Gotham

by Nick Earls

  We are a long way from the streets in which Lydell Luttrell Junior started life. Not so far on the map or by the subway, but some kind of journey. He has the place rearranged around him, clothes he may or may not glance at draped here and there, all at his whim, like a boy pharaoh.

  ‘So, what makes this your kind of place?’ It’s often best not to start with the music. Start with the music, and sometimes that’s all you’ll get.

  Smokey’s thumbing a message on his phone, but he glances up, in Nati’s direction.

  Nati gives a hint of a smile, then toughens his look up. ‘Are you sayin’ I should be shopping some place else?’

  He will challenge me all night, I know it. There will be no right questions.

  ‘That this ain’t the place for me? That I’m not suitable?’

  ‘Not at all.’ I have to meet him. Not fight him, not apologise, just meet him, without any doubt in my voice, or any hint that I’m acknowledging I’ve opened with a question about race. It is not about race, though at the same time this is not the tale of a grey mannequin. Race is there, undeniably. Obama being in the White House does not give every black rapper a middle-class start to life, lawyers for parents. ‘I just didn’t know you’d wear this kind of stuff. Tie bars…’

  ‘I’m not here for preppy shit.’ He laughs. ‘I got my Bathing Ape, my Billionaire Boys Club. My Black Scale.’ He picks the cap up from the arm of the chaise lounge, spins it on his finger and flips it into his other hand. ‘I got street covered, man, but my thing is blending it with a little high-end. But don’t go taking my picture with no tie bars. They just incidental. That’s our yoghurt bar there, that is.’ Without turning, he points with his thumb at the glass countertop behind him, the silver ice bucket. ‘That shit’s got chocolate-coated goji berries and honey. It’s like, organic honey.’

  ‘Wildflower honey,’ Smokey says, to be helpful.

  This era, food is all about the adjectives, the boosters, the story. Or maybe it’s privilege that accords a person more adjectives with their food nouns. Honey is no longer just honey, not for Nati, or Smokey.

  ‘Bloomingdale’s frozen yoghurt is…an institution. You get frozen yoghurt any place now, but it was here first.’ Smokey looks at the ice bucket, the melting yoghurt. ‘Should’ve got an extra bowl.’

  The poster for the tour in support of The Snatcher, Nati’s major label debut, features a reclining white woman, photographed in black-and-white from the end of the table or platform that she’s lying on. It isn’t a bed or somewhere comfortable—there’s a glossy sheen to it, hard edges at the sides and a curve at the end that lets the top turn ninety degrees and drop to the floor. Her face and upper body are out of view. All you can see of her are her thin bright legs. She’s wearing glossy dark shoes with towering heels, and perhaps nothing else. One knee is bent, with the shoe on the tabletop, while the other is almost straight and rotated a little outwards, with her foot and shoe hanging in space. Nati’s hand is a dark wedge over her crotch, flat with the fingers extended. It might be a barrier, a shield. It might not even be touching her. His arm is straight, his torso shirtless and crossed by metal chains, his face staring at the camera is utterly blank.

  ‘So tell me how the creator of The Snatcher gets to be an appreciator of institutions.’ It seems as good a way for me to put it as any.

  He takes the shirt from Eloise, rubs the fabric between thumb and finger.

  ‘Soft,’ he says. ‘I like that.’

  He holds it up against himself. There’s a full-length mirror next to me, angled so that he can appraise himself.

  Just when my question seems to have drifted out of view, he adds, ‘Institutions. The record’s all about one of the oldest institutions. It’s about a thief of love and pussy.’

  He offers it as though it’s the smartest thing said in the world all week. He’s said it dozens of times, I bet—‘a thief of love and pussy’—with no thought as to whether the recipient might already have given the record’s title a second’s thought and be wise to the sledgehammer subtext.

  He bundles the shirt into a ball and tosses it back to Eloise.

  He’s still looking in the mirror when he says, ‘That record got me more pussy than a bucketful of fish marinated in catnip.’ Then he glances Smokey’s way. ‘That’s a new one, new right now. You can have that one for Australia.’

  He sets up for a fist bump and Smokey obliges.

  ‘He’s a poet, my boy,’ Smokey says, shuffling his cuffs again and giving Nati a smile I can’t read.

