Gotham (9 page)

‘So, why do you like facing backwards?' I want to get us talking.

‘Is this the interview?' He tears the foil from the top from his bottle and twists at the wire cork cover.

He's in a good mood. He is famous on 59th Street and he has Krug to share.

The engine starts. It's less powerful, less military in tone than I was expecting. It's a car engine, with this beast of a pimp van built on.

‘It can be. Or it can be just a question.'

‘Sure.' He drinks a mouthful. ‘Any asshole can face forward. In a cab, you face forward. In a car, you face forward. You got wheels big enough to have a room, you get to face backward.'

It's a point he can't seem to stop himself making. He needs it in my notes, in every article. He wants proof in writing that he has escaped the hard streets of his recent childhood and arrived somewhere else, in some Oz of his invention, where life is about something altogether more luxurious than survival.

‘And you get to look back and see all the people pointing, going, ‘Who the fuck?' He imitates star-shock, going wide-eyed and waving his hand around, snapping away with an imaginary phone.

Beside him, Smokey stares at his screen, punching out a text message, no doubt to his labouring lady, placating, promising, telling her
she matters more than this ride. He has another life, as do I, but I have yet to see Na
ti's properly. My hand goes to my pocket without me thinking about it, but there's no buzz of a message from Lindsey, nothing telling me there are problems back at the Beacon.

Smokey hits send and says, ‘I might step out while you two eat.'

It's the first I've heard of food being part of the plan. The nine-thirty meeting time meant I ate in the real world before heading for Bloomingdale's. But I'll take it. The biggest piece I'm writing is
Rolling Stone
-style, where you buddy up with the artist and log time across different terrains—in transit, in their favourite dive bar where they don't merit a glance, over Darjeeling tea one morning while they're in trackpants and coming down from something, finding room for remorse and even doubt. For this interview I get to compress that into one
night, and it must go as long as it must go. A meal works well as the middle part of it. It'll read like days. Themes will be revisited. Truths will find their shape and show themselves.

‘You leavin' me at this man's mercy?' Na
ti laughs. ‘Who knows what shit I might say without you running interference?' He pokes Smokey in the sleeve, hoping for a laugh back. Smokey obliges, but half-heartedly. ‘Yeah, man. I can let you off the clock a while.'

Na
ti pulls his own phone from his pocket and flicks between screens. I didn't hear a message. He smiles to himself. The van turns out of 59th Street into an avenue, heading north. He glances through some photos—blurred selfies, a girl with blonde hair—and starts tapping a message.

‘Okay,' Smokey says, more to bring Na
ti back to us than anything. Na
ti's focus stays on his screen. ‘Okay, that's good, LyDell.'

‘I have a visit in mind first,' Na
ti says, still texting. ‘A little happy appetiser before the meal.' He sends the message and twists around in his seat, ducking Smokey's gaze. He puts his hand on the driver's shoulder. ‘Candy store, my man.'

Smokey turns to look out the window at the lights, at nothing at all, his lips pulled shut over his gold grills. The van makes a right at the next intersection, then another, sending us south, back where we've come from.

Na
ti's directly opposite me. He catches my eye and grins. ‘Candy store.'

It's cryptic, and its mystery is meant for me. I'm not on the inside. He's welcome to remind me of that as much as he likes. It would not occur to him that I don't want to be him. It would shock him to learn that I am in his van, writing this piece, solely for the money. It would not shock Smokey, I think. His life is in a hospital somewhere else on this crowded island, eight
centimetres, nine centimetres, ten centimetres, action.

‘I'm sure we can handle the interview, just the two of us, if Smokey has to go.'

‘Really?' Na
ti says, his grin now more of a smirk. ‘You're sure of that?'

Smokey's mouth opens as if he's about to speak, but then he closes it again. His chunky ring taps his window as the van hits a bump.

Na
ti's head is already in his candy store, and Smokey will not jolly him back to me. Na
ti turns his phone over and over in his hand and stretches out in his seat, an action that requires me to move my feet for his. He sets his phone on the flat plane of his abdomen—he is whippet-lean beneath his rapper's clothes, I'm betting—and he keeps one hand over it.