a favorable consensus.
Sometimes I can overload myself with a whole lot of movement about nothing. Which is why I blow my own fuse a lot and stay blacked out. My definition of writer’s block. There’s another reason the novel had to knock everyone out. I had doubts about my stamina.
I hoped no one came up to bother me. Especially not Adina because I wasn’t up to giving advice that I knew would go unheeded. This is how it works with most of the people around here who seek me out.
 
 
2
 It was no way to celebrate my ten thousandth day. Don’t run for a calculator. That made me almost twenty-seven years and five months. Not that I want to be difficult, but after twenty-five I began to set my own milestones. Folks kept yakking about how the years go by faster the older you get. Some say they fly by like the foreground seen from the window of a speeding train. I need that slower moving background because it’s my best chance to stay focused. This happens for me when I think in terms of days. I see each one as a heavy wet towel that I need to wring dry with my own hands. If you wring 10,000 towels you know you have been productively here. And if you don’t wring them you will have a mess of mold and mildew backing up on you that you could have prevented. So thirty won’t be a crisis for me. It will mark a rather ordinary 10, 959^th day.   
I needed days. I needed the top of the mountain. And I really needed more printer paper. I had wasted so much. Each time I pecked out the first page of the perfect novel, it followed the countless other beginnings and became a wrinkled paper basketball to be chucked into the wastepaper basket. All the stuff wasn’t horrible. Just none of it was perfect. No page safe from attack by a group such as the Afrocentric Culture Club or the Big Boojies of America. No page would prevent other spotlight seekers from running me down at a writers’ conference and bellowing that I was full of shit and didn’t know the deal.
I don’t think Adina knew she was pregnant when I met her. She came telling me real blunt that she liked older men. I told her right off that I liked older women and that cooled most of it. Then she grew big and it was she and I arguing and finally his knocking her down the stairs. I thought it a miracle she didn’t miscarry. She vowed, with the strong resolve she could show on occasion, that he would never set eyes or hands on the child.
Well he had seen the child in the hospital. She failed to handle business in a way to prevent that. But she made good on the no hands part, which had gotten her punched upside the head two or three times since she had come home. These were times when Al caught her alone and could not convince her either to invite him in or bring the baby out. So, as her order of protection, she carried the hunter’s knife in the carriage under the baby’s blanket.
I told Adina not to freeze Al out of the picture altogether. After all, it took two to tango and a man had a right to interact with his child. Just control the arrangements. But she wouldn’t listen. She was more interested in a dangerous game of spite. 
     I chuckled inside the stairwell and paid attention to the reverberating sound. The timbre enclosed in concrete. I could advise well but couldn’t keep my own thing together, which, I suppose, is how it usually goes. “Marriage,” as Kay Francis said in the movie, “is the most beautiful mistake two people can make.” My wife and I committed enough lovely errors to keep up our halves of the bargain. And when the mistake loomed larger than the beauty, it was time to give it up. I mean we tried to talk. You know how folks decide to talk the whole thing over---then proceed to talk around the whole thing until it disintegrates. Not talked over. Just over.
It was important to her to be a plaintiff. No problem. We hadn’t accumulated enough in three years to fuss about. My schooling and her allegiance to fashion had ensured that. The car she could have. She dropped me a line once in a while from Florida, where she was engaged to a rising entrepreneur. I’d get a call for my birthday, but not for my ten thousandth day.
The best part of the divorce, which often masqueraded as the worst part, is that I had to look writing in the eye once again. Could no longer use domestic disputes as an excuse. And now that I got myself fired from the Mid-Queens Language Institute I had even more time staring back at me. At least for a spell. Simple towels to wring because I knew I would break through and produce. The world would know about Eric Michigan. Being named after a state was a good sign, never hurting Joe Montana or French Montana at all. And, until lately, I had done more than fair betting on the Wolverines. However, there are drawbacks. Especially with a state like Michigan. You get called Detroit for much of your childhood. Even sometimes as a man. That’s not too bad, even periodically cool. But it never was cool to have your mother called Lake and have people joke about a swim, though it does toughen you.
As I emerged from the stairwell, I heard the groan of the elevator as it rose from the floor below. The door opened onto the seventh floor and my roommate appeared. Paul Hinton. He also answered to Psycho, a name he received because he had a Master’s in Psychology. Paul had also gone to Wilson U. From Delaware, he showed up in town on a fellowship. He always had ideas worth listening to, though he could stretch a tale on you in a minute. He stayed in New York after graduation, free lancing here and there until recently landing a high-paying job at the Downtown Therapeutic Clinic for Former Wall Street Brokers. He administered cognitive therapy to those suffering from recession depression.
“Hey, Eric. Heard I missed the matinee.”
“Was nothing. Al acting up, that’s all.”
“You’re stepping a bit gimpy for it to be nothing. No?”
“It’s nothing.”
We entered our apartment. Paul set his brief case on the floor near the door. I slumped into the swivel chair next to my laptop.
“So how are things at the clinic?”
“Ah, a little slow. But the Dow Jones was down 248 points last I heard, so things ought to perk up. The gig is no problem. What I can’t handle is the F train.”
“You mean you fell in love again?”
“Five seconds out of West Fourth Street. I saw a lady so bad she put on an ordinary overcoat and still be the center of attention at a Beyoncé concert. I could really go for some Maslowian self-actualization with that sister.” Paul yanked his tie loose, then off, and draped it over his left shoulder.
“So what happened?”
“I didn’t move fast enough.” She got off at 34^th Street. But I fell three or more times before I hit Queens.”
“You’re going to get in trouble behind that overrated blood pump.”
“At least it’s working. Wouldn’t hurt you to come alive.”
“I am alive. I’m gonna pump this computer.”
“With weather this good? This early summer? That’s insanity. Once I get all the fallen brokers straight, I’m concentrating more on your case. Anyway, I thought we were going to hang out for the ten thousand?” Other than my former wife, only Paul knew my system. We rung in his ten grand six months prior by blowing a combined bundle in Atlantic City.
“Nah. I think I’ll lay low. Get some movement on this story.”
Paul ambled down the hall toward his room, belting out lyrics to what only loosely could be called a tune: A word processing program to fill up the spring is crazy to me.
I was annoyed, but only mildly so. A little ribbing only fueled my desire for perfect results. Besides, in reality, I had a little action going. When my loneliness swelled, I knew a woman who welcomed it.
I stared at the screen and then turned off the machine. I took in street sounds, mostly the high-pitched play of children. I gazed at the painting on the wall. A little Black boy. A small oil on canvas done in black and shades of gray. Showed a lot of promise considering the girl I commissioned it from was only fifteen. I can’t get her to do another. She died from a drug overdose.
Paul returned in blue and white striped sweat pants, white tee shirt, and bright white sneakers. He had worked extremely hard to slim down. His pinkie ring was even loose; he needed to resize it before he lost it. With sunglasses in hand, his thoughts shifted back to the confrontation with Al.
“You ain’t looking for no follow up trouble, are you?”
“I don’t think so. He’s so out of it I don’t think he can concentrate on anything other than crack long enough to be a problem for me.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, these crackheads are just remnants before the new thing, the Rice Krispies Execution Plan. Snap, crackle, pop---if you can dig it. I met a guy the other day who broke the whole thing down for me.”
“So how is the next great old-school conspiracy supposed to work?
“Like I said, man. On the serious tip. Snap. Crackle. Pop. Just like the cereal. See, in the old days there were folks running around getting high on amyl nitrate, more commonly known as smelling salt.”
“I know. They use it on unfortunate boxers. I was never that bad off.”
“The street name was ‘snaps.’ And people bugged out behind it. Not LSD stupid, but stupid enough. In fact, other things kind of overshadowed it, but that was Operation Snap, the first phase of the plan to stimulate the brothers and sisters out of existence. Then they came with Operation Crackle, which is called Crack for short, and you see how this has excited people out of their minds. But it’s never been clean enough, a heavy burden on taxpayers.”
“I hear you Psycho,” I said laughingly. “But I thought heroin was the master plan to stymy Black urban youth.”
“That’s expensive too and that’s from when another intelligence agency with a different aesthetic held an exclusive contract. They were into anesthesiology, more of a Michael Jackson type of thing. And the heroin thing is still in effect, coming back strong along with some other stuff. But this other crew is moving vaporization. Which is why they’re coming with Operation Pop. I’m telling you. They’re gonna have a drug that you smoke and then vanish into thin air. Pop, that’s it. Cheap. And it’s almost ready. The major problem is how to satisfy the crime industry sector of the economy, how to protect revenue streams. Also, I think some funeral directors organization is having a fit. They’re going to have to increase some casualties in other areas. Maybe Ebola will help with this, even though the virus is too late to handle slave masters, COINTELPRO agents, and Ferguson cops. But it’s gonna all be worked out. This can be researched.”
“Where’s the evidence? The data?”
“Give me a few days. When I see this guy again, I’ll have more info. See, even beyond the social cost, the crack thing has to wind down because of some other politics and economics. It’s becoming harder for coca farmers to turn a profit. It’s like a pyramid scheme. Or capitalism. The early birds grabbed the money, but the wealth created inflation and the late coca might not fetch the price it took to grow it. Especially when the police show up for their protection tax and the communists show up for their revolution tax. Matter of fact, let me get to that keyboard. I’ll show you how to use it.” He feigned trying to capture the machine. I hunched over the keyboard to shield it from Paul.
 “Better get out of here.” After several playful attempts to break my defense, he backed off.
“So how’s it coming along?”
“Still looking for my handle, you know, a way in. May all click tonight. If that dude in them Best Man movies can make it, so can I.”
     I rose to go to the store, and Paul went with me. When we hit the street, we were struck by its emptiness. By all the norms we knew, the heat should have held the people. Folks had to be on the stoops, leaning on mailboxes, drinking beer on the benches, blasting music under windows. What was the neighborhood coming to? When we turned the corner, we knew. Somebody was dead.
     The crowd was bound together in a sort of colloidal suspension near the entrance to the drug store. The circle remained constant even though some were retreating from the object of interest while others pressed forward in fascination for a better look at the white sheet beneath which lay the slain body of Al Walker. The rap was that he had gone in with a pistol to rob the place and had his life taken by a man with faster reflexes. Nothing to do right then but cordon off the area, as the cops had done, wait on the coroner, and maybe comfort the young woman who was on her knees sobbing, bent forward, her tightly clinched fists pressed against her closed eyes. Adina. She of the bruised neck.
     Paul and I pulled back to the edge of the crowd. We were standing next to two guys with haircuts that looked like they were designed with graphics software, you know, lines and arrows this way and that. Not as inconspicuous as the plain close-cropped style I wear. Both dealt crack and were talking about “doing something” to the Arab store owners because they were tired of foreigners coming into the community dissin people.
     “We gotta make them do the right thing,” said one. “Might have to hit ‘em with a bunch of drones.”
“Word,” said the other.
Paul was generally nervous about these sort of street scenes even though he had seen more than a sprinkling of them back in Wilmington. He could hold his own with the fisticuffs, but weapons gave him jitters. He was particularly disturbed by the fact that it was Al Walker who had gotten his hands on a gun.”
“Could have had it for you, Eric.”
I didn’t respond.
After I scooped up several items from a different store down the block, Paul and I split up. He tried again to convince me to hang out, said he could put his latest connection on hold. But I preferred my solitude, so he caught a bus to Jamaica.
     When I arrived back at the apartment, the phone was ringing. In my haste to answer it, I fumbled with the lock longer than I normally do and figured that I had missed the call. But the phone kept ringing.
     “Hello,” I eventually answered.
     “Eric,” the unfamiliar voice announced, “you’re a dead man.” That was the entire call.
     A suspect? The first one I could think of had just departed. To worry? I do that anyway. What to do? I had a perfect novel to write.
 
 
3
Turned out that over the next few hours I did more worrying than writing. I hadn’t panicked, but there was a hard-to-reach itch at the center of my consciousness. If I hadn’t been so behind technologically, I could have maybe tackled matters better. I knew a guy, Professor Ay-Bee, who talked about leading edge, training edge, and no edge. I do write electronically. Beyond that I’m pretty much no edge. But that way I won’t have to fret about cell-phone brain cancer or feel responsible for the millions of birds electrocuted because of the new towers erected along their migration paths. However, that analysis wasn’t really satisfactory. I abandoned the keyboard, pulled a lightweight blue from the closet, and went outside.
     The air was crisp and the temperature had dropped dramatically, a reminder that it was still spring, not the twenty-four-hour steam bath a New York summer day can be. A brown dog trotted briskly down the street, and I was reminded of a poem by Pablo Neruda that describes a person tracking a dog through the streets until the person becomes dog tired. I figured that would work for me, at least get me ready for bed, so I pursued.
We turned the corner, heading toward the park. The dog stopped to sniff two plastic garbage bags set out on the curb, determined that nothing smelled good enough to paw them open for, circled the bags one last time, then dashed across the street. I had to speed up to keep pace. I lost sight of the animal as it entered the darkness of the park. I jogged over, entering the playground as the first shot rang out. I ducked and tried to locate its exact source when a barrage of shots exploded as rapid as machine gun fire and as plentiful as on the silver screen. I heard yells and saw the ghostly outlines of figures scattering, several running my way. Other shots, with traces of blue fame, came from a van on the far side. The engine roared and the van, headlights off, screeched into the park, cutting across the softball field toward me. I scampered into the playground amid the monkey bars, swings, see-saws, and sliding boards. Barely in time. A second van pulled up near the entrance I had just vacated.  A ghostly figure leaned out the window and open up on the other van, a report of bullets so terrible I could imagine it ripping the entire vehicle apart. But all I heard was the cadence of lead hitting metal---and I heard no crash of glass. The figure melted back into the passenger side and the van zipped off into the night. Not, however, before a fusillade of chasing bullets echoed terrifyingly behind, mostly missing the target but spraying a half block of cars and destroying the plate glass window at the entrance to the Summit Building. The van took off in the opposite direction.
I slumped to a seat on the edge of the sliding board trying to put the pieces together. I peered across the field. The night had once more been unified, if only momentarily, in silence and stillness. This had been a skirmish in a drug war with the latest artillery available. I supposed the vomit of blazing missiles came from Uzis, weapons of choice. And the vans had to be armored, which is how the drug crews get them these days. The police snatched one off the boulevard last year and the media made a big deal about it. But it was common fare. Sides reinforced with inch-thick steel. Bullet-proof windows. You couldn’t beat one in a battle of lead. Maybe blow the tires or bomb it. I don’t know. Drug tanks. Some disarmament talks need to take place right in the neighborhood.
There had been talk of a war coming. A major dealer had gone to prison for life and the scramble for control was inevitable. Loyal soldiers tried to retain power over the territories while others sought to make inroads. It put Queens in the news again.
This borough used to be ignored by the town’s major media although it has over two million residents and five times the land mass of Manhattan. Even little Staten Island drew more attention for threatening every now and then to secede from the city. But with big time political corruption and the subsequent suicide of the embattled borough president, the execution of parole officers and patrolmen, notorious drug gangs, a skyrocketing homicide rate, the old Howard Beach incident, and the St. John’s Sex Assault Case, even that prestigious Manhattanocentric newspaper opened a news bureau here (though that probably had something to do with ailing circulation).
The truth is that Queens has always been wild, especially in sections like South Jamaica, Corona, Queensbridge, and parts, right here, in Queensview. This isn’t the Doug Heffernan district. The homeboys always felt they had to overcome being tagged “soft” by those from Brooklyn, Harlem, and The Bronx. So they’ve been going to jail and doing as much time as anyone else.
And it was in Queens, way back in 1902, that Jerry Hunter and his wife, a Black couple, engaged one hundred policemen in a gun battle for more than seven hours. The local papers reported that it was the greatest exchange of bullets in Queens since the Battle of Long Island in 1776. There were serious wounds on both sides and Jerry, sixty years old at the time of the incident, did three years in Sing Sing. All this happened because Jerry shot a White trespasser.
I picked up the blaring of sirens. As it grew louder I left the sliding board and exited the park through a hole in the fence behind the swings, around the corner from where I had entered the park. I sensed someone was behind me and I whirled frantically to see the dog. He trotted away. I crossed the street and leaned against the side of a building, in shadow. Two patrol cars pulled up and a crowd was streaming toward the scene. I contemplated the swirling lights, intrigued by them, puzzled by the optics involved. Whenever I’ve studied these lights in the dark, and I’ve done so hundreds of times, it seems that the white bulbs revolve more quickly than the red, although of course that’s impossible.
I pushed on up to the corner and, choosing between a long walk and a rather brief ride, caught a bus over to the old neighborhood, down to a bar on 36^th Avenue not far from Citi Field. I figured a few cold ones from the tap would help.
The joint was Friday night lively. Sugar daddies eager to lavish lot on slick young ladies. But nobody was really young in there. If you thought so you could get tragically fooled. Neo-soul floating from stereo speakers I the rear. Chatter around the television about the Mets screwing up yet another season. Light dollars wagered on the too-small, coin-operated pool table. I grabbed a brew from the barmaid, who winked at me and remarked that she hadn’t seen me in a while.
“Keeping out of trouble,” I replied dryly, without a wink. I began to watch TV.
Halfway through my second mug the door swung open. An old friend named Boyd sauntered in, thick gold chain around his thick neck. He spotted me instantly and came over.
“Detroit. My man.” Two front gold teeth flashed. Boyd drove an eighteen-wheeler for a living---owned it himself. Smartest truck driver I knew. “Don’t see you much anymore. That book should be ready to roll by now. Time for you to get paid.”
“I’m working on it. Trying to get it perfect.”
“Aw nigga, you just gotta write. We gon let you know if it’s perfect or not.”
“No. All you wanna let me know is what’s wrong. But if I lay this thing down dead letter perfect ain’t nobody gon be able to tell me nothin.”
Our exchange was loud enough, and I guess interesting enough, to invite the old man on our right in.
“Who a writer? Y’all write?” He wore a beige yellow baseball cap, only a tad lighter than his wrinkled complexion, with the name of an insurance firm written in black letters. Boyd pointed to me.
”This man here writes.”
“Well, what you write about? I tell you what you should write about. You should write about all the trouble I done seen ‘cause I done seen it all.”
“I don’t mean to be impolite,” I responded. “But what you seen don’t interest me none. It’s how you seen it that might interest me. You should write yourself.”
“Yeah, maybe I should,” he reflected. “I done sure seen it all.” He polished off his drink in gulps and reordered. Boyd asked for beer.
“I bet you have seen it all,” I acknowledged. “What have you concluded about it all?”
“Yeah,” Boyd chimed in. “What’s it all boil down to, sir?” The old man glanced at Boyd with mock contempt.
“Niggers ain’t nothing. That’s what it’s all about.”
“Order this man a double, Boyd. Fuck that. A triple. No. A grand slam. We don’t need for anybody to hear this story.”
“You into censorship?” smiled Boyd.
“Never. I’m only into getting him drunk.”
“Say, my man,” Boyd addressed him. “Why you so hard on my people, our people?”
“They ain’t nothing. That’s why. They does the same old thing all the time. Ain’t about nothing. Like the folks in this here bar. These same folks been coming in here for years, not really the same people, you know what I mean. But they been coming. Snifin and playin and scheming.”
“And you been drinking and watching them,“ I countered. “You better than them?”
“I might not be but I think I am. I know what it’s all about. I ponder my spots.”
“What spots?” Boyd asked while accepting his beer.
“Spots, man. Ways. Don’t study these jive cats in here. You have to study the big cats.” He stopped to sample his drink. “They say a leopard don’t change his spots, but he don’t even be thinkin about ‘em. If he did, he might think of a way to change ‘em. But the real point is he don’t be thinkin much period. That’s these folks around here. Now me, I think about my spots. I ponderizes ‘em. I just don’t do nothin. But I be thinkin mighty hard.”
“Every drinker is a thinker,” Boyd said, mostly to me. “And all see spots sooner or later.”
“Yeah,” I joined in. “Give me another beer.”
After a long pause, the old man, whose name was Rivers, started up again. “Everything go back to White folks.”
“Don’t go blaming the White folks for everything,” I responded. “First it’s the niggers. Now it’s White folks.”
“Which White folks?” asked Boyd.
“White folks period. Can’t forget ‘em. Let some White boys get killed by some Black policeman. They’d hang this whole neighborhood from a tree.”
I stepped off for the bathroom, the beer working furiously on my bladder. By the time I returned, Rivers and Boyd were hoisting a birthday toast, Boyd’s treat no doubt, to a woman at the end of the bar. The old man spoke.
“How old are you, sweetie?”
“Old enough to vote,” she offered coyly, looking at Boyd.
“You were old enough to vote twenty-five years ago,” snapped the barmaid, looking at me. I was ready to leave.
Boyd took care of the tab for me and I was on the outside heading for the bus stop. Had to run to catch the bus, a fortunate dash. Sitting in the rear was Ella Goodhope, who dropped fifty dollars on me that I had lent her to help her make a good impression on a date. She still refused to let her hair grow out no matter how much I teased. I had a big thing for her back in the day. She was a challenge. You know how male ego tells you that a lesbian, especially a fine one, is only one good heterosexual Big Bang away from conversion.
“So how’d it go? I hope the money was well spent.”
“Oh, it’s all locked up now. Let me give you my new address.”
“You mean you left the other girl?’
“Had to, Eric. She didn’t understand. I told her to let me play this new chick for the money. She’s got a couple of business operations underway and everybody could get paid, know what I’m saying? But no, she couldn’t dig the move. Got all jealous and stuff, so I cut her off altogether. Terminated. Don’t need nobody standing in the way of progress.”
“I hear you. But after all the shit we went through? You knock her upside the head because you catch her with someone else. I post the bail. She throws you out. I’m playing big time intermediary to get you back in.”
“C’mon, Eric. You know how it goes. Once weak, now strong.” Her eyes twinkled and she handed me a slip of paper. I guess I do know. Relationships are relationships.
“I’m glad you’ve calmed down again, doing the one on one.”
“It’s not exactly that, Eric. But I am being pretty cool.”
“Good. Don’t have to worry about you showing up trying to eat up everything I’m working on.”
“Eat up? I told you before I don’t have to operate that way.”
“What you do then?”
“Same thing you do.”
“But you just sat here and said you don’t.” She vibrated with laughter.
“Yeah, Eric. It’s people like you that make it difficult for people like me.”
“Ella, that’s supposed to be my line.”
A lesbian who denied giving oral sex. I bet Rivers hasn’t seen this one. Although maybe he has. We joked back and forth until I reached my stop. I hugged her and kidded her about being a gigolo. I insisted, as I always did, that between the two of us I was the nicer guy.
I was home only twenty minutes or so when the phone rang. I ignored it. It rang on two more occasions before I fell asleep.
 
