Hunting in Harlem (15 page)
At the door, Snowden paused, called back, "So I'll see you at work tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," Bobby offered. "You'll be working for me next year. You know that, right?"
Snowden was so drunk he didn't care that he was walking down the street looking as if he pissed himself. He didn't, but what
if he did? To the few people he did catch looking he was like, "Come on, now you mean to say you've never peed yourself before?
Never felt the shame and release as the warm spray runs down to your legs, unbound? Who among you can say that?"
At his door he barely managed to locate his keys, get them out and working to keep from peeing himself for real. A struggle
through the dark, into the bathroom where he did his business and left his jeans hanging over the shower curtain. It was Snowden's
habit not to turn on the lights when he came home on nights like this: The orange glow of the street lamps provided enough
to get by, any more would tempt him to toward distractions that would keep him awake until it was time to go to work the following
morning.
Tracing his fingers along the walls down the hall toward the kitchen, Snowden adhered to the greatest lesson his father ever
taught him: how to avoid hangovers. As he had so many nights, Snowden found the bottle of vitamin B, chased down five pills
all at once with the jug of water from the refrigerator. It was after he'd put the jug back, in the fleeting light of its
closing door, that he turned and saw the dead body lying on the couch past the counter.
Snowden stood as still as the jar of grease by the stove, the box of cereal in front of him, and every other inanimate object
in the room. The flash of light had left him momentarily blinded and he was absolutely certain that if he turned on a lamp
there would be nothing on his couch at all, and not because it had been an optical illusion, either (it hadn't, it had been
a man), but because it was the ghost of Baron Anderson, come back to haunt him for tripping on the cord and stealing his son.
Snowden was absolutely certain of this and equally so that he didn't want to witness the miracle, that it would scare him
even more than he already was and force him to believe in something he'd rather not even if true. Then it farted and Snowden
yanked his longest knife out of its drawer before hitting the light and finding Lester passed out on the couch, shoes still
on.
The light did what the sound didn't, Lester blinked a bit as Snowden stood in disbelief before him. The man looked started
at first, as if it was his home that had been invaded, his eyes blinking till they were answered with the replacement of his
glasses.
"You have beautiful legs," Lester managed. His voice wasn't slurred, but even the drunk Snowden could recognize that the man
was floating several miles above his usual plane.
"Sir?" Snowden looked down at his own boxers, made sure his penis wasn't hanging out. I am standing here with no pants, my
boss has broken into my apartment, stoned off his ass, and I'm not dreaming. "Sir, what are you doing here?"
"No, no, I ain't the one in trouble. You the one in trouble." Lester's voice sounded like he was talking in his sleep. Snowden
kept the knife in front of him, but Lester paid it no mind. His lids kept nodding, his voice trailing out between sentences
as his eyes skipped open and closed.
"You told that woman. That paper bitch, the one you're fucking." The most terrifying thing about what Lester was saying was
not that he knew it was Snowden who'd leaked the story: Snowden assumed that eventually he would get busted. It was the lazy
way that Lester mentioned it, no hint of taunt or recrimination, casually adjusting the pillow beneath his head as he talked.
It was as if Snowden's most private actions were Lester's common knowledge.
"It's all right, though. A couple, a couple TV spots, that won't matter. We're going to take care of that, take care of your
indiscretion."
"So I'm fired now. You want me to leave?" Snowden asked. The Peter Pan bus rode to Philly all night, at least that was a way
out of all this. Lester laughed at him. "You're cute, I mean that. You ain't fired, you ain't kicked out the program, and
you ain't going nowhere. You just screwed up, trusting her. Trusting anyone. Not fired, just back with the pack. You was in
front the other two, now just running with the pack again. You still got the potential. Just can't mess up no more." Lester's
last words drifted off when he did, were replaced by the much louder sound of his snores, and still they managed to scare
Snowden enough that he kept the butcher knife in front of him until his hand cramped from gripping so tightly.
