Black Buck

by Mateo Askaripour

  “I jus’ saw Channel Seven, D. They’re sayin’ some crazy stuff about Sumwun and that little girl who got murdered. What do you know about it?”

  “Not much, really,” I said, snapping back to reality. “Shit’s crazy over there right now and we got all of our clients cancelin’. Rhett says it’s war.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I made sure Mr. Aziz was still sweeping before bringing her in for a kiss. “I’m aight. What’s good with you, Miss Nurse?”

  She smiled and pointed to a thick textbook on the counter. “Gettin’ a head start now, but I’m sorta nervous about—”

  The bells clanged, and a tall white woman dressed in black leather from her head to her patent leather Doc Martens walked in. She looked like she was about to hit either an early morning BDSM session or a neo-Nazi rally. “Got any American Spirit rolling tobacco?”

  Soraya stood on her tippy-toes, scanning the overhead rows with her hand. “Yeah.” She placed a light-blue pack on the counter.

  The dominatrix looked down and scrunched her face. “The organic kind,” she said.

  “We don’t have that one,” Soraya replied. “But this is just as good.”

  The heavy-metal hippie grabbed the pack and threw some cash on the counter. “Jesus. You people have nothing in this fucking neighborhood,” she said, before stomping out and bumping Mr. Aziz with her shoulder.

  “What the fuck is her problem?” I asked.

  Soraya popped open the cash register and placed the money in with a smile, shrugging. “Who knows. A lot of them are like that. But a lot of them are also really nice and like to make small talk. It’s fine. You wanna hang later?”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking at the time. 6:45 a.m. “We’ll see. I gotta go, habibti.” I leaned over for a kiss, but she turned around and began arranging candy in the window display.

  Mr. Aziz walked in, my cue to leave.

  Once I got to the corner, Jason hit me with a nod and I nodded back. Word, a peace offering. We hadn’t really spoken since we got into that argument a few months ago. Some days he’d hit the corner with bruises all over his face, other days he was shining like he’d made a million bucks. Today was one of the former. Various shades of red bloomed all over his face like ripe plums.

  “You aight?” I asked.

  “What it look like?”

  “Looks like you got fucked up.”

  “Aight then, why you askin’? Should jus’ keep mindin’ your own business like you been doin’. Chump.”

  The way I saw it, people, no matter how close you once were, could grow apart. And maybe that’s what was happening to us.

  “Yo, tha’s your problem right there,” I spat, pointing in his face. “Always blamin’ people for shit instead of lookin’ at yourself. Thinkin’ you’re too smart to get a real job. You’re a loser, bro.”

  He brought his hands up, jerking his head at me. I flinched. He laughed. “Yeah, tha’s what I thought. If a loser can make you shook, what does that make you?”

  “Aye, Darren!” Wally Cat called. “Where yo’ momma at, boy? Ain’ seen her in a minute.”

  I stared at Jason, spat on the ground, and walked away. He’s just jealous I’m moving up and he’s moving backward.

  “She’s still sorta sick,” I said to Wally Cat, plopping my ass down on a crate. “But she’ll be aight.”

  “Mm-hmm, tha’s right. Faith, nigga. Always gotta have it. What’s new in the WWW?”

  I burst out laughing. WWW is what Wally Cat had started calling Sumwun a couple months ago. “The World White Web is aight, man. I mean, nah, not really.”

  He scooted his crate closer. “What’s goin’ on? You didn’ fuck no snow bunnies, right? Remember what I said. They is trouble. They will steal yo’ fuckin’ soul if you let ’em.”

  “Nah, man. It’s not that. It’s worse. Some girl—hol’ up.”

  My phone was ringing. Rhett. He never called this early in the morning.

  “Yo, I gotta take this. I’ll be back.”

  “Aight, don’ forget.”

  I picked up. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Buck. How are you?” He sounded anxious.

  “I’m okay, Rhett. How’re you? I saw the news, man. You’re about to be on Rise and Shine, America, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “About that. You’ve spoken with an assistant or two before, right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, my heart fucking racing. Was someone trying to implicate me in this? Thinking I was going to faint, I walked to the park and sat down on a swing too small for my ass.