 
4
Early the next morning I was in the laundromat. Alone with Viola, the attendant, and a skinny teenager in a tattered Sheetz cap. Fresh food made to order. Hope he can make that paycheck to order. He had his head buried in the sports section of the New York Post. I sat on the low ledge in front of the small Westinghouse machines looking across at the two humming Duplex washers that held my laundry. I was daydreaming. Watching the suds bounce up against a window. First a big strong wave of suds slid downward along the glass. And as the window was almost clear, another strong white wave leaped upward. At intervals a patch of blue material broke through the suds and rubbed against the glass. Then a patch of gray material. Then yellow. Then green.
A fast spin cycle. The machines appeared empty. Standing out were the back walls of the tumblers, black with small white dots. Fast whirling galaxies. Like something you imagine when you have a hangover. Makes you dizzy if you stare too hard.
Back to a slower cycle. Hardly any suds left. Just a tumbling of water and color and fabric. Color and fabric sparking thought. My purple shirt. Last time at Angela’s. I always call but haven’t been there in a while. Need to check if she was trying to reach me. Gray Knicks shirt. Al Walker. Viola says she saw the whole thing. Firing up jump shots in the park. Adina of the bruised neck.
Fast spin again. People coming in. A shopping cart full of clothes, wheels squeaking, passing between me and my galaxies.
Another slow cycle. Black. Red. Paul’s shirt. Is he in yet? Seen my note? Door of a Westinghouse slamming. Eight coins in the slot. Machine starting with a whirring sound then settling into the hum, the dream, away, away, mellow, away . . .
Paul burst through the door with his shades on. He had thrown on a top to match the blue and white pants but was shirtless beneath it. “You see I got your message. What’s up?” He sat next to me on the ledge.
“I got some old funny phone call. That’s all. And I didn’t answer the phone after that. Just some old funny shit that I’m trying to get a feel for.”
“What was the person saying? Male? Female?”
“Some dude. Saying I better watch out. Like that. And used my name. Spoke with a slow exaggerated monotone. Nothing I recognized. But I’m wondering if it’s a one-shot crank call or gonna be a nuisance.”
“You think it’s connected to the fight with Al Walker? Revenge maybe?
“I thought about that for a minute, but I don’t see how it could be. I didn’t do anything to him. I mean, if he’s got an avenging angel out there, it seems the store employee would be the target.”
“Maybe he will be a target. You never know. I wouldn’t worry too much though. Phone calls like this don’t amount to anything. The thrill, the power kick, is the call itself.”
“You stake your degree on that?”
“Not the whole degree.”
“That’s what I hate about your field, Paul. Every time one of you guys says something, somebody else says the opposite.
“Yeah,” he countered sarcastically, “like literature.”
A woman about thirty with a freshly scrubbed appearance entered the laundromat. Her sweat pants and baggy top couldn’t disguise a figure that others stuffed themselves in heels and designer jeans to effect. She pulled a cartful of clothes with two bags. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail.
“That’s the real thing,” Paul whispered. “Woman got it together in those pants and sneakers really got it together. No illusions. What looks firm is really firm.” He made eye contact and nodded a greeting. The returning nod was cordial---and left him uncertain.
“She ain’t really my speed,” he uttered delicately. “Got too many clothes. That means too much family. Besides, I spotted the ring.”
“Who knows what a ring might mean? I bet you don’t see any men’s clothing come out of those bags. Might not see any children’s clothing either.”
Paul whispered the inventory as she emptied her bags into the machines. “Two tee shirts, my man. What’s that look like Size 10? 12?”
“Those are hers, Paul.”
“You’re nuts. My little nephew wears shirts like that. She ain’t hardly getting all that topside action in no little boy’s undershirt. And look at the panties. That’s a little girl three or four years old. Makes the shape all the more impressive.” After dumping out more items that kept Paul’s count at three family members, the woman pulled an extra large, maybe XXL, tee shirt from her bag with ‘Virginia’ spelled out on it in Large orange letters. “There it go. There’s hubby.”
“Not necessarily. That could be worn as a nightgown.”
“Not those boxer shorts.” She had pulled the first two of several pairs from her bag. Appeared to be at least 40s. Paul removed his sunglasses and eyed me with mock disdain.
“You got lucky.”
“No luck, Eric. It’s my job to read the signs.”
It was time to retrieve the wash. Paul helped me dump the clothes into the cot for the transfer to a dryer.
“I’m gonna talk to her.”
“What about too much family?”
“This is innocent.”
Paul approached the woman, introducing me in the process. It went smoothly enough. By the time I was done drying, Paul had fallen in love again.
“She’s sharp, Eric. Aware. I have to find someone like that. Know who she kinda reminds me of.”
“Don’t say it.”
“Angela.”
I slung the bag over my shoulder and headed for the numbers hole. Simmons buzzed us in. Seemed like a lot of security for what was supposed to be a candy store. Not to mention several video monitors that provided a view of much of the block. Simmons and I went way back. Next door neighbors in our childhood. “What I got you got,” he would say. “Where I go, you go.” We were part of the Wall Crowd, a group that often hung out by, against, or on top of a brick wall at the end of a street that was cut off by the parkway. That was out training ground, our philosophy academy, our political science think tank, our debate arena, our field of dreams. If someone fancied a Mercedes, another would make it a stretch limousine. Then another would conjure up a limo with a sauna inside. Simmons would usually take out the prize, stay ahead. And he was ahead now in the eyes of most. Bumping around in his luxury SUV, sporting the honeys, pumping the music. Simmons was paid and partying.
“I come to break you today,” Paul challenged.
“You couldn’t break my daughter’s piggy bank.” Simmons sat guarded by plexiglass in a booth that opened onto the rear of the store, where his uncle handled the phone lines. “Bring that money over here. That therapy money spends like all the rest.”
Paul grabbed a slip and pen from atop a glass counter holding shelves partially stocked with stale candy. He changed numbers often, played several at once, and boxed them all. I played the same number every day and played it straight.
An elderly woman, Mrs. Beacon, somewhat bent-backed and wearing thick eyeglasses and a decent wig---but not her best one---beat Paul to the window. She had several slips with no bet bigger than a dollar. She tucked a copy of Big Rainbow into her pocketbook and faced me to give advice. Her squealy voice sounded like the one on that old Jimmy Castor record “Funky Worm.”
“Nine to lead. Hasn’t lead in seventy-one days.”
“You sure it won’t be seventy-two?” I asked.
“Make fun if you want to. You young’ns know so much. I almost had that darn thing yesterday. That four messed me right up.” That was the four’s job, I thought. To mess a whole lot of people up. It merely did its work.
She turned and handed the slips to Simmons. I noticed that his left thumb was wrapped in gauze and tape. Probably injured it pursuing one of his hobbies---carpentry. He made me a chess table for me, though we hardly get together to play anymore. He’s definitely ahead in our lifetime series but takes defeat hard. Just competitive that way.
Simmons pressed the buzzer to let in two debaters whom I knew. Both were in their sixties like the fighters they represented. Past 20,000 days for sure but in solid shape, one a tight exuberant middleweight and the other a rangy heavyweight.
“Foreman was too slow, man. You saw what Holyfield did to him Tapped him more than Savion Glover. So how was he gon whip Larry Holmes?” The middleweight glanced at me to approve his impeccable logic.
“With his fists, what the hell you think? Of course he was slow in his forties. I’m talking about both of them in their twenties, their primes.”
“Foreman was in his twenties when Muhammad Ali kicked his ass.”
“Holmes wasn’t Ali. And even Ali wasn’t looking for a rematch. He didn’t want to tangle with that young cock strong boy no more.” The heavyweight shifted the pressure to me. “Tell him, Youngblood.”
“Hard one to call,” I offered reluctantly, smiling. “That’s before my time. What you think, Paul.”
“Holmes.”
“Simmons. Holmes or Foreman?”
“Foreman.”
After Paul put his slip in, I pushed a five-dollar bill through the opening. “My regular.”
“Why don’t you write it out? Some people wanna be writers and can’t even write three numerals on a little old piece of paper.”
“Do an honest day’s work,” I chided. Simmons grinned and grabbed a slip.
“Yeah, Eric. I was trying to call you.”
“When?” I sounded too eager.
“Lemme see. What’s today? Saturday. Well it had to be, lemme see, Wednesday. I had two live wires. You would have liked this. I couldn’t get you, so I kept both of them for myself. I really hated to do that.”
“I’m sure you did. It’s all right, though. The only live wire I need is attached to my computer.”
“You and that computer. I’ll be glad when you finish this monster bestseller so you can come on back out the house. Tell him, Psycho. It’s summertime and the living is supposed to be easier than a muthafucka.”
“I told him already.”
“It’s not summer yet,” I noted.
“May as well be,” Simmons replied. “Hot as it’s been.”
“Soon as I bang this digit I’m gon get me a business just like these Koreans around here.” The middleweight Holmes supporter had shifted to economics. Aside from grocery store flare-ups, the home team resented Koreans for buying up the real estate. They blamed them, as well as the Chinese and Japanese, even the Dominicans, for ruining the housing market by overpaying on everything and driving up prices. Funny enough, the acquisition that irked them most was the purchase of a one-story building that had sat vacant for six years while the locals speculated about what a nice space it would be for a cultural arts or recreation center. It was turned into a private nightclub: Seoul Train. I, a definite nonmember, got to hang out there after I had met the manager, Hee-Kwon, while he was supervising renovations. We just struck up a conversation and he invited me by. Simple as that.
I felt sneaky about accepting.
 
5
There was a sleepy drawl in Angela’s voice when I called. Naturally she said come by. I nodded to the Haitian junior who had JEUNESSE de GETHSEMANE RETOUR AUX ANCIENS SENTIERS inscribed across the front of his shirt. I skipped the elevator for the stairs because my knee was feeling pretty good.
Although I sort of kept her on hold, Angela had grown on me, which is the way I think this love thing is really supposed to go. You sort of get used to somebody and if you can’t come up with a list of serious negatives no matter how hard you try, then the person got to be all right. I tried the head-over-heels way, that at-first-sight unbridled passion. And I know that wasn’t the way. Angela Chance, on the other hand, might be the right person to marry if I got up that kind of nerve again. We thought a lot alike and had pleasant arguments. So when you said “Good Morning” you knew what response you would get. When she cooked breakfast, she didn’t season it with attitude. But Angela didn’t know about my calculations because I didn’t express them. She didn’t press me despite being well known for her spunk. And we just floated along.
When I rang the bell, Angela promptly answered the door. She offered a cheek and I pecked her on it. Seemed a bit formal. But I went with the flow and followed her into the living room. She usually pranced about her place scantily clad, but she had on a housecoat with only the top button loose. It didn’t hide a whole lot though, hugging enough curves to tug at the string of my excitement. “I’ll take an afternoon of this,” I thought, as I flopped beside her on the sofa. Her long black hair, even in its wildness, framed her dark radiant face perfectly. 
“So what has you up and running around? I didn’t think you could free yourself from your computer.”
“I need a break. Have to come out into the world at some point. Folks call me sometimes and I don’t even answer the phone.” I paused to let the words hit home.
“Yeah I know. That’s why I don’t much bother calling you anymore. I figure I’ll hear from you sooner or later. “
“What, you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“Oh not at all, Eric. You know me better than that.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “Guilt isn’t part of my vocabulary when it comes to you. I’m simply expressing that I like seeing you have something you can get truly absorbed in. That’s not a break everybody gets.”
I was about to explain to Angela that I make my own breaks, that I pay deep dues for my choices, when a sonorous baritone call came from the bedroom. “Angela honey, may I see you for a second?”
She smiled a wink at me and bounced up from the sofa. “Be right back.” On edge, I called on every lesson on cool. I had to play the Mr. Casual role to the hilt.
I had to hand it to Angela. She played it straight up, no evasiveness at all. We made no promises, and “cheating” wasn’t a word for us either. When she returned, I didn’t want to ask, “who’s that?” But I couldn’t help myself.
“Oh that’s Alfonso.”
“New friend?”
“New man. You are a friend.”
So at least I knew how bad the damage was. I knew the lingo. If you were a brother into possession, friend was the most vulnerable position you could be in. Whenever a woman introduced a man to me as her friend, I knew I had a shot. The sister doing the intro knew it too. “Husband,” ironically, is a neutral term. You have to know the context to ascertain what kind of commitment came along with that tile. But when a sister designated someone as her M-A-N, you had no play coming. That was it.
“When did all this happen?” I tried to sound matter-of-fact, maybe even congratulatory.”
“Just recently,” she said, not really giving me the exact day, hour, minute, second I was, I guess, fishing for. It wasn’t supposed to make a difference. “Tell me about him. No, don’t tell me. I’m jealous.” I tried to ride the intended joke on top like a melody. Serious as an MX missile down inside.
“Be for real, Eric. You don’t have any stupid hang-ups like that. That’s why I can talk to you so openly.” She went into the kitchen to make coffee. Offered me a cup, which I didn’t want. What I wanted, I couldn’t have. She brought the coffee anyway.
“You know how crazy I am about you. But I think he’s right for me right now. Little older. Stable. Noble and ready, I guess. And I never feel lonely around him, if you can understand what I’m saying. I think you’d like him for me, and I think you’d like him period.”
I didn’t see the point of hanging around any longer. There I was, disfranchised, so to speak, and couldn’t get angry with anyone but myself. Angela wasn’t trying to crush me. In part she was doing what I helped free her to do. And how could I get upset at a woman who comes across a Mr. Right? I’m not one.
I announced my leave, pecking her on the cheek once more. I hadn’t touched the coffee. “Just remembered there’s a contract out on me and I have to find another hiding place.” Angela smiled in a way that made me focus on her full sensuous lips.
“Well, before they catch up with you, let me squeeze a favor out of you.” She was using all the wrong words. “This one was going to get you a call from me.”
“What is it?”
“Alfonso and I are going to the show that everyone is talking about. I was wondering if you would babysit?”
“Babysit? Babysit what?”
“My niece. See, I agreed to do it because my sister and her husband are going to the show, but then Alfonso pops up with tickets, some connection he has. Now we need someone else.” I suggested you, which she thought was a terrific idea. You know how she likes you.”
“I don’t know, Angela. I might be dead before then.”
“Let’s assume you aren’t. You’ll do it?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Give you a chance to practice some mothering skills.”
“Wait a minute. Don’t start with that. I’m modern but I ain’t practicing no mothering skills.”
“I mean nurturing, Eric. Nurturing is mothering.”
“Whatever happened to fathering? Or even parenting?”
“Inaccurate term. Parenting is mothering.”
Now look, Angela.” I was showing agitation for the first time. “You sound like you been hanging down at the Double X Literary Society with my mother. You all can’t snatch the language like that. I mean, I see the problem with ‘he’ as a generic pronoun or terms like ‘mankind.’ I’m all for change. But now you folks want to eliminate ‘fathering?’ And I guess the next step is that we’ll either be human beingers and human beingesses, or maybe just huwoman beings. Or not even that. The Random House lexicographers did list ‘womyn’ as an alternate spelling for ‘women.’ So we’ll just be huwomyn.”
“You’re overreacting. I’m asking you to babysit. That’s all.”
“Do I have to wear a skirt?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s your niece you say?”
“Yes. You know her.”
“Girl niece or boy niece?”
Angela sighed and smiled. “You’ll do it, right?”
“Only for your brother-in-law.”
“Around 5:30.”
I started to leave. A familiar longing appeared to register in her face. As I boarded the elevator, which was empty, I called back to her. “Stop lingering in the doorway. Better go in there and get some food on the table.”
What if Angela and I . . .  She already sounded like the one Mrs. Michigan I knew best. Wanted to be in motion and rooted at the same time. Questing and playing it safe. But polarities I understood. There was teenage mother, back to college, high school English teacher, closet poet Moms, and teenage father, handsome bus driver, beer guzzling, would-be fighter, boxing fanatic Dad. It all worked out. I liked Shakespeare and I liked to fight. Plenty folks in the Bard’s work took the ten count. The big one. No, the enigma to me was my mother herself. She talked this bold stuff to me about what women should be about, but Dad ruled the home. Don’t be a minute late with that dinner and better have it piping hot. Better not trim that long pretty hair and let’s get those blue shirts ironed just right. All that in addition to her own career. I took the shirts to the laundry once and she was way more disturbed about it than he was.
Dad died from cancer last year. Not much short of the 17,000-day mark. While they eulogized him with all the glowing tributes that certainly made sense to broken up me. I wondered how my mother, a rather stoic presence, felt. I recalled the old joke about the mother and son at the funeral during a glowing eulogy and the mother asking the son to go up and check to see if they had the right body in the casket. 
 
