Hunting in Harlem (6 page)
At moments, Snowden found the intensity of Bobby Finley inspiring, something he could just sit and drink in front of for hours,
and Bobby's intelligence gave it both a voice and elegance. After a while, though, it could get plain boring. Sometimes Snowden
feared that when Bobby got excited (as he did) and pulled out a copy of
The Great Work
to quote, the thousands of others on the shelf would come collapsing down as well, crushing them. Just another fatal accident,
and then Lester would be in here cleaning up, blank faced, except this accident would get press for the sole reason that it
was so absurd. The earnest cream puff anchor on Channel 9 news would run the teaser, "Man Crushed by Dreams," during commercials
only to offer the story as an almost lighthearted piece slipped in after the sports and weather. Snowden's own apartment was
only a block away, and Bobby had even suggested that they go there sometimes, but since Snowden had already given Jifar his
own set of keys it didn't seem right, the boy there, them drinking. If the kid wanted to see that, he could stay downstairs.
Those keys had been meant for Bobby in case Snowden got locked out. However, drunk, resting on the space cleared off Bobby's
makeshift couch, Snowden didn't see the use anymore in getting another set made for Bobby. Not only would they most certainly
be lost in the debris that blanketed every surface and floor, but there were other, even more compelling reasons not to. The
most obvious was that while Bobby had implied that the burning down of his mom's boyfriend's house was a one-time incident,
and while the fact that he was walking a free man certainly testified to the fact that a judge and jury agreed so, the burnt
crap that emerged from beneath the surface anytime Snowden adjusted the mess around him contradicted that. While the majority
of it seemed to be charcoaled packs of matches, black and flailing, the variety of what Bobby chose to ignite was nearly impressive.
Plastic silverware, just the eyes in an entire issue of
Talk,
a collection of small colored plastic dinosaurs. Snowden began hunting for new finds, curved round and twisted by the heat,
every time Bobby went to the bathroom. Based on one of his findings - an entire collection of male doll heads apparently disfigured
and guillotined before melting in some postapocalyptic revolution - Snowden began to believe that Bobby was actually going
out and buying things specifically to burn them.
A LOT OF people died in Harlem. This didn't surprise Snowden, it was a big place. What surprised Snowden was that almost once
a week one of them died in a Horizon property. Sometimes it was a preexisting condition finally taking its toll, but often
it was just a matter of one little misstep, a simple accident, and those that were living, weren't. Snowden's Tuesdays were
booked with the special project from then on, going in and bagging it up to take it away. Bike riders without helmets or reflective
gear, residents who chose to avoid the pedestrian route underneath the scaffolding of renovating buildings, commuters who
ignored the plea to buckle up in the back of taxicabs. Snowden would ask the cause and Lester would tell him and then Snowden
would spend the rest of the day imagining the end the person came to, piecing together his or her life before as he shoved
its remnants into the Dumpster.
In an attempt to prove to himself that sudden death was not this random, that these people had brought this fate upon themselves
(and therefore it was avoidable), Snowden looked for clues of moral or discipline lapses that preceded their demise. Snowden
wanted reasons. When they were cleaning out the sty of the guy who croaked in his bed from diabetes, Snowden found two cases
of Pepsi underneath the sink and caught himself pumping his fist to himself in victory. This was a rational universe. This
guy was huge too, his mattress bowed like a hammock from the springs he'd crushed while sleeping. The whole thing had acted
like a sponge. It wasn't the smell of the bed that made Snowden vomit, it was the layer of maggots on top of it, the sound
of a thousand dry worms in agitated orgy. Together, he and Lester wrapped it in plastic, had to take it straight to the sanitation
department and come back because it stank so bad. The man's room was a collection of empty ninety-nine-cent boxes of snack
cakes, gun collector magazines wrinkled and stained, and cheap black porno. Videotapes were strewn across the floor of his
bedroom, their boxes discarded beneath the bed, images of the poor, tattooed, and desperate covered in a layer of gray dust
and the congealed remnants of their late owner. When Lester and Snowden finally unscrewed all the locks on the narrow closet
in his hallway ("You can't bust a door like this, that oak woodwork's irreplaceable"), the final evidence in the deceased's
damning was the strongest. Shotguns, wood and black metal, some barrels already sawed off by the same hand that had rubbed
out the registration numbers, but mostly handguns, piled in boxes according to make, caliber. A cardboard barrel with the
letters
SNU
written on it was the biggest, the visibly cheap six-shooters piled on one another like so many crabs.
The next posthumous eviction was a woman who'd lived in the second-story floor-through on 126th, right around the block from
Sylvia's, the victim of a hit-and-run walking back from a bar all the way over on Amsterdam. It was a nice building too, even
for a Horizon property, fully renovated the year before. There was a literary agent making an office of the garden apartment,
the third floor held a thick bit of brown-skinned cuteness who smiled at Snowden in the hall as he carried up sheets of boxes
to be unfolded. Lester said she was playing the role of a dancing plate in
Beauty and
the Beast,
turned back to caution Snowden not to bug her for tickets to the show.
