Hunting in Harlem

by Mat Johnson

  The brother-in-law answered the door, the one she obnoxiously referred to as "Dumbass." Snowden recognized him, smiled, then recognized his reluctance to open the door. Relieved that Snowden was there to speak with Piper and not sell him something, the man's response was a quick smile and wink before turning around to yell a name Snowden didn't recognize. Flopping down the stairs, barefoot and pajama-bottomed, two feet on every step before going to the next one, was Piper. There was no rush, and when she finally got to the door she didn't open the screen for him. She didn't even ask, "What?" just her face did, and it didn't do it particularly politely, either. Snowden the Pious used this as motivation.

  "I saw your article," Snowden challenged. Piper said nothing. She just kept looking at him, mouth closed, a big woman in a tall doorway.

  "I can't believe you - "

  "No!" Piper barked back at him. Snowden stopped, started. He waited for her to say something else. She didn't. For a moment he was glad there was a screen door separating them; she was like a bear.

  "What do you mean, 'No!'?" Snowden demanded.

  "I mean, no. I'm not arguing with you. I'm not going to accept being yelled at at the moment."

  "But I don't think you understand. I have the right to be upset here. You took what I told you in intimate conversation! You even pulled me along to get more, and then you published it for the world to see without even telling me. I could have lost my job! I'm the wronged party here."

  "Fine. You're a wronged party. How about you come over in about three days, how about Saturday night, maybe? You can yell at me then. I'll set time aside, I'll make sure nobody else is home so you can really get loud if you want to, and then you can come over and yell at me. We'll make a date of it. I'll order pizza or something."

  " But . . . I don't want to yell at you in three days. I want to yell at you now." It didn't seem true anymore. She'd exhausted him, derailed the passion he'd mustered. Now he was just thinking she looked cute like that: the man's white overshirt loose except at her breasts' roundness, the red plaid pajamas below. She had chipped paint on her toenails and for no reason that could make sense to him Snowden found that immensely exciting.

  "Look, I'm not saying you don't have a right to yell at me. I should have told you, I wasn't sure if I'd go farther with it when you were telling me. It wasn't supposed to be on the front page. It wasn't even supposed to be printed at all; the typists, they picked it up by mistake during production and nobody caught it. I've been getting yelled at all day, three different people chewing me out. So if you want to yell too then you're too late, I'm completely numb now. You can come up, relax with me, because I'm in the process of getting drunk, but if you just came by to yell, then come back Saturday."

  They made it as far as the entrance hallway just past Piper's apartment door, then spent the next hours on the long strip of rug there. The light in the hallway leading up to it was out and Piper held out her hand for Snowden behind her. It was small but strong, the plains of skin holding his fingers hard and round. Piper opened her door with one hand and in response to the darkness Snowden pulled his own back to him. Piper didn't let go, turned around and pulled him in fast, and Snowden's reaction was to kiss her. Snowden stepped back to check his libido with reality, save himself further misunderstanding and a potential parole violation and ask her if he should apologize for the gesture or offer more, but Piper didn't open her eyes, just leaned her head in for more.

  On it, in it, during the moment. They could have easily gone left to the couch or right to the bedroom but they were on the hall rug and their knees were already bending, going down, and where was the drama in practicality? Piper thought, I need this right now, I deserve this distraction, he is a pretty man, I am a woman, and don't I deserve to just once use a pretty man?

  When Snowden awoke, Piper was at the windows, the ledge starting at her knee and rising nearly to the ceiling. Her pajama pants were on her and not inside out and in a ball next to him anymore. The way the streetlight came in through the blinds, hung in yellow bars on her and created a silhouette with the stripes of light on the wall behind, made Snowden want to go over and pull those pajamas off again, throw them in the same ball where they had fallen the first time. He got up with that intention, walked over to her, saw the stiffness in her stance, and remembered that she was a stranger, that no moment had been guaranteed beyond the one they'd just had, that if he touched her and she pulled back or was immobile the loneliness he was already starting to feel would crush him and he didn't even have his pants on.

