Hunting in Harlem (9 page)
Piper's idea of housekeeping was to keep all her papers on raised surfaces like the counter, dining room table, and lid on
the toilet basin, and all her clothes in piles on the floor, organized by the place she was standing when she took them off.
There were no dishes to wash because she used paper plates and plastic forks, and couldn't cook. She walked to the take-out
counter at Bamboo and they said, "Piper, you should really get the greens with that, you're not eating enough vegetables."
She dialed their number from memory. There was a place on her tongue that was lobbying heavily for Thai, but what Piper wanted
even more was a dish she could pour into her own cold pots and claim credit for. While Piper was quick to brag that she couldn't
cook, she was equally willing to passively pretend she had. Not cooking Creole food was her specialty.
When Snowden arrived, Piper was laid out on the sofa, the effort of removing half her debris from sight rendering her unconscious.
It was after nightfall and the light coming through the glass door to the outer hall pushed her toward waking, but it was
the sound of Dee knocking on the door as she pushed through it (a fascist trait inherited from the mother, Abigail Goines)
that brought Piper completely to reality. From a quick glance at her sister, the ever astute Piper could tell several things:
that the food had arrived, that Dee had paid for it but not brought it up till now, that in the short walk up the stairs Dee
had found time to ask Piper's guest his occupation (because she would surely not recognize random help) and he had told her,
because she was wearing that face (one their mother created as well). It seemed that on 122nd Street, for all intents and
purposes Dee was Abigail Goines.
Snowden was gracious, smiling and nodding to Dee until she closed the door behind her. His pacing of the room before seating
himself was polite, complimentary. The curiosity Snowden displayed was in the acceptable manner of casually walking over to
Piper's paintings along the back wall, smiling with polite befuddlement before heading over to the bookshelf to see what tides
were in the mind of the person he was dealing with. Piper encouraged this by drawing out the process of microwaving the dinners
because that's what that bookcase was for. All the junk that would give him any real insight, the seedy true crime stories
and painfully embarrassing personal growth memoirs, were carefully hidden in the bedroom within a trunk, beneath several sedimentary
levels of dirty laundry, exactly where they belonged.
His politeness and respect were not a total facade either, because when Snowden went to the bathroom Piper listened and she
didn't hear the crashing sound that would have erupted if he'd attempted to peek in the medicine cabinet. A legion of pill
bottles had been placed there specifically to fall out if the door was opened, revealing a handwritten note that said YOU
DON'T KNOW WHO YOU'RE MESSING WITH, a homemade novelty item for friends and a warning to dates that her heart had its own
security system.
The meal disappeared rather quickly, the bottle of red also, but Piper's mouth kept running. She started with a capsule version
of her life story, a set background piece she used with new friends to get it out of the way and provide context, which she
followed by more in-depth studies into the more prominent themes and incidents: Abigail Goines's failed attempt at breeding
the
uber-Afncanus
woman, Piper's exchange year in Portugal, the buying of this condo within her sibling's home, and the anecdote that displayed
that her brother-in-law's credit wasn't as clean as he liked to pretend it was. The complete
New Holland Herald
breakdown, including employee profiles and her desire to overtake the office and seize control, if possible by armed struggle,
the latter confession telling her she was officially tipsy and that she was talking entirely too much. Despite polite (if
not overly enthusiastic) efforts to draw her guest out, the only thing Piper'd learned was that he was from Philadelphia and
had attended Temple University, a fact that he himself admitted was probably true of nearly half the city's population.
"So you're how old? Can I ask you that, or will you blush and get coy on me?" A slight teasing. This was a major component
in Piper's arsenal of seduction. It always worked, and when it didn't it was probably for the best anyway.
"I'm thirty-one. And I'm too dark for blushing," Snowden bantered.
"And so where have you been? What have you been doing since you graduated?" Snowden removed his napkin from his lap in response
to the question, accepted that he liked her enough that he would definitely be back and therefore was unable to give his usual
lies as an answer.
"I didn't graduate," Snowden said flatly. It was meant as a deterrent, offering a statement of failure as emotional libation
while defining a border clearly marked against further trespass. Piper respected no such boundaries.
"College is expensive, half the time it's useless. But that doesn't explain where you've been, what you've been doing, does
it?" Piper was smiling. She wasn't pretty, but she was cute and she used this sometimes to excuse her rudeness. She did it
so well that Snowden noticed only when he was about to begin confessing, annoyed at the manipulation.