Snowden remained standing in his underwear waiting for more. "It's hot," Lester finally mumbled, eyes still closed. He was
right, the radiator had the room so hot the windows were steamed.
"Help me," Lester said, his arms hanging out limply before him; he hadn't even loosened his tie. His forehead had been invaded
by an army of sweat beads, they joined into battalion streams to invade his pillow. Snowden opened the window, stuck a fan
in it. Accidents happen. They'd both cleared out the slovenly apartment of a senile senior citizen after she'd fallen victim
to the last heat wave of the summer. Her windows were painted shut and at the time Lester had said she hadn't called about
it. Now Snowden could clearly see him painting her windows immobile in June, then refusing to return her desperate calls to
fix the hazard. Lester stopped his latest round of snores, grumbled, "Undress me. The knife placed on the coffee table, within
reach, Snowden went over to him cautiously, started untying and pulling off Lester's shoes. Yellow socks, so much foot powder
that when Snowden yanked them free the cloud sent him sneezing. Lester responded by cracking the bones in both feet unconsciously
before rolling onto his back, arms passively bent up to the sky like a newborn. "Shirt," he said.
The tie was a clip-on. A couple buttons down the front and a closed-eyed Lester responded to the stimuli by assisting Snowden
with an effort to pull his own limbs out of the sleeves. Snowden could see the needle marks that lined the veins of Lester's
arms even in the dark, like chicken pox on parade. We are all weak, they said to him. Count how many times I gave into temptation.
Snowden was considering shoving Lester's arms back in his shirt so he could play it off in the morning, but then he looked
down and saw his boss staring at him.
Lester beckoned lightly with his other hand for him to come closer. Before Snowden could pull away, Lester had raised himself
close enough to whisper something in his ear. Snowden gave up, leaned into it, but the secret became a kiss when Lester finally
reached him. It landed on the side of Snowden's nose, was wet, quickly turned into a tongue licking lower before Snowden could
yank away, offer, "Sir, you're wasted," as an excuse for him.
"Just because I suffer from a chemical addiction doesn't mean I'm a bad person." Snowden heard the voice and opened his eyes
and there Lester was, sitting on the foot of his bed, fully and impeccably clothed.
No, jou're a bad person because you kill people,
Snowden kept thinking later. "Quite the contrary, I hope you've realized that by now. Everything I do I do out of love, for
the betterment of our people." Crisp shirt, pants pleated, starched tie, hair greased into its permanent currents, the only
evidence that proved to Snowden the reality of the night before was the fact that it was six A.M. and Mr. Lester Baines was
sitting there on Snowden's mattress.
"I've had my sorrows, my weakness, like many men. I understand loss, I don't take what we're doing lightly. It eats at the
soul, I'll warn you, but we too must pay a price for our goal."
"Yes, sir. I totally understand. You have my word. Really," Snowden said, politely waving him away, but Lester just took a
seat beside him on the bed.
"I lost someone. He was very dear to me. It makes things, I find things . . . difficult. At times, difficult."
"Me too."
"No disrespect to you, your home, then," Lester said standing up again.
"None taken."
"I've decided that, outside of work, you can call me Lester.
Respect."
"Respect," Snowden repeated back to him. Then Lester was gone. Snowden listened to his boss walk down the hall and lock the
front door from the outside with his own set of keys, then spent two unsuccessful hours trying fall asleep again.
TO BE BOBBY Finley on the following morning was a beautiful thing. The night before it seemed a dire lot for sure, but the
next day, when Bobby woke up in the fetal position on his bathroom floor, his spirit traced the sunbeams back out the opaque
window, past the sky and into the starlit heavens far beyond. When he got to his feet, Bobby realized he wasn't drunk anymore.
It was as if in that last bit of violent vomiting before he passed out he had rid his body not only of the remaining alcohol
but also of the months of romantic indulgence he had poisoned himself with. Such foolishness, that Piper Goines thing. It
seemed now only one more bitter taste in his mouth to be spit into the Irving Howe with the rest of his bile.
