Hunting in Harlem

by Mat Johnson

  Bobby said nothing, his face boiled featureless. Snowden hung, waiting to be cut down with a response. After a few more snaps of the lighter, Bobby finally put it away, leaving his arms dead at his sides. Snowden attacked his forty. It was full, but he would empty it, use it as a polite excuse to call an end to the night instead of simply sprinting out the door like he wanted to. Bobby stood staring at him, his arms not even swaying at his sides, as Snowden's bottle went straight up in the air like he was balancing it on his lips.

  "She just wasn't the one," Bobby repeated back to him, minus all intonation. "I was clearly mistaken."

  Snowden didn't even bother mumbling out a response. Bobby's words seemed the kind of thing someone says aloud just to hear the truth resonate.

  The ache in his eyes was the only thing that got Bobby to start blinking again. His body, tired of waiting for its orders, took over. Bobby suddenly became animated and stepped toward him. In response, Snowden took the proactive measure of bracing for the blow. When Bobby merely grabbed Snowden's empty bottle and headed for the kitchen, Snowden didn't abandon his expectation or stance: arms wrapped around his head's top and bottom, both knees pulled up to protect his chest and abs. I am not a coward, I am Armadillo Man, Snowden told himself. Waiting for the pitch and the forty bottle to come flying, Snowden watched through the gap between his elbows as Bobby placed the empty in the trash, pulled a full bottle from the refrigerator, opened it with that rubber thing by the sink before walking back to him. Snowden's muscles relaxed and fell to the floor like dead rose petals, his smile of appreciation just that much wider because the gesture was unexpected.

  It was that smile that woke up the brain that had for the last minutes been simply floating passively in Bobby's head. Impulse outgunned restraint and Bobby pushed the bottle past Snowden's hand, turned it over, and began pouring the contents into his guest's lap. Then he just held it there, staring into the eyes of the other.

  It was not the gesture that scared Snowden, it was that Bobby's eyes weren't even angry. His mouth was breathing heavily and his chest bounced below it, but his eyes were dead like there wasn't a damn thing their owner could do that would disturb them. They were all mad, the men of Horizon, even the best of them. Snowden remained seated, took the glare and offered his own learned numbness in response to it. The beer soaked Snowden's pants, the couch, and the papers around him. The sound as it left the bottle and made its way to the hard floor died down, and then Snowden listened to Bobby's breathing even clearer until he decided to walk off down the hall.

  At the door, Snowden paused, called back, "So I'll see you at work tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow," Bobby offered. "You'll be working for me next year. You know that, right?"

  Snowden was so drunk he didn't care that he was walking down the street looking as if he pissed himself. He didn't, but what if he did? To the few people he did catch looking he was like, "Come on, now you mean to say you've never peed yourself before? Never felt the shame and release as the warm spray runs down to your legs, unbound? Who among you can say that?"

  At his door he barely managed to locate his keys, get them out and working to keep from peeing himself for real. A struggle through the dark, into the bathroom where he did his business and left his jeans hanging over the shower curtain. It was Snowden's habit not to turn on the lights when he came home on nights like this: The orange glow of the street lamps provided enough to get by, any more would tempt him to toward distractions that would keep him awake until it was time to go to work the following morning.

  Tracing his fingers along the walls down the hall toward the kitchen, Snowden adhered to the greatest lesson his father ever taught him: how to avoid hangovers. As he had so many nights, Snowden found the bottle of vitamin B, chased down five pills all at once with the jug of water from the refrigerator. It was after he'd put the jug back, in the fleeting light of its closing door, that he turned and saw the dead body lying on the couch past the counter.

  Snowden stood as still as the jar of grease by the stove, the box of cereal in front of him, and every other inanimate object in the room. The flash of light had left him momentarily blinded and he was absolutely certain that if he turned on a lamp there would be nothing on his couch at all, and not because it had been an optical illusion, either (it hadn't, it had been a man), but because it was the ghost of Baron Anderson, come back to haunt him for tripping on the cord and stealing his son. Snowden was absolutely certain of this and equally so that he didn't want to witness the miracle, that it would scare him even more than he already was and force him to believe in something he'd rather not even if true. Then it farted and Snowden yanked his longest knife out of its drawer before hitting the light and finding Lester passed out on the couch, shoes still on.