  I have, it turns out, missed most of the trying-on of clothes. I’m here to bear witness to the boy pharoah’s taste for Bloomingdale’s, to his penchant for mashing up high-end and street, but I’ve been spared much of the detail. Andie has been folding and piling the chosen garments on the next countertop along from the frozen yoghurt. The throw to Eloise signified that the Pensacola Henley is a no. They have a system.

  I take out my camera and snap some pictures of Nati on the chaise lounge, picking up the plush red, the gilt trim, the silver of the ice bucket over his shoulder. He knows I’m doing it and looks as disengaged as possible. He’s been watching models.

  ‘Would you like to see the purses now?’ Eloise says. The question’s directed at Nati but her eyes shift for a moment to Smokey. She’s following orders. Some time during the planning he put purses on the list. Smokey seems not to notice her. He’s checking his phone again. ‘I have a selection from our premium designers.’ She indicates a trolley that’s mostly obscured by the grey yachtsmen.

  ‘I would.’ Nati Boi sits back on the chaise lounge and runs his hands down his thighs, as though smoothing invisible wrinkles in his shiny synthetic trackpants.

  ‘I have a McQ clutch…’ She reaches for the trolley.

  ‘All of them.’ He glances towards Smokey, who has the same smile as before still in place. ‘I want to see all of them.’

  ‘It has a razor-edge laser hologram.’ Eloise is still with the McQ clutch, her spiel spooling another sentence before she can pull it to a halt. Her hand is on the way to the clutch, but she lets it land on the brass handle of the trolley instead. ‘But all of them, sure, no problem. We have quite a range, all new season. I’m sure there’ll be something that will…’ She doesn’t know who it’s supposed to be right for. She looks around as if the recipient of the purse might conveniently appear among us. ‘Be just right.’

  It’s specificity that she’s searching for. She sells purses to men all the time, perhaps, but the woman is present—it’s part of the gesture, the trip together to Bloomingdale’s to buy the purse—or the woman is named straight-up. Before confessing a complete ignorance of purses and throwing himself at her expert mercy, the one thing any man tells her is who he’s buying for.

  On the surface, there is nothing in this for any of the pieces I’m writing, but I’m still recording. Too much is unexplained. We are in male personal shopping. These purses were gathered floors away and brought here.

  Eloise eases the trolley across the tiles and into full view.

  ‘Which one’s the most expensive?’ Nati Boi says, having not clarified since he tossed the Henley that he’s the boy pharaoh here.

  ‘Sure.’ It comes out clipped, Nati’s bare crassness a gust of cold air that has her buttoning down her response.

  She searches through the purses—they’re filed like books on a library trolley—checking tags only occasionally and mostly making her price assessment based on the purse itself. She slides one out and sets it on top. It’s plum-coloured, shaped like the round-cornered square of a Scrabble letter, with a long black strap. The second purse she pulls out is gloss black with a black suede flap, silver clasp and a shorter black strap. They are for different occasions, different people.

  ‘These two come in at nineteen ninety,’ she says. ‘One thousand, nine hundred and ninety.’ She turns the tag on the second over again and nods. ‘Both Costume National. This one’s the Colorblock Piccola Messenger and this�
�’ She touches the flap of the black bag, ‘—is the Tema Morbido in suede.’

  ‘Let me see the…’ he points lazily in the direction of both of them. ‘Purple one.’

  ‘The Piccola Messenger? Sure.’

  He takes it in both hands and feels the weight of it. He opens the flap and then clicks it shut again. It’s a good, solid click, almost a clunk. He tests the gold buckles that join the strap to the bag and then holds it up by the strap and rotates it to view it from all angles.

  ‘Yeah.’ He turns to Smokey, the bag suspended from two of his fingers. ‘You know who this is for.’

  ‘I do, LyDell.’

  It is a moment between them that is not to be broken by me asking the obvious question. Sometimes, in this job, a question can be the worst way to go. Rapport is not about questions and will not come easily with Nati Boi as it is. The truth, the interesting part of it, at least, is not often arrived at through asking for it directly.