 
6
“Hi, Mom.”
“Now I know something is going on. First a phone call that was really about whether I called you. Now a visit. And all this before noon? It’s not quite Mother’s Day.”
“Of course not.” I gave her a big hug then moved from the foyer into the living room. Her perfume lingered in my nostrils as I slumped into a chair. “I got fired.”
“Fired?”
“Angela cut me off.”
“Oh. You saw it coming, didn’t you? I did.” My mother seemed to find this amusing.
“You’re probably in on it.”
“What an inappropriate thing to say,” she laughed.
“But it’s not really a big deal. I just have to figure out the best move for my immunological system. You know it’s rough out here.”
“That’s it?“ She scooped up a throw pillow and tossed it playfully at me. It was like a slow jab and I slipped it easily. “As long as you stay rubberized, it should be no problem.” She took off for her bedroom, attractive in a beige business suit and brown heels. My mother could wreak havoc with the heartbeats of four generations. 
“Where you going?” I tried to sound like she had to answer to me. Ain’t that outfit a little short? A little tight?”
“Hush, boy. I’m in good taste.” When she returned, she had me fasten her necklace.
“So what are you spruced up for?”
“Luncheon date?”
“I hope it’s a man. Hope you ain’t looking this good for one of those Double X gatherings.”
“I’ll handle my own social calendar if you don’t mind. In the old days, sons protected their mothers from strangers of the male persuasion.”
“These aren’t the old days.”
“No, they aren’t,” she replied flatly. Then she turned upbeat. “Your Dad was actually a fan of our club. He didn’t understand in many ways. Figured we were humorous. But he was supportive. He was a good person, and I’m far from crazy. He boosted me in his own way. Always did.”
“Mr. Where’s My Shirt?”
“Don’t be silly. There are many blind spots that go along with growing up. You were in the home but not in the marriage.”
My mother peeped anxiously out the front window. Too nervous for Double X activity. She took a seat, lit a cigarette. With my badgering she had cut down to less than half a pack per day.
“So how’s the book coming? We need something new to criticize at our meetings”
“I don’t care. It’ll stand inspection. And then maybe I’m out the game. I retire undefeated. Might start my own institute, or should I say anti-institute?”
 My speech correction work had paid me well, which was the only reason I could take a break now. A splinter group from the English Only Movement received a huge government grant to change the way that Black people in the ‘hood speak. They said this would lead to greater job opportunities for those who successfully completed the program. For a while I put my tongue firmly in my cheek and did the work. Later I started asking why the folks still didn’t have jobs. So I, speaking as properly as I could, was released.”
My mother ground the cigarette, only half smoked, into an ashtray. I started thinking about Mary Chao (she got the Mary part over here), a seventy-year-old student of mine when I first joined the institute as a part-timer in its Foreign Affairs Department. Mary had come for reading classes. She struggled through a story about Johnny Appleseed in the required elementary school text. Then through a story about the Hindenburg. I can still hear her pronouncing “dirigible” as durra-gib-ble. But Mary was so cool; I couldn’t laugh. She had staying power.  When I used to drag in from fitful sleep, concern would spread across her roundish face and she would champion the virtue of physical exercise. She would spring up and amaze me with her gracefulness as she tried to coax me through a series of katas with her. And this was after she had done a more extensive series of exercises at home that morning---before commencing her morning chores. However, I worried about how foolish I would have to look as a novice. 
Mrs. Chao complained often about the daily cooking and cleaning she had to do and how this made it almost impossible for her to study and learn English properly. She had been in the United States more than thirty-five years. Her husband was a distinguished physicist. Her son and daughter, both of whom she birthed in her early forties, were in graduate school. They were all into their careers and spoke English impeccably.
Sometimes she would talk about the old country. Anger rose in her as she thought about relatives who had been persecuted, which sort of jarred me because I usually went along with the left uncritically on China. Same with Cuba. I figured immigrants would always be anticommunist. The flesh and blood stories, however, made me think.
My mother fidgeted at the window once again, and I finally heard the summoning of a car horn. I rushed to the window, ducked low to get a good look at the driver in the shiny sedan. A man.
“Oh ho! No wonder we’re flitting about like a butterfly.”
“We’re running late, Eric. I can’t talk now.”
“Somebody better talk now. What about my proper introduction?”
“Go ahead somewhere,” she barked as she rushed out the door. I beat her to the car. The driver appeared to be in his early fifties. Handsomely so. Silver tinges in his dark hair. Sporting a spring tan. Expensive suit. But still coming up on twenty grand no matter how you sliced it. I extended my hand through the open window.
“Eric Michigan. Mary’s son.” His shake was firm but well short of a macho obsession. 
“Ronald Searcy. Call me Ron.  Pleased to meet you. Are you joining us?” He spoke smoothly. I didn’t recognize the voice.
“Not this time,” I smiled. He climbed from behind the wheel but I told him not o worry about it. I opened the passenger door for my mother, who was standing patiently on the curb.
“Have fun.”
“I’ll try. Don’t forget to lock up.” She waved me away as she lowered herself into her seat, with me halfway tucking her in. I closed the door and reentered the house. I remembered something that I had wanted to ask Dad. Never even thought of it until after his death, when it just came to me. Fortunately, my mother had the answer.
Dad had taken me to the park one day when I was eight or so. I was with a group of kids while Dad hung out by the basketball court talking with friends. Somehow they got around to their Lake Michigan jokes. I popped a boy in the mouth and several ganged up on me. I was wheeling and dealing for quite a spell before they began giving me a sound thumping. Just as they dragged me to the ground, Dad leisurely stepped into the middle of the scene and tossed them aside, but not too harshly, one by one. The question that came to me as an adult was this: How long did you watch the battle?
My mother said it was one of his favorite episodes. And he had seen the whole thing from the beginning. He let me handle every bit of what I could. Then he handled the rest.
 
 
7
I stopped by the numbers hole on my way home to check the lead figure---a zero---that ruined my prospects. In my apartment there was a note from Paul: Meet me in the park. Important. Before I made it out into hall, the phone rang. I answered on the second ring.
“Hello.”
“Dead.” Same plain voice, sounding like a tired person over the loudspeaker in an airline terminal. Then a click in my ear.
I walked quickly into my room, pulled some books from the bottom of the wardrobe closet, yanked out two pairs of winter boots, peeled back a comforter, and brushed the lid off the shoe box that held my .38 revolver. Or was supposed to. The gun was gone. I thought for a moment that I had misplaced it but promptly dismissed the notion. I couldn’t imagine that Paul would bother it; he’d be too afraid.
I finally decided to clean out the entire closet. I cleared out more books, mostly required college texts. My choices were out on the shelves. I was lifting the comforter when I heard a thud, not heavy enough to be the revolver. When I tossed the blanket aside, I saw that Paul’s ring had dropped to the floor.
Perspiration dotted my brow. But why run off to the park? Did the voice even faintly, remotely sound like Paul’s?
He was seated on a bench overlooking the basketball court. I slid behind him, noticing my black vinyl athletic bag on the ground next to him. He jumped embarrassingly when I poked him in the back.
“Don’t do that, man”
“Don’t live such a nervous life.”
“Can’t help it in America. You got the note?”
”You got the gun?” We both eyed the black bag.
“Your mystery caller, Eric. Been calling all day. It was like you said. He just speaks and hangs up. Usually just says ‘dead.’ But he did put your name in it once.” As this was sinking in, Paul continued. “I couldn’t breathe up in there, so I had to get out into the open. I’m just sitting here realizing that none of this makes sense. Me included.”
“Relax, Paul. Nothing’s wrong with you.” I sat on the bench in a way that forced him to scoot over. I was positioned between him and the bag. He was shivering although the day was warming up to match Friday.
“But who?”
“It doesn’t matter who,” I responded. I have to be on the defense and don’t even know where the play is coming from. First person roll up on me funny is the who.”
“I just can’t figure it.”
“You’re the shrink. Figure it. You know, I always knew you never deserved no fellowship to Wilson U. Must have been screwing somebody on the admissions committee. You supposed to do some astounding psycho shit for me and you come up blank. What’s the profile? Someone knows me and doesn’t like me. Big deal. But I haven’t beaten anybody out of any money. I don’t mess with nobody’s wife. I’m not important. I’m nobody.”
“Nobody till somebody kills you. Didn’t Biggie say that?”
“Very helpful,” I chuckled, not inspired enough for a laugh.
“It has to be this thing with Al Walker. That’s what I keep thinking. You’re being held responsible.”
“I can go along with that easily enough. Simple enough to get the number. But why the calls anyway? I appreciate the warning and all, but if I had to snuff someone, I would sneak the person.”
“Probably wants to be stopped.”
“I thought that was only serial killers.”
“You may be part of a series. We don’t know. You have to toss all the angles around. At least we know it’s close. And a solo job. That’s why he won’t speak long on the phone; he knows that monotone disguise won’t hold up. Actually, when you examine it all over again, it probably doesn’t amount to anything. The phone handles the frustration and that’s it. But, of course, there’s an opposite view on that.”
“Of course.”
Paul was loosening up, and I knew it was good to keep him calm. But I had my own jitters to handle. I reached for the bag.
“Paul, I don’t know if that psychology stuff is ever going to help me. So this joint stays with me 24-7.”
“Would you really shoot?”
“Faster than a politician can lie. This ain’t no joke.” I extracted his ring from my pocket and extended it to him. He reflexively glanced at his finger.
I turned my attention in time to see the latest neighborhood prodigy grab a rebound high above the rim and dribble expertly up court to launch a picturesque jumper from three-point range. The ball spun out and, as I was following it, he dashed in and propelled his 6’-6” frame toward the stratosphere to resoundingly tap dunk the ball over the top of two futile defenders.
“Wouldn’t do that to me,” Paul yelled.
“That’s ‘cause I’m kind to senior citizens,” the lanky youth rebutted instantly. Paul, and to a lesser extent myself, were mentors to the kid. Tried to look out for him.
“”I’m only twenty-eight,” Paul exclaimed in fake indignation. “I’ll make you get it from the line.”
Bring your psychological ass on out here then. Bring that other old guy too. Let me show you what the B-ball degree is all about.”
Paul declined the invitation with a laugh and explained that it was too hot. I merely waved him and fanned myself with my hand.
“They can’t be better that young, Eric. And he makes the grades.” That reminded me of the scholarship offers. I bellowed at the kid, who had just thrown an outlet pass.
“Make up your mind yet?”
“Not yet. But you won’t like it when I do.” So Michigan had been ruled out.
Paul and I slowly walk the blocks.  Two perspectives. He comments on how well the little girls can double-dutch. Says he going to get a double-dutch team together. I absently tell him how boss that is. My focus is on the rooftops that I would not ordinarily notice. A woman in red shorts approaches. Paul introduces her and she drags him off to the side after excusing herself to me. I usually make a mental note as to whether the woman is gorgeous or not, but I’m not thinking that way. The shorts remind me of the red dress worn by the woman who set up John Dillinger. I unzipped the black shoulder bag.
Paul nonchalantly negotiates his way through the stream of people. A greeting here and there. A quick handshake. I’m attentive to the voices, greet a bit, but have nothing more than a prefabricated smile for anyone. And I turn to watch them after they have passed, especially those with baggy shirts or carrying bags the way I was.
Paul waves to people on their stoops. I peer into the doorways. He ignores the alleys. I throw my eyeballs down each one as far as I can. He points to a brown Jaguar he likes. I see it before he does. I’m walking along the curb all along, checking out all the parked cars we pass. A girl shrieks as she gets doused with water from a fire hydrant. I tense.
Paul turns his head to observe another woman, one he doesn’t know. He says that if she looks as good going as she does coming, he would have to say something. A driver brakes to let small boys scurry across the street. Doesn’t pick up much speed even after the boys are clear, and I’m paying particular attention.
Paul steps off the elevator in a normal manner. I scrutinize the hall, wary of the door leading from the stairwell. He plops down in a chair. I check the entire apartment while trying not to be obvious. Eventually, I settle wearily onto my bed. Paul’s question comes back to me. Would you really shoot?
Dreamily, I remembered a summer night long ago when I was eleven. Just after we had moved into our new home. My dad sent me to the store, and as I was walking along a rough hand tightly clamped over my mouth from behind. A powerful arm encircled my neck and I was dragged squirming and kicking into a dark driveway, my mouth dry with the dust of total terror. With whispered vengeance, a man accused me of being one of the guys who stole from his vending cart. I wasn’t. I tried to shake my head in refutation but he was holding my neck so tightly I could barely move it. All I had going for myself was a stifled whimper.
Suddenly he removed his hand from my mouth and eased up a bit on my neck. If he had been tentative, I probably would have screamed. But he was so sure of himself, so in command, that I intuitively sensed that it was wise to remain under control. I figured that as soon as I could satisfactorily explain my innocence, everything would be all right. But he didn’t want to hear it. Called me a little bastard. Called my alleged partners in crime faggots. Complained about the bitches that didn’t know how to raise us. Said if he knocked my head off of my shoulders it would be the best thing that ever happened to me. Warned me to spread the word that he was not to be fucked with. Did all of this in front of his very own residence. The vending cart was visible at the end of the driveway.
When he released me, he pushed me and sent me stumbling back toward the street. As I gained a steady stride I began flexing and massaging my neck, trying to get the proper grip on myself. I didn’t look behind me although I was fitfully anxious to get a better glimpse of my tormentor. Then it dawned on me that I could link him with the cart. In fact, I had seen him once or twice but hadn’t played close attention.
I wouldn’t tell my father. No telling what trouble he would get himself in. That wouldn’t be the payback. It was on me to swap terror for terror.
I missed his takeoff the next morning, caught up with him down by the subway station. In this light he was a husky and pleasant fellow with a rather kind clean-shaven face. Far from being the tremendous ogre I had imagined in the dark. I was still afraid, however, as I waited in line to buy a soda. He didn’t seem to recognize me. Complimented me on my bike. When I informed him that my parents had given it to me, he said that I had nice parents.
I began spying from various hideaways and watching the details come together. His name was Johnson. He lived alone and entertained a lot of women.
Growing bolder and bolder, I tried to peep into his first-floor apartment one night and got chased away by the barking of what sounded like a small dog.
I gathered my fuel, made a round of the gas stations that closed early and squeezed the remains from their pump hoses until I had filled a milk container with a quart of gasoline. I sealed the container with black masking tape, slipped it into a brown paper bag, hid it in the garage behind our home, and waited for the opportunity that seemed as if it would never come. Whenever I got a store call, the streets were still full of people. Whenever a good rainy night came along to clear the streets, I didn’t get a store call. I grew so restless that I decided to make my own break and sneak out late one night.
The air was cool and invigorating, as brimming with enthusiasm as my mind. No mugginess, no fog, no contradiction to stark and precise action. Only my mittens were strange, I thought.
With swift and sure strides I arrived at Johnson’s. On the front door I taped the index card on which I had taped the letters of his name. When I opened the door, it seemed to creak much louder than when I had previously tested it, and the dog started barking even more quickly than I had calculated. No matter. I poured the gas over the floor of the vestibule and threw in the flaming paper as I backed out, a great wooosh leaping at me along with fire. And I was off and running.
I returned to bed a nervous wreck, shaky replacement for the heap of clothes I had left under the covers. It was only moments before fire engines were sirening through the streets.
It was a long way from there but not so far. I dozed off. When I awakened it was time to babysit.
 