"I was in jail."
Piper didn't even pause before following with the mandatory response, "What for?"
There was the word,
manslaughter.
It was the proper one to use because it was literally the action he'd been found guilty of and sentenced for. It was also
the best word there was to say that you killed someone. At Holmesburg State Penitentiary, it meant that this was not to be
your permanent residence, and that you'd been smart enough to get a lawyer who arranged a lesser sentence. In this world it
implied that there were ulterior circumstances, that the murder might even have been justified in everyday morality but legalities
forced this minimum judgment. Its vagaries were one of the reasons Snowden hated saying it, it was a word that demanded questions.
Worse, every time he said it, Snowden could clearly hear both words it was made of. When Snowden said it, Piper didn't bother
to ask for more, just waited quietly for him to offer.
"My father - I mean there were problems for a long time, I was in foster care mostly growing up, he was in jail. He was a
Panther, then in the BLA, that's the Black Liberation Army; he was nuts. I came home from college winter break, we got in
a fight, I just hit him wrong. That's it." That was. There was more Snowden could say, but that was enough.
"Oh shit, I'm sorry, I always push things too far, I'm always screwing up doing that."
"Look, I'm sorry. I'm not used to talking about it. I should be. I mean, it's not like I don't think about it, or don't regret
it, it's something on top of everything I do. It's just, you know, something I've been working myself away from. So I got
out almost two years ago and I've been struggling to get a good job, but now I do. I got hooked up by my PO in this program
with Horizon, you know. Got the chance to make some money, do some good, right?"
"They have some kind of community program?"
"No. I mean, that's what it is, exactly what it is, community work. That's what Horizon is doing, trying to create another
era of thriving black Harlem. Things been rough since the black middle class ran off to integration and took the money with
them, right? So we're trying to bring them all that back."
"So how is that good?" Piper asked. "Helping the fortunate take Harlem away from the poor people who've been living here all
this time?"
"No, that's not it, that's not what I'm saying. What Horizon has planned is better than that. They don't want to displace
everybody, they just want to bring enough people back here to make the place healthy again. People to spend their money, create
some vibrant retail life like back in the day, create jobs. Straight up, also to have some folks as role models walking around,
to show that you can do it."
"Believe me, just because they make money it doesn't make them any kind of role model. Come on, it's just the same old story,
isn't it? Gentrification." Piper bugged her eyes out and chuckled bitterly.
"Gentrification? No, no," Snowden shook his head in near confusion. "It's not gentrification when it's black folks moving
back into the black community. It's . . . it's housecleaning."
"Great. So you got it all planned out, then."
Apparently Snowden did. Snowden had never really had a plan for anything, one that required sturdy bridges of faith to keep
it connected. Rinsed by euphoria, Snowden kept going. Piper looked at him like he was glowing. It just encouraged him to burn
brighter. He sounded like Lester himself, worse, like Bobby at his fevered best, but he wasn't channeling. Freed from the
role of reluctant skeptic only to find himself a true believer. A dream was a drug. In a world without meaning, belief was
an aphrodisiac. Snowden could feel it working on him, working on the woman across from him. So being a dreamer felt like this,
having a belief brought this out in others. It made sense that so many dreamers were whores.
"Thing is, it has to be now. We don't have time to fool around anymore. The white people are coming. The island is full, they
got nowhere else to go. They're scared to death of us, but that's how bad they need a place to live. If we don't start buying
up this area, moving into its apartment buildings and staying there, in twenty years our Harlem will be lost. There's already
a Starbucks on 125th Street. . . and it sure as hell ain't for us."
"I'd love to do a story on you guys."
"You should." Snowden smiled, pointed at her. "You met the other guys, Bobby obviously, Horus is the other one. Like I said,
not that bad, really, once you know them, like most folks really. Whoever performs best this year is going to be promoted
to oversee the whole thing, too, even get a house out the deal. I'm in the lead, I'm pretty sure. My boss has me doing a special
project the others aren't even in on, things are going good."
"What kind of project?" Piper asked.
"Well, it's a little morbid, but when people die and nobody claims their stuff, I go in with him and we clean it all up. Mostly
it's accidents, and it's just in this little area of Harlem around historic Mount Morris, up to Adam Clayton Powell, rarely
above 128th or below 117th."
"That doesn't sound bad. You can't have to do more than one a month, right?"