  “Great, that’s good. Listen, Buck. This is going to sound weird, but you know we’re at war, right?”

  “Of course, Rhett. I know.”

  “And you know we gotta do whatever we can, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, unsure.

  “Exactly. And they just fired their first shot this morning. ABC, NBC, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, all of them. They’re coming down hard and trying to make an example out of us.”

  “But why would they do that? What have we ever done?”

  “It’s like I said yesterday. We were winning too much. We represent the future, and people are afraid of the future, so they do all they can to maintain the status quo. And now it’s time for us to hit back. Starting with going on Rise and Shine, America and letting the world know who we are instead of having others tell them.”

  “Hell yeah,” I said, swinging back and forth, shaking the rickety swing set.

  “And this is where you come in,” he said. “I need you to go home, change into something nice, and take an Uber to Times Square Studios. I’ll pay for it.”

  I fell off the swing and landed on my face, dropping the phone onto the rubber playground tiles before scrambling for it.

  “You there?” he asked.

  “Yeah. But what’s this all about, Rhett?”

  “It’s time for us to hit back, Buck. You and I. We’re going to go on Rise and Shine, America. Together. I’ll tell you why when you get here. Now hurry.”

  * * *

  Morning traffic in Manhattan was slower than loading porn with dial-up in the nineties. The Uber driver with skin the color of midnight and eyes as yellow as egg yolks kept looking at me in his rearview mirror.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you somebody?”

  Good question.

  “Nah.” I looked down at my white short-sleeved button-up with two pens in the front pocket, black slacks with a black belt, and black leather shoes to match.

  “Oh,” he said, disappointed. “It is just that you look like somebody, you know? You have that look.”

  “Sorry to let you down, man,” I replied, twisting in my seat. My phone vibrated. Rhett.

  Where are you Buck? Starting in 15. Hurry!

  There was a huge television screen on the building with the words RISE AND SHINE, AMERICA plastered on it, headlines flashing on the banners below. “Sumwun CEO to speak.” “Sumwun got some explainin’ to do.” “Tensions rise in Libya.”

  The driver turned around before I hopped out.

  “Hey,” he said, exposing teeth that matched the color of his eyes. “You are going to be somebody, I know it.”

  “Thanks, man,” I said, showing him the five-star rating on my phone. “I appreciate it.”

  After arriving on the second floor, I saw an audience full of white women and Sandra Stork, the beautiful tall Black TV host Ma loved. A group of lights and cameras faced windows looking out on Times Square.

  “Thank God,” Rhett said, hugging me. “You, uh”—he looked me up and down—“sort of look like a Mormon, Buck. I don’t know if that’s the look we want. But maybe it is. Friendly and harmless.” Rhett wore a sharp beige suit with a white button-up and light-brown dress shoes.

  “Thanks, I think. So what’s going on?”

  “You and I are about to go on national television to hit back, that’s what,” he said, pointing to t
he cameras. “Just be yourself, answer questions as they come, and don’t, I repeat, don’t get defensive. We have nothing to hide.”

  “Okay, but why am I here with you? Why not Chris, Clyde, or someone else?”

  He shook his head. “No, we all went through that already. Everyone thinks it’s best for you to come on with me. For optics, you know?”

  “Optics?”

  “Yeah, optics, you know?” he said, smiling as he play-punched my shoulder.

  “No, I don’t know, Rhett. What do you mean?”

  “Listen, Buck. You know I love you like a brother. Everyone thought it’d be good to have a younger member of the sales team with me who won’t come off as a holier-than-thou white frat bro, you know?”

  It took me a second, but I got it. Donesha was young and Black. I was young and Black. Rhett, Clyde, Chris, and everyone else on the team were white, which, I guess, meant they weren’t optimal for optics.

  Reader: There’s a difference between saying you’ll do whatever it takes to win and doing whatever it takes to win. The true salesperson is a doer.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I get it.”

