Angry Black White Boy (13 page)

“Cut!” said Nique, stepping in front of Macon and waving his lanky arms like an air-traffic controller. “That’s a wrap, folks. Nothing more today. Go home, file your stories, have a drink. Have ten. We’ll be in touch.” He and Andre ushered Macon into a waiting cab and took off.

“Why’d you do that?” Macon protested as they turned the corner. “I was just getting warmed up.”

“Wave,” Andre suggested, buzzing the window down.

Macon waved.

Chapter Three

“You were great,” raved Nique, stalking 1107 Carman, cigarette in hand. Andre had granted him full smoking privileges on the hunch that the R.A. wasn’t going to be fucking with them anymore. “Honest, articulate but not too polished. Disarming, provocative, quirky. A natural.” Nique sped his pace and began cutting figure eights around the two desk chairs. “This is gonna be some shit,” he said for the hundredth time.

Andre perched on the radiator by the window, watching the street, a mug of instant cocoa in hand. “They’re still out there,” came the update,
they
meaning the hundred-plus protesters flooding 114th Street, a bloodthirsty and bizarre non-coalition waving signs that ranged from A WHITE RACIST IS STILL A RACIST to VIGILANTES DESERVE VIGILANTE JUSTICE to SELLOUT DIE. A fistful of reporters covered the zealotry and a six-pack of cops kept the demonstrators lazily in check. Columbia security massed in front of Carman, a loose phalanx. Andre shook his head. “In the pouring rain, too. Not good.”

“Are you kidding?” Nique scowled. “The more the better. We’re getting ricochet publicity off them. Shit, Moves, I’m gonna make you a star.”

Macon lay facedown on his bed and didn’t answer. Adrenaline had powered him through the impromptu press conference and now he was twitching through withdrawal, on the brink of passing out—a brink from which he would have gladly plummeted had Nique and Andre not been plotting his hostile takeover of the media and then the world between incoming phone calls.

Radio, TV, newspapers, Web sites, magazines—everybody wanted the well-spoken white criminal race traitor. Andre had adopted the role of press secretary, dutifully cataloging the whos, whats, and wheres in felt-tipped pen on the side of a huge, still-packed cardboard moving box marked
Pimp Shit III: This time it’s
personal.
Macon had declared a moratorium on decision-making of all kinds until he could get some rest, and so dozens of invitations and interview requests were going unanswered, much to Nique’s dismay. He had taken to calling Macon “The Franchise,” and to slapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other as he spoke to convey the urgency of his words, even if all he was saying was “We need a pizza.”

Nique’s patience with his star was running low. “Yo, Moves,” he said again. Macon propped himself up on his elbows and rubbed his eyes, resigning himself to the fruitlessness of trying to sleep in this madhouse. He could hear the protesters like they were in the next room, or at least he imagined he could.

“What, Nique, what?”

“You wanna answer the door? Opportunity is knocking.”

“He shoulda called before he came.”

Andre laughed. “Come on, man,” he said. “I saw you up there, having the time of your life. Ain’t no way I’m buying this reluctant-hero prima donna shit now, so you might as well sit up and get your game face on.” He paused. “I’ll roll a joint, if that will help.”

Macon turned onto his back, clasped his hands behind his head, and sighed. “I wouldn’t stop you. All right. Hit me.”

Nique did a quick lateral slide into a chair next to the bed, then stood, flipped it backward with a flick of his wrist, and straddled the seat. Andre rotated the notated side of the
Pimp Shit
box toward Macon, and Nique brandished a pen. “Okay. I say we hit radio tomorrow morning and TV in the afternoon. There’s three programs that sound good to me, and if we hustle, we can do them all. You can talk to the newspapers tonight and we’ll stall the magazines until the buzz builds even higher. We freak it right, we’ll get some covers.”

“Whoa,” said Macon, waving his hand as if he were shooing a fly. “Whoa, whoa. Hold up. I should be worrying about getting my ass a lawyer and staying out of jail.” He glanced toward the window and winced. “Not to mention alive.”

“Listen,” said Nique. “Why do you think those wackjobs outside are so mad? Everybody knows you’re guilty as sin, but the case against you is flimsy as a hooker’s panties, and everybody knows that, too. All the victims would have to reverse their statements about you being a brother, for one thing, which would make them look ridiculous. That just leaves the one guy as a witness, and he can’t even say if the gun, which they don’t even have, was real. It’s assault and petty robbery, dude. For all they know you could be a copycat criminal, and the original cat is still on the loose. A decent lawyer will get you off with a suspended sentence, at worst. And if you get famous enough, Moves, we can hire one of the best, Cochran or somebody. So let’s get you famous, motherfucker.”

