by Mat Johnson
When Red Rose had burnt away the encrusted syllables he might begin with explanations of the night before (‘After you left, I really tied one on, got right pissed’) or show me a souvenir of his travels (‘See this sign? I pulled it off last night. Right off a stone wall with my hands, right? I was mad, pissed out of my head. I used to chat up this girl that lived on Thorncliffe, number seventy-four. Lovely, you should have seen her.’) or passionately reveal his latest fascination (‘Mushrooms are the fruit of the soil. It’s like eating the earth when you eat them. That’s what it is.’). Then a walk to the third floor. David would get the messages from Raz, and we’d go down the blackboard in the center of the room, figure out the agenda and schedule whatever in-house or client meetings were needed.
But how long could that last? Particularly when the spritz of lager cans being opened marked the top of the hour better than Margaret’s antique grandfather clock (the German one, with the thick oak sides, and the two brass pendulums)? Inevitably there came five-thirty, a time to pick up the downstairs before Margaret came home. A time to pull up empty and half empty cans and the ashes of fags and spliff, for the list of chores to be executed while David hit the shower again, this time destined to arise with more clothes than his pajama bottoms. Was the work done? No, but as long as people were contacted, meetings were kept and deadlines were met, I could do all the work I needed to do that night, downstairs in my study, complete now with the drafting table, lamp and file drawers that Fionna’d gotten me to buy, the only distraction being her calling me from upstairs to tell me when something good was on the telly (‘Christopher, you’ll like this one, come.’). As long as David was there every morning, guiding me, massaging the clients, creating the designs, Urgent could keep going. David took care of the business, dealt with the people, I birthed the ideas. I was good at my job. I liked working. I liked working for him.
If the pre-Margaret chores were quick (get vitamin C, cod oil, and ginseng from Boots, renew the subscription to the Voice, mop kitchen floor) I could make my disappearance before six having taken care of things. If the chores took too long it was just ‘Do what you can do, I’ll take over when she gets here. Wake me when you hear her keys in the door.’
‘Are you going to wipe his arse, too?’ Fi asked me. I was late. Only a little, but she had been waiting for me down by the ticket machines in Brixton tube station and that short homeless brother with the busted lip and the lobotomy scar had yelled at her. We had opera tickets for the Royal Albert: I’d never gone and she was excited she was going to show me.
‘You know it’s not like that. He takes care of me also,’ I told her, going down the escalator.
‘David takes care of himself.’
‘David pays my rent, he pays my bills, everything. He got me here. That’s how he takes care of me. He’s my boy. Without David I would have nothing.’ And without David, I would be nothing. Lady, you don’t know it, but without him propping me up, you wouldn’t even be standing next to me.
‘That man will suck as long as you let him, and then when there’s nothing more he will fly off like a bloated bat. By then you will be too weak to even swat him down.’ Fionna stared forwards while she said this, as if she were watching this unfold. For a second she wasn’t a beautiful woman, someone who looked just the way beauty was supposed to. For a moment Fionna was just a skinny little black girl, hair straightened, lipstick done, trying to look cute in a dress she had no hips to be wearing. She could be from Nicetown maybe, East Mount Airy or Ogontz.
‘Fi, really, don’t worry. David is cool. Just because he needs me doesn’t mean he’s using me.’
‘Chris, who am I? I’m the one who loves you, the one who will always be here for you. I am the woman holding your hand.’ Fionna’s hand was a light thing, impossibly soft, even at the palm. The thin veins on top could barely be traced without looking. Later, when we got to the show, I held it during the entire performance, letting my hand explore hers as she led me through the sound.
The opera was a story about an old guy who married a young chick and then she cheated on him, and they all suffered, but that didn’t matter; I was a Phillystine and didn’t care about that silliness. What mattered was that we sat close enough that you could see the spittle shooting out of the actors’ mouths, that the voices of these performers were so strong, their sense of the emotion so complete, that when they sang I could feel their sound upon me, vibrating the hairs in my nose, as loud as when you’re waiting for the sub at Fairmont Avenue and the express roars by. What mattered was that here was a plain old Philly boy, costumed in a suit and actually enjoying the sounds of this world. The only one under these ornate ceilings who knew what malt liquor tasted like, what to do when someone starts shooting up a party or how to open a Krimpet without letting the icing stick to its plastic bag.