 
8
We stood ceremoniously around the bed, all focused on the sleeping baby. The mood was light with solemn undertones. Angela was to my left. The father, Omar, to my right. Diane, to his right, broke the silence.
“She just fell asleep in the car. You know how motion gets to babies. I don’t think she’ll sleep long.”
“I hope not,” I said. “I can use the company.”
“Food’s on the kitchen counter. Remember, there’s extra milk in her bag. And diapers along with powder.”
“I got it.”
“You sure you’ll be all right?” Angela asked.
“The baby is gonna be all right, Angie. That’s what matters.”
“You know what I mean.”
The women really were no problem. If they didn’t think I could do the job, I doubtlessly wouldn’t have had it. They had seen me enough around the child, helping out, to be confident. I wasn’t so sure about the father.
“What’s wrong with these women, Omar? They ask you for a favor because they know you can do it. You agree to do it, and then they grill you to death about whether you’re capable.”
I felt like plucking Angela’s nerves. Instead I gave her the compliment she deserved. She was elegant in a plain style. Didn’t need either extravagance or vulgarity. She wore a denim skirt that unbuttoned down the back. Just the right number of buttons left unfastened. Just enough tease. Diane was sharp also, and I was rushing them out of the apartment. Alfonso, the mystery man, was meeting them at the theater.
I went back into the bedroom. With the baby sleeping so soundly, I could get some work done on Angela’s computer. I fired it up and typed: THE REVISED OPENING. I decided to work on description, contrast. Describe the angelic appearance of the sleeping baby and suggest the devil she must be when awake. The bed is a quiet resort for respite but doubles as a wild arena. I deleted all of that and began a story of a woman caught in between the older new guy and the younger old guy. I couldn’t develop it.
I sat mesmerized by the cursor. I didn’t have to think about Angela. There certainly were matters of greater importance to consider, and I sort of considered nothing.
The baby began stirring, then stronger and stronger. I was afraid she would burst out crying so I scooped her up and gently tucked her head in against my shoulder. I knew she had reached the stage where they were aware of who were strangers and rebelled with howls and yells. I wasn’t aware of my status. Angela would say stranger, but I had, in fact, been around. Fortunately, the baby didn’t start crying right off. Relieved, I brought her over to the computer and sat her on my lap. I hit a couple of words; she started drooling.
“It is brilliant, isn’t it?”
She reached for the screen. I had to balance her with my left hand. She hinted at a fit, which made me try to fast talk her and relax her. I told her to leave those words alone. All she said was ug-duh. And then she reached for the screen again, me restraining her my left. She needed a seat belt. With one hand I tried to get into a typing groove, but she reached out with a burst of energy to bang several times with both of her palms. Now she had her own phrase on the screen: n/ ,g az;. ’eiuyrr
I deleted it. I folded her arms and pinned them against her stomach with my left as I nestled her more firmly in my lap. I began to peck but didn’t get half a line in before she squirmed and broke out bawling. So the keyboard was hers. Her eyes were ablaze as she was drooling and ug-duhing her way along. I said her style wasn’t commercially viable, though it wasn’t the worse I had seen. When she became bored in a matter of minutes, I told her that she lacked the discipline to make it.
I took her into the living room to watch the ballgame---what I usually did when not writing. I sat her on the couch and she carefully but very unsteadily climbed down. I could tell she had been practicing this move. She braced herself on the coffee table, let go to walk, but couldn’t quite pull it off. She crawled over to destroy the newspaper on the floor. Crunched it in both hands. Went for the taste test but I interrupted. I put the paper on a shelf. She crawled over to Angela’s magazine rack and pulled out the copy of Spectator, the Wilson U literary journal that contained my story. I rescued it, placed it on the shelf next to the newspaper, and brought the baby back by the sofa. My favorite pitcher was in a bases-loaded-no-outs jam and I became absorbed in seeing if he could work his way out. He got the first out on a foul pop to the catcher.
The baby yanked out a copy of the latest Double X Bulletin, Angela’s favorite little periodical. She was salivating over one corner of it. I bolted over to save the newsletter also, then placed all the magazines out of reach. I knew I would have a hard time convincing Angela that the Double X Bulletin had been randomly vandalized. My pitcher escaped trouble with a ground ball double play.
I chose to get the baby some real food before she forced the issue. Popped the top of the spaghetti dinner and heated the jar in a pan partially filled with water. I arranged the food in her bowl. Dumped half a jar of spaghetti and a half a jar of peaches. Anybody old enough to know better wouldn’t mess with this. Even she rejected the first spoonful of spaghetti. She accepted the peaches so I knew I could trick her. First I scooped up a quarter spoon of spaghetti and then peaches right behind so they would be on the front of the spoon. I hit with the peach taste first. This worked.
“Thatta girl. See, you’ll be all right. You got it made. Handsome gentlemen waiting on you hand and foot. That’s the way to keep ‘em if you can. But don’t worry too much. You got over a thousand days just to get to kindergarten. Then you have might have to feel your parents complain about how much you cost. They’ll complain even more if they hand you some brothers and sisters. They’ll say they love you, but you’ll have to evaluate it. But the main thing is with these guys. Put a high price on yourself. Not that you trickin. It’s a question of self-esteem. And a question of racism on top of that.”
She wasn’t yet interested, hadn’t heard anything better than peaches.
“With all the violence our children witness firsthand, they’re showing up in clinics with terribly low self-esteem and with Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome. A doctor said it was like working with military vets. Paul could get more into it. Higher rates of cancer, liver disease, and diabetes for us are linked more to race and economics than to genetics. All this came out at the National Medical Association Convention. So if you can keep the self-esteem up you’ll come out okay. And who knows what the new chemical scourge is gonna be. Hear Paul tell it, you have to worry about the Rice Krispies Execution Plan. That’s a whole other obstacle to get over. And if you beat all that and don’t get rich, will you be mad about it? And what’s global warming going to look like? I know these worries ten thousand times over.”
After I finished feeding her, I cradled her in my arms, fantasizing that in some way she could understand what I was saying. She appeared to be drifting back off to sleep. Then her face grew tense and darkened and she made a soft grunting sound.
I took her back in the bedroom. Cleaned her, powdered her, put on a fresh diaper. She accepted her bottle and went back to sleep. I ignored the computer, opting instead to watch more of the ballgame. However, that didn’t last long as I began to feel drowsy myself. I turned off the television in the living room and turned on the small set in the bedroom. Propped myself up on the pillows and kicked my shoes off. I told myself I would listen to the game with my eyes closed.
The phone revived me. It was Angela. The game had ended long before.
“We’re on our way. How’s it going?”
“No problem.”
“Good.” She seemed hesitant. “We’re on our way.”
I lay back to listen to a movie. Angela awakened me. I glanced to my right. The still sleeping baby was fine.
 
 
 
9
I got careless. My bag wasn’t even unzipped and I was slow reacting to the shadowy movements. As I whirled and snatched loose the zipper, a voice I knew so well issued a simple call: Eric.
“You’re lucky, Paul. If I’m on my game I burn you. What you doing here?”
“Waiting on you. What else you think? Two more calls. First one was the same. Second one said ‘almost.’”
“Same voice?’
“Yeah, but sounded a bit fainter. Sounds kind of familiar but I can’t place it.  I’m just wishing too hard that I could know. One of us should be able to break this. I’m convinced this is inner-circle action.”
“Not really, Paul. My circle is very tiny right now. Me. You. Moms. Anybody else is on the outside and expendable. You’re expendable if you keep sliding up on me like this.”
“Angela didn’t tell you I was down here?”
“Didn’t tell me anything. She’s in her unreliable phase.”
“I saw both cars pull up; I told her I would wait down here.”
“Saw her new friend?”
“I met him. Shook hands and all that. He’s buzzing around here looking for a parking space. Hard to believe about . . .”
“Can’t sweat that, can we?” I sped up slightly, leaving Paul a fraction of a step behind. He drew even until I pulled ahead again.
 “Wonder how long they will come in. Two nights of warning, no action.”
“Crank stuff, like you said. So we stay with that. I’m just on edge because I can’t afford to guess wrong. Plus you know my doomsday disposition.”
Under a streetlight, I caught a distraught look on Paul’s face and could sense the microfiche spinning. He was trying to name this by something established on file. Match it up.
We walked in silence for blocks. The bag remained unzipped on my shoulder. We came to a corner, usually pulsating with night activities, that was uncharacteristically quiet. I looked up ahead a block to see that the next corner, usually quiet, was busy.
Then I noticed, directly across the street from us, an unmarked car. Which is a misnomer actually. It’s only called unmarked because it’s not painted police car blue with all the trimmings. But since anybody with even a noodle of brain knew what was up, especially with the salt and pepper team inside, that made the car marked, didn’t it?
Paul and I entered the bodega on the corner. I grabbed a tall beer and pulled my very modest roll from my pocket. Paul added a bottle of spring water. I started to put my beer back for spring water also. It appeared to be a big decision, so I just added another water to the tab.
“Que cuesta?” I fired at the man behind the counter. I had a habit of doing this when in a store run by a Latino. They never missed a beat. I never found one who wouldn’t spit the price back so fast that I could barely understand it. But I would have the purchase figured anyway.
“Hey bro, “ I inquired (like the Puerto Ricans say it, not bruh like we say it). “Como se dice in Español gloom and doom? Como se dice?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Yo no se . . . Maybe triste, tristeza y condena.”
“Gracias. Paul, it’s all about tristeza and condena. Understand that and you can chill.”
We crossed the street, were diagonally across the intersection from the police, when the shadows moved along the wall to our left. I slid my right hand inside my bag.
“Freeze muthafuckas! A wild-eyed desperado in a dirty white polo shirt aimed a silver-colored revolver at us. His arms were almost fully extended and there was an easily discernible tremble to them. Sweaty brown skin. I started easing away from Paul, widening the distance between us as quickly as I thought safe. Where are the cops? I let my water and beer drop to the ground. The beer bottle broke. 
“All right, you know what THIS is.” I never heard the man before in my life. Where are the cops? I could have handled this if they weren’t around As it was, I had to offer our robber a break.”
“Five-O right across the street, man. Sitting in that car. You don’t wanna do this now.” Had it been a ruse, he would have fallen for it. He looked apprehensively across the intersection. The truth he saw didn’t prevent him from trying to hold on to the bird he thought he had in hand, though the world population minus one could see that the better play was to look for two in a bush. But then you don’t have to pass an IQ test to go to jail.
He trained his eyes back on us. Trembling even more. Motioned for us to get against the wall.
“Okay. Okay.” I stuck my hands high in the air. What, they absorbed eating donuts? Paul followed my lead.
“Git them goddam hands down,” he ordered, being smart about the wrong thing. Gimme that bag and git them pockets turned out.”
Paul kept his hands up. I honored the second request---literally. Pulled my pocket inside out and let the bills fall to the ground at my feet. He became so wild-eyed I became fearful, thinking I had blundered disastrously. But he locked in on that money. Nothing but that money. If he could get that money off the ground and into a dealer’s grip, he’d have his carpet ride back to heaven. 
“Drop the gun! Drop it!” Finally. Our stickup kid went frigid. The White cop, brandishing his service revolver, approached him straight on. The Black cop circled behind. I zipped my shoulder bag.
Our robber lowered the weapon to the ground and then launched himself toward Paul, landing a punch to the side of the head that staggered him. The cops rushed him and pinned him against the wall. Cuffed him, shook him down, and recovered the gun. The White cop spoke to Paul, who was massaging his own head.
“You okay, pal? Everybody’s lost their freakin minds around here.” You can pick up your money,” he said to me. It wasn’t even within hailing distance of the kind of money that I might consider going to jail for. You’d have to multiply it to the fourth or fifth power. The stickup kid kicked at me as he was being escorted to the police vehicle. Didn’t rattle me. The cop spoke again.
“Listen, you guys. You’ll have to come over to the precinct. You know where it is? I can call a car.” Not for me carrying an unregistered firearm.
“My car is around the corner,” I said. That they were leaving and I still had my .38 was good enough.
Passersby suddenly emerged. Some came from the bodega.
“What happened, bro?”
“Guy tried to rob us,” I answered. “Crackhead. No big thing.” Alongside my version, Paul placed his.
“Guy had a .357 magnum. Thought we were holding something big. Me and my man were about to take him but the police showed up.”
“I didn’t see no .357 magnum, bro,” contended another man. I guessed it was a .32.
“You must not know what one looks like,” Paul countered. “I’m looking right down the barrel of the thing.” It was no romance to me. I headed down the block, freeing Paul to catch up.
“You’re really not going to the precinct?”
“Nah, man. Maybe I should do my bit, but I’m not living like that right now.” Paul’s face knotted up, then relaxed. He sipped his water but would be going for something stronger soon. “Why us? This is getting too crazy.””
“You’re around enough streets it ‘s bound to happen. You hit the lottery.”
“I don’t need this one.”
“You’ll take the other one won’t you?”
“Damn right.”
“Well, this one goes with it. It’s all connected. I want to hit no lotteries.”
“What were you thinking back there?”
“Just wondering where the cops were. I knew they were there all along.”
 “I missed that. You dropped that money and I almost dropped with it.”
“You did fine. You were cool.”
When we reached our building, I decided, to Paul’s consternation, not to go upstairs. I didn’t see myself sleeping, and sleep was the only reason to be inside. I was more in the roaming mood. Paul stayed with me. I couldn’t shake him.
 
 
 
10
Paul was not too comfortable sitting at a table in Seoul Train. He was more bothered than I by the plentiful glances, even downright stares. I knew my problem wasn’t in there. He sipped bourbon and scanned the club, but not in the normal scouting way. He continually refocused on the giant red and blue circle painted on the far wall, the fields of color in whale-shaped patterns, each filed exactly one half of the area of the circle. Red on top, blue on bottom. The balance of opposites. The symbol on the South Korean flag.
Black music enveloped the dancers. The steps weren’t quite as we knew them. But pretty good. Some of them could maybe hang out in hip hop videos. It reminded me of the time I stumbled across a Korean dance performance at Wilson U. I was dazzled by the twists and turns and loved the accompanying drum beat. The food they served afterward made me quit after one bite; I can’t be international just for the hell of it.
“You ought to check for these women,” I said to loosen him up. Paul trended toward nationalism. Every Black-White marriage or new Asian-American business establishment in Queensview gave him the blues. “Or are you worried about what the sisters gonna think? Another up and coming professional escapee from the race. If a White girl don’t get him, an Asian will.”  I chuckled and took a sip of my beer.
“They don’t have to worry,” Paul allowed. However, he added defiance to make his next point. “It’s not because of what they say. They don’t run my life. And I’ve never had any hysterical leave-the-White-girl-alone women chasing after me. So why should they call the shots? I just happen to prefer them anyway.”
A man named Kyung, in his forties and slight of build, joined us at the table and introduced himself. He said he worked with Hee-Kwon.
“So how are you enjoying yourselves. Okay?”
“I’m having a nice time,” I replied. “It’s relaxing in here.” Kyung couldn’t have expected that exact phrasing and looked puzzled liked he missed an inside joke.
“It’s all right,” responded Paul.
“You dance yet?” asked Kyung, recovering.
“Nah, I don’t really dance all that much. Paul here is the dancer. I mostly enjoy the music and the sights.” Sights he understood.
“Look at ladies is fine. No prejudice here. Koreans are good people.”
“These seem to be,” Paul proclaimed. “So far.”
“Any club that is private is prejudiced,” I said casually. “It’s prejudiced at the very least against the people who don’t have a membership.’
“Pay money, get membership,” Kyung countered. “You can get membership. You want?”
“I’ll think about,” I said. “I might.”
“Problems not the main thing,” counseled Kyung. My mother is hairdresser. Black customers call her Mommy. They say ‘Mommy, please cut my hair, please cut my hair.’”
“Really?” I nodded. “What if Mommy’s daughters went out with Black guys? How would the family react?”
Kyung smiled. “You have good humor.” He knew that I wasn’t talking about his mother or family in particular. “Some families would be positive. Some negative. But every group is like that, right?” He reached over to shake my hand.
“What about the Chinese?” I interjected. “How do Koreans and Chinese get along? I heard there might be some problems there.”
He remained the good ambassador. “Koreans have no problem with Chinese. They get along good.”
“What about the Japanese?” I continued. “I once asked a Korean man about the Japanese, and he spit on the ground.” I knew Japan ruled Korea from early in the twentieth century until the end of World War II. Kyung understood the historical dimensions of my question.
 “Well, that has been a little different. The history. It has changed some. It’s better. But still a little problem.”
  “Are you saying,” Paul inquired, “that Koreans accept Blacks more than they accept the Japanese?”
Kyung smiled again. “Blacks never control Korea.” He excused himself and disappeared through the crowd. We both sensed that he would return. Unlike me, however, Paul thought we were going to be offered some prostitutes.
“They’re getting these girls to come over from Korea and making them work that body, really work it, until they get out of debt, which they never do. Watch him come back with two.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“That’s because your antennae doesn’t work in here. Me, I’m just buying all that interethnic harmony. They probably have a KKKK, a Korean Ku Klux Klan.”
“And who did they lynch?’
Paul had to defer his comeback. One person, not two, materialized before us, a petite woman named Rahn Kim. She wouldn’t bust any shape stereotypes but had sparkling eyes and a pleasing face. She was a great addition to our table. About our age, her speech cadences were much closer to our own than to Kyung’s.
“Our friend Kyung said that you were afraid of Koreans.”
“Afraid?” Paul indignantly turned to his bourbon. “ I never said anything like that. We were exchanging views. Your friend thinks Black man-Korean women couples are going to be the rage. I don’t see that happening around here. I don’t think Koreans in general accept the idea of Black men seeing their sisters and daughters.”
“I see.” She continued thoughtfully, “Well, there’s no one Korean viewpoint. Many exist and they grow more complicated every day. We even argue about who is Korean and who is not. Your people have gone through something like this, I think.” Even Paul must have known by now that we were talking with no prostitute.
“Still going through it,” he said.
“It’s the same. I have a cousin who has been here four months. He says my sister and I are not real Koreans because we were born and raised in America. My sister has a White husband. My cousin doesn’t like it. But he says he understands it because she is not really Korean. He says that if she had thought and language like a Korean, a real Korean, she would not have married a White man. As for himself, because he is a real Korean, he has to have a Korean woman, a real one. My father agrees with my cousin but he accepted the situation, even supports it now. Fairly calm. My brother-in-law’s family was actually more upset.
“I guess they felt he wasn’t like a real White man,” snapped Paul. Rahn chuckled. I polished of my beer and reordered, adding a glass of wine for Rahn to my tab. “
“Let me ask you,” Paul resumed, getting to the angle he wanted to pursue. “I’m assuming that if your sister had chosen to marry a Black man, your family---mother, father, cousin, and all---would not be as calm about the idea. They have to see that as worse, no?”
“Different viewpoints again. My parents, yes, they probably would be prejudiced like that. They’re not against Blacks---they say that. But I detect some prejudice in their thinking. They favor Whites over Blacks. My cousin diverges. The other group doesn’t matter. A lot of Koreans think like my cousin. I have an aunt who dated a Black guy back when she was in high school. I think they really liked each other. Her father sent her back to Korea. Sometimes in cases like that, the girls were sent to other states where there are relatives. But she had to go to Korea.”
     If I read Paul’s mind correctly, I knew his next line of inquiry. But he didn’t ask Rahn about her own romantic history. Nor did I. Rahn Kim wasn’t a case to me. She was simply Rahn Kim. She rubbed her forehead slowly with one hand before she spoke.
     “We have to be careful with our generalizations. Remember the movie in which the Korean shop owner had to declare that he was Black to save his store from Back rioters? I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
     “I know the movie,” I said. Paul did also. It still comes on television a lot.
     “That was actually not respectful and not that good a joke. My cousin obviously objected, but I also did. We have to be who we are. Someone proud of his heritage would give up the store instead of flying false colors.” I had just thought the scene was corny. I didn’t take it as far as Rahn. 
     The conversation went on and on, all of it relaxing to me. We found out that she worked in the accounting department of Korea Magazine and was enrolled in the MBA program at Wilson U. She invited us to a party, a multiethnic one, on the following Saturday over in Flushing. She wrote the address on the back of one of her business cards. She also wrote her phone number. I tucked the card into my wallet.
 