  "You know your friend Bobby sent a cassette tape to my job, I just listened to it today. There was a poem on it. I got really creeped out —it was my own voice from my answering machine spliced up, the words rearranged."

  "I'll talk to him about that."

  "Don't," Piper told him, her head leaning on the windowpane like she wanted to stick it through the glass. "The crazy thing was the poem wasn't that bad. It was about destiny, the importance of seizing your destiny, I think. It was actually really good. Once I realized that, I wasn't freaked out anymore. Mitigating circumstances."

  "What are you watching down there?" Snowden stepped closer to follow her eyes to the street below.

  "Do you see them? You should have heard them going at it. Is that what woke you up? Can you believe that? If he hits her, I'm going to call Giuliani's goon squad, I swear to God." Snowden saw the couple. The woman had her arms crossed, staring across the street at nothing. The guy was pacing like he was trying to wind himself up. Piper kept her arms crossed around her body but leaned back into Snowden. Relieved, Snowden placed his arms around her. Looking below he saw the other couple and thought, What's the difference between us and them? Three months? So let's enjoy this point Let's make this stage last and that stage as brief as possible. Snowden smelled the oil in Piper's hair and wanted to pull her back to the couch, stared down and wished he believed in God so that he could pray that the other couple would clear off and let them enjoy their good moments.

  "They were so loud they woke me up. I was having a good dream, too, and then they started. I think he hit her already, I do. I just want to see it before I call the cops. I don't want anybody to get shot for no reason."

  In seeming response, the guy stopped his pacing for a brief moment, then sprang at her. His arms were straight up in the air to show his exasperation, so he was totally unprepared when she punched him right in the mouth, a full-bodied right hook that sent the man to his knees, trying to keep his jaw from coming off his face by holding it with both hands.

  "Should we call the police now?" Snowden asked. She kept hitting him. From his knees the man collapsed forward, tried to hold her arms, but she just started screaming, so he gave up, rolled himself into a ball and let her pummel him. The woman screamed, cried the whole time like it was her that was on the receiving end.

  It seemed to Snowden another half hour before the couple joined each other arm and shoulder and dragged their heels over to Lenox so that he and Piper could do the same to the couch a few feet away. The scene had oudasted Snowden's arousal. Piper went to the kitchen, took a bottle of bourbon off the counter and two glasses, so they went down that road instead.

  "That's the thing about living in the city, you see everybody's business up close. Whether you want to or not. At least here they're all strangers." Piper sat down on the couch's end, guided his hand to her side. Tall water glasses sat on the coffee table, both filled with an inch of alcohol.

  "I hate the city," Snowden told her. "Harlem's OK, and I'm going to try to do this, try and give to it for a while, but when I get my nest egg I'm going to get a nice place way outside the city, someplace cheap where the money will last." Snowden was always tempted to discuss nesting after new sex, even in cases where he doubted it would go much further, like this one.

  "No. You don't want to go out there. There's nothing outside of the city limits. It's like Mississippi out there. Upstate New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania? Mississipp
i. Just rednecks. All looks the same, too, north, south, it doesn't matter. Nothing for black folks. This is all we have. That's why making this place livable is so important."

  "Not that far out. Like, the suburbs. They got folks in the suburbs. Shit, like the place you grew up, that's what I'm talking about. Start my own family out there, kids running around — "

  "Running around, draining the energy out of you with every step, taking a year off your life for every one they get. Selfish, destructive, constantly demanding vacuums, that's what kids are," Piper spit. "And talk about loud, your little suburban world sounds about as quiet as a school bus."

  "Rather hear that than this four-fifteen in the morning argument in the street stuff. In the suburbs, summer is nice and calm like it's supposed to be, relaxing." Snowden was smiling, hands before him like he was holding the dream up for Piper to get a look at. She wasn't looking at it, she was looking at him like he was a madman. Like a madman had sneaked into her apartment and had sex with her.