The Fourth
Chris Jones, the American, for once so proud to play the part of the Philadelphia Negro, the apron on and the coals going, cooking on the Fourth. It wouldn’t be like home, no walking down to the Art Museum in the crowd’s stream, everybody staring to the sky, the small balls of white fire streaking up until they exploded and fell casually down, paper burnt and still on fire drifting back into the crowd as we’d giggle and push each other out the way. When it was over, the pedestrian mass rushing off the Parkway in the newly established darkness. Me and my moms heading back to Suburban Station to catch the Chestnut Hill West, or if she had a boyfriend at the time, walking towards his car and waiting in the traffic until we escaped the side streets and got on West River Drive, joining the chained slalom to Germantown.
So that’s what I wanted: to give a bit of what was me to the people I was now loving. To be like, Check this, instead of always taking. To show David what my life tasted like: lemonade with the seeds floating at the top of the pitcher amidst clouds of pulp, and real burgers, huge ones, with chunks of onion and reeking of garlic, and big beef ribs, and chicken (greasy bump-covered legs or the smooth pink divinity of cleaned chicken breast). And everything covered in barbecue sauce, layered in it, cream rust that bit you pretty behind the tongue and on the roof of your mouth, the meat painted in its burgundy glory and then cooked hard and repeated until the sauce was a skin in itself, chewy and salty and the red-black of Satan’s deck chairs. I couldn’t cook, but damn, I could burn some flesh, out on the little deck staring over Brockwell Park.
Fi cooked the rest: greens, potato salad, mashed potato, sweet potato with marshmallow, corn bread, pancakes (I explained they were for breakfast but she said we could have them with jam for dessert), corn, broccoli, carrots steamed and cut, the cauliflower brains of the Green Man. It was a feast Americana, planned for months in post-coital discussion sessions and during Coldharbor Lane pub crawls as David himself made suggestions.
At three the doorbell rang. Margaret stood there, smiling, her hair tucked behind her ears, holding a bag whose weight was shifted from one hand to the other as she leaned forward to hug me.
‘David’s just gone to park the car,’ and then a kiss, on one cheek and then the next. Margaret offered Fionna a hand, but Fi called, ‘Hi! No!’ pausing briefly at the sink to smile. So much food and nobody had even died. The bloodshot cartoon eyes of deviled eggs, bulbous baked apples pouring over with their own beige pulp and dusted with cinnamon sand, sourdough muffins shaped like volcanic islands.
‘David is going to be completely enamored.’ Margaret faced the bounty and held out her arms as if she intended to hug it all. Instead she hugged Fionna, who looked so toyish in the older woman’s arms.
Margaret lit her cigarette on the stove pilot, the blue turning its white tip a haggard gray. Standing, she took a few drags, then stared at her fag, snug in the crotch of fingers. When she saw me looking at her Margaret laughed, reached into her Marks and Spencer’s bag and handed me a large white container. ‘A gift.’ Within it was my childhood obsession, just the way it used to look behind the glass display case in Melrose Diner.
‘Lemon meri
ngue, right?’ So right, nearly the size of a hubcap, those full whipped waves frozen in chaotic turbulence, the white valleys and baked brown peaks.
‘David found the recipe for me.’ I was kissing the taut cheek of a smile. ‘Well then, I’m glad David was right; he said you might like it. It’s rather sweet, isn’t it?’ It is what sweetness is, and such a day it was to be.
So rare to see them together, these women, especially with the fat boy not here to pull the attention away. Margaret looked younger when David wasn’t in the room; maybe it was just because she wasn’t frowning. When Margaret went upstairs, Fi squeezed my hand with her wet, cooling one, leaving me rubbing the soap between my fingers as she squeaked away on rubber sandals. ‘So I can serve?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, in just a second. David should be at the door in just a minute.’