Back to work, walking down the apartment's hall for the first time, Snowden saw the children's room. This was a shock because
usually, when they showed up to clear a place out that had housed children, that presence could be felt immediately just by
the collage of toys, books, and drawings they left behind. This apartment was spotless. A sparse, mature space without a sign
of anyone below legal drinking age. Yet here it was, this kids' room, a narrow area with two bunk beds on either side, barely
enough room for an adult to walk between them. Four name tags handwritten in crayon, one on the frame of each mattress. They
must have built them in there, that was the only way they could have fit, and now he was going to have to take them apart
just to get them out. As always, Snowden packed the children's things separately in the specially stamped boxes. On Lester's
request, Snowden also created a different box for each child. They were now enrolled in Horizon's Little Leaders League and
Lester intended to relay their possessions to them that night.
Finished, joining Lester in the master bedroom, Snowden was amazed at the contrast in size. The bed was a king yet looked
like a little island in the center of the vast room. The mirrors on the walls and ceiling made the space seem like a loft.
Lester caught Snowden looking at the costumes lying out on the dresser: a full-body skin of latex with holes for the head,
hands, feet, vagina, anus; a leopard leotard whose tail erectly saluted; the mandatory French maid outfit but in red leather
this time; countless others obscured below them and shackles straight out of
Roots
on top.
"She was a whore," Lester clarified, throwing the bulk into a fresh lawn bag, stomping it down with his purple snakeskins
to make room for more.
Back to God. It was as if he existed. It was as if he was making up for a century of hands-off management, was considering
a new policy of snatching up the unjust and using Harlem as a testing ground. It was a source of comfort, that the bad would
be punished. It explained things: Maybe, when Snowden swung on his father and the man just died, maybe that was why. Maybe
God was a brain hemorrhage sometimes. It offered solutions to unsolvable problems: This fate could await Jifar's father as
well, some moisture on the bathroom tiles and faulty high-voltage wiring ready to claim victory for a vengeful lord, and then
one more child would be free of a monster. More troubling was the universal implication of the theory Snowden had begun to
imagine. It wasn't long before he began judging himself and his own actions.
Weeks into his special project, Snowden went up on the roof, unhooked the line he had less than two months before connected,
then called Time-Warner to get his cable legally this time. The DMV tickets for the rental car, he paid them. He cursed the
City of New York Transportation Authority for their contrived alternate-side-of the-street parking, but he admitted his sin
and paid them anyway. Snowden's entire collection of
Black Tail
(April/May, August/ September, October/November, and the double-size Juneteenth Collector's Edition) went in the trash. Snowden
even found himself keeping his apartment unusually orderly, fixing the stopper on the Irving Howe so you didn't have to hold
the handle to flush, replacing the shower curtain with a plain, mildew-free print, hanging up the framed pictures that had
from the day he'd moved in been resting on the floor against the wall. Eventually he would die and someone would be in his
apartment as well. The saddest thing, those little tasks undone.
This rest of the world could not be controlled. In light of his new awareness of death's proximity, its random appetite, Snowden
looked for safety, found none. On the job, carrying large, visually impairing objects down the steps, Snowden lost the confidence
that if he simply dropped a foot blindly to the space below, there would be a stair there waiting for it, ready to carry his
weight and the weight he was carrying.
Bobby: 'You look like a little girl trying to figure out if the water in the pool's too cold."
Undaunted, Snowden kept dipping down his right foot only, testing for purchase with his toe before investing the rest of his
weight on the platform. The last step on any flight, the one right before the landing, was particularly worrisome to the newly
spooked Snowden. His view blinded by whatever crap he was forced to lift at the moment, he kept fearing that he would confuse
the final stair with the landing, or the landing for the final stair, and that this miscalculation would result in a fatal
fall. One could drown in a thimble of water (or cereal bowl - Brian Lane, 853 East 134th St., Apt. A19). One could break one's
neck just by landing headfirst on a steel-toed shoe (Pernell Harris, 432 East 116th St., Apt. E4). Uncertainty guaranteed,
Snowden walked slowly. Horus, twice the boxes in hand, just pushed by, calling Snowden a "pussy" when the laggard cringed
at contact.
It was nearly ten weeks before they got to do anything as a group besides lift furniture, then training began, late but as
promised. Lester announced the change in schedule before handing out checks in the back of the van. "Come to the lodge front
door at nine A.M., dressed like a real estate agent." During nearly every coffee and lunch break for at least two weeks before,
Horus had been putting forth his personal conspiracy theory that the whole program was a big scam, that they would never promote
ex-cons to agents, that there was no townhouse to be awarded, that they just wanted the cheap labor and to make the sick joke
of the banana uniforms. It began as an obvious ploy to throw the others off, but every time Horus made mention of it Snowden
found himself succumbing to that delusion as well, despite the contradiction that there was no reason to import cheap labor
to Harlem.
