I Am Not Sidney Poitier (16 page)

At the next class meeting, Everett informed us that we would be taking an essay examination that day.

“You said ‘no tests,’ ” one of the women said.

“This is an examination,” Everett said.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“Well, be that as it may.” He passed around the exam. “There are three questions, and I urge you to divide your time unevenly on them, as they are of equal value. Since one hundred is not divisible by three, there is no way for you to achieve a perfect score. Unless of course we decide that ninety-nine is a perfect score, and I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

The examination:

We students looked at each other with varying degrees of confusion, panic, and anger. And like idiots, we set to work. At least they did. I read the questions over and over and after the numbers 1 and 2 on my paper I wrote,
I don’t know.
After the number 3 I wrote,
Awful,
then added,
damn it.

Podgy Patel was tapping my desk with the eraser of his pencil. He looked around the dorm room, then at me sitting on my narrow mattress. He said in his lilting singsong accent, “You know you don’t have to live like this.”

“I choose to live like this.” I looked at his chinos and red sweater. “Thanks for not wearing a suit.”

“Casual Friday,” he said.

“It’s Thursday.”

“At home it is Friday. Or Wednesday maybe. I cannot remember which way it goes.”

“What’s up, Podgy?”

“Your money continues to grow, but it would be growing much faster if you made an investment.”

“Why should it grow faster?” I asked.

This agitated him slightly. “Mr. Not Sidney, money should be allowed to grow as fast as it can. This is my business. I am your advisor, and your money wants to grow faster.”

“I don’t know anything about investing.”

“Of course you don’t. That is why you have me, Podgy Patel. That is why I am here.”

“Thank you. So, what do you want me to do? Buy stocks or something like that? I trust you. Just buy whatever.”

“No stocks. Stocks are no good. Chimp change.”

“Chump change.”

“That, too. No, I don’t like stocks. I think you should buy a television network. A cable network.”

“Excuse me?”

“A television network.”

“I heard you, but I don’t understand you, or at least I think you’re nuts. You mean like Ted’s network?”

Podgy nodded. “Yes, like that, but not so big. I have one in mind, and it will not cost you much. It is called N-E-T.”

“What’s that stand for?”

“I believe it stands for Negro Entertainment Television. I say so because there are many many black people on all the time.”

“Why would I be interested in that?” I asked.

“Are you not black?”

“I don’t know the first thing about running a business, much less a big business, much much less a television network. I couldn’t run a doughnut shop. Hell, I couldn’t run a lemonade stand.”

“Ah, doughnuts. Those Krispy Kremes sell themselves.”

“Then maybe I should buy one of those.”

“Oh, no. The boom of that franchise has peaked and will soon crumble. Pardon my pun.”

“N-E-T,” I said.

“The infrastructure is in place. All you have to do is own it. You simply show up for meetings now and again and listen to how things are going. You can participate however you like.”

“You make it sound easy.”

He laughed his high-pitched giggly laugh. “When you have so much money, everything is easy.”

“You’ll be involved?”

“I am a financial advisor. Nothing more.”

I reached over and took the pencil from his hand. “And the new head of my network. Pay yourself what network heads make.” I thought about the whole business. “N-E-T. Net. I like that it spells
net.
”

“It is a very nice word.”

Ted was pleased to hear of my bold move into the media business. I was surprised, however, to learn that not only had he not prompted it, he’d known nothing of Podgy’s advice to me. We were sitting in a Church’s fried-chicken restaurant. We’d entered at his insistent, whining request. His lips, his face, and fingers were shiny with grease.

“Jane would shit her yoga pants if she saw me eating like this,” he said. “I no doubt will later.”

“Nice image, thanks.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Why are you eating this stuff?”

“A media mogul.” He nodded. “You’ll do great.”

“I won’t be involved in running the thing,” I told him. “I decided to put Podgy in charge.”

Ted poked at some chicken skin with his finger. “I don’t believe Podgy knows anything about running a company.”

“He knows more than I do.”

“I wonder if the skin is good for you. I can’t imagine it is. It tastes good, I know that.”