“It’s true,” Andre agreed, in his most soothing tone. “They really don’t have shit, Macon. And the best way to cover your ass is to become a celebrity. You know that.” As if on cue, he and Nique turned up their palms and raised their eyebrows.

Macon dropped his thrumming head into his hand. He didn’t want to let on, but he felt tremendously reassured. “How much was my bail?” he asked.

“Twenty-five grand.”

“What?” Macon sprang to his feet, and a sharp pain shot through his head. He sank back down onto the bed. “Where the hell did you guys get that kind of dough?”

“You had four,” said Andre. “I had six. My mother spotted me the rest. She owes me big. She’s an entertainment lawyer and I brought her the biggest client of her career last spring. This fool named Hank Barrows who used to wash my car. He just sold Fox this sitcom about a Black Muslim leader whose distant cousin dies and leaves him custody of three white kids.
Li’l Devils,
it’s called.” He paused. “Plus I told Moms about you and Cap Anson. That really affected her, somehow.”

“Andre, I mean . . . Thanks, but . . .” He tried to size his roommate up. “I’ve known you four days. Why would you . . .” He sighed. “What do you guys want from me?”

“I’ve decided to believe in you until you give me reason not to,” said Andre, rifling through dresser drawers in search of his stash. A deliberate attempt to stay busy as he spoke, it seemed to Macon. “Somebody’s gotta light a fire under white people’s asses. Every time a brother does it, somebody up and kills him, so it might as well be you.”

Macon rose, walked over, and extended his hand. “I appreciate that, Dre,” he said softly. “I promise I won’t let you down.”

Andre stopped what he was doing long enough to give Macon a rushed pound, then resumed the hunt. “Listen to this fool,” he said over his shoulder. “Sounding like a politician already.”

“He damn well better,” Nique said. “A chance like this doesn’t come along every day. For any of us. We gotta make moves here and now. Pun intended. That twenty-five is an investment, Moves. A year from now, I’ma be selling stock in your ass.”

“Twenty-five grand.” Macon shook his head. “If I was black and robbing black folks, it’d be twenty-five bucks.” He stopped and mused. “Then again, if I was black and I’d robbed all those crackers, it’d be like—”

“Be like your ass was still in jail,” said Nique.

Macon stood. “I gotta get some air.”

“Try Connecticut.”

“I’m going uptown to my man Drum One’s pad,” Macon decided. “Don’t book anything yet. I need to think this through.”

“Drum One TDK?” asked Andre, looking up.

“How many Drum Ones you know?”

“Wow. He’s like the grandpa of graffiti. What’s he like?”

“Weird. Call you up and run his jibs for three hours about some twenty-year-old beef he has with some writer you never heard of over who was king of the 1 train in 1978. You don’t say five words the whole time—matter fact, you put the phone down, go make a sandwich, and come back just in time to hear him say, ‘Yo, you know what I like about you, man? You listen. Stay up.’ Then you don’t hear from him for six months.”

“Well,” said Andre, “he can do whatever he wants. How’d you meet him?”

“We’ve never really met. He used to publish a graff mag and I sent him some flicks of my shit. Actually,” Macon confided, failing to keep the pride out of his voice, “judging from the amount of time I’ve spent listening to him talk about ‘the white man,’ I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a brother, too.”

“Not if he reads the paper,” said Nique.

“Well, he only knows me as Easel. That was my tag.”

“Why Easel?”

“Good letters for bombing. Plus, whatever you write Easel on becomes one.”

“Nice,” said Andre. The bag of herb was in his hand now. He dropped a bud onto his desk, hunched low, and began breaking it apart. “But just to bring it back to reality like Soul II Soul—”

“Or Intelligent Hoodlum,” interjected Nique.

“Who just sampled the Soul II Soul song.”

“Who just sampled the drums Marley Marl gave Biz for ‘Pickin’ Boogers.’ ”

“Who sampled them from some funk record we don’t know about regardless,” finished Andre, impatient. “Point being, you can’t just mosey on downstairs and hop the train, dude. There’s a mob calling for your blood outside.”

“Hey, I bet there’s already Macon Detornay Web sites up,” said Nique. He reached over and pressed a button, and Andre’s laptop whirred to life.