The Horizon Property Management office was just one small storefront in a converted stable; the corner brownstone it was attached
to was originally built for the Slang Berg Explorers League, a short-lived gentlemen's club that derived its name from the
original Dutch tide for Mount Morris. While the lodge was built in the same architectural style as the other brownstones of
the Mount Morris Historic District (as all were the product of architect Richard Morris Hunt, better known for his contributions
to Carnegie Hall), it was obviously too big to have been intended as a regular home, bulbous around its edge like it was pulling
away from a block it had outgrown. There was an abandoned cinder-blocked shell attached to it, but the contrast just added
to its grandeur. They all knew it was Cyrus Marks's residence, they all hoped to get a chance to be seen by him. Bobby had
even practiced bending down to shake hands so it looked more like a bow than an acknowledgment of how much shorter the old
man was. It made sense that Marks should live there. If you could have your pick of any house in Harlem, and were not burdened
by modesty, this would be the one.
Wednesday morning, ten to nine, they stood outside, ready for the next phase in their ascension. Snowden had bought his suit
the day before at Sutler's, Nineteenth between Fifth and Sixth. It was black, a retired tux rental, he wore it with a red
tie and hoped the others didn't notice the strip on the outside of the pant legs. It was the best he could do for under $150.
Bobby's suit was expensive. Snowden could tell, but Bobby bragged about it anyway. It was his reading suit, the one he'd bought
to wear standing in front of bookstores, award ceremony podiums, glossy magazine shoots, and in the darkened room of a coveted
interview show. That didn't happen and now it didn't fit anymore. It was baggy. Bobby'd forgotten to wear a belt so kept the
coat buttoned even though it was hot and June, kept his hands in his pockets to keep his pants up while attempting an air
of confidence.
Horus was dressed in a some sort of military formal wear, but it was not an outfit someone actually in the military would
own, rather the type of uniform a doorman or the guy who takes the tickets at a fancy show would be forced to wear. Its felt
material was Astroturf green, the rope that lined it gold metallic. Horus saw Snowden looking and, smiling, brushed off absolutely
no lint from the glowing rope that lined the shoulders, arms, and five-inch cuff links.
"How much did you pay for that?" Horus asked Snowden. The question was nonjudgmental, but the way Horus nodded to Snowden's
suit, with his nose leading, Snowden could sense the distaste in it. Snowden adjusted his own shoulder pads, both of which
seemed to be determined to emigrate south and get jobs as elbow pads.
"One forty," Snowden told him. Pissing contests were tax-exempt. "
Snowman, you should have gone with me to the warehouse. I told you." Horus spread his legs, slight and stiff, held out his
arms for inspection. "Eighty bones, my son. That's what I'm talking about. Forty for the coat, forty for the pants. Check
this out." Horus leaned into Snowden, glanced over at Bobby for mock privacy. "It buttons all the way up the neck so I don't
have to waste money on a shirt or tie neither."
Their first training day set the schedule for the rest: At exactly eight A.M., a man appeared, a Mr. M. R. Linden. M. R. Linden
was white and bald except for his beard, which disappeared over his ears and was brown with an oval albino patch on the left
side of his face as if he'd fallen asleep in a shallow pool of Clorox. He looked like a genetically modified pig, but he wore
a much nicer suit than they did so his students listened intently. Day one was the basics: the difference between rent controlled
("a set rent price that increases slowly for the length of the rental") and rent stabilized ("a controlled rent price that
can be raised by a citywide certified percentage each year"). From there Mr. Linden flew without pause into the particulars:
Rent control is over, the only people who have it are the elderly or live-in descendants who inherited the robbery; rent-stabilized
status applies to an apartment regardless of the owner, and even when a tenant leaves the rent can be raised only by a controlled
percentage. The first postlecture discussion topic: Are rent control and rent stabilization the cause of Manhattan's exorbitant
real estate prices?
Snowden leaned forward in his chair just to get a look at Bobby. Bobby the preparer, Bobby memorizer of manuscripts, dark
prince of data. Bobby, who in less sober moments had confessed that since he was long and weak his best chance at proving
himself to the powers of Horizon was to intellectually dazzle, was preparing to use this opportunity to display the depth
of his knowledge of the ruling argument of New York housing questions: whose fault were the prices, the realtors or the renters?
Snowden could tell Bobby was reciting his speech in his head, raising his hand with no intention of waiting till he was called
on. Brushing off one of the techniques that got him through high school, Snowden quickly excused himself to the bathroom,
tried to make it to the door before Bobby could start talking.