Bobby was very much a man who believed in lessons. From every misfortune, no matter how grave, he searched for the golden
rule to be salvaged, that thing to keep the experience from being a complete loss, to comfort himself that the same situation
wouldn't happen again. On November 7, right there in the bathroom of Apartment 16, 342 East 123rd Street, Bobby Finley declared
the End of Romanticism. No more carelessly using the L-word, misusing his heart as if it was no more than his liver. From
this moment forward, Bobby swore that he would treat his own affections with the solemnity and respect they deserved, not
throw them about without care and then become hurt when others treated them in a similar manner. When the one came, he would
take his time in identifying her, would not be foolish enough to be confused by something as insignificant as the cut of her
clothes, the relative pleasantness of her face, or her physical conditioning. When looking for a soul these were all just
hindrances. As a popular song of his youth had put it, "Never trust a big butt and a smile." This shall be my motto, Bobby
decided.
So much is said about being in love, finding love, losing it, why had no one raised the trumpet for having no love at all?
Devoid of the phenomenon, Bobby felt light, buoyant, prone to giggling fits and whistling, both of which he stifled on the
job, particularly around Snowden whom he was no longer mad at but was punishing by pretending he was for the remainder of
the week. Of course, the woman Piper Goines could clearly not have been the one. The one would be his complement in every
way, she would certainly share his passion, his idealism and dedication to uplifting of the race, his artistic fury. There
was no way a goddess such as that could be attracted to the likes of Snowden.
Snowden was attractive in the purely physical sense, granted, Bobby could see that, but Snowden was so determined to believe
in nothing he'd made that a belief system in itself. The man was dedicated to no more than getting unharmed from one day to
the next one, shrugged lazily at this Horizon opportunity when it should have sent his heart soaring. Snowden preferred tuning
the radio to the Top 40 station and never got sick of those same songs over and over. Although he claimed to be a book lover,
the only thing Bobby'd seen Snowden read consistently was the sports section of the
New
York Post.
For the love of God, the guy was a Bo Shareef fan. Snowden provided entertaining company, true, and Bobby did enjoy him as
a complement to his own admitted intensity, but that the Goines woman had chosen Snowden as a lover was irrefutable proof
that Bobby had been blissfully mistaken. Snowden's betrayal was a blessing, actually. It left no echo of doubt in Bobby's
mind that an error had been made.
Snowden, for his part, adopted a demonstratively sullen posture he'd abandoned years before. It started at work as a ritualistic
display of submission for Bobby, like a dog rolling onto its back to show its belly, but Snowden noticed his mood remained
the same when he was off the job as well, home alone with no one to perform for. The week that followed was a somber one.
Regardless of the time he spent on the dilemma, no alternative course of action that didn't involve himself in jail for the
rest of his life and all the little Leaders being sent off to foster homes presented itself. During his most optimistic moments,
Snowden hoped that Lester and Cyrus Marks would decide that enough community pruning had been done and forget the whole thing.
Aside from brief encounters with the clients in the morning, Lester was barely around at all. Snowden appreciated this greatly.
Wendell was left behind in the cab of the truck, a patch of mange over his right hip leaving it scabbed and balled and making
him particularly irritable. There was to be no slacking under his watch. Wendell demanded vigilance via incessant barking,
ensuring that the three worked quickly just to escape from the racket.
Horus was deputized to go over the inventory with the clients at the end of the day and get their signatures, a duty he boasted
of daily, throwing in comments like, "Y'all better get used to the way I run my ship. I'll let you come for tea when they
give me my brownstone!" Though a big man, Horus provided little company. As soon as he and Snowden ran out of merits to debate
between the 1996 Bulls and 1968 76ers and the conversation slowed, it was Horus's habit once again to remove his laminated
cutout photo of his dream Mercedes and hijack the discussion to one about the merits of the CL-class coupe versus the SL-class
roadster, pointing down at the faded image like he already owned it.