  ‘He’s my cousin, you know,’ Nati Boi says to me. ‘This man.’ He places the bag in his lap, folds the strap over it and keeps both his hands there. The gesture looks protective, like the move of a grandmother on a train rattling through a bad part of town, her eye out for miscreants. ‘Second cousin or some shit. Maybe second and a half. With me all the way.’

  ‘All the way from diapers,’ Smokey says, smiling at him, rubbing a cufflink with his thumb and finger under his jacket sleeve. ‘All the way from when you was only Lydell Junior.’ Back before the ‘D’ in LyDell got capped. Lydell Senior never made that move. ‘He got Nati Boi from what old Ms Willard round the corner used to call him. And she used to call him that ’cause he was one nasty boy. Full of nasty tricks, you was.’

  Nati Boi laughs, treating it as a compliment.

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ Smokey says, ‘playing the dual roles of Mr Straight and Mr Narrow.’

  Lydell Senior was gone early. ‘He got messed up in some shit,’ is all that’s been said about that by his son, spraying it like smoke over the question as a means of escape. I read it in a print interview. The body language was all recorded, and as expected, drawbridge up. When his son was four, Lydell Senior’s body was found in a dumpster with two bullets in it and his hands cable-tied. No one says that’s a robbery, or someone ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  ‘Is it good, working with family?’ I try to make it sound like conversation rather than a question.

  ‘Always,’ he says. He smiles.

  And that’s it. I open a small door that might take us to the subject of his parents, his childhood, and he shuts it without drama.

  He stands and hands the bag to Eloise. ‘I’ll take it.’

  ‘No problem, sir.’

  She folds the strap over carefully and carries the bag to the counter, where Andie has started scanning the clothes. She puts the bag down with its tag barcode up and starts folding the items Andie’s already processed and placing them in one of two Big Brown Bags.

  The bill comes to 11,700 for not much. Nati reaches into one of his pockets and brings his hand out like a poker player covering an ace. His credit card clicks against the glass when he sets it down on the counter.

  Andie swipes it and watches the small screen on the machine. She presses a button and swipes again. She takes a look at the magnetic strip on the card and rubs it before trying for a third time.

  ‘There seems to be a problem with this card,’ she says, tentatively. ‘It’s reading okay, but I’m not getting authorisation.’

  ‘The card is good,’ Nati tells her. He shuts his mouth firmly and works his jaw muscles.

  ‘I’m sure it is, sir.’ She swipes again, then taps the card on the counter while she waits, her eyes fixed on the screen. She is wishing she could be anywhere else, home, on the subway.

  Smokey steps across and places his hand over hers, extracting the card.

  ‘I’ll just put in a call,’ he says quietly. ‘Or we could try splitting it and use one of my cards for some.’

  ‘We’re not using your cards, man,’ Nati says. He swaps weight from one foot to the other and gives an exasperated sigh. His body’s still wired for all the young people’s gestures. ‘We’re not doing that shit. This is my spree. This is Bloomingdale’s.’

  ‘I know it.’ Smokey turns the card so that it’s face up and runs his eye over its details. ‘I’ll put in a call.’

  He takes his phone from an inside jacket pocket, scrolls and finds the number he wants.

  ‘Voicemail,’ he tells us once it’s connected.

  I’m close enough to make out the beep at the end of the outgoing message.

  ‘Hey Aaron,’ he says. ‘We got a minor credit card thing going down here, LyDell’s card. We’re at Bloomingdale’s and it’s declining eleven seven. Be good to get it fixed ASAP.’

  He finishes the call and flicks to another screen. Nati watches him, focuses on him, pushing Bloomingdale’s to his peripheral vision, blocking it, blocking this brass and gold and black-and-white-tiled institution that has given him exquisite attention and frozen yoghurt but rejected his card. Smokey’s still working on his phone.

  Eloise has gone, I realise. She’s silently ducked out behind the grey yachtsmen, like an actor stealing an exit from the stage the instant the focus is elsewhere. Andie is motionless at the counter, the lack of expression on her face more deeply embedded than ever.

  Nati lifts and then drops his arms in a half-question half-shrug, a mime to get Smokey’s attention.