 
11
     On Sunday morning, Paul and I walked into the National Pastime. Baseball is only that in name only these days given all the competing recreation outlets. But I still love the game because you don’t have to be pumped up or elongated to have a decent chance at it.
     Our primary mission was to obtain an answering machine from the electronics store because Paul needed recordings to do the deeper analysis that he wanted to perform. He said the answering device might induce the person to talk more. Studies indicated, he explained, that these types of callers often talked more to machines. (Other experiments, of course, suggested the opposite.) I felt any new wrinkle was worthwhile.
“Keep your eye on the ball, baby. Can’t hit what you can’t see.”
The little Latina lefty threw smoke that made the catcher’s mitt pop loudly. She impressed Paul and me right away and made us delay the rest of our stroll along Central Avenue. The next Mo’Ne Davis might be a Mexican from Queens.
“Stay in there, Patrick. Step to the ball.”
“Eye on the ball, son.”
     “Strikes, Isabella. Strikes, Chicita.”   
     “Hang tough, Patrick.”
     “Stee-rike.” The umpire’s bellow. I agreed.
     “Thatta way, Isabella.”
“Damn ump is blind, the idiot.” Now the adults had gotten too much into the game. The woman who spoke sat near us in a folding chair behind the fence along the first base line and sported red hair to match Patrick’s.
“Or else he’s cheating,” opined one of her companions. She was of brown complexion. “You know, I don’t really care, but it hurts the kids. Why hurt the kids?” The way she nibbled at her nails, she could never convince me that it was all about the kids. She was sitting next to a man in a Boston Red Sox cap. Dominicans like the Red Sox.
Patrick chased a high hard one and missed. The ball was really high, almost over his head. The third base coach, whose athletic claim to fame seemed to be that he was champion of the buffet, erupted. His hair was red like Patrick’s.
“Jesus Christ! I told you about chasing pitches like that. That was ball three. When the hell are you going to learn the strike zone? This game is for first place for Christ’s sake.” The kid hesitantly repositioned himself in the batter’s box, probably scared he would get the death penalty if he struck out.
We didn’t have that problem when we played for Dad. I had a good arm and tried to pitch like Isabella, but I was too wild and had to give it up. He wanted me to be intimidating on the mound like Bob Gibson, one of his idols. My mother adored Gibson because he was dignified and articulate. Anyway, Dad didn’t want me to be too intimidating. After checking that another kid I hit was okay, Dad laughed me over to third base. That put me next to our shortstop and best player, Simmons. But we would bump into each other all the time chasing popups, so I was shifted to first base. We never won anything significant---and didn’t care. All we wanted was a chance to go to a restaurant after a game, and Dad hooked us up a lot.
I surveyed the territory around us. Seemed safe enough. Not much automobile traffic or pedestrian activity. About as quiet as things get around here. But my bag remained unzipped.
Some of the kids seemed big, real goofy, in uniforms too small and burdened with coordination that hadn’t kept pace with their growth. Some looked too small to be on the field. They were dwarfed inside their uniforms. White sails against a green sea. Little folks of various hues dreaming for the fences. But attention spans were far too short for the demands of the game. Some were picking weeds in the outfield. Others looked at planes overhead. Still others played with bugs in the dugout.
The third base coach admonished his team. “Hey, let’s hear some enthusiasm for the game, some encouragement.” The team responded with a few weak choruses of “we want a hit.”
Isabella rifled another ball toward the plate. It was called a ball. Full count.
“I don’t think I could hit her,” mused Paul. A grandmother type in a floppy white hat shot him a look of scorn. I questioned the coach.
“What’s the age range here?”
“Ten to twelve,” he answered curtly. He turned his attention back to the batter at the plate. “Pick out a good one, Patrick.”
Patrick froze, not chancing a swing at all. Looking undersized and overmatched and probably feeling that way, he took ball four. I thought him fortunate because it sure looked like strike three from where I stood.
“Way to look ‘em over,” the coach approved. “That’s working the pitcher. Now you’re playing ball.” The kid heaved a huge sigh of relief, then seemed reenergized as he sprinted to first base. He snuck a glance at the crowd.
 Rico, who looked big enough to be fifteen, was next. He swung two bats for warm up, tossed one aside, and stepped forward purposefully. Paisan.
“Come on, Rico. Home run, Bambino.”
Isabella peered in with determination, locking in on the target set by her husky African-American catcher. She unleashed a scorcher that Rico swung at and missed. In a few moments, Isabella wound up again. Rico rapped the pitch on the ground right at the Chinese third baseman---and right between his legs. The spectators along the third base line roared as Patrick and Rico sped around the bases. Isabella threw her glove to the ground in disgust and called the third baseman an asshole. The shortstop, a dark kid I guessed was Dominican, jumped up in the air. When he landed, he ran out into short left field to accept a relay throw. The catcher stood in front of home plate with his mask in his hand.
In the first base dugout, three kids were going through agonized routines. A white kid banged the dugout fence with a bat. A Black kid threw a glove. A Black man threw his hat on the ground. I pegged him as the coach.
Isabella ambled over near the third baseman. “I told Mr. Jones to put you in the outfield and let your brother play third. That would have been the last out. You suck.”
“Fuck you,” the kid said with no real conviction, not that loud, drawn out, resounding and unmistakably challenging epithet.
If Isabella were unnerved, Carlos wanted to take full advantage. He whacked the first delivery deep but foul. He posed way longer than he need to.
“Straighten it out, Carlos. Hit a home run.”
Isabella drilled him straight in the back with her next pitch. You’re my kind of girl. My father’s voice crept into me. Carlos dropped the bat and spun around in momentary anguish. The coach lumbered in from third. The other sauntered in from first along with the Black man from the dugout, who now had his hat back on. The umpire peeled off his mask to inspect the situation. The kid shook his head up and down to signal that he was unhurt and ready to take his hard-earned place on the base path. He didn’t get far. Isabella blew away the next batter on three pitches.
Paul and I continued down Central Avenue, the streets becoming more alive. He soon was complaining about the businesses owned by foreigners.
“That’s half of it,” I observed.
“What’s the other half?”
“Somebody’s letting them do it.”
Another hot day was unfolding, a record setter in the making.
“A lot of sandals out here,” I commented.
“That’s what you see?” Paul asked rhetorically.
That was only part of it. Coming toward us was my old teammate Simmons. His left arm was in a cast and supported by a sling. His thumb was still bandaged. Of course, I grew alarmed, but it was never our way to be completely sympathetic on the surface.
I started in. “See you done flapped your wings in the wrong sky, hunh?”
“Something like that,” he responded good-naturedly. “Motorcycle accident. You know how nice the weather’s been, so yesterday I figured I’d dust off the bike and go for a spin. I wasn’t out five minutes when someone ran a light, made me swerve to avoid impact, and go flipping over the curb. Boom. I’m in the emergency room. Fractured arm.”
I begin to express genuine concern. “Did the driver stop?”
“Kept on going, man. No info.”
“How long do you have to wear that?”
“They’re talking five or six weeks. But they don’t really know. Whatever the case, I’ll be all right.”
“Your thumb was already bad. I noticed that yesterday.”
“Banged it with the hammer.”
“What I figured.”
“It’s definitely not my weekend. I know that.”
Paul wouldn’t let us remain solemn for long. “On the bright side, it’s an accident. I see a brother bandaged up and I immediately think about some type of hostility.”
“It was hostility,” Simmons deadpanned. “Hostility with an automobile.”
“You sure one of those high-powered party girls didn’t flip on you?” Paul asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Psycho.” I got enough women to fill every pothole in Queens, and not a single one is a problem. Baby mama not even a problem. Woman trouble is for Eric.”
I was stuck back on not my weekend. I certainly commiserated with Simmons on that point. Now I was jarred by his foray into an area that I definitely wanted to avoid.
“How we get on me?” I asked with injury.
“Ah, I’m just keeping everything real,” Simmons reassured. So he was the self-appointed recording secretary. It was his job to keep all the narratives straight. Taking a little perverse pleasure in the task, making a person squirm a bit, assigning a few masculinity demerits, were all part of the job.
“Check this. I was out taking a little stroll, a little exercise for the walking wounded. And who should I see coming toward me arm-in-arm with a dashing beau? So I’m looking at the guy, you know.” Simmons acts out this part, cups his good hand over his eyes as though he’s trying to beam in on a distant object with a telescope. “He don’t walk like E, but I put that thought out of my head. It’s Angela, so she’s got to be with E, right? That’s how I’m thinking. Makes sense, don’t it? So I get up on ‘em, you know, and I’m thinking, ‘damn, E sure is aging fast. Features even changing but they look good on him.’” He was mostly performing for Paul by this point. “Then I spoke and the voice sounded funny. But people do change. I can accept that.” Then he spoke with fake wonder directly at me. “But now I see you and you’re back to your normal self. It’s a miracle.”   
“That’s yesterday’s news,” I said dismissively.
“Wasn’t yesterday’s news a few yesterdays ago.”
“It’s been longer than you think. And it’s no big deal. I have already been married, so . . . “
“That’s your fault. Told you not to do it.”
“. . . anything else just isn’t that heavy.”
“Why you so rough on Eric?” Paul laughed.
“Gotta look out for him. Been doing it my whole life. Gotta git the fear out of him.” Simmons leaned forward and thumped me twice in the chest with the back of his good hand.
“How’s that?” asked Paul.
I knew no short answer was forthcoming because I could sense that Simmons was about to morph into full lecture mode. In his mind, he was holding court back on our favorite dead end street. After he paused for what he considered to be sufficient dramatic effect, he posed his topic question: why do men drink? I wasn’t in the mood and tried to ward it off. I gave him two reasons: that they were trying to forget something or trying to remember why they liked liquor. He brushed me off to lock in on Paul, whom he could tell he had hooked. Simmons then explained that all men drink and do drugs to cope with their fear of women. The ones who get high even when women aren’t around are simply addicted. The one you think don’t get high are just fronting, indulging on the sly. Simmons allowed that he had suffered through intimidation himself. It just so happens that he was the best example of how to get over it.
“Gotta beat the fear,” he counseled as he stepped around us to head up the avenue.
“Chill,” I offered as I hugged him carefully. “You can’t get no pussy two-handed for a while.”
“I’ll be all right,” he maintained.
When Paul and I resumed our walk, I asked him if it were true that a lot of men fear the one thing that they spend so much time chasing. 
“He could have a point, even a couple of points. His system isn’t completely logical, but some drinks get poured based on what he says.”
“Sounds strange to me,” I said evenly.
But strange was the new ordinary.
 
 
12
     It was busy inside the electronics with most of the hubbub generated around smart phones. A Puerto Rican asked a sales clerk about one the latest and most expensive models. Her English was very limited, but he gave her a rundown in rapid-fire Spanish that sealed the deal. Part of me was impressed by the Asian’s Spanish. He did what he could to be a full-service employee. I wondered if he would try speaking Ebonics with me.
     I watched one of those news programs on the six television sets lined along a shelf. I had enough bullets for them all. It was the same old story. The money gets screwed up. The people just get screwed.
     Our own transaction unfolded smoothly, standard all the way around. As we neared the front of the store to exit, I noticed folks across the street gathering in front of the sporting goods store with boycott signs. Some of their placards read COMMUNITY WATCHDOG ASSOCIATES. I had donated money several times. When I pushed the thick glass door open, I heard the chant full blast:
 
DON’T SHOP HERE
DON’T SHOP HERE
 
A slightly rotund man began to preach through a bullhorn. His processed hairdo was battling to hold up against the heat.
 
DO NOT SHOP WHERE YOU ARE NOT RESPECTED, MY AFRICAN BROTHERS AND SISTERS.YOU CANNOT CONTINUE TO GIVE YOUR HARD-EARNED DOLLARS TO PEOPLE WHO CARE NOTHING ABOUT YOUR WELL BEING. WE WILL NEVER BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY UNTIL WE ARE FINALLY SERIOUS. DO NOT SHOP HERE. (He dabbed his brow with the handkerchief that he held in his free hand.) ONCE AGAIN WE SEE WHERE OUR WOMEN ARE NOT RESPECTED. THEY ARE VERBALLY ABUSED AND PHYSICALLY THREATENED. OUR BROTHERS ARE TREATED WIT DESPICABLE SUSPICION. WE WILL HAVE NO JUICE AS LONG AS WE LET THE MONEY LOOSE. NO MIGHT UNTIL WE GET IT RIGHT. DON’T SHOP HERE. DON’T SHOP HERE. THIS AIN’T HATE. THIS IS EDUCATE.
 