  "Summer in the suburbs isn't relaxing. Don't believe that. Suburban summers are not relaxing. It might be stiller at night, just the hum of a hundred air conditioners, but all day, you never heard anything like it. Lawn mowers, constantly. Not a lot of grass, just people mowing their little lawns, going over the same patches over and over. So scared something's going to grow, something wild, they're out there all the time, wasting fossil fuels, creating smog. Weed whackers, hedge machines, blowers, it's crazy. Then you've got all those damn ice cream trucks. So loud you can have all the windows closed, the air conditioners going, the lawn machinery roaring, and you can still hear their electric music box sound playing the same four bars over and over, because that's how they want it. Not just one truck, either, a fleet of them, one showing up before the last one can disappear. Can you imagine how insane you have to be to work in one of those? Or how nuts it drives them to hear that same song, over and over, every day for months? Sure, they're selling ice cream, but that's not what it's about. The ice cream, that's just to support their real agenda, to drive you as crazy as they are."

  Snowden looked at her in awe. She was Bobby's soul mate, he was suddenly sure of it. She was just as crazy, in just the same way as he was. Snowden couldn't even look at Piper, the guilt of his betrayal so palpable. Maybe there really was someone out there for everyone. Maybe Bobby had found his one, that one person in the world who would put up with his combustible insanity. Maybe the woman Snowden had screwed on her hallway floor without a moment's consideration really was Bobby's one chance at happiness.

  "I'm sorry," Piper said. She'd hopped closer and laid her hands over his own. Snowden looked at her and couldn't figure out what transgression she was referring too. "I should have called you, told you I was working on it. I just got so excited, and I didn't even think it was going to be published this week, it wasn't supposed to be. But I don't know if I would have told you before next week's issue, either. I might have, but who knows? But I wasn't trying to use you. I certainly wasn't trying to single-handedly destroy the real estate market in Harlem."

  Snowden shrugged before responding. "Look, lady, I'm going to ask you something, but y'know, it's not based on anything but my own paranoia." Snowden paused, tried to think of a good way to ask his question, but couldn't find one. "It's just. . . everything is kosher, right? It's not like there's some psycho killer walking the streets they don't want us to know about."

  "Oh my God, wouldn't that make a great story?" Piper mused wistfully. "Sorry. People like that, they kill in patterns, similar ways, similar people. I looked, trust me."

  "So there's not like a Chupacabra monster running around?" Snowden asked. He tried to laugh at the question but it just came off like a nervous tic.

  "Wow. That would be cool. Can you imagine how many Herald copies we could sell? But there's nothing. Totally different people, obvious circumstances. I mean, there's dumb things. Like, I got all excited because I noticed in the coroner's reports that a bunch of them all had five-dollar bills in their pockets, at least twenty bucks' worth. But then, some didn't, and there's always some stupid stuff like that, some little coincidence that if you look hard enough you can connect. That doesn't mean it's not meaningless."

  Don't carry any more five-dollar bills, Snowden told himself. He could do that. The key to irrational fear and superstition is getting them to work for you. It wouldn't be hard to get rid of all his five-dollar bills; Snowden always considered himself more of a one-dollar-bill man.

  Snowden leaned forward, started kissing on her neck, wanting to make sure that if another night like this one didn't happen he had covered every inch of her.

  Snowden tired. Snowden drunk. Snowden left Piper's and was back at his building as the sun's first rays streaked across the sky. Not caring about previous arrangements or responsibilities, just that he had to pee, and then he had to go to bed, and hopefully in that order. Snowden ran into Jifar sleeping across a step on the flight that separated their apartments and thought, Come on, man, not now, give me a break, but didn't register much more until he unwrapped the boy's blanket and saw the child's unconscious face, its new symmetry with a swollen eye on one end and a busted lip on the other. Snowden said his name, crammed in a progressive number of grim conclusions before Jifar blinked back at him. "What's wrong with you?" the boy managed. Snowden lifted the boy up, kept walking. First it was just the weight of Jifar in his arms that kept him from going back down and banging on the door so the father would come out and Snowden could pound even harder. Then, after he'd laid Jifar on his couch and was forced to pause in contemplation for those two minutes standing before the porcelain bowl, it was a combination of exhaustion and rational thought. Snowden allowed himself to walk out of the bathroom and continue straight to the bedroom by pledging, I will take care of this. I will do whatever I have to to change this situation, tomorrow.