  Rhett exhaled. “I knew you would. It’s war, Buck. We all gotta play our roles.”

  Sandra walked over wearing a sleeveless slim-fitting blue dress, and I was surprised to see that she was even more radiant in person. She also had a commanding presence—she was obviously the HNIC here, which was impressive since everyone else, including the audience, was whiter than the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

  “Everyone ready?” she asked.

  I turned to Rhett. He nodded at me. A chubby guy who smelled like the inside of a high school locker room mic’d me up, and Sandra walked us to three tall chairs behind a curved desk.

  “Just relax and be natural,” she said, smiling into the cameras. “I won’t throw any hardballs. Just a few light ones to let the world know everything is under control, okay?”

  Rhett and I nodded. The chubby stinker gripped the main camera in front of us, counting down with his grimy fingers.

  One.

  I glanced at Rhett. Having looked like he was going to throw up a moment ago, he now had a fake smile plastered to his face and appeared as cool as a Klondike bar.

  Two.

  My hands were sweating, and I really wished I didn’t look like a Mormon. Do Black Mormons even exist?

  Three.

  “Today we have a Rise and Shine, America exclusive interview with the CEO of Sumwun, Rhett Daniels, and Sales Representative Darren Vender, who will tell their side of this truly tragic story. As you probably know, Sumwun, a New York City tech startup with more than three hundred employees and twenty-eight million dollars invested from some of tech’s biggest players, including Lucien Quartz, has been at the center of controversy since the story broke yesterday.

  “To recap, it was Sumwun’s platform that connected young Donesha Clark—also known as Donny—with her therapist, Jiao-long Lee. Lee lured the depressed and unsuspecting Donesha to China to brutally murder her. Donesha’s parents say their little girl had plans to attend college and become a dentist in order to brighten the world with more smiles, but now, she’ll never smile again.”

  Damn. This is how she kicks this shit off?

  “Gentlemen, many people are saying that you should all be thrown in jail, just like Mr. Lee, for allowing this horrific death to happen. What do you have to say to that?”

  So much for no hardballs. I turned to Rhett, who was still wearing that superficial smile.

  “Well, Sandra, I first want to say that the entire company is devastated by what happened. Each one of us is someone’s sibling, child, or parent, so we understand how deeply unsettling this is. Second, this is the first time anything like this has ever happened, and more than ninety percent of our assistants, which is what we call the people who users speak with, have five-star ratings.”

  “And about these people, Rhett,” Sandra said. “A majority of them aren’t licensed, are they? I mean, they’re not actually certified therapists who have been trained and passed exams in order to be qualified to help anyone, correct?”

  This was an ambush.

  “Well, I can’t speak for all of our assistants, Sandra. They hail from different countries with different interpretations of what it means to be certified. But truthfully, I’d say that many of the licensed therapists here in America aren’t qualified. The only thing they are qualified to do is charge astronomic prices to vulnerable people in order to get them hooked on useless therapy instead of actually helping them.”

  Boom. The audience watched with excitement, and one woman even broke out a box of Milk Duds. Popcorn, no doubt, would be next.

  “And,” Rhett continued, “we have a strict vetting process and review system. This means that if a user feels uncomfortable with an assistant they can notify us immediately and we’ll look into it.”

  “Got it,” Sandra said. “So you’re blaming the victim.”

  “What? No.”

  Sandra assumed a menacing smile—her first taste of blood. “Let’s switch gears. I have a question for you, Darren. As a young Black man, how are you able to go into work and sell a product you know has the potential to kill young women, especially young Black women, like Donesha Clark?”

  “Um,” I said, coughing so hard and for so long that Sandra handed me a bottle of water. How the hell could they let a twenty-two-year-old wing it on national television? I kept coughing, trying to buy time, but then it hit me like Muhammad Ali knocking out George Foreman in Zaire: this was a role-play. Sandra was playing the role of a tough prospect, and I was playing the role of a salesperson—selling her, the live audience, and everyone watching at home on our side of the story.

  Reader: What you are about to see is all of my training put into action in the world beyond Sumwun. If you ever needed proof that what I’m teaching you is more about life than just about sales, this is it. Hold my drink.