     I didn’t hang around to get the specifics, not since I was rolling with a .38 caliber handgun. If it involved something deadly, it would have made the news.
     Back down Central Avenue we passed the ball field again. At bat with the bases loaded was a fairly small kid on Isabella’s squad, maybe Filipino, who skillfully dropped a bunt down the third base line. The blond fielder reacted quickly, beat the pitcher to the ball, barehanded it, which was the proper technique because it was his only chance to get the runner, and then gunned an errant throw far over the dark-skinned first baseman’s head. All three base runners scored and the batter wound up on second. I couldn’t sort out the ensuing pandemonium, but I imagined the fielder was getting cursed in a dozen languages.   
     We were almost back to our block when a car crossed over to the wrong side of the street and angled toward us. Paul and I scrambled, and I was about to draw when the driver screeched the vehicle to a halt right before us. Nigel, a painter from the Caribbean whom I knew from my undergraduate days popped out.
     “Mahn, you two mighty jumpy,” he exclaimed. The more animated he became the more his dreads dangled.
“Maniacs behind the wheel make us that way,” I replied.
Nigel sped past my comment. “Yeah. Yeah. Don’t tell me you forgot about the opening? I tried your apartment already and I was on my way. Now I’ve located you. You need to get a cell and stop being the last holdout. Are you still going?”
“Take it easy. I’m with it.”
I slid in on the passenger side. Paul had his mind on our new machine and promised Nigel that he would catch the show before it closed, a compromise they both thought was fair.
Interesting that Nigel became a serious artist. Or perhaps it was predictable. He almost failed Art 101 back in our undergraduate days. We had the same professor, Dr. Bloom, but we were in different sections. His class would be leaving as mine assembled, and we would talk about how he had dozed off again during a slide presentation. I think he slept through the entire Renaissance. Another guy in Nigel’s class, Arthur Fraime, a White guy, also snoozed a lot and carried a D+ average in the course, about like Nigel’s and not far below mine. They decided to do some collaborative learning to improve their lot; they collaborated on the final exam, which Dr. Bloom gave to all of his sections at one sitting in the gymnasium.
Once the exam was underway, Dr. Bloom, who was tall, gaunt, and ever vigilant, paced up and down the center aisle and occasionally angled across one of the rows. Shifty like a character in a cloak-and-dagger production, he would menacingly hover at select spots.  At one point, he towered over me for a minute or so. I sat in the end seat with the aisle to my left and empty chair (we were required to keep at least that much space between ourselves and the next student) immediately to my right.
The test wasn’t difficult for anyone who had been an attentive student. Even I could solo my way to a 70 or so. There were essay questions and I knew two cold: the Egyptians and the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff. That gave me 40 points as a base, and I knew enough about the other slides to scuffle my way to a 70 from there. I wound up with 72.
Neither Nigel nor Arthur could have topped 50 alone. But they both scored over 50 because Dr. Bloom didn’t see the slides that I saw.
Right after Dr. Bloom passed them on his rounds, Nigel “accidentally” pushed his blue exam booklet to the floor between him and Arthur, who scooped it up and placed it up on top of his own booklet and the extra one he used as scrap paper. He slipped his work over to Nigel in the same manner. Dr. Bloom came down the aisle and paused by them, unaware that they were intently reading each other’s answers and scribbling down whatever useful information they could. Luckily, their knowledge overlapped. When Dr. Bloom was back in front of the gym, they made a second exchange and passed the course.
We hummed through the streets. The face of the nation has changed nowhere faster than in Queens, making the sociology department at Queens College a plum job location. Along with large populations of long-standing ethnic groups and nationalities such as Irish, Greek, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, and African American, you now had African and Caribbean Blacks, Koreans, Vietnamese, Arabs, Uruguayans, Ecuadorians, Dominicans, and Colombians, among others. Jackson Heights, which used to be a Jewish spot, had been dubbed little Chapinero after a neighborhood in Bogota. And a guy in the newspaper remarked that when migrants and visitors from India hit town, they want to see the Freedom Tower, the Empire State Building, the United Nations, and then head to Queens for home cooking.
We passed a corner where a Black man I recognized furtively transferred something to the hand of another Black man in a red, green, and yellow knit cap.
“See that, Nigel?”
“What’s that?”
“Yankee Boy passing the drug baton to the West Indian.”
“I see it all the time. Both ways.” We were making reference to the debate about which group was superior, African Americans or West Indians. I never favored disaster, but if both groups hit bottom together perhaps they would rise together.
“What kind of art is going to come out of this?” I pensively asked Nigel.
“Don’t know, mahn.”
“The mixture. The tension. There’s enough angst and anxiety out here to produce art. I read that cultures have lives of their own---birth, peak, decline, death. When cultures are pregnant, writers, poets, and painters act as midwives to the birth of the new art. The Harlem action was going to happen regardless of which individuals were around because Black culture was ready to give birth. If Langston and Zora and those folks hadn’t been midwives, someone else would be famous because the Renaissance was going to happen anyway.”
“You really read that?”
“I did,” I responded in a firm tone.
Nigel thought the matter over for a block or two, then
he announced definitively, “I’m gonna be in that delivery
room.”
Before I made it to the part of the gallery where Nigel’s paintings were displayed, an assemblage of bronze sculptures captivated me. They were fashioned in an illusionary style suggestive of Paul Wegner’s Jazz & Blues Collection. There was a DJ at a double turntable. But in the sculpture his hands were attached to the turntables. There were no arms or shoulders. You had to imagine that the limbs were there, that is, after you first noticed that they weren’t. It was tricky stuff. Rising from the turntables between where the hands were attached was a slim curve suggesting the lower torso, broadening up into a fully rendered chest, neck, and head. The DJ wore an African medallion. It worked well, like all the pieces. Athletes were portrayed. Musicians. Writers. Political figures. A rendering of Malcolm X. Malcolm’s right arm was raised, and his index finger extended forward about head high, slightly in front of him and off to his right. His upper torso, neck, and head rose directly from a podium with a microphone. There was no left shoulder arm or hand. Again, you didn’t notice this at first. That was the key to the style: how little material could be used to keep the essence intact. Wegner did it with Louis Armstrong. He had Satchmo’s trademark handkerchief spiraling up from the base and connecting to the underside of the trumpet. His hands were attached to the trumpet, but his arms extended barely past the wrists, white cuffs, and traces of a black jacket. The jacket lapels came straight up from the trumpet valves. No torso at all. No body at all until we catch the bowtie, shirt collar, and frontal shot of the face with the famous grin.
     I liked Nigel’s work also, mostly abstract expressionism done in bright colors that seemed to be motion splashing about on six feet square canvases. A nattily dressed young African-American couple stood next to me sipping wine, the woman explaining: “See the energy in the piece? The diagonal lines at forty-drive degrees. So much energy.”
     “Look, baby. I don’t see any of that. I just see paint thrown up there. I kind of like it, but I can’t get all technical about it.” He pulled me in. “You know what I’m saying, don’t you brother? How do you judge this?”
     “I’m no expert,” I clarified. “I just observe and then I vote it up or down inside. That’s all I do.”
     “But you have some standards, don’t you?”
     “I was trying to tell you,” his companion insisted. “You evaluate line, form, contrast.”
     “But you still have to make a call, baby.” He encircled her waist and spoke suggestively. “What, the right lines make the painting right?” The woman sighed, playfully exasperated. The man looked for me also to respond.
     “I don’t know about all that. I just know that art has something to do with what you’re looking for. You can’t avoid being wrong to someone.”
     “That’s too subjective,” the woman asserted, adopting an annoying tone of authority. “One can be knowledgeable about the elements of composition and make informed judgments.”
     I remained diplomatic. “I don’t doubt that. I’m just not the one.”
     “I’m not either,” the man declared. He made a sweeping gesture to indicate that he was referencing all of the work in the gallery. “Thousands for all this? The sculptures are intriguing; I appreciate that creativity. But some of this other stuff? I need to throw me some paint around.”
     “I told you, honey. It’s not thrown around. There’s technique involved.”
     “Yeah baby, the throwing technique.” The woman sighed and shook her head. She raised her glass to finish her wine and announced she was going for more. 
     “Can’t appreciate fine art. I don’t know about you two.”
     “I appreciate whatever I can,” I smiled apologetically. It’s not what I would have said had she been alone.
     I wandered back over to the sculptures. The artist was being photographed in front of his work. He had on a black baseball cap, baggy gym-style pants, and a muscle shirt. He spread “thank you” all around and exchanged hugs and kisses with admirers, all while explaining why less is more. Nigel enjoyed his own buzz in another part of the gallery. He listened patiently as the art expert I met explained to him what he achieved.
     LeBron, or half of LeBron, leaped with a basketball in hand. His broad upper torso tapered to a thin line a bronze that extended down into the base of the sculpture. 
     Nigel approached to ask if I wanted to go with some of his friends to a bistro named The Side Theater. I had been there a few times. It was a place where some of the borough’s emerging Black cultural talent rubbed shoulders with a so-called cognoscenti that espoused progressive political talk, pretended to read more books than they actually did, and delivered their voting districts to conservatives. I chose to have Nigel drop me off at home.
 
 
13
Upstairs, Adina was bending Paul’s ear about the services that coming Wednesday for Al Walker. She wanted front-row status, even more, and the Walkers didn’t want her around at all. I set my bag on the floor and sank into a position at the opposite end of the sofa from Paul. Adina, seated directly across from him, turned to me. I hadn’t seen her since Friday and she didn’t look any worse for wear. I could barely notice her bruise. She wore a lightweight dress that fit comfortably, but not so loosely as to hide the fact that she was getting back into shape.  
“Maybe you can understand this, Eric. He just keeps telling me I’m wrong.” I considered her much too young---and she looked and sounded it---for this conversation. The movement of her head and hoop earrings punctuated her statements. ”So he’s just like my mother because she’s saying the same thing. But I do think I should be involved---pick out the casket and stuff. Not his sister, though. She says the family ‘thinks it best’ I stay away. That’s how proper the bitch said it, ‘thinks it best.’ She tryna front like she finished high school and I’m dumb. At least I’m gon git a GED.”
“She might get a GED too,” I said, just to be saying something. I didn’t know Al’s sister.
 “She ain’t doing nothing,” Adina insisted. Then she reasoned, “It ain’t really her that’s doing all the talkin. It’s that mother. She mad ‘cause I wouldn’t let Al or her see Jason.”
“I didn’t know she was cut off as well.”
“I had to. She dissed me too much. She didn’t care about my safety. All that mattered was what her son wanted. And what she wanted. She wasn’t even in favor of me having the baby, like I wasn’t good enough.”
“How good do you have to be?”
“What you mean?”
I couldn’t precisely say. In my mind I entered Adina in the bedroom Olympics working on a new life. So I struggled to concentrate on my line of advice by which I intended to make her focus on her self-worth in a way that started levels above an Al Walker. I also formulated some loosely conceived notions about how death can be illuminating, even brilliant, not just dark. It contains messages for you, or at least for her.
I landed on a benign declaration. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“No. You also think I’m incorrect.”
“Not in those terms. Look Adina, you started good enough. Now it’s about getting better. It’s definitely not about being a star at Morgan’s Funeral Home. Anybody who don’t take no mess off nobody is headed in the right direction.”
“I get that.” But her response only feinted toward a logical connection with me. She added with the defiance of one whose mind was made up, “And I ain’t taking no mess offa Al’s family either. I have friends going to the funeral. What it gon look like for me to be sittin in the back with his baby?’
“But you don’t have to take the baby.” I sounded weary to myself. “You don’t have to take you. That’s what people are trying to make you see.”
“But I have his baby.”
“You have your own baby.”  
“You don’t even sound right.”
But I don’t think I sounded juvenile. The more she talked, the more she extinguished my desire. I charged bluntly, “Al would have killed you and the baby too if he had staid around long enough.”
Her face sagged. “That’s kinda cold.” She seemed seriously wounded, but I couldn’t be concerned. There’s nothing wrong with the truth.
She spoke naively. “We had problems but I loved him and everything. Al was on drugs. That was the main problem.” She regained some spunk and added, “It was the drugs.”
“It was Al,” Paul disagreed promptly. “Drugs don’t change people that much. They can make people thieves to get more drugs. That they do. But when it comes to battering females, that’s in the basic personality already.”
Adina usually would have reached the limit of her patience by then. But she sat composed, eyeing Paul and me. We were the wayward thinkers.
“I don’t think guys understand this kind of stuff,” she said in a thoughtful tone. “You all just don’t know how it is.” Then she spoke with an air of finality. Her solemn vow: “I’ll tell you one thing. I’ll be right up front at that funeral. And them bitches better put us in the obituary too.”
The phone rang and Paul answered it on the first ring before the machine could kick in. I turned to Adina.
“We’re just trying to look out for you.”
“You two always say that. Think you gon be somebody’s big brother. I don’t need no big brother.” She held my gaze. “You don’t tell them old women you gon be they big brother.”
“I don’t know any old women.”
“You know what I’m saying.” Of course, I did. I also hoped that at some level Adina would understand what we said to her. She was her mother’s fourth child, first girl. The scorecard on the sons? Cemetery 2, Prison 1.
Paul rejoined the conversation with a proposal that provoked laughter. “We’re going to set up a screening committee for you. Any guys have to check with us first.”
“That sound like some old-fashioned stuff, bringing somebody to a committee.”
“Actually it’s new-fashioned,” explained Paul. “And it’s the wave of the future. We’re screening dudes; if they don’t come up to standards, they are going to get vetoed.”
“Vetoed? You can’t veto no niggas I’m talkin to.” She followed with the most succinct phrase of ridicule: “You trippin.”
“Maybe,” said Paul. “But that’s the way it’s going to be.”
“Watch us,” I affirmed. “We see homeboy heading for the crib, we interviewing him on the spot. We see you with somebody in the street, we asking for a progress report. If it’s not satisfactory, he has to step off.” Paul and I exchanged high fives.
Adina good-naturedly endured the debate. “You can’t pick no guys for me. I definitely ain’t with that. What about my freedom?”
“You been having freedom,” I cut in. You’ve had thousands of days of freedom and it’s got you sitting here asking us about your freedom. You don’t need no more.”
Adina eventually grew bored with that aspect of the conversation. She switched to a reflective pose. “I’m not thinking about guys right now anyway.”
“And when you do,“ Paul asked softly, “how will you pick them?”
“You know.” Adina suddenly seemed bashful. I had never seen this scrappy seventeen-year-old that way. “They gotta be handsome and fine, have a nice car and stuff. Can’t be spending all they time around here.” Except maybe for the handsome and fine part, she wasn’t describing another Al. Then she amended, “They don’t really have to be that fine. Just all right. Kind of fine. But they do have to be positive.”
“Okay,” Paul intervened. “You get somebody positive. You get the dream. You choose the dream. So how do you get the dream to choose you?”
Adina grasped the question but replied in a subdued tone, “I’m not worried about that.” Then she announced somberly, “I think I want to go to college. Not for no dream guys. I have to protect Jason.”
“Not a bad idea,” Paul encouraged.
“But it takes so long,” Adina backpedaled.
“It’s just days,” I said.   
 
14
I relaxed my grip on my bag and let it dangle from my shoulder. Mr. Searcy rose from the sofa as we entered the living room. He was tall with a tightly wound frame that indicated he knew his way around a health club. His grip was firm but, again, not overdone. After he shook hands with Paul, they both sat on the sofa. I slumped into the same chair I had been in the day before. I zipped my bag and placed it on the floor.
“Can I get you two to something to drink?” my mother asked, dressed in a belted dress, beige with a faint flowery pattern. She wore modest heels.
“I’ll take a macaroni and cheese cocktail,” Paul answered. “It sure smells good.”
“Thanks. But it’s not quite ready. And you’re not getting much of it anyway. We have to keep that weight off now that you have achieved such a dramatic loss. How about a sip of wine? Just a sip.”
Mr. Searcy, dapper in dress pants and shirt without a tie, was already into a scotch on the rocks. He began steadily, “Your mother tells me you’re a writer. What do you write?” I wanted to say that I write writing and be done with it. I felt faint and tired and wanted to put civility on hold. Besides, I figured my mother had briefed him. I ultimately chose the conventional route.
“I’ve written mostly short stories. I’m trying a long one now. I’ll finish it when my mind is right. That’s why I room with Paul. Psychology is his field and he’s my therapist.” Mr. Searcy studied me, trying to decide how much stock to put into what I was saying.
“I’d like to see your work. Have you published anything lately?”
“No. Not lately.”
“Why do you write?”
“Noise.”
 Mr. Searcy fidgeted with his drink, stirred it with his finger and drew attention to his diamond ring. Amusement flitted in Paul’s eyes.
“How does noise make you write?” Mr. Searcy asked.
“Because there’s a lot of it. With all the noise around, I don’t get to say everything I might desire. You know, it’s a heavy competition of sounds. When I write I can hear myself think, as they say. Then I can go on and articulate something. And if I get someone to read me, then I got my echo working. I end up fighting my way into the noise.”
“Oh. I think I get it.” If he’s serious, I need a million like Mr. Searcy at the bookstore, I thought. He seems to have no problem with my style. Read me, pay me, and retire me. That’s what the Searcys of the world could do. He turned to Paul.
“You do actual therapy?”
“That’s the only kind they have, I think.” Paul also knew that the mission was to test Mr. Searcy’s mettle. Check him out. “I mostly work with business clients right now suffering from recession depression. They’ve lost a bundle and can’t cope. I have one guy who was a multimillionaire and a sailing freak. He had a dozen yachts. When he went into bankruptcy, he had to get rid of them all. Along with a few houses. So then he was in an apartment too small for his family. He proceeded to decorate the apartment like a boat. He taped the windows so they looked like portholes. He only called his wife and children ‘mate’ and was ready to punish them if they say “aye, aye, captain.’ He’s coming around though. We’re still working on the ‘aye, aye, captain’ bit. What’s your line of work?”
“I’m in real estate. I broker some. I own some properties.”
“Real estate. I may have to treat you next.” Mr. Searcy laughed robustly along with Paul. I didn’t yet see a reason to disqualify him.
“For now, I’m managing quite well. There’s enough movement in the not-so-high scale holdings and in certain multi-unit dwellings. But tell me, a guy really thought he could turn his apartment into a boat?”
“That’s nothing. There was another guy who would run his family out, string a tennis net across the living room, and wear himself out hitting balls against the wall all day. He refused to use courts open to the general public.”
My mother bounced back into the room with wine for Paul and me. I barely touched mine. I focused more on the idea of eating because anything less than a hearty effort would raise suspicion.
Establishing claim to a chair at one end of the table, I motioned for Paul to get the other end. My mother and Mr. Searcy would sit across from one another. I helped set out the food: Roast beef, macaroni and cheese, yams, string beans, corn bread, and iced tea. We complimented the chef twice, once while contemplating the spread and again once we dug in. We used the standard line about her putting her foot in it. You know how we do.
Paul went full bore, explaining, as he loaded his plate, how extra gym sessions were forthcoming. Mr. Searcy almost matched his vigor. My mother was stylish and deliberate, but still a bit in front of me. She spoke to Paul.
“Have you decided whether you’re going back to school?”
“I’m still considering it?”
“Paul might pursue the doctorate,” she informed Mr. Searcy.
“I think that’s commendable,” her guest conceded. “He certainly meets interesting people in his endeavors and seems passionate about the contribution he can make.”
My mind was on the scream that jumpstarted my weekend and the phone calls that ruined it. I remembered the dog and the bullets and tangling with Al. I hadn’t a clue and not much of an investigative technique. Just be quick enough and be sincere about pulling the trigger.
“You’re not eating the way you normally do. You okay?”
“I’m all right.”
“You look worried.”
“Tired is all. Trying to put this story together. Haven’t been sleeping much. Plus the heat, this crazy early summer. You know I don’t each much when it’s hot.” My father was the same way. 
“You didn’t mention that someone was killed Friday night.”
“Store holdup. This guy named Al.”
“Drugs?”
“You don’t need another guess.”
“Did you know him?”
“He was from the next block. Has a baby by this young girl in our building. Paul and I try to look out for her.”
“Oh really?” My mother spun her head from me to Paul. “How old is this young girl?”
“Seventeen.”
“Young.” Her brow knitted as if she were straining for the answer to a problem. She bent forward and gingerly touched her mouth to the back of her hand and let it linger there for a moment. Then she straightened up and said matter-of-factly, “But then seventeen isn’t that young nowadays.” After a few forkfuls, she spoke confidently. “It’s a good thing that you two help this girl. There are things we can do for ourselves.”
“That’s for sure,” said Mr. Searcy, trying to get back into the flow. “Our people need to solve more problems themselves. Our people need more initiative instead of expecting government to do everything.”
I didn’t quite understand why Mr. Searcy swung the conversation in that direction. It was maybe his first misstep. Paul and I didn’t intend to examine too harshly. There’d be no diatribe at the dinner table as in American History X. No fist flying as in Song of Solomon or slaps around the fireplace as in The Third Generation.
“I don’t think people expect much from government,” Paul challenged without an overly biting tone. “The government can barely take care of itself. They’re letting financiers call the shots and then they blame the people when the hustle falls through. Like we ever caused a fiscal crisis. Seems to me that Black people have always solved financial problems in America, all the free, cheap, backbreaking, and sometimes strike-breaking labor we have provided.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Paul. I‘m not saying things aren’t wrong with the system and that we haven’t been victimized. But at the same time you can’t keep pumping money into entitlement programs that kill incentive.” He stated the proposition like it was self-evident. But Paul wouldn’t back off.
”Isn’t room for everybody’s incentive. Street corner economists know this and academic ones do also.”
“But there indeed are jobs,” Mr. Searcy countered, still level-headed. “People just don’t want them. Especially these kids. Ask them to work in a hamburger joint and they frown for days. They don’t want to start at the bottom.”
“They already live on the bottom.” Paul issued his retort with a mischievous smile. “We preach this work ethic while we toss millions to corporate giants and war merchants.”
“I’m not contending that isn’t true. But you have to be realistic, and you can’t merely excuse people---“
“I’m not excusing anyone, Mr. Searcy. I’m trying to explain them.”
Paul was way ahead on my card. Some referees would have stopped the match. Mr. Searcy might even have been looking for a way to bow out gracefully.
“All I know,” he offered diplomatically, “is that when I was a kid I delivered papers, shoveled snow. That’s how we came up. I don’t see that now. If you want something, you should work to get it. If you have no get up and go, don’t mess with the next man’s thing. I have several apartment buildings, and tenants destroy things for no reason. Kids running wild just tearing up the place. Here it is, they have a Black landlord and they treat me like this.”
“You discount the rent because you’re a Black landlord?” I asked.
“My rents are market rents,” he defended.
“Then you’re just a landlord.”
Mr. Searcy seemed unnerved and searched my mother’s face for help. She just laughed and told him, “You’re being officially welcomed to the dinner table.”
Paul commenced with the kinder and gentler approach. He was definitely enjoying himself and seemed nowhere near as pensive as I was. Up until that point, I hadn’t thought he could be calmer under the pressure of street life than I could. “I’m no knee-jerk liberal, and I’m not advocating dependency. We definitely need to be about a lot of self-help. The magic is most assuredly in us. But you can’t forget about Oz. While we’re running around in the ‘hood, there’s people behind curtains who love this social pathology parade. Their psychology affects our psychology. We have to unravel all of the various combinations. You know, the first social science course I took in school was Introduction to Sociology. The professor told us that the sociologist is concerned with what is going on. That was it. I wanted to get more into explaining behavior. I wanted the inlook and not just the outlook. What most policy makers don’t get. Or if they glimpse it, they too lightly dismiss it because too much would have to be called into question. But before I dump on my own people, I would point out that no group one hundred fifty years out of bondage has ever done any better.” 
“I have to go along with Paul,” my mother declared. I knew she would. I was raised on talk like this. “There’s much we can do, but there’s much designed to stifle us. I don’t know why they even pretend to have a real anti-drug initiative.”
Mr. Searcy shuffled a bit verbally. “I don’t totally disagree. At any rate, it’s refreshing to hear young intelligent folks whether I completely endorse what they are saying or not.” Then he addressed Paul and me politely, “I’d love to have this discussion with you two when you reach my age. We’ll see how much you change.”
“I might change,” I said in a conciliatory manner. “And I might not.” I thought about Boyd. I don’t know that thinking about spots will cause a change. However, I understood Mr. Searcy. He played the strongest card he had within the game of civility that we had constructed. And I admired the guy; he could hang out. When we all resumed talking, we went for the smaller stuff---the weather, sports. I had a surge of appetite and did particular damage to some yams. 
 I later helped my mother to clear the table. Mr. Searcy offered to assist with the cleanup but I waved him off. In the kitchen, I gave my preliminary stamp of approval. “Seems like a nice guy, Mom.”
“Maybe.” She had that faraway look in her eyes.
“No Mom, really. You met him at a club function?”
“Yes,” she said absently. “It was just an idea.” 
“Not such a bad idea” I consoled, embracing her firmly. 
 