So an hour and a half later I said it, because I knew Margaret was uncomfortably, thinking it and worse, as his wife, claiming it: the absence that was now becoming clear.
‘David probably nipped down to the shops. The off-licence is my guess. We could use some more beer. And I forgot to get the ice cream.’ No, I didn’t. Actually, I didn’t care for ice cream: the ice made my teeth hurt. And the pantry looked like Stop ’n’ Go. The food was getting cold and Fi, of course, was getting a bit chilly herself.
‘We’ve got to eat soon. I can’t keep reheating all of this,’ Fionna didn’t bother to whisper.
‘We will, just a second. As soon as David makes it up the walk, we eat. I promise. Just come upstairs. Let’s watch one of the movies. Margaret left her book in the car so I already started running the previews.’
‘No.’
‘Do you need any help? I could be doing something.’
‘No.’
‘Would you like me to kiss you and hug you and make everything better?’ Comedic failure. Fionna turned away from me. The hair on her head was straight and long, most of it even hers. Unable to leave without having something said that would make things better, I leaned against the doorway, watching her. That was my punishment, it seemed we had wordlessly decided, for me to stand there with a frown, wanting her to talk to me, only to be ignored as Fi move around in an effort to keep the food warm. Lifting and placing and closing and waiting and then repeating. Each flash of upturned ass as she bent to remove a dish from the oven became an accusation, until I became content with my silent flogging and went upstairs.
Two hours can go by rather quickly. If you’re watching The Great Escape, for instance, and you start counting from the moment the title comes across the screen, two hours is not even long enough for Steve McQueen to ride his motorcycle unsuccessfully towards the Alps, or for Charles Bronson to float to freedom in that little boat of his. Two hours was, however, enough time to realize you didn’t know when a certain nigger was going to arrive at your door, or what to say to the wife he had deposited in his absence. And if she was by birth British, regardless of the fact that both her parents were born in Trinidad, her destiny would be to sit a rigid deposit of angles, frozen by embarrassment, unable to share the anger and therefore converting it into pain and humiliation. I tried to give her something to read, but the closest I could come to a mystery novel was my copy of ‘Benito Cereno,’ which made Margaret even more anxious when she found it lacked the correct formula.
Fi was downstairs, seeming to make more noise than when she was cooking for real, when the bell finally rang. I ran to it before Fionna could get a chance.
There he was—
‘Christopher!’
—drunk already, falling in the doorway. In, oh God, a glowing cherry Kool-Aid British colonial officer’s coat with blue shoulder pads, gold buckles, and a white wig—
‘The red-coats are here! The red-coat is here! Revenge for the Empire.’
—reeking of something sour and strong. How did he drive here like that? Pushing past me David dropped a duffel bag in the hall and headed for the kitchen. Fi came out, and I was studying her face to see whether she was going to smile or scream when David pushed by her, glancing her with his hip hard enough to make Fionna’s little body bounce like a marionette being slapped. She didn’t even have time to cry, she was too busy making sure she landed right, and David didn’t stop, he just disappeared into the kitchen. I went to help her but Fionna slapped my hands away, fast. In the kitchen, David was at the table, an entire husk of corn in his mouth, digging into the mashed potato pile with his fingers.
‘Fucking hell, David, easy, man! Easy!’ I was pulling him by his arms and he was giggling. When he turned to me he held out a collection of mash-covered digits, each one waving at me. ‘Good,’ David said, letting the half-chewed husk fall to the floor.
I got some paper towels from over the sink and wiped off his pudgy brown paws, ‘You’re a mess, cuz.’ David was still looking at the food, his body slowing. And then with another burst he started yelling at Fi.
‘Luv, you are amazing! This is just brilliant! It’s everything he’s been on about.’ I turned around to see her, David’s messy hands still in my own. Fionna stood leaning into the corner, her knees slightly bent, her arms hugging herself.