After work on Sunday, a good four days after his conversation with Robert M. Finley, Snowden finally admitted to himself that
he'd become a truly unhappy person. He wanted to get drunk but didn't feel like getting drunk alone, and the TV lineup was
so bad he couldn't even be bothered to flip through the channels as he was apt to. Left with his thoughts, there were no distractions
to keep him from realizing that the majority were not happy ones.
Throughout his life, Snowden was sure he'd seen people on the street and behind cash registers, heard them on the other end
of phone lines, who were perennially pleasant. Truly happy people among us. Snowden could barely imagine them even crying,
but he was sure they did, short bursts never louder than their normal talking voice, things they wiped away like mucus before
returning to their state of happiness once more. These people often seemed bland and stupid as well, but what a small price
to pay for true happiness. The ones Snowden envied the most were those who seemed to be happy just because they believed in
something, something so big it shrank all their own obstacles down to minutia. It didn't seem to matter what that thing was,
either, just as long as it was big and depended more on faith than reality. Nursing his anxiety, Snowden wished he could believe
in something big and beautiful, even this Horizon insanity he was being pushed into, that he could rid himself of the certainty
that eventually it would engulf him.
The most beautiful thing Snowden could think to believe in at the moment was love, and even though he was pretty sure he wasn't
in love with Piper Goines and that it was good sense to avoid her in general, he felt overwhelmed by the need to be near a
woman, inside her, and Piper's door was already open for him. The urge to be touched, listened to, overshadowed the fear that
Lester would see him near her, so once more he found himself at her door, greeted by her patented lack of surprise, customary
silence.
"I'm here for consolation," Snowden said as soon as he'd ducked inside the vestibule, out of sight from the street.
"Good."
"Would you rub my hands for me? They hurt from lifting shit."
"OK. It's a deal, then."
Upstairs, Piper obliged. There were too many bottles for it to take so long to find a little something to rub into his skin,
but it did. Snowden sat on the fuzzy lid of the toilet while Piper pulled through the stalactite jars in the cavern under
the sink, most of which ended up on the floor in the process. Snowden begged for her to settle with the petroleum jelly but
Piper chose instead some pink paste meant for hair moisturizing that stank like a perm but felt good. They had sex in the
bathtub because when they started kissing they were next to it and it was the only bare surface in her apartment.
Snowden woke up paranoid. His dream hallucination that he'd been sleeping in a coffin-sized office drawer turned out to be
the product of the manila files underneath the sheets of Piper's bed, ones she hadn't bothered to mention or clear when they'd
collapsed there. Snowden was pulling them out from beneath himself when Piper reached out for his hand.
"I didn't expect this, you know. I mean, it wasn't an expectation, do you know what I mean? I realize, at least it's my understanding
of this whole thing, that we're just messing around here. But I want to tell you I really appreciate it, you coming over here
to console me, taking into account how I must feel."
"Console
you"
Snowden sat with it a moment, admitted there was no way he could hold that statement that it would make him see it clearly.
"I'm sorry, did something happen to you?"
"Jesus." When Piper flopped back on the bed like that, Snowden could hear that there were even more files hidden beneath her.
"You didn't even see the article, did you? You probably don't even read the
Times,
do you?"
"Oh, I don't just not read the
Times,
I don't read nothing at all. I'm a total moron." Snowden caught the flash of white from Piper's rolling eyes as she jumped
out of the bed and past him. He was beginning to wonder if he should follow her when she returned to drop the weight of the
Sunday paper on the bed beside him. As she went searching through each section, Snowden became certain that when she was done
she would leave the periodical right there where she dropped it for weeks, kicking it piece by piece onto the floor in her
sleep.