  The light did what the sound didn't, Lester blinked a bit as Snowden stood in disbelief before him. The man looked started at first, as if it was his home that had been invaded, his eyes blinking till they were answered with the replacement of his glasses.

  "You have beautiful legs," Lester managed. His voice wasn't slurred, but even the drunk Snowden could recognize that the man was floating several miles above his usual plane.

  "Sir?" Snowden looked down at his own boxers, made sure his penis wasn't hanging out. I am standing here with no pants, my boss has broken into my apartment, stoned off his ass, and I'm not dreaming. "Sir, what are you doing here?"

  "No, no, I ain't the one in trouble. You the one in trouble." Lester's voice sounded like he was talking in his sleep. Snowden kept the knife in front of him, but Lester paid it no mind. His lids kept nodding, his voice trailing out between sentences as his eyes skipped open and closed.

  "You told that woman. That paper bitch, the one you're fucking." The most terrifying thing about what Lester was saying was not that he knew it was Snowden who'd leaked the story: Snowden assumed that eventually he would get busted. It was the lazy way that Lester mentioned it, no hint of taunt or recrimination, casually adjusting the pillow beneath his head as he talked. It was as if Snowden's most private actions were Lester's common knowledge.

  "It's all right, though. A couple, a couple TV spots, that won't matter. We're going to take care of that, take care of your indis­cretion."

  "So I'm fired now. You want me to leave?" Snowden asked. The Peter Pan bus rode to Philly all night, at least that was a way out of all this. Lester laughed at him. "You're cute, I mean that. You ain't fired, you ain't kicked out the program, and you ain't going nowhere. You just screwed up, trusting her. Trusting anyone. Not fired, just back with the pack. You was in front the other two, now just running with the pack again. You still got the potential. Just can't mess up no more." Lester's last words drifted off when he did, were replaced by the much louder sound of his snores, and still they managed to scare Snowden enough that he kept the butcher knife in front of him until his hand cramped from gripping so tightly.

  Snowden remained standing in his underwear waiting for more. "It's hot," Lester finally mumbled, eyes still closed. He was right, the radiator had the room so hot the windows were steamed.

  "Help me," Lester said, his arms hanging out limply before him; he hadn't even loosened his tie. His forehead had been invaded by an army of sweat beads, they joined into battalion streams to invade his pillow. Snowden opened the window, stuck a fan in it. Accidents happen. They'd both cleared out the slovenly apartment of a senile senior citizen after she'd fallen victim to the last heat wave of the summer. Her windows were painted shut and at the time Lester had said she hadn't called about it. Now Snowden could clearly see him painting her windows immobile in June, then refusing to return her desperate calls to fix the hazard. Lester stopped his latest round of snores, grumbled, "Undress me. The knife placed on the coffee table, within reach, Snowden went over to him cautiously, started untying and pulling off Lester's shoes. Yellow socks, so much foot powder that when Snowden yanked them free the cloud sent him sneezing. Lester responded by cracking the bones in both feet unconsciously befo
re rolling onto his back, arms passively bent up to the sky like a newborn. "Shirt," he said.

  The tie was a clip-on. A couple buttons down the front and a closed-eyed Lester responded to the stimuli by assisting Snowden with an effort to pull his own limbs out of the sleeves. Snowden could see the needle marks that lined the veins of Lester's arms even in the dark, like chicken pox on parade. We are all weak, they said to him. Count how many times I gave into temptation. Snowden was considering shoving Lester's arms back in his shirt so he could play it off in the morning, but then he looked down and saw his boss staring at him.

  Lester beckoned lightly with his other hand for him to come closer. Before Snowden could pull away, Lester had raised himself close enough to whisper something in his ear. Snowden gave up, leaned into it, but the secret became a kiss when Lester finally reached him. It landed on the side of Snowden's nose, was wet, quickly turned into a tongue licking lower before Snowden could yank away, offer, "Sir, you're wasted," as an excuse for him.