 
15
I awakened late Monday morning from a deep sleep so refreshed that I felt I might write something more than a mere book. I would start a whole new genre, like Equiano with the slave narrative, like Capote with faction. The pre-autobiography. You start the book at the moment you were conceived and develop story lines around your parents and whatever else you wanted to explore. On the last page you’re coming out of the birth canal.
I noticed the message light on the answering machine and retrieved the messages. A call from that airline terminal voice again. The first we knew of since Saturday night.
“Soon.” I tensed a bit. I had been trying to convince myself to dismiss this guy, but he wouldn’t disappear. A second message worried me even more. Same voice. “Paul, too.”
Why bring him onto it?
The last message was a business-like one from Angela. “Eric, I need to talk with you.”
I dressed and went out. The heat wave still in effect. I bought a newspaper and went to play my number. Simmons wasn’t there. His cousin Andre, who usually worked at the family’s other betting parlor, filled in. He told me Simmons had gone to the doctor because his arm was aching unbearably.
From the numbers spot, I headed for my mother’s house to borrow the gun my father left behind. I would use it and lend mine to Paul. I took the box down from a shelf in the bedroom closet, placed it on the dresser, and removed the holstered .38. Dad had used that gun to teach me to shoot. He collected old, thick carpets to roll up for targets, and every so often we’d take a few shots in the basement. Mom also. Dad made sure she would be bad news for a burglar or anyone else she deemed dangerous to her person.
I slid my fingers along the beige, soft-leather side of the shoulder strap. My fingernails played around the shiny silver buckle, counting the buckle holes in the strap. Six holes. My fingers moved along the strap again until they reached a cluster of stitches. Brown thread. These formed a rectangle with two inscribed, intersecting lines that divided the rectangle into four triangles. I stroked the pattern slowly and gently. I counted the stitches in this arrangement. Eighty-four stitches. Then I ran my finger along the reverse side of the strap. It was of a much coarser hide, like the inside of a well worn baseball glove. Next I grabbed the back strap, a strip of white elastic with a thin line of yellow thread running vertically down the center.
I slowly removed the gun from the holster and carefully laid it upon the dresser. It was loaded. I stared at the dark blue steel for several seconds before I picked it up again. I tilted the barrel upward, moving my head delicately, as if balancing a jug of water, to a close angle where I could see down the barrel just enough to make out the curved metal tip of a bullet. I moved a touch more, the goldish glint becoming a full moon. Even the scratches on the tip suggested the roughness of the actual lunar surface. I jerked my head back and stuffed the gun back into the holster and into my bag. I didn’t think I could lose.
I read the paper on the way home---not the most security-conscious way to walk, but you can’t be scared all the time. Two dozen mutilated bodies, beyond recognition the reporter said, were found in an abandoned building in Queens believed to be used as a drug den. Evidence suggested it had been a coordinated attack. The details of “other shocking developments” could not yet be released.
When the secretary at Paul’s job informed me that he was working in the field and not expected back, I left a message just in case---and one on his cell. I fumbled around the apartment, ate a sandwich, spent an unproductive spell on the laptop before opting to watch television.
Caught an old Al Pacino movie right at the beginning. City scene. A sizzling summer day, but not much hotter than the ones we had this spring. Men on sidewalks in beach chairs. A shot of a cemetery. A bank. The robbers roll up at closing time and call themselves taking charge. They wander all over the place, cameras taking enough pictures to make a portfolio the size of an encyclopedia. They’re in more than two minutes before Sonny pulls the shotgun. The young boy chickens out and Sonny lets him go. After five minutes, he decides finally to spray the cameras. Another minute before they find only $1,100 in the vault because they had missed the pickup. Sonny burns bank records, the smoke is spotted outside, and soon an army of police appear. Sonny tries to convince Sal there’s a way out, maybe by demanding a jet. Sal has achieved something very difficult. He’s dumber than Sonny. Sonny asks him if there was any special country he wants to go to. Sal says Wyoming. I turned off the television and went back to my laptop.
I started working on the pre-autobiography, making surprising progress. Mom and Dad strolling along holding hands talking about the repression and state of emergency in South Africa. Reagan in the White House trying to speed up the development of weapons systems. The jobless rate soars. Harry Belafonte thinking about running for the United States Senate. Folks trying to figure out the real reason the Challenger exploded seventy-three seconds after liftoff. Watching Michael Jordan score sixty-three points in the playoffs against the Boston Celtics. Microsoft goes public. The New York Mets go on an eleven-game winning streak that makes the best pregnant fan they have ecstatic. They ride the momentum of the streak to a great season and their most recent world championship.
The doorbell rang. Usually this was an inside move. An outsider more likely would ring the buzzer downstairs.
“Who is it?” I barked.
“It’s me.” I recognized the voice.
“Me who?”
“You know who this is. Open the door.”
“Identify yourself first.”
“Who’s the prettiest girl you know?’
“Not you,” I said as I let her in.
“You knew who it was,” Adina said casually. Wearing loose jeans and an oversized sweatshirt, she looked tomboyish as she started toward a seat at the dining room table.
     “No I didn’t. Lots of people ring this doorbell.”
“Those old women.”
Her stay was brief. She was looking for Paul although she didn’t disclose why. She did allow that she probably wouldn’t attend Al Walker’s funeral.  
“It’s like you and Paul said. I don’t need to go.”
“We didn’t say that,” I corrected. “We just said keep some style about yourself.”
“I want to get out of here,” she said wistfully. I wondered for a flash what it would mean to do it for her. Take her and her son and make it work. Then I laughed inside; that thinking would get me hooked up fifty times a year. 
After Adina left, I put in more time on the laptop until it was nearly dark. I still hadn’t heard back from Paul. His phone went straight to voicemail, so I left another message. I pulled back from the screen and hit the commands to save my document. I opened the blackjack game to kill some time and soon yearned for the real thing.
I grabbed my bag and hit the streets.  
 
 
16
The building on Peak Street was flanked by abandoned storefronts and didn’t look much better itself. The front window was sloppily covered, from the inside, with black paint while the wooden frame was rotted and unpainted. The only clue to the glory days lay in the faded red sign with the white letters: billiards.
Dunbar and Sadness, two winos sharing a bottle and blocking the doorway, had an issue for me to resolve. “E,” directed Dunbar, “tell this man that nobody believe he got women lining up for him.”
Sadness laughed and turned up the bottle. “They are,” he maintained unconvincingly.”
“Tell him, E. He too ugly.” I glanced up and down the street, stayed on my bag, before speaking.
“It’s possible. I don’t have them. Maybe he does.” I stepped around them and reached for the door. “Let me go get two cents in here.”
“Maybe you’ll let me hold one?” Dunbar inquired.
“Maybe.”
     The room was large (six tables had once fit in) and deteriorated. Walls a dull, stony gray with a few hanging chips of green paint. Holes where the plaster had fallen away. Holes in the ceiling also. There was a gray plastic pail on the floor to catch water when it rained. A heap of broken cue sticks were stacked against the rear wall next to two rusted bicycle rims. In the far corner an old broken television set was pushed against the door of the bathroom.
Chatter surrounded the game table.
“How much you bet?”
“Yeah, I seen them bitches you talkin about. They---”
“Gimme a card.”
“Knicks ain’t gonna be shit next year either.”
“Man, fuck this. Let’s shoot some dice.”
“Push the cards over please. After every---“
“Damn sure ain’t my day.”
“The cards please.”
“Twenty-four bodies? That’s a lot of---“
“You deaf muthafucka? The cards. Push the cards. Push the cards.”
 The dealer was a short, bald-headed man with a high-pitched voice. He was thin, square-jawed, fidgety, and wore a blue sleeveless undershirt. I knew him simply as Chuck. Before each hand he would ask each player how much he wished to wager. As they announced their bets he would deal them a card, face down, and repeat the figures loudly so his banker could cover. His banker and partner, Charley C., stood to his left. As he heard the figures he counted a corresponding amount onto the table, each bet in a separate place, so that he had five rows of bills on the table during each hand. Once all the bets were covered, Chuck dealt himself a down card and gave everyone, including himself, a second card face up.
Jater, the house man, sat to the dealer’s right on a high stool. In his sixties, he had been a pool hustler once, but all came down to this now. He got three dollars per shuffle.
I stepped up to the table, exchanging nods here and there. I wasn’t exactly a regular, but not stranger enough to make anyone uneasy. I squeezed in between Baltimore and his huge sunglasses and Bo in his grimy, khaki garage suit.
“Can I get a card?” I asked Chuck, who was preparing to deal another hand.
“Not now, brother. Got to wait for a new shuffle. Deck got to play out.”
I felt anxious for action but watched silently as Chuck leaned over the table, distributed the cards, and called out the bets. Ten dollars to Baltimore, past me, eight dollars to Jamel, six dollars to the next man, twelve dollars to Bam, two dollars, the minimum, to the last man, and a card for himself. The shiny cards lay in stark contrast to the dingy table top. Chuck dealt again. Ace of clubs---seven of hearts---three of diamonds---king of spades---ten of diamonds---nine of spades. Baltimore turned up his hole card immediately and slammed it atop his ace. Jack of clubs. Blackjack. He won both the bet and the deal.He smiled and rubbed his hands together jubilantly. The banker tossed him two fives. Baltimore pushed his cards toward Jater while Chuck turned his attention to the mechanic.
“What you do?”
“Hit it.”
“Nine. You got sixteen showing.”
“I’m busted.” The banker collected eight dollars and Jater accepted the cards. Chuck confronted the next man.
“Name your pleasure, baby.”
“Smack it one time good.”
“Four.”
“Come again.”
“Jack. Seventeen showing.”
“Fuck seventeen showing. I’m busted. Cocksuckin’ cards.”
Next man.
“Call your downfall, son.”
“I’ll stay. I got twenty.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. See the next man.”
“What you say, next man?”
“Step on it lightly.”
“Boom. King. I know you’re gone.” He was right. He stretched up to his full height. Peeped at his hole card. “I bet this man is bluffing again.” He turned over Bam’s down card. Queen. He did have twenty. Chuck peeled the next card from the top of the deck. Four of clubs. He would have had twenty-one if he had mustered the nerve. He smashed the rest of the deck to the table. Charley C. paid the twelve dollars to Bam and went off in a corner with Chuck to see how their money had come out.
Baltimore scooped up the cards Chuck left behind, got the rest from Jater, and paid him the customary fee. Bo stopped playing to become banker.
The first position belonged to me and I opened up with a pair of nines good for ten dollars. I lost twice, dropping two dollars each hand, but then caught a pair of queens good for ten dollars as the deck played out. I won another ten drawing to twenty-one against Baltimore’s nineteen. On the sixth hand I hit blackjack for five dollars. I had the deal and a chance to make a big move.
I gave Jater all of my money. He would manage my bank for a tip. I had just begun shuffling the cards, when Dunbar came through the door.
“See you dealing so you must be doing all right.”
“So far. Let’s see where I can go from here.”
“You might wanna go to the hospital. One of your main men been shot.”
“Who?” I asked, scooping my bag off the floor. I dreaded to hear the next words but had to listen.
“Paul.”
I flung the cards on the table, retrieved my money from Jater, tipped him anyway, slipped Dunbar a five as I dragged toward the door and pumped him for information. The table buzzed behind me.
“Always something around here.”
“He be in here?”
“Not a lot but you seen him. Nice dude, don’t know him for having beef.”
“Who’s taking the deck?”
“A shame really.”
“I’ll take the deck.”
When I finished with Dunbar, I dashed across the avenue toward the cab stand.
 
 
17
After I spoke with a security guard and a city police officer, they waved me into the treatment area. Paul lay on a gurney with his left calf wrapped in blood-stained bandages. The bullet had gone clean through the fleshy part. A frail woman was a gurney next to him on the other side of a partially drawn curtain. In between them was a rolling tray housing boxes of syringes and blood collection systems. She was out of it, almost all the way. I bumped fists with Paul.
“Did you see who it was?”
     “I didn’t. I heard blam, blam, blam and felt the pain. Might even have felt the pain first. I was struggling for cover and heard a car screech away. But I didn’t see anything. And nobody’s talking. I guess I panicked.” Fear was still in his eyes.
     “Panic is when you practice something and then get afraid. You don’t practice this. Exactly where were you?”
     “About halfway from the bus stop. I’m thinking about the tennis player I was working with all day. Then the shots and feeling like I got stabbed in the leg. I guess I’m lucky the person has poor aim.”
     “What are the cops saying?”
     “Not much. I feel like a suspect talking with them.”
     “You know who did it.”
     “But how did I get to be the target?”
     “You didn’t check your cell. He called the apartment today and said your name.”
     Two doctors, male and female, and a male nurse came to examine Paul. I didn’t wait for them to ask me to leave. I wanted to get in motion anyway, abandon the hospital altogether, but I needed to hear more about Paul’s condition.
     A severely lethargic man, maybe a heroin overdose, was being wheeled in by an attendant. A nurse badgered him.
     “Mister, you wanna wake up and talk to me? Will you tell me why you called an ambulance? Why did you call an ambulance, sir? You have to talk to me or we’re gonna start putting big tubes everywhere. You felt weak? Talk to me. Open your eyes and talk to me.”
     He squeezed out a request for water. 
     “Water? No! You can’t have anything until you talk to me. Anything hurt? Head, stomach, chest, back?”
     Out in the waiting room I entered a large semi-circle marked with chairs. The open end faced the wall. In the nearest chair sat a middle-aged Black woman whose eyes were puffed and red. She sat still, with her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands clasped together in her lap. Two seats away from her was a young man who looked like her son. He was leaning back in the chair and staring at the ceiling. A brown shopping bag was on the floor between them. I nodded at the woman and took a seat across from them, at the other tip of the semi-circle.
     About halfway around the curve, a young Latino held a bloody handkerchief against the top of his forehead. He didn’t seem alarmed, however. Rather, he appeared relaxed as he watched the gangster flick on the television screen overhead.
     A White couple, my age maybe, was a few seats to the Latino’s left, holding hands and also absorbed in the movie. Her blond hair was rolled up in pink plastic curlers and covered partially by a green scarf.      
     Another man joined the mother and son. Looked like another son. He kneeled to the floor and turned the shopping bag upside down. Out spilled the clothes. Shorts, belt, underwear, sneakers, socks, and a blood-soaked, formerly white, basketball jersey, which he stretched out on the floor, highlighting the thick splotches of red-brown blood. “Must be a gallon in here.”
     The other son reached across for the woman’s arm and drew himself into the seat next to her. They started speaking softly. I could have made out the conversation if I had strained to listen. But I had pieces of my own life to contemplate.
     I spotted a newspaper under a chair and retrieved it. I turned to the article I had read that morning about the bodies in the building:
 
