A Brief History of Seven Killings (79 page)

The bus is here.

I’m still living.

Three

N
ah, this is the C
. The A doesn’t make stops until 125th.

—Ah.

The man steps back from the doorway as if he saw somebody in the train he didn’t want to run into. I watch the door closing him out and sit back down as the train starts to move. New Yorkers, the uptown train has been lying to you. This is what you do, you take the C from 163rd to 145th Street to jump on the express because you’re in a fucking hurry and this is uptown, and there’re always delays or some drama. I mean, only last week, when I was rushing to JFK to catch a flight back to Minnesota because Mom wasn’t doing so hot, a man pulled down his pants and started to shit on the train. He just squatted and dumped, yelling the whole time like he was giving birth. Of course he did this the second the train pulled out of Fulton, which meant it would be forever before it reached High Street all the way in Brooklyn. Six or seven of us, I don’t know how many, rushed to the door only to see that it was the one door that didn’t open for transfer to the next car. I’m there thinking, begging, please don’t start throwing your shit. Please, please don’t. When the train finally pulled into High Street we all tumbled out and ran. But that’s not my point. My point was, you take the C to 145th and then switch to the A because it’s the express. But the A is fucking slower than the C. Come at, say, West 4th Street and wait a minute or two, and there is the same damn C train you jumped off at 145th.

So now I just stick on the C and try to read. That’s not true. I stay on the C train to check out people reading
The New Yorker
. I wonder if they’re reading IT. An Irish novelist friend of mine told me how once on the train he saw someone reading his book. He asked her, Is it any good? and she
said, Some of it but other times it’s a slog. For some reason it made his day, and that she didn’t even recognize him. So yeah, sometimes I’m on the C looking for that woman, and it’s almost always a woman reading
The New Yorker
and hope I can sit beside them and wait for them to turn to IT. I can say, Holy shit, this is like the movies. I mean, this never happens in real life, right? And she’ll say what happens? And I’ll say that a writer happens to be on the train to see somebody actually reading his stuff. In this version of the story she will also be cute, hopefully black and if not single, then certainly not beholden to a concept as passé as monogamy. Who am I kidding? With all the free-love bullshit I spout I’m the one who sounds old hat. Thanks to Republicans and AIDS, everybody is marrying now, even gay guys are thinking about it.

But one guy’s riding the C and he’s some kid in torn-off sweatpants and long johns underneath. Leather jacket but I can’t see much else because he’s reading
Rolling Stone
with what looks like Axl Rose on the cover. Guns N’ Roses supposedly saved rock and roll a few years ago, or at least that’s what anybody who works at
Rolling Stone
will tell you. I say if this is true, then why am I hearing shitty dance pop from faggy limeys on the radio all the time? A fucking band named Jesus Jones, Christ. And please for God’s sake don’t play that Black Crowes album again, I heard it the first time when it was called Sticky Fingers. God, maybe the reason why the cab’s so empty is that everybody can sense I have grown into such a belligerent motherfucker. It’s the weird time after rush hour but before lunch where you can ride an empty car in broad daylight. Cab’s covered in new graffiti, on the windows, seats, even the floor, the new ones looking sharp and sci-fi with letters, I think they are letters, that look like molten metal. That and posters for Tang! Non-Invasive Cure for Bunions and Fucking
Miss Saigon
.

Shit, I wish I had a
New Yorker
. Or anything for that matter. Rushed out of the office because I realized I was close to deadline and preferred working from home when under pressure. I handed in part four yesterday. Four of seven. Yeah, a part of me hopes people still read
The New Yorker
or at least pay attention to it the way they did for the Janet Malcolm thing on Jef
frey MacDonald and Joe McGinniss only a few months ago. Not that I’m working on anything so heavy, and besides, who the fuck gives a damn about the Singer or Jamaica now other than frat boys? You, Alex Pierce, are what the kids today call a relic. And it’s only March.

I get off at 163rd, climb up the steps hoping the guy who tried to bum a cigarette off me isn’t there for another one. Shit, why buy a pack when he can score one or two from me every day? The further I step away from C-Town the more it hits deep that there’s nothing good in my fridge. I’m going home to no food, which will only piss me the fuck off, and I’ll put this coat back on to walk right back to the C-Town I’m walking away from right now. But fuck it, I’m on 160th already.