"No, you'd be surprised. It's a rough city. You got to be careful in this place. Drugs, disease, stupidity. Old age. Mostly
accidents."
"So come on, you can tell me," Piper leaned forward smiling, rubbing her hands together. "How often do people around here,
y'know, drop off?"
"I don't know. I guess we're doing people almost once a week," Snowden said.
Piper pulled back, stopped smiling. "You mean that in this little area - what, a square mile, maybe two - there is at least
one death a week, accidental?"
"Yeah, crazy right?" Snowden looked over the last of his platter for a discarded sliver of bass to nibble on.
"That's insane. You're pulling my leg, right? You're just messing with me." Piper said the last sentence like he'd admitted
as much, grabbed the dishes off the table and started piling them for removal.
"Oh, I'm not lying to you, for real," Snowden pleaded. He wanted the smiling Piper back. He was pretty sure that one would
kiss him. "I make a lot of extra cash for those days, so I know."
"But it seems like there wouldn't be that many accidental deaths in the whole city," Piper blushed back at him, offering innocent
amazement. "That's so wild. Just out of curiosity, what were their names?"
"SHE'S AN AWFUL . . . awful person," Bobby decided. He was drunk, lost his way after the third word of the sentence, found it again. Snowden agreed with him. Piper seemed
all right to him, but for the purpose of this discussion, yes, she was an awful person. To jilt the person who loves her without
even giving him the respect of acknowledgment makes her an awful person, in that moment. We are all awful people when we do
that. Snowden raised the nearly dry remains of his own jug of malt liquor in salute to the truth of it, was reminded by its
lightness that to go further into oblivion he needed more, but his tragedy was that he was too drunk to get up and get some.
"She was . . . there should be another word for rude. Something like callous, but harsher."
"Asshole," Snowden offered. Bobby burst out laughing at the joy of it, that the language hadn't failed him, that he wasn't
going to have to learn French or create his own collection of syllables to give voice to his emotions. Bobby stumbled across
the room to slap the hand of the man who pointed this out to him. They slapped bottles instead. The glass broke. Neither one
acknowledged it, or looked down to where the shards had fallen, because neither one felt like being bothered to pick them
up.
"She was an asshole," Bobby continued, getting a little more comfort from taking this woman who'd inexplicably consumed his
mind, dumping her in the past tense and leaving her there. The two actually had more than a bit in common, Snowden registered.
The passion, the moral certainty, the disastrous attempt at art. To his eye, Piper's work looked like she subjected herself
to paint colonies, squatted over the canvas and let go. Snowden burst out giggling at the thought. Emboldened by the sound
of laughter, masculated by his protest, Bobby continued.
"I was lucky! She was an evil whore!" The last word Bobby screamed. Snowden sat with it for a little while and got uncomfortable.
There was no form of torture that had been invented yet that would get him to disclose that he'd had dinner with her the night
before, that she had in fact chastely escorted him at evening's end to the door, so Snowden protested on more general grounds.
"Dude, I don't know about that, man. I mean, you can't really say she was a whore, can you? I mean, it doesn't really apply
here, does it? If she was a whore, she would have given you some, got you all worked up, then dissed you. This one, she didn't
even bother calling you back."
"Hey man, I'm not talking in a literal sense! I'm talking in the sense that, I don't know, I'm a man and she's a woman and
she did me wrong, right? Like, I can use it that way." Registering that the other was clearly unswayed, Bobby tried another
vein of reasoning. "Okay, she was a whore in the sense, in the sense that she was nice to me that day, right? Real nice, so
in a way she was kind of promiscuous with her . . . her politeness."
Both of the men became silent. Bobby's last comment sounded so stupid, Snowden felt as if it lessened him just to hear it.
He just stared at his feet, watched the alcoholic optical illusion of the ground swaying beneath them. After a few minutes
this way, Snowden accepted the fact that the snorting, gasping sound coming from the other man was crying, but he couldn't
bring himself to look up and face it. Snowden literally couldn't, he was so drunk he felt like his head had been filled with
BB pellets when he wasn't looking.
"The word
piper
means 'crackhead' in Philly," Snowden offered, head bowed.
"There you go!" Bobby pointed across the room, energized. "That's what I'm talking about!"