  "Just because I suffer from a chemical addiction doesn't mean I'm a bad person." Snowden heard the voice and opened his eyes and there Lester was, sitting on the foot of his bed, fully and impeccably clothed. No, jou're a bad person because you kill people, Snowden kept thinking later. "Quite the contrary, I hope you've realized that by now. Everything I do I do out of love, for the betterment of our people." Crisp shirt, pants pleated, starched tie, hair greased into its permanent currents, the only evidence that proved to Snowden the reality of the night before was the fact that it was six A.M. and Mr. Lester Baines was sitting there on Snowden's mattress.

  "I've had my sorrows, my weakness, like many men. I understand loss, I don't take what we're doing lightly. It eats at the soul, I'll warn you, but we too must pay a price for our goal."

  "Yes, sir. I totally understand. You have my word. Really," Snowden said, politely waving him away, but Lester just took a seat beside him on the bed.

  "I lost someone. He was very dear to me. It makes things, I find things . . . difficult. At times, difficult."

  "Me too."

  "No disrespect to you, your home, then," Lester said standing up again.

  "None taken."

  "I've decided that, outside of work, you can call me Lester.

  Respect."

  "Respect," Snowden repeated back to him. Then Lester was gone. Snowden listened to his boss walk down the hall and lock the front door from the outside with his own set of keys, then spent two unsuccessful hours trying fall asleep again.

  CHUPACABRA

  TO BE BOBBY Finley on the following morning was a beautiful thing. The night before it seemed a dire lot for sure, but the next day, when Bobby woke up in the fetal position on his bathroom floor, his spirit traced the sunbeams back out the opaque window, past the sky and into the starlit heavens far beyond. When he got to his feet, Bobby realized he wasn't drunk anymore. It was as if in that last bit of violent vomiting before he passed out he had rid his body not only of the remaining alcohol but also of the months of romantic indulgence he had poisoned himself with. Such foolishness, that Piper Goines thing. It seemed now only one more bitter taste in his mouth to be spit into the Irving Howe with the rest of his bile.

  Bobby was very much a man who believed in lessons. From every misfortune, no matter how grave, he searched for the golden rule to be salvaged, that thing to keep the experience from being a complete loss, to comfort himself that the same situation wouldn't happen again. On November 7, right there in the bathroom of Apartment 16, 342 East 123rd Street, Bobby Finley declared the End of Romanticism. No more carelessly using the L-word, misusing his heart as if it was no more than his liver. From this moment forward, Bobby swore that he would treat his own affections with the solemnity and respect they deserved, not throw them about without care and then become hurt when others treated them in a similar manner. When the one came, he would take his time in identifying her, would not be foolish enough to be confused by something as insignificant as the cut of her clothes, the relative pleasantness of her face, or her physical conditioning. When looking for a soul these were all just hindrances. As a popular song of his youth had put it, "Never trust a big butt and a smile." This shall be my motto, Bobby decided.

  So much is said about being in love, finding love, losing it, why had no one raised the trumpet for having no love at all? Devoid of the phenomenon, Bobby felt light, buoyant, prone to giggling fits and whistling, both of which he stifled on the job, particularly around Snowden whom he was no longer mad at but was punishing by pretending he was for the remainder of the week. Of course, the woman Piper Goines could clearly not have been the one. The one would be his complement in every way, she would certainly share his passion, his idealism and dedication to uplifting of the race, his artistic fury. There was no way a goddess such as that could be attracted to the likes of Snowden.

  Snowden was attractive in the purely physical sense, granted, Bobby could see that, but Snowden was so determined to believe in nothing he'd made that a belief system in itself. The man was dedicated to no more than getting unharmed from one day to the next one, shrugged lazily at this Horizon opportunity when it should have sent his heart soaring. Snowden preferred tuning the radio to the Top 40 station and never got sick of those same songs over and over. Although he claimed to be a book lover, the only thing Bobby'd seen Snowden read consistently was the sports section of the New York Post. For the love of God, the guy was a Bo Shareef fan. Snowden provided entertaining company, true, and Bobby did enjoy him as a complement to his own admitted intensity, but that the Goines woman had chosen Snowden as a lover was irrefutable proof that Bobby had been blissfully mistaken. Snowden's betrayal was a blessing, actually. It left no echo of doubt in Bobby's mind that an error had been made.