"You know what? The most annoying thing about all this is now you're going to be all freaking happy about it too, about my
travesty." Piper threw the section at him, bouncing it off his slow hands and down to the floor in front of him. The paper
looked as if it had been shared by a bored army for a month, its sides soft and rounded from repeated bending, gray with the
ink of smeared words.
"My editor in chief called me last night to tell me about it. The bastard even sounded happy that I'd been scooped. He's supposed
to be my advocate and I could almost see the old fool smiling on the other end of the phone. He must have gone through my
insurance records to get my home number. It was like his little payback for my piece knocking out his Special Report, as if
I had a damn thing to do with that."
Snowden heard none of this, the auditory processor of his brain being infringed upon by the visual overload of seeing Cyrus
Marks right there on the cover of the real estate section, his smiling visage centered and in color, Horizon Realty's swinging
sign over his shoulder, the number showing clearly. Deja vu as Snowden found himself reading the paper with his fate caught
in the text, but now the anticipation of each additional sentence given the context of joy. The article's tide, AMID ACCIDENTAL
ASHES, A NEW HARLEM BLOSSOMS.
"See? See? Not only does the bastard not mention that I'm the one who broke this story, he doesn't even bother mentioning
the
New Holland Herald at
all. You know, you think sometimes that black people are starting to get respect, then you look at the way the black press
gets dissed . . . It's goddamn antebellum. It really is."
"Although much has been made in our local tabloid press about the high number of accidental deaths in the historic Mount Morris
section of Harlem, it must be taken into account that these figures apply entirely to the lower-income residents of the area,
the elderly, the drug-addicted, and others who are obviously at a much higher risk than the flourishing and unaffected high-income
newcomers." After that, Snowden read the sidebar about Mr. Marks, Harlem's favored son. Cyrus Marks was the only real estate
agent profiled, his optimism for Harlem quoted and unquestioned, his hope for all Harlem, rich and poor, beyond reproach.
A long, run-on sentence listed his charitable contributions and affiliations.
"The thing that kills me is the morally reprehensible tone this guy gets." When Piper got mad, she had a habit of slamming
her fist down. The bed shook. "It's like he's implying it's some bourgeois Manifest Destiny, like Harlem is just weeding itself
to make room for the moneyed fucks to come steal it away for themselves. It's disgusting."
Snowden got to the quote from Lester at the end. "A well-groomed, courteous man, Marks's one-time parolee, then chauffeur,
and now lead agent. 'Of course white New Yorkers are welcome in Harlem, just as the former president himself. Black Harlem
enjoys the diversity they bring to our community'"
If there were any lingering suspicions about the accidents, this article dispersed them beyond the borders of memory. It was
the first moment since he saw Baron Anderson's lifeless body that Snowden could actually believe he would make his way out
of his situation. Snowden had never considered sending flowers to a man before, but he promised as he read that Lincoln Jefferson,
the reporter, would be his first recipient.
"You know, you could at least give me the respect of not smiling like that until you're dressed and out of here," Piper told
him.
The following morning, Monday. The phone rang at seven-ten and it was Lester. Snowden heard the voice and groggily begged
to know what was wrong, what did they want of him now, what the hell was wrong with this world.
"Everything's fine," Lester chirped cheerily. "Everything's fine now. Horizon has many friends, in many places. It's all been
taken care of."
The day's relocation was originally scheduled for noon, but Lester wanted Snowden to show up at nine instead, back up Nina
in reception by clearing the messages off the voice mail. Snowden had performed the duty before and disliked it. Nina was
an adherent of the Ebonic school of customer service, felt rudeness as much her right as her paycheck, got even worse when
she was forced to share her small territory behind the reception desk. Her image in Snowden's mind was intertwined with the
smell of rotten flowers, provided by a decade of her sweating through her perfume in Horizon's cramped front office. The job
was easy though, involved sitting in the small space behind her with a notepad, transcribing the messages from the eight or
nine calls that, on busy days, overflowed.