‘Lovely, this. I can taste the butter,’ David said as he broke free from my hold and lifted the remainder of the starchy mess to his mouth. Laughing, looking at me and smiling as he continued to chew. I tried to get Fi’s eyes, but she kept looking at him, her face nearly devoid of expression as her body rocked back and forth. No anger, no tension, just not there. When David stomped upstairs, calling Margaret’s name, I reached for her. ‘He’s an asshole,’ was the first thing Fionna said, coming to life, hot and wet and into my chest as I hugged her. I said I was sorry.
‘Obviously not too sorry,’ she said, shrugging me off. ‘You shouldn’t let any man act like that in our house.’ But he pays for this house. And the food. It wasn’t that bad, was it?
‘I don’t care what he thinks he pays for. If Margaret wasn’t here I’d tell him to leave. I would, Chris. I don’t know how she puts up with him.’
Apparently she put up with him by pulling him into a small room (like my upstairs bathroom) and first yelling (as if maple could contain such trebles) and then, after he attempted to sing songs over her shouts (‘My One and Only’, first verse), by just crying.
I stood outside the door for a while, listening, wanting to help someone inside. Wanting them to come out and fill their plates so we could all talk about what a pretty day it was and where are we going to take that group holiday we’ve been talking about? When the door didn’t open, I went back down to Fi to help her get the dishes ready. The kitchen was empty. The door to my study was now closed and locked. I didn’t bother knocking. I wasn’t prepared to begin an entire apology session. I wasn’t prepared to admit that my dreams for the day had come to an end.
Back out on the deck, I made the perfect beef patty with my hand and laid it on the grill. The peace of coals. Me, my meat, my park. What a lovely day to be in Brixton. Sunshine being replaced by red skies and air cool enough to make your sweat tingle. I pressed down on the hamburger with my spatula so it would sing its tribute. I heard slamming doors inside, but I didn’t know if they were for me, or for him. Didn’t matter, really.
I saw the fireworks about six burgers later. I heard the sound, got excited, and when I looked up there they were. The first thing I thought was, look at all the colors. They seemed so out of place in this sky, like a Cadillac on the M4. Ducking my head inside, I yelled frantically for Fi, but she wasn’t answering. The house seemed empty. Margaret’s pocketbook was gone from the living room. The study door was now open, but the bedroom door was now closed. When I heard the next rocket shooting up I grabbed my keys, a four-pack from the fridge, and went outside.
In the park, David was sitting on a child’s wagon; I don’t know where he stole it from. His white wig had fallen off and hung loosely behind him, the ponytail caught limply between his flesh and the back of his collar. The red coat was open now and the bear gut had
appeared, dominant and hairy. As one firecracker shot upwards the next was pulled from the duffel bag, his little silver lighter igniting a moment more of life. The sky was in its blue-to-black phase, and David’s fire laid pinks and reds and greens upon it.
‘Surprise,’ David said without pausing from his ritual. ‘It’s why I was late, this. I had to go all the way over to Peckham. In the Fiat. Try telling the missus, right?’
‘Are these illegal?’
‘Yes,’ he said, lighting the next one, watching it shoot up in a tan line, curve into a fall, and then explode louder than a car backfire. I could hear the sound echo off the apartment complex behind us and pass us again as it flew downhill to the east.
FEEZZZZ12!! is the sound of the whistle as one of these babies (huge like hoagies) flies up in the sky. POCK13 times ten is what it was like going off. Between these explosions the polyrhythmic silence, Monk-like in its pauses. In the sky neon spiders threatened their own constellation, an electric arachnid orgy. SPEEZ the lighting of a wick was a brushed snare. Above us, the last shudders of energy at climax, shooting pieces of itself randomly away from its source.
‘It’s this guy I worked on Iron Guard with, the camera man,’ he was saying to me. ‘He’s got a licence because he uses them for videos, right? But they didn’t come in till today so I had to run out there, for the surprise. You like?’