It’s March, it’s still fucking cold and you can’t even give these fucking homes away. The brownstone I bought didn’t need any work and yet the owner was itching so bad to get out I became convinced something was seriously wrong with it. That only made him drop the price more. He tried to sell me on some shit about Louis Armstrong living here. Only three minutes later he said Cab Calloway. Whatever, I liked a neighborhood that people were trying to get away from, though if you asked me, people are probably skipping because they hate how this part of Washington Heights, pardon me, historic Harlem, had been going to shit since the late seventies, brief eighties fake boom to real bust notwithstanding.

What I’m trying to say is this street, especially at this time of day, is usually pretty empty. So why are there four black guys, all dressed like they just walked out of a rap video, sitting on my stoop? I couldn’t turn back, because they had already seen me. If I played it like a scared white guy they would call me out in a second, or smell the fear and chase that shit. Fuck me. One of them, with dreadlocks in fucking pig tails, stands up and looks me over. I’m just twenty feet from my own house and four black guys are on the steps. Two of them just shared a loud joke. I make one little step back and feel like an idiot. They are just black guys sitting on my steps. It could have been anybody’s steps and look, fucker, they could be your neighbors and it’s your fault you don’t know any of them. I tap my ass as if I’m reaching
for a wallet that isn’t there, and try to fake an oh-shit-I-forgot-my-wallet look, but Pig Tails is still staring at me, glaring even, but that might be me imagining things. I can’t just stand there. Maybe I can walk right past and go to the café around the corner. Wait them out for a few minutes, though they look like they’ve got nowhere to go. Fuck. I can’t just stand here. I mean, this is New York City and black boys know better than to jump unsuspecting white guys post Bernie Goetz, right? Except that was a good while ago.

When I get to the steps my door is wide open. Pig Tails shifts to the side and points my way in, as if it’s his house. I pause, hoping the police car that circles when it feels like it, creeps up soon. Pig Tails beckons me again, this time with a flourish like he’s Jeeves, and I make one step. The other men stare at me. One in a gray hoodie hiding his face, one wearing what looks like stockings on his head, and one with his hair plaited like Jamaicans do before they pull it out into an Afro. Pants so low the crotches are all at the knee and all of them in tan Timberlands. If they’re packing, they clearly don’t think I’m worth showing it. I don’t want Pig Tails to direct me to my own house for a third time, so I step up. I could barely move. Jesus Christ. Only last week a friend of mine, who used to sell coke to Fleetwood Mac, said he got out of the business because the fucking Jamaicans were taking over and they didn’t give a shit who and how many they killed.
Bredrin me say ah no so it go
, somebody says outside in a Jamaican accent. This feels like the point where I make a joke about Jamaican mothers teaching them to keep a place clean, but there’s nobody to share it with.

I walk down my hallway like it’s somebody else’s and the floorboards creak and give me away. Pass my own staircase to the second floor and listen for people upstairs. Somebody or bodies are making a fuss in the kitchen. A tall black man in a wife beater and khaki overalls with one strap hanging off is blending yellow juice in what’s supposed to be my blender. The other guy walks into my view like somebody yelled action over the noise. He starts talking to me as he sits on the stool by the sink. Black man as well, hair cut low and slightly chubby, but taller than wife beater dude, wearing a royal blue silk suit with a white pocket square like a dying flower
popping out of his heart. I don’t know this guy. I don’t know any of them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen shoes so shiny. Dark red too, almost black in parts. I look up and can tell he’s noticed me admiring them.

—Giorgio Brutini.

I want to ask if that’s the B-movie version of Giorgio Armani, but then I remembered irony is not always the wisest card to play with a Jamaican.

—Oh, I say.

—So hear this, this man you see here, Ren-Dog? He think me contract him because he good ’pon the trigger. But me really have him ’round because nobody can make a juice like this man right here, Jah know.

—Cho man, boss. Mind me have go to cooking school now.

—You better take a night class, haha.