  THE MUSIC MAN

  SNOWDEN WOKE UP late because he didn't want to do it. Then he heard the bastard singing "Super Freak" from his bath as the water pipes whined, and he'd had enough. Two sets of knocks and then Baron Anderson answered the door.

  A bathrobe nearly as worn and frayed as he was, both of them dripping. Jifar walked between his father and the door, the plastic shopping bag of ice cubes Snowden had given him discreetly removed from his face. Anderson didn't ask where his son had been, gave no more than a casual glance noting Jifar's presence and appearance. If there was guilt, if there was concern there, it was not being offered for public consumption. Just annoyance. Just a motion to close the door that was aborted with the look at Snowden still standing there, shoulders squared.

  "What?"

  "Could I talk to you?"

  "I got work to do. I got things I got to accomplish." The door seemed leaden, its weight pulling it shut with little resistance.

  "Jifar's a good kid."

  "That's right, Jifar's a good kid. I don't need you telling me that, I'm his father. I got to go to work."

  The door had almost closed when Snowden's foot shot forward to halt its progression.

  "Look, I wanted to tell you, I know about this special boarding school. I think it'd be good for him. It's right in the neighborhood. I think I can - "

  "Don't think, man. Don't think. That's your problem, you're spending your time thinking about shit that don't got a goddamn thing to do with you." Grunting out the last words, Baron Anderson turned his energies away from polite conversation and toward trying to shove his front door closed despite the sneaker blocking it.

  "That boy's face - " Snowden gave up and started pushing awkwardly to keep it open, hoping Jifar was in his own room behind a closed door so at least he didn't hear the grunts of the struggle. Anderson kept muttering "nothing to do with you," like if he said it enough times Snowden would believe him.

  "You know what, I got to see that boy in these halls all messed the hell up, so it's got something to do with me. I got to hear you abusing the kid through my floor all the time, then it's got something to d
o with me. Don't think I won't call the police on your ass." It was the last, hollow threat that got the door to stop shaking.

  "What the fuck? Man, I don't need this. I don't need this from the likes of you. Call the police, then. You know what? Call them. I want to know what my boy's doing up in your apartment all the time. I know he's there, I can hear him watching his cartoons through the ceiling. Get them coppers in here looking at you."

  Like most smelly, feral animals, when cornered Mr. Anderson could display impressive pugnacious ingenuity. Particularly the ability to locate weakness and exploit it immediately. "That's right fool, and I want to know what the hell he was doing sleeping up there last night. I woke this morning, didn't see him, I was worried sick. That's right, punk. You don't mind your business, I'm a give those cops a call, figure they'll want to know too. You like prison? They sure like your kind in prison, I can tell you."

  Snowden had a property to clean later that morning. A tenement, much like his own but farther along in its process of being converted to a decent building. Of its nuisance tenants, three overcrowded apartments' worth had belonged to the superintendent, a grumbling grub of a man who for over a decade had made a habit of demanding bribes to provide the most basic of his duties. He'd had a verbal agreement with the previous owner to house his entire extended family in exchange for keeping the repair prices down, an arrangement that immediately dissolved when Horizon purchased the building. (Apparently, the entire gene pool was now creating havoc out of a one-bedroom apartment in Paterson, New Jersey.)

  The other problem tenant was the guy on the third floor who liked to club and who liked to come back from the club and continue the party back home even louder, speakers in every room as well as aimed straight out the window, and dance or screw at an even louder volume. His greatest skill was his ability to turn off his music and lights as soon as the summoned squad car pulled onto the block. Then one night he went out and a couple of days later the other residents realized they'd had a suspiciously quiet string of restful nights. The only reason anyone finally noticed he'd gone missing was he'd left his shower dripping. After a week it'd managed to swamp the whole apartment and leak through to the one downstairs. It was the middle of the night; firemen had to break in the door with a battering ram. He never came back home. Everyone chalked it up to another victim of the gay life. It was horrible what happened here, Snowden thought. It would take three layers of varnish just to bring the floor's shine back.