  “Platforms like Sumwun don’t kill people, Sandra,” I said. “People do. And that’s what happened here. Yes, a man killed someone, but people have done that since the beginning of time and will continue to long after we’re gone.”

  Sandra’s smile disappeared. A faint rage flashed in her eyes. “That sounds an awful like what right-wingers say about guns, Darren. Any tool can be turned into a weapon, no?”

  “Sure, but any reasonable person understands that it comes down to intention. The end result of pulling a trigger is always harm, even at the cost of protecting yourself and others. In all cases, except for this outlier, the end result of using Sumwun is happiness and well-­being.”

  “But your platform enabled the murder of an innocent, depressed young woman,” Sandra replied. “If Sumwun never existed, Donesha Clark would still be alive today. What you’re saying is completely irresponsible.”

  “How do you get to work, Sandra?”

  She shifted in her high seat, confused. “Excuse me?”

  “How do you get to work in the morning? Like today, how did you get to the studio?”

  “I took a taxi, but sometimes I take the subway.”

  “Why did you take a taxi, and why do you sometimes take the subway?”

  She laughed, sipped from her Rise and Shine, America mug, then said, “Because it beats walking! You try treading through Manhattan in Manolos.” The audience laughed.

  “Exactly, Sandra. This year alone, more than one thousand people have died in car crashes and subway-related accidents. So, by your logic, we should take cars off the road and stop the subways because those one thousand people wouldn’t have died if cars and subways had never existed, right?”

  She opened up her mouth, then closed it. “It’s different, Darren. You may be too young to know the difference, but things that are more helpful than harmful are good for society.”

  She’s done. This was nothing compared to Hell Week.

  “One person died, Sandra, which, I agree, is a tragedy. But we have hundr
eds of thousands of users who log into Sumwun daily and decide to live another day because of the help we provide. And if that counts for nothing, then I truly feel sorry for a society that would rather focus more on some random, senseless act of violence than on the lives we save.”

  The audience nodded, and I knew if I’d convinced a bunch of middle-aged white women that we’d done no wrong, the rest of America watching us from the comfort of their couches would also agree.

  After that, Sandra lost her spark. The other questions she threw at us—“Where does Sumwun go from here?” “How are you going to prevent this moving forward?” “Anything you want to say to the family?”—were the softballs we’d expected.

  By the end, she clenched her jaw and looked into the camera, putting on her million-dollar smile. “There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Two representatives of Sumwun. You have the facts, so it’s up to you to decide what you make of them. Thank you for your time, gentlemen.”

  The stinker came over and unmic’d us. Sandra stood up, impressed. “Fair play,” she said, shaking Rhett’s hand, then mine. “Especially you, young man. If you ever get tired of sales, give me a call.”

  “Thanks.”

  Rhett and I headed for the elevators. Once inside, he wiped thick beads of sweat from his forehead then took my face between his hands. “You crushed it, Buck!” he shouted, and kissed my forehead. No man had ever done that to me before. “Just like we knew you would. It was exactly the type of offense we needed. Time to go back to the office and see if things are settling down.”

  We hopped in an Uber. Stopping at a red light, the driver looked in the rearview mirror and smiled. He was a pale kid, maybe my age, with cheap sunglasses, and some flag I couldn’t place stuck to his dashboard. “I saw you two coming out of that big building where I sometimes see celebrities. You guys somebody?” he asked, his voice heavy with excitement.

  Rhett laughed and elbowed me in the rib. “I don’t know about myself, but this guy sitting next to me? He certainly is.”

  14

  Two days later, things were finally returning to normal. Prospects weren’t hanging up after hearing, “Hi! This is so-and-so from Sumwun, how are you?” Clients weren’t frantically canceling. And the tension we all felt, while still being very real, slowly dissipated. Even Lucien, our main investor, relaxed, and the media latched on to some story about a Justin Bieber–worshipping cult in Oklahoma kidnapping “non-Beliebers” and eating them. It felt like we were in the clear.