Hunting in Harlem (10 page)

The statement came from memory, in which it was accompanied by himself barely as tall as the counter at the corner store,
a dollar and a quarter hot in the tight grip of his little fist. It was a later time, and these cigarettes cost more than
those did, but when the guy handed the pack over to him, Snowden recognized them as his father's brand. He knew he'd asked
for them, he knew that the guy inside the wooden box was not his dad but just another fathead man, but for a moment it was
like he had asked for a smoke and his father had reached out and given these to him. A gift, or revenge. Snowden asked for
matches.

Imitating the ghost, Snowden slapped the little box's ass four times before taking his teeth to the cellophane and folding
the lid back. Looking off for a distraction from the meaning of his actions, he found one in the newly arrived edition of
the
New
Holland Herald.
The stack still had its white packing strips lying loose around it where they'd been cut. Snowden was looking at it, trying
to discern what it was that made the front page look odd, and realized that the letter from the editor, the consistently well-written
and intensely insane column that was one of his favorites, was missing, the absence of its always boltled text giving the
tabloid a naked quality. Then he saw her name, and he thought,
I
shouldn't have tried to kiss her.
They'd been at the door downstairs, and even though Piper Goines seemed a bit distant at the end, he'd gone for lips during
the parting gesture, she to his cheek, both landing at an awkward place in the middle. Snowden scratched that spot like it
itched him, saw the tide ACCIDENTS HAPPEN? above Piper's byline, and that same hand shot out to bring it closer, HISTORIC
HARLEM EXPERIENCES DISPROPORTIONATE NUMBER OF ACCIDENTAL DEATHS.

Snowden would never find a better time to begin his new hobby. Back in the truck, he was through his second cigarette and
on to his third when he got the strength to pick up the paper from his lap, shake off the ash, and turn it over.

The first skim was just a hunt for a name, his own, a blissfully unsuccessful one. The facts that presented themselves on
the second read were actually less painful than the dread with which Snowden anticipated every word. It made the damaging
point that life was a little shorter above 110th Street, the coroner's office was quoted as saying on examination that the
number of accidental deaths in the last year in Harlem were almost as much as the number of similar fatalities in the rest
of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island combined, but the commentary that he sounded "surprised" was provided by the author
herself, not the source, and the piece didn't depict the anomaly as anything more than what it was. It was certainly nothing
to promote the real estate renaissance of Harlem, but it didn't seem to be anything to destroy the fragile boom either. It
wasn't like they were muggings, rapes, drive-by shootings, or any of the other man-made calamities that would fuel the imagination
of the outside world that Harlem was the hellish ghetto they feared it to be. The people there were just clumsy.

Inching back up the FDR with the rest of the late rush-hour traffic, Snowden felt relief replace the hollow flash of anxiety.
By the Seventy-second Street exit, he was glad that this was all he had shared with Piper, that he hadn't had any more sensitive
information for her to expose. By the time he'd reached the Ninety-sixth Street exit, Snowden was overwhelmed by a feeling
of betrayal, all of Bobby's drunken admonishments flooding back to him. He was sure he had given Piper Goines his number,
and even if days had gone by without him calling her, he wasn't the one with the reason to. Turning left onto the exit for
125th Street, it was this that stuck with him, that she'd used information from their private conversation, information given
in an informal and confidential setting, and had used it to further her own career, her own ambition at getting a front-page
story, and hadn't even bothered to give him notice of her actions. Snowden wasn't the type of person to feel justified indulging
in self-righteousness that often, so as such relished the novelty of it, drove straight to Piper's home instead of dropping
the truck off.

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? Mississippi. 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."