Just because every metal sidewalk door you've ever walked on has held your weight doesn't mean they all will. Some become
concave from years of pedestrians and simply fold beneath that one foot too many. Sometimes there's rust, underneath where
you can't see it, making it brittle like metal matzo. Step on the wrong one and you could shred an ankle, a kneecap as you
loose the ground beneath you. Step on the wrong one and you can, your whole body, go right through. Who can say how far down
it will be before you reach ground again? You can't. You don't even know how long it would be before they found you. It could
even be one of those grates you tread over every day without thinking, like it was for Irene Bell of 843 Lenox, #4. One minor
step in a day of many, the context changes and it's the final one. They find you two weeks later only because it smells so
bad the Con Ed man checking the meter next door to the abandoned building thinks it's worth calling the cops over. Think of
how bad that's got to stink, that a man would call the police in response to it. So many ways to die. If you don't choose
one, a method will be appointed to you. Life's only guaranteed service.
Snowden wasn't exactly feeling sorry for Ms. Irene Bell. Part of this was due to the fact that when he opened the trunk she
used as a stand for her small black and white TV he saw that it was filled nearly three feet deep in other people's wallets.
The collection ranged immensely in size, color, and quality of craftsmanship. The ones at the top of the pile had stubs to
recent movies inside them, the ones at the bottom held licenses that had expired years before. She deserved to die, Snowden
decided. She deserved to die because everyone deserves to die, so really what was the point, which was Snowden's new attitude
to death in general. There didn't seem to be any other way to deal with it.
There were moments still, like when Lester had him run an envelope down to a buyer on Fifty-first and Madison during the lunch
hour, when he saw all those people and thought somebody must have figured out an escape. Staring at the thousands pushing
forward, each one a part of the crowd he wished to avoid, Snowden could believe that in the millennial of humanity surely
someone had figured out how to avoid mortality. But that mix of optimism and paranoia never lasted long. No matter how many
people, no matter how decent they were or how much money they acquired, the odds were still the same. Everyone was going to
die. So how could you feel sorry for Ms. Bell, probably miserable in her dirty little apartment, going out into the city to
ride the crowded subways in search of someone to lean against and steal from, to plant some of her misery into his or her
life?
Snowden crumpled her designer dresses into balls and shoved them in one more trash bag and this time thought of how many days
would be better without her. How many men would pat their inside pockets and women check their purses and see that what they
worked for was still there and not even know they had a rusty basement grate and a twenty-foot fall to thank for it. Life
has many stories, but one ending. Snowden decided it wasn't always a sad one.
Ms. Bell's apartment was done by one-thirty P.M. It was small, and Snowden was getting good at what he did. Sometimes Lester
didn't even stay around anymore, just let him in and came back around the time everything was ready to be loaded, and Snowden
didn't mind. Lester always put the soft rock station on the radio, and with him gone Snowden could listen to whatever he liked.
In addition, Snowden had decided that all coinage on the floor (or not already in a purposed container) was his tip money,
and isolation made the acquisition that much easier. Also, Snowden sometimes caught Lester staring at him.
At first Snowden thought it was to make sure he was doing the job right, and when he caught the older man doing it he would
ask politely just that, and the answer was always pretty much the same: yes, that's it, good job, that's right. Then Snowden
would pass a mirror and Lester would be in it, looking at the back of him like Snowden had a movie projected between his shoulder
blades.
There were so many Lesters, Snowden began to feel, and some times all they seemed to share was a fashion sense. The regular
workday version of Lester barely talked, only smiled for the customer, spent his time either off showing properties or showing
up late and falling asleep in the back of the cab while the work was getting done. Not just naps, full-fledged sleeps, some
going six or eight hours if the time allowed, waking up just before the sun went down again. The classroom Lester was a set
persona as well, the interpreter of the real estate portion, the pulpit inferno for the historic and philosophic conclusion.
Tuesday's "special project" Lester Snowden found a bit more laid-back, casual clothes that still managed to cover his body
completely: turdenecks with elbow-patched sports coats, slacks. On especially hot days, sandals. For some reason, Snowden
found the site of Lester's hairy feet particularly disturbing, perhaps because it was the only part of him approaching nudity.
This Tuesday Lester had, on more than one occasion, referred to his charge as "Snowball." Even Wendell seemed more informal
on their Tuesday encounters, walking over to Snowden's legs and leaning his weight into him as he slowly pushed pass. At night,
Snowden's calves reeked of the mutt.