“Can anybody in this room focus on anything?” asked Andre. He turned to Macon. “I think you should stay here.”

“Suggestion duly noted and rejected. What good is you bailing me out if I’m a prisoner in my room?”

“Well, at least be careful. Here, wear my lid as a disguise.” Andre tossed a wide-brimmed fisherman’s hat across the room.

“Take my Rineharts,” Nique offered. Macon put the glasses on. The room swam green.

“I’m not even gonna look in the mirror,” he said, “because I know this looks ridiculous.”

“We should come with you,” Nique said dully, hands moving over the keyboard like manic spiders.

“Nah,” said Macon. “I wanna be alone for a minute.”

Nique shrugged and his eyes widened. “Damn, five hundred and sixty-three matches. Ain’t that some shit.”

Macon hucklebucked eleven flights rather than risk one elevator stare. His footfalls echoed in the cement quiet, and the cement sounds of jail resurfaced for a second. I’m not going back there, Macon told himself, chest cavity tremoring with the sudden applicability of such a hackneyed line. He flipped his jacket collar up and hunched into it, pulled the hat low and thanked God he had the sunglasses, a filter for the world. He remembered a sci-fi book he’d read dog-eared as a kid. A monster in it was so stupid that it wouldn’t eat you if you closed your eyes, believing that if you couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see you.

The tug of Macon’s desire to walk among the protesters frightened him as he stalked through the lobby and banged a military-sharp left turn onto campus, away from the crowd, refusing himself even an over-the-shoulder glance. He longed to glide unseen through the throng’s ranks and scream with them—to smell their colognes, their breath, the wet wool of their sweaters, anything. Instead he hurried over to Broadway and hailed a cab, arm outstretched at a hitchhiker’s angle. The rain splattered against his hat, fat drops amplified by the soaked cloth and sounding solid, like BBs. He slid across the taxi backseat, the fake leather cracked and patched with duct tape, glanced at the driver’s ID and told himself he was above dwelling on the irony of now-I’m-riding-in-a-cab.

Drum lived up in Washington Heights, fifty blocks north. Macon leaned back and sighed. His chest felt tight and his head still throbbed with metronome consistency, engorging with pain and draining slowly. He stared at the sheets of rain sloshing over the cab windows and studied the unmatched tempos of the windshield wipers compressing the water down into small moisture-hills, the way the left wiper slashed in and then retreated as the right advanced. When he was little, Macon had always imagined that the wipers were boxing, knocking each other down. The timing was cyclical, and without thinking, Macon counted the number of times the wipers moved between their closest synchronicity and their most dissonant point. Every sixteenth wipe, it turned out, the tips almost kissed. Then they grew apart until they were so distant they were close again.

Macon overtipped the driver, sprinted into Drum’s foyer, and pressed his buzzer. No answer. He rang again and sat down on the windowsill, out of ideas. It hadn’t occurred to him that Drum might not be home. The cat was pushing fifty, and as far as Macon knew he only stepped out of the lab to put in appearances at graff events, gallery openings and film screenings and whatnot, sign blackbooks for starstruck new-jacks a third his age. Like many old-school writers, Drum was on some paranoid conspiracy shit, refusing to have his picture taken without shielding his face behind a gas mask, sunglasses, or a camouflage army jacket. Periodically, he disappeared overseas, departing abruptly and making veiled, ominous references to “shit” being “hot.” There was no point in trying to figure him out, Macon thought; Drum was as indecipherable as the wild styles for which he was famous: twisted, polymorphous letter-forms spiraling through white space, glinting fluorescent, illegal as all hell.

While some of his contemporaries, the first generation of New York writers, graffiti’s inventors, had pursued art world acceptance and made the transition from trains to canvases, Drum had stayed underground. Permission walls were not a part of his agenda; artistic terrorism was. To him,
graffiti T-shirt
and
legal piece
were oxymorons. Most of the guys who’d gone legit, Drum was quick to point out, had been pimped and dismissed by the fickle art community, treated as ghetto curiosities, and pushed off the cutting edge as suddenly as they’d defined it.

A few writers were still selling canvases, but that shit looked static, dead. Trains moved; that was the genius of graffiti: words flying through the city, jags of color shrieking every which way, the motion of the pieces locked in violent competition or beautiful harmony with the motion of the trains. It had been a city-sponsored, rotating exhibition seen by five million New Yorkers a day, ridiculously competitive and growing ever more involved until only the secret community of writers could read the names sprayed in interlocking, tangled angles and raging, moving color.