  ‘He’s workin’ on it,’ Smokey tells him. ‘Chill LyDell. It’ll be cool.’ A text message pings through. His thumb slides up and down. ‘Okay, so there’s a certain limit, like ten K…Probably a security thing.’ Nati goes to talk, but Smokey doesn’t stop. ‘Not about you. He’s going to see what he can do. Now, I got my cards…’

  Nati’s right hand clenches into a fist and he leans forward, then rocks back and taps the fist against his thigh. He has a glare fixed on Smokey, which Smokey is matching with a smile as close to beatific as he can make it.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Eloise says as she crab-walks past the purse trolley and the yachtsmen and into view. ‘Drinks?’ She’s holding a tray carrying a shapely crystal jug of green turbid liquid and three high-ball glasses, each with an inch of crushed ice in it. ‘Some refreshments while we get everything finalised. Kale, ginger, celery and green apple.’

  Nati Boi is a juicer. He’s talked about that. She’s done her homework.

  She sets the tray on the counter next to the yoghurt and starts pouring. The three of us follow dumbly, Nati working his way down from punchiness, Smokey going for the safety of silence, me processing and so far coming up short. There are agendas here, and I don’t know them yet.

  ‘This is good,’ Nati says, sipping from the first glass poured. ‘You know I like this shit.’

  ‘I do,’ she says, rather than ‘yes’. Nati Boi would say ‘I do’, as would Smokey, but it’s not mimicry. It’s the chess game these celeb shopping sprees must become when they hit a snag, and unanticipated prickliness.

  When I reach for my glass, I notice Nati’s credit card is next to it on the counter. Smokey has put it down to keep his phone in one hand and glass in the other. It’s a simple card, blue rather than gold or platinum, the kind anyone might have.

  ‘So, your credit card’s still in L L Luttrell?’ My recorder’s still humming in my hand.

  ‘Yeah.’ There’s a tone to it that’s bordering on surly—I’ve seen something that wasn’t my business, I’ve put into play a name that he’s outgrown. Then he changes his mind and smiles. ‘I ain’t done the paperwork yet. I been busy. There’s forms and shit. Smokey can fill them in for me, or Aaron, but I got to sign.’ His free hand does a squiggle in the air. ‘That’s prolly the limit thing, too. I could get a different card with a concierge and shit, but I got to slow down enough to sign the form one day.’ He nods. He likes the sound of what he’s said. It might even be true. ‘One of those black cards’d be
nice. Amex Centurion, like the King of Monaco. They ain’t even shiny. That’d be cool.’

  He is picturing a deluxe life, private jets, a card with powers as strong and mysterious as the Matrix. I read an article on black credit cards and Prince Albert once, and my guess is the card’s about half as good as Nati’s imagining. That’s still a deluxe life though.

  ‘Or you could do what Martin Sheen does. He works as Martin Sheen but he still lives as Ramon Estevez. Passport, credit cards, all that.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He takes another sip of his drink. The light green foam touches his thread of moustache and he licks his lip. ‘He could get his ass kicked back to Mexico with shit like that.’

  Smokey lifts a finger from his glass to catch Nati’s attention. ‘I’ll show you something later, LyDell. Some of Martin Sheen’s work.’

  ‘I’ll take a look at his shit now if they got it in Bloomingdale’s,’ Nati says with an expansive gesture that forgets the credit card, says all this is his.

  At the other counter, Andie coughs, but it starts as a laugh that escapes before she can catch it. Nati glares at her. She reaches into one of his Big Brown Bags, intently rearranging the folded garments. She presses her mouth to her sleeve and gives another small cough, no hint of anything else to it this time.

  ‘Prolly shit anyway,’ Nati says. ‘Martin Sheen. There’s a lot of shit in here. Too many old Italian faggots gettin’ it all wrong this season. Not just them. Anita Clark. I was very disappointed there. I didn’t say that at the time.’

  It’s a monologue. We’re not expected to buy in. Somewhere among the discard piles on the furniture around us is the work of Anita Clark, rejected before I arrived.

  ‘Sold too much shit to the Obamas,’ he says. ‘That’s what it is. I know where she was from, but she done lost it now, what she had. She all dried up inside. She all Hamptons now. Next year she’ll do goddamn boat shoes. She whiter than Ralph Lauren now.’