  Snowden, for his part, adopted a demonstratively sullen posture he'd abandoned years before. It started at work as a ritualistic display of submission for Bobby, like a dog rolling onto its back to show its belly, but Snowden noticed his mood remained the same when he was off the job as well, home alone with no one to perform for. The week that followed was a somber one. Regardless of the time he spent on the dilemma, no alternative course of action that didn't involve himself in jail for the rest of his life and all the little Leaders being sent off to foster homes presented itself. During his most optimistic moments, Snowden hoped that Lester and Cyrus Marks would decide that enough community pruning had been done and forget the whole thing.

  Aside from brief encounters with the clients in the morning, Lester was barely around at all. Snowden appreciated this greatly. Wendell was left behind in the cab of the truck, a patch of mange over his right hip leaving it scabbed and balled and making him particularly irritable. There was to be no slacking under his watch. Wendell demanded vigilance via incessant barking, ensuring that the three worked quickly just to escape from the racket.

  Horus was deputized to go over the inventory with the clients at the end of the day and get their signatures, a duty he boasted of daily, throwing in comments like, "Y'all better get used to the way I run my ship. I'll let you come for tea when they give me my brownstone!" Though a big man, Horus provided little company. As soon as he and Snowden ran out of merits to debate between the 1996 Bulls and 1968 76ers and the conversation slowed, it was Horus's habit once again to remove his laminated cutout photo of his dream Mercedes and hijack the discussion to one about the merits of the CL-class coupe versus the SL-class roadster, pointing down at the faded image like he already owned it.

  After work on Sunday, a good four days after his conversation with Robert M. Finley, Snowden finally admitted to himself that he'd become a truly unhappy person. He wanted to get drunk but didn't feel like getting drunk alone, and the TV lineup was so bad he couldn't even be bothered to flip through the channels as he was apt to. Left with his thoughts, there were no distractions to keep him from realizing that the majority were not happy ones.

  Throughout his life, Snowden was sure he'd seen people on the street and b
ehind cash registers, heard them on the other end of phone lines, who were perennially pleasant. Truly happy people among us. Snowden could barely imagine them even crying, but he was sure they did, short bursts never louder than their normal talking voice, things they wiped away like mucus before returning to their state of happiness once more. These people often seemed bland and stupid as well, but what a small price to pay for true happiness. The ones Snowden envied the most were those who seemed to be happy just because they believed in something, something so big it shrank all their own obstacles down to minutia. It didn't seem to matter what that thing was, either, just as long as it was big and depended more on faith than reality. Nursing his anxiety, Snowden wished he could believe in something big and beautiful, even this Horizon insanity he was being pushed into, that he could rid himself of the certainty that eventually it would engulf him.

  The most beautiful thing Snowden could think to believe in at the moment was love, and even though he was pretty sure he wasn't in love with Piper Goines and that it was good sense to avoid her in general, he felt overwhelmed by the need to be near a woman, inside her, and Piper's door was already open for him. The urge to be touched, listened to, overshadowed the fear that Lester would see him near her, so once more he found himself at her door, greeted by her patented lack of surprise, customary silence.

  "I'm here for consolation," Snowden said as soon as he'd ducked inside the vestibule, out of sight from the street.

  "Good."

  "Would you rub my hands for me? They hurt from lifting shit."

  "OK. It's a deal, then."

  Upstairs, Piper obliged. There were too many bottles for it to take so long to find a little something to rub into his skin, but it did. Snowden sat on the fuzzy lid of the toilet while Piper pulled through the stalactite jars in the cavern under the sink, most of which ended up on the floor in the process. Snowden begged for her to settle with the petroleum jelly but Piper chose instead some pink paste meant for hair moisturizing that stank like a perm but felt good. They had sex in the bathtub because when they started kissing they were next to it and it was the only bare surface in her apartment.