HORROR IN QUEENS
    
I read the headline over and over again until it no longer registered as a verbal message. I examined the letters, staring so hard I could notice all the tiny white spots in the bold black print. N had more white spots than any other letter. Folded the paper and placed it in the chair next to me. Looked around the room again. Staring. Suddenly it seemed too bright and I felt out of place.
The floor was of white tile with streaks of brown. Shined like it had just been waxed. No dust, gum, or anything. The squares were the exact size for my size elevens to fit in diagonally. I hated the floor. Too clean. The curtains on both large windows were drawn closed. The orange-and-white checkered pattern in synch with the orange walls. But I didn’t like the curtains. Or the walls. Or the white ceiling. The lights were too bright overhead. Words rang inside my head, “neat neat too neat antiseptic antiseptic antiseptic.” I started to stand but it seemed an invisible chain kept me fastened to the chair.
A guard stood over by the elevator. Dark blue cap, sky blue shirt, a silver badge over his heart and a gold patch on his sleeve. Walkie talkie, in a black leather case, hung off his left hip with the strap stretching up over his right shoulder. Pants matched the cap and he had on shiny black cordovans. He stood tall and still against the wall. A smoking prohibited sign was on the wall near him. “Regulations,” I thought.
The son who dumped the clothes from the bag had stuffed them back in and taken a seat. His head rested on his arms as they were folded across his lap. His unzipped sweat shirt, collar turned up, was pulled over his head. The other two were still talking.
The gangsters were shooting it out with each other. I wanted to turn the channel. The set was a small zenith bolted onto a black metal shelf that was bolted to the wall. I wanted to rip the set from the shelf and smash it to the floor but settled for seizing the remote and turning to a channel that carried no signal at the time. The couple grew somewhat alarmed and turned toward the guard. So did I. He wasn’t there. The woman shrugged her shoulders and eyed me quizzically. Her companion spread his arms apart, palms up, signaling “What’s going on?” But it wasn’t a challenge. I gave them back their movie. Mother and son still talked softly.
I sat down and got back up and sat back down. Looked around some more. Black-and-white pictures on orange walls. A picture of trees, a picture of a poodle, another landscape, rocks and a stream, a little boy on a physician’s knee, a class of students in a laboratory. I spotted a triage nurse at the desk who was busy writing. More pictures on wall behind her, and some plaques. I couldn’t make out the inscriptions.  
I started to change the channel again but refrained. The chrome plate around the electrical socket shined too brightly for me. The chrome covering the heat ducts was too shiny. Too much reflection. There was a coat rack on the wall. The orange wooden base blended with the wall but the six metal hooks shined too brightly. The water fountain sparkled. The metal cup dispenser above it glittered. No cups were in though. The plate around light switch gleamed. The bullet-shaped chrome garbage can shined brightly, especially the word engraved on the mouth flap: P U S H.
I grabbed the newspaper and stuffed it into the can. Smeared my fingerprints all over the top. Went for a drink and smeared prints on the fountain. Sat down but got right back up. 
I left the hospital. The glass door was closing slowly behind me. I reached back and slammed it.
 
 
18
After fetching my bag from the bushes, I continued up the incline to the sidewalk. Past a row of M.D. license plates. Turned right, then diagonally left as I crossed the street. Glanced back and up, over the red beacon on the roof of the building. The moon was almost full. I came upon the side of a white brick building. A green garbage dumpster was pushed against the wall. Cardboard boxes and wooden crates were piled over the rim. More litter on the sidewalk around the dumpster. Brown paper. More boxes, half a tomato, a crushed and soggy cigarettes. When I reached the corner I could see the front of the building. A fruit stand owned by Koreans, closed and dark inside. With the help of a street lamp I could see a few displays in the front part of the store. A barrel of apples near the door.
I turned away and looked across the wide intersection. Considered going over to the diner but didn’t want to enter all that brightness. Walked past the fruit stand instead and continued along the same block. Stayed in close to the store windows.
A Laundromat was next. Two rows of green machines facing each other. Troops at attention. Blue dryers in the rear. A soda machine. Dull green tile floor. A woman’s boutique. A smartly cut pin-striped business suit in the window I liked for Angela. I hadn’t returned her call. I lingered before the window before I noticed a black skirt and took off again. A florist shop. A pink fluorescent sign: FLOWERS. I stepped faster. The sign above read BIKE AND HOBBY SHOP but I saw no bikes or anything that might be a good hobby. An advertisement let me know that I could buy greeting cards below cost. A cleaners. An ancient sewing machine on a table by the door. $98.20 rung up on the cash register. McCULLOUGH’S TAVERN. Neon signs for Miller. Only three patrons. NICK’s BARBER SHOP. Four black vinyl barber shop chairs all facing the same way. JOE’S SHOE REPAIR. Boxes of vintage Cat’s Paw thin heels on display. A beauty center advertising “diagnostic hair design.” A chart with a dozen hairstyles on the same face. Chinese laundry had large green artificial plants in the window in big heavy orange clay pots. The supermarket had an iron shutter pulled down over the front. I stepped on the metal cellar doors and made a loud clanking sound. FOREIGN AUTO PARTS. Black gates. Novelty shop with old-fashioned shoes, slippers, robes. Nothing I would wear. NITE SPOT LOUNGE. Almost empty. Only one customer and a barmaid. Over cellar doors again. Clank! Clank! A stationery store with more black gates. Get well cards. I went by quickly. Drug store on the corner with more black gates. Clank! Clank!
     I turned right and crossed the street. Walking crosstown now. Streets dark and empty and sloping downwards. Tidy one and two-family houses with lawns and hedges and cars in the driveways. I walked in the middle of street so I could be seen clearly. Didn’t need a problem with, as Paul would say, middle-class representatives of Oz. A summery breeze kicked up.
     I began mumbling and making gestures with my arms and hands as if I were actually talking to someone nearby. I had to figure this out. I turned to thoughts of Angela’s niece. What will she be? A lawyer maybe? An actress? President? A crackhead or, as Paul could suggest, a pophead? Popheads don’t even last. An alcoholic maybe? No. Why not? Why won’t she be?”
     “BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T WANT TO BE. THAT’S WHY NOT.” I had spoken aloud, so I started walking extra fast. Had to get off of that block before somebody heard me. But I was still mumbling and gesturing. And what about Adina’s son? Who will try to cancel him and for what? The latest bling? A white girl? A cop’s recreation? Politics? And I kept mumbling and walking and gesturing.
     In the next block I saw a blue glow in a second-story window and thought about a couple making love. Do they have soft music? A sip of good wine maybe? Probably. Does she really enjoy it or is she only going through the motions? And so what?
     At the corner I made a right, burst into a run for a block before slowing to a walk. I grew more nervous. Has anyone seen me running? What do they think I’ve done? I walked almost three more blocks and as I neared the end of the third I heard a car coming down the street behind me. The first moving car since I entered the dark streets. I made a right at the corner and kept my pace even, hand in my bag. The car kept going straight. White couple. After that I didn’t walk consecutive blocks in the same direction. Kept turning and winding my way through the dark streets. What’s happening with Paul?
     I became annoyed with how dark it was, how desolate. All of a sudden the street I was on, which looked just like the first dark street I had entered, looked just like the street that had helped rescue me from the darkness, was too dark and empty for me. I peered down at my sneakers. Black. I wished I had on a different color. Sweat pants were black. Too dark. Even my blue shirt appeared black on that dark street. I hurried back toward the hospital, tense, kept my hand in my bag.
Paul was fidgety on the gurney. “I was wondering where you were.”
     “Had to walk. Roll this thing around in my head. I’m almost there. I can feel it. What are the doctors saying?”
     “I have to stay at least overnight. But it doesn’t sound too bad. I rely mostly on my jump shot anyway.”
     “I’ll spot you ten points right now.”
     “I’m sure you would,” he laughed.
     “Cops saying any more? Protection?”
     “Nothing more.”
     “Don’t worry.”
     I asked Paul to call the answering machine and get the messages. One from him. One from the hospital about him. A third one from our airline terminal voice: “You’re next.”
     I had it! It was like playing Jumble. You can work feverishly to unscramble the word, but if you can’t see it you just can’t see it. On the other hand, when you’ve determined the word, that word is all that you can see. No re-scrambling of it will ever fool you. I had the voice cold. One more voicemail though, the one most distressing: “Angela too.”
     Carrying Paul’s phone, I strode quickly through the waiting room. The couple was gone. The television was off. The old man was in a treatment area receiving stitches. The people connected to the bloody jersey were still there. And an Indian couple had arrived with an infant.
     Angela answered after three or four rings. “You finally called me back.”
     “You all right?”
“What you mean?”
“You know, is everything all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“I figured it out.”
“Figured what? Alfonso?”
“I have to explain it to you tonight.”
“Come over. I told you I wanted to talk with you.”
After a word with Paul, I was back on the streets, bag back on my shoulder. I had withheld from Paul my finding because I wanted to bring him a neat package.
 
    
19
After Angela buzzed me into the lobby, I stopped in front of the big mirror to blow myself a kiss. It’s nice not to go completely crazy. I chose the elevator. Slower but safer. I pressed the round black button on Angela’s door one time hard, ding dong. Heard the movement of the peephole shutter, the fumbling locks and latches. The door swung open for our new ritual: politeness. I felt an impulse to pinch her behind as she walked in front of me.
“When did you start painting your jeans on?” I asked.
“They’re not tight.”
“You gonna cut off circulation and kill the very ass you trying to show off.”
“I said they’re not tight.” She grabbed a throw pillow from the floor and threw it at me. I didn’t even try to duck. I made a detour for the bathroom so I could check the bedroom situation. The door was open and no one was inside.
Angela called from the kitchen. “You hungry?”
“No. Just thirsty.”
“I know that already. Ginger ale good?”
“Perfect.”
From the sofa, I noticed once again the designs on the wallpaper. All kinds of colorful lines, angles, triangles, circles, and squares against a pale blue background. I blew hot and cold about the design, hot at that moment, adoring the precision of geometry. When you know it, you know it.
I could hear ice rattling in glasses. I picked out a circle inside a square. Angela brought the soda, orange for herself, and sat next to me, legs crossed, feet up on the sofa. She sipped a taste and placed her glass on the coffee table. I wasn’t proceeding fast enough to suit her.
“So what do you have figured out that’s so important?”
I suppressed the urge to caress her. Keep everything precise on the surface. Back to the circle inside the square. Robotically, I drank some of the ginger ale. Lowered my mouth to my chest in a slow, mechanical movement, brought the drink up to lips in a separate, uncoordinated movement, sipped a bit, lowered the glass back down to my lap, and leaned all the way back against the sofa so I could gaze at the white ceiling.
“What is it?” Angela demanded.
“You first,” I said deliberately, my gaze still on the ceiling. “You think I know something about your guy.”
“Well,” she relaxed, “I thought maybe you sensed I was struggling with that.”
I snapped to attention. “We not in tune that way. What’s the struggle?”
“How far to take things. He wants to do this traditional thing of taking me to meet the family, staying in the home. He’s really old-fashioned with all of this formality. And it just seems so advanced.”
“I thought you two were already advanced. Past friendship anyway.”
“But not the ring yet, which is what he wants to do.”
“Kind of quick, no?” I must have come off as sarcastic.
“You’re getting sensitive,” Angela observed.
“I can’t be sensitive.”
“You have potential sensitivities.”
“Had.”
“Are you trying to blame me for something?”
“Wish you and him the best if that’s the way it goes.” I fell back into my routine. Head to chest. Stop. Glass to mouth. Stop. Drink. Glass to lap. Stop. Head back. Stop. See flat white paint.
“It’s a guess anyway,” Angela said shakily. “Do it and see if it’s right.”
“That much love in the mix?”
“I didn’t say that. But I’m thinking that all you need is the minimum.” She absently brushed her hair with her hand. “You and I would be shipwrecked on an island and have fun. And there never would be a mainland.”
I went back and forth between a few shapes in the pattern before asking, “Did you at least visit the island this time around?”
“A true man you are,” she replied with out hesitation. “Fake indifference and all. Male ego won’t let you rest. You want details. You’re dying to know what and when. So let me give you the latest bulletin. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what you are ready to do.“
“Me? I’m not ready to do anything.”
“Sure.”
We sat awkwardly in silence for a few moments before the phone rang. Angela took her time answering. It was for me. Simmons.
“You want the showdown you know where to meet.” His voice was gruff.
“No problem. I suppose it’s either you or me.”
“Better hurry.”
Of course, Angela became alarmed and grew even more so as I told her the most fantastic tale she had ever heard. I explained how I already knew it was Simmons. Paul’s theory was correct, and Simmons had become a victim. He was literally disappearing. The bandage was not really covering a thumb. The cast was not really covering an arm. The art exhibit started itching me and then Simmons lost just enough control over his voice for me to identify it. The threats and violence I could not exactly discern.
Angela sat stunned. “I can’t believe this. It’s too unbelievable.” 
“You have to believe so we can get to the end of the story.”
I decided that Angela should stay locked in her apartment while I went to meet Simmons. She rejected the idea; she also refused to give me her car keys.
“I’m going with you. I’d be a nervous wreck in here.”
“You need to do what I tell you.”
“That’s not happening.”
“Remember, I have a gun.” I shouldered my bag. She took a peep inside and shuddered.
“Still not happening.” She gathered her own bag and found her keys. We headed out the door. 
“You this bossy on your job? I definitely couldn’t work for you.”
“Yes you could. And you’d follow orders.”
“That’s talk for your hubby, and I hope even he don’t go for too much of it. You women are getting out of hand. That’s why I’m scooping me one of those young girls. Lay down the do’s and the don’ts. Train her properly from the beginning.”
“That’s quite the project,” Angela said casually. “Make sure you don’t become trained.”
 
 
20
We passed the dead-end block slowly enough for me to spot Simmons’ SUV facing toward us. The lights were off.
“He’s down there,” I said cautiously. “Now go on and get out of here.” I opened the door and began to slide out.
“I’m staying,” Angela protested.
“We already went through this. If you want to do something, go check on Paul.”
“What if something happens to you?”
“Then it could happen to you. So get the hell out of here.” I slammed the door and stood on the sidewalk staring her down through the open window. After telling me that I didn’t have to speak so harshly, she finally coasted away. The taillights mesmerized me. A fire on a night long ago crossed my mind. I wasn’t there, though, merely to scare. Two blocks up, Angela made a left turn.
I pulled the revolver. Half crouching, I slipped along behind the row of cars parked at the opposite curb from Simmons. When I pulled even with his SUV, I ducked low behind a car and peeped across the street.     
“Go ahead, Eric. You’re close enough now.” The voice wasn’t fully resonant, but it was familiar. But he didn’t face me. He looked straight over the steering wheel and had the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head. I thought maybe I had walked into a trap.
“Go ahead,” Simmons commanded, still not turning his head. His voice magnetically drew me toward the car. I had to see his face. I drew a bead with the pistol and advanced.
His cheeks were sunken. I relaxed my aim when I saw that his gun lay on the seat across from him. I also saw how bad the damage was. Both of his arms were gone up to the elbow. A bloodless operation as far as I could tell. The Execution Plan. Early like the weather.
Simmons studied me intently. “Go ahead. Shoot me while there’s something left to shoot. The legs just went.” I saw the collapsed upper legs of his pants. “I’m tingling now in my face. My torso. It feels like liniment and then that’s it. Doesn’t hurt. You saw me front the arm off in a cast. You saw my thumb. You can’t comprehend no shit like this, can you?”
“Paul put me on it a few days ago. I figured it out.”
“Then why did you come? Why didn’t you just let me fade away?”
“I didn’t know how long it would take or how much damage you could do before you left.” We had settled into a normal conversation.
“Not much. I couldn’t even handle Paul the right way. My good arm was going. I couldn’t get a decent shot.”
“Won’t be my problem,” I said, raising the revolver to his head.
“You’re no killer, E,” responded Simmons with out emotion. “You’re a good self-defense man. But I’m no threat anymore. I’m just fading the fuck on out of here.”
I held the gun down by my hip. His sweatshirt started to sag. “Why kill me?”
“I don’t know. This thing isn’t reasonable. You know, I always told you that you have to go where I go. Maybe that’s it. The magic just makes connections.”
“No reason for the others?”
“I wanted company. But it doesn’t make a difference now.”
Tears flowed down my face. “This is the best you could do?”
“I’m like Humpty Dumpty falling off that wall back there. I can’t get back together.”
“Yeah. And you’re melting like the Wicked Witch of the West. How long does it take?”
“It varies from what I hear. Probably three or four days. They haven’t yet perfected this drug to where it’s instant. I started out kind of slow. Just a few spots missing, and tonight I’m accelerating like crazy. I think the purer you get it, the faster it works. And the type of system you have has something to do with it too.”
“I’m not even going to ask why you messed with it.”
“I couldn’t believe it, Eric. That’s what it was. Like when Paul broke it to you. The folks uptown were telling me about the experimental batch they had, but I thought they were joking. Matter of fact they were joking because they didn’t believe the rumors either. We snorted it like it was cocaine. So I know at least four people on their way out if they aren’t gone yet, including two of the prettiest women on the planet. You know the headlines today? Twenty-four bodies?”
“Same thing, right?”
“Precisely. And they’ll never release the real story about it. Crackhead roles in movies are never coming back. They got some super hype shit coming for these niggas out here. You folks better use your brains. As for me, I’m on Flight 370. I’m out.” All the mysteries, I thought. After all, I still didn’t understand why Guitar went after Milkman.   
Simmons began a smile he never completed in this world. His sweatshirt crumpled to the seat atop his pants. I put the gun in my bag and reached through the window to seize the clothes. I seized them over and over, feeling for something solid. Then I dropped them. I backed away and stood erect, conscious of the heat and humidity and darkness. The brightening moon.
I started toward the corner with a dull ache creeping into my chest. Of course, I would miss Simmons, my homeboy. But around here you get enough practice to handle these developments rather well. Perhaps too well. Be surprised what you can accomplish in 10,003 days.
A car pulled into the block and jerked to a halt. Some women are just hardheaded. I did, however, accept the ride. I didn’t have the girl but I was still in the running. And I was hoping for simpler days to deal with, as somebody must have been blessed with---Once upon a time.