When Lester came back that afternoon, Ms. Bell's life had become orderly. She had gone to her grave, the clothes worth saving
in the bags to the Salvation Army off Third Avenue, electronics in a box to the 135th Street Y, the personal items in a long
plastic storage container just like the others, ready to be retrieved by whoever they held meaning for. The furniture was
in two piles on opposite sides of the room, the larger of which was headed for the Dumpster, the smaller one to the prop warehouse
on Twenty-fifth and Tenth, proceeds going to the rent Ms. Bell had apparently intended to catch up on before her fate caught
up with her. The rest, which was most of it, garbage. Wendell immediately located the bag that held the former contents of
the refrigerator, took a long snort, and walked away without being told to. When Snowden returned from his first trip down
to load the truck, Lester was standing over the pile of wallets that Snowden had dumped in the bathtub pending further instruction.
Snowden watched as the older man churned the pile, searching.
"Crazy, right?" Snowden asked. "She must have been cleaning up for years. You should see some of the Afros in the pictures
of the older ones. A lady, too. From what I saw in her pictures, looked perfectly normal, like a schoolteacher or something.
Has to be a thousand of them there. Not one credit card in the bunch; she must have sold them. Can you believe that shit?"
Lester offered nothing in response. He kept shoving his hands in and up the pile like he was tossing a salad. After a minute,
Snowden began wondering if he'd actually just said anything at all.
"I saw her," Lester offered. Snowden replied with a polite affirmative; the woman had framed pictures of herself all over
the house.
"No. In person I saw her. Just a little while ago."
"You know what, that's funny because I definitely think I saw her too, probably when we moved that guy in on the third floor
two doors over a couple weeks past."
"I saw her then, but before that," Lester said, still looking, still churning. Wendell was pushing up against him, annoyed
that the expected hand with scratching fingers didn't come. "I was at the Schomburg, in the reading room. I was at the shelves.
I saw her reach right into a man's blazer and remove his billfold from its inside pocket. Right there, in the Schomburg Library
of all places. You'd think that all those books, all that history and knowledge, that it would keep the ignorant at bay, wouldn't
you? That it would just repel a nigger like a church would a vampire." Wendell, either in agreement or impatience, started
barking. The bathroom was small, lined with graying tile, amplifying the sound and sending both men's hands to their ears
in unison. "Fucking bitch," Snowden heard Lester say as he reached for Wendell's mouth, but he was pretty sure it wasn't the
dog he was talking about.
When everything was dumped and loaded, Snowden suggested they drop the licenses in the mail, that someone had done that for
him once and he was sure the former owners of Ms. Bell's booty would be just as appreciative. Lester loved the idea and took
it even further, ordering that Snowden pack up the lot of them, wallet and all, and mail each one to the address listed. Snowden
spent the first moment proud that his input was being respected, the next pissed at what the job would entail, and then the
next six hours doing it.
After Lester dropped off the box of envelopes, he left Snowden there in the apartment of the recently departed. All the furniture
was gone, so Snowden sat on the toilet as he worked, discovering the mailing address of each bit of stolen property and repeating
it on the manila, sealing the package and throwing it in one of the white postal crates. Dizzy from the repetition, Snowden
forced himself to speed up as the night approached, feeling increasingly certain he didn't want to be in the dead woman's
apartment when it was dark.
By the time he got out the door and turned the final lock behind him, he was determined to start smoking. Its promise was
the only thing that got him through the hours before. He would start smoking, not just an occasional puff, he would buy his
own pack and take it up seriously this time. He would not fear the valley of death, he would buy a ticket to it, bring a reclining
lawn chair, two towels, a Bo Shareef book.
Lester insisted that Snowden deliver the packages to a post office downtown. He did not want the reputation of Harlem to be
sullied when the recipients saw the 10027 zip code, and Snowden agreed. Snowden pulled the lumbering truck onto the narrowness
of the FDR, driving as slowly as he safely could in the newborn fear he would die with this cargo and be posthumously blamed
for each of Ms. Bell's crimes, getting off at the first exit he could in midtown. After the job was done, Snowden double-parked
in front of a kiosk on Fifty-seventh, still enamored with the idea of his new hobby. What better way was there to be rid of
one's fear of death than to just embrace it and be done with the matter? Snowden stared solemnly at the packs lined topside
out behind the attendant, understanding that the first pack would probably solidify a lifetime of brand loyalty and addiction.
Momentarily overwhelmed with the feeling of incompetence, Snowden banished the fear with the firm declaration, "A pack of
True Greens."