Silk suit guy holds one finger up to cut off what I was going to say, but I wasn’t going to say a thing. He picks up a glass and drinks the whole thing down in five loud gulps.

—Mango, he say.

—What kind? Wife Beater says.

—Julie and . . . hold on . . . me know it . . . East Indian.

—Jah know, boss, you mussi psychic or something.

—Or me is just a country youth who know him mango. Pour out some for the white boy.

—I’m really not thirsty.

—Me ask you if you thirsty?

The smile up and vanishes, just like that. I swear this is something I’ve only seen Jamaicans do, and they can all do it. A sudden change of face that just runs cold. Eyebrow in a frown, but eyes dead steady. It can make a ten-year-old kid frightening.

—I guess I could drink something.

—Good to hear, my youth. And you’re welcome for all the milk, and yogurt, and fresh fruit in your fridge. To r’asscloth, Ren-Dog open the bredda fridge and little most me think you is a serial killer with a body up in there.

—True thing, boss, is a wonder rat don’t bore a hole into the fridge bot
tom yet, Wife Beater says.

—You know you did have milk in there from January?

—Was trying to make my own yogurt.

—The man is a comedian, boss.

—Haha, it sound so. Or maybe he just a joke. Anyway, brethren, come over here so me can take one good look ’pon you.

I take the stool. I can’t tell if looking him in the eye would impress or annoy him. Then he starts walking around me like I’m some sort of exhibit. I almost say this museum’s closed, I almost do. I don’t know why I think joking would bring any sort of levity to a situation because it never fucking does, ever.

—Ren-Dog, me ever tell you ’bout a man named Tony Pavarotti?

—You never tell me but me know ’bout him. Which youth didn’t know ’bout Tony Pavarotti when him ah grow up?

—Yow, is near fifteen years, me ah look for you, you know that?

It takes me a good three seconds to realize he was talking to me.

—But Eubie, why you bring up Pavarotti, him nuh dead from seventyseven? Seventy-eight?

—Seventy-nine. Nineteen seventy-nine. Ren, meet the man who kill him.

Four

W
hat happen
to you hair?

—It went white. Prematurely grey then white. The ladies call me a silver fox.

—Premature me r’ass. You greying right on time.

—Funny one, Josey.

—And you living in America too long now, you sounding like one of them.

—Like I living in America?

—No, like you living with Cubans.

—Haha. Nobody ever believes me when I say Josey Wales has a sense of humor.

—Yeah? And who you talking to about me?

—Man, Josey, look at us. You ever think about the past,
muchacho
?

—No. You know I never think about the fucking past. That shit will fuck you up and you can’t fuck it back.

—Got yourself a dirty tongue in prison,
mijo
.

—Dirty mouth. When in Rome do as the Romans do.

—Haha. Good one, Josey, good—

—Stop with the bloodcloth patronizing, Luis. How you like that, eh? A big, big word just for you. I don’t see the man in seven years and where we end up? Prison. See what I mean about the present too r’ass weird? Especially when the past keep showing up this week. From baby mother I even forget, to relative who worried about money—not me, to Peter Nasser, that one made me wish the cell have hidden camera. That man alone make me start wonder if you really get wiser as you get older.

—Peter Nasser?

—Don’t act like you don’t know him.

—Haven’t spoken to the man since 1980. You forget I was only going through him to get to you.

—Well now that he wanting to become a Sir, he hoping the past don’t pull a jim-screechy.

—A what?

—A jim . . . a fast one.

—Ah. But the sir thing,
hombre
. He wants to become a Sir? Don’t he already got a dick,
hombre
?

—A knight. A Sir, like Sir Lancelot. Now he want to go down on him knee so the queen can bless him with her sword. Such is the natural things for all black man, that they still want white woman to tell them they arrive, no so?

—Didn’t know he was black, Josef.

—Funny, in the five minutes you just call me five different name.

—What can I say,
mijo
? Every time I see you, you’re a different man.

—Me is the same man.

—No. You’re not. You just say you never think about the past. That’s why you can’t see what you look like.

—Me don’t know what the r’ass you saying. Walking in and running your mouth with all sort of foolishness. Any more of this, a violin going start play.