“If the network fails, it fails,” I said.

“That’s the spirit. How are classes?”

“Fine. Most are boring, predictable, and nondescript. And then there’s Everett. He’s a nut. No one knows what the hell he’s talking about.”

“Must be a genius,” Ted said.

“He’s an idiot. He admits to being a phony.”

“What network is it?” he asked.

“N-E-T.”

“The black soul station,” he said. “I actually thought about buying that once. Then I figured I’d be stepping out of my comfort zone. As if that ever stopped me before.”

“I’m out of mine, I can tell you that.”

“I wonder how astronauts go to the bathroom? And how much do they eat? Can you get fat in a weightless environment?” He chewed more chicken, then laughed to himself. “Not to sound racist, which, being American I no doubt am, you’d better watch Podgy. Next thing you know you’ll have shows on the air called Punjabi Profiles and Getting Down on the Ganges.”

“You’re right, that is kind of racist.”

“Your point being?”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind if he did program stuff like that.”

“I think I left the front door unlocked at the ranch in Montana. People always think of blue as a cool color, but the hottest part of a flame is blue, so blue is actually a hot color.”

Everyone in the class was confused, even angry. I too. We had been handed back our surprise midterm exams, and to a person we had received failing grades. This was bewildering, especially in light of Everett’s assurance that we would all get As for the semester.

“You failed the test,” Everett said. “That’s all I can say. That’s all I need to say.”

“You said we were getting As,” a big guy in the front row said. “This is not an A.”

“Had you been that astute on the exam, you might be looking at a different grade. However, for your observation, you now have a D. Does that make you happy, Mr. Winston?”

“Only slightly,” Mr. Winston said.

“That it makes you happy at all forces me to lower your grade once again.”

“How do we raise our grades?” I asked.

“Now, that is the question to ask,” Everett said. “Mr. Poitier has hit the screw on its head. That is the question. How? Pray tell, how?”

“This is bullshit,” another guy said and seemed to pull together his things to leave. “I’m dropping this motherfucker.”

Everett smiled at him. “You’re willing to give up an A in an upper-level course because you failed an exam?”

The student fell back into his seat, looked around at the rest of us, then back at Everett. “I’m just saying I’m confused. Is that it? Is that all you’re trying to do, confuse us?”

“Not all,” Everett said. “Not all. Class dismissed.”

“What if we don’t come back?” Maggie Larkin asked.

“Then you won’t know if I’m here waiting for you, will you?” Everett looked out the window at the sky. “On that rather shrill note, which is very close to a C-sharp, I’ll say again, and with a clarity unheard of in the hallowed halls of academe, class dismissed.”

“He’s crazy,” Maggie said to me as we stepped out of the building into the autumn air.

“He’s boring, that’s what he is,” I said. “May I ask if you find me in any way attractive?”

“You may ask,” she said.

“Do you?”

“I do.”

And so began my first relationship. Maggie Larkin was from Washington DC. Her father was a lawyer, her mother a physician in training only. Her older sister had graduated from Spelman and was in law school at Georgetown. She spoke proudly of her family, and I never mentioned mine, as there was none. To her questions about my past, I told her I’d come to Atlanta after the death of my mother. She asked me why, and I deflected the question by telling her that I needed to get away from Los Angeles, which was true enough, and lied to her about an uncle with whom I lived until his death. When she asked me where I got my money, I told her that I had worked three jobs to save up for college. I lied stupidly and clumsily, and I am afraid with little gusto as my story was anything but detailed. Though not well thought out, my answers for some reason went unchallenged, though I could sense a raised eyebrow. We kissed and rolled around on the little bed in her private dorm room. I soon was spending most of my time with her. We sat beside each other in Everett’s class, which we continued to attend despite his insanity and lack of coherence, but our being together at least made it more bearable. Everett even noticed us once as we made eyes at each other, and I believed he nodded approvingly. The man unnerved me, but his nonsensical rambling became a sort of entertaining white-noise sound track to everything that I pretended or perhaps hoped would entify, crystallize, or coalesce at some point into something vaguely useful or at least coherent, however shapeless.