Minister Faust (18 page)

All of them turned to stare at me silently.

The only sound was the blare of a clanging, bass-bursting reggae instrumental with electronic bleeps echoing as if into the depths of space. A man behind the counter glared at me. I found myself momentarily hypnotized by his handlebar mustache and the sculpture of his pectorals and biceps beneath his tight white T-shirt before I noticed him nodding to his right, directing me to sit.

Around the corner sat the X-Man, drinking tea with a smooth-skinned Asian man in a suit—Tran Chi Hanh, FKA Chip Monk and, briefly, as my patient.

Their cups emitted ghostly trails of steam into the dark air. Kareem looked up at me narrowly before rolling his eyes and whispering something to Tran. Both men stood, and Tran excused himself to walk past me with only minuscule acknowledgment before he was out the door.

I asked Kareem if I might sit with him. He grimaced, finally pointing to a chair for me and motioning toward the counterman before sitting himself.

“What’re you doing here, Doc?”

“Well, Kareem, in therapy yesterday, weren’t you the one who told me I wasn’t making accurate observations because I was only seeing all of you in the clinic? That I had to get out of my comfort zone and see you in your natural habitat?”

“I don’t think I’d ever’ve used those words—”

“Regardless of the semantics, I’m here.”

“Doesn’t this violate confidentiality,” he hissed, leaning forward, “you coming here like this? And how’d you know I was here in the first place?”

“A good therapist always knows where to find her patients. And as to confidentiality, these people don’t know who I am—”

“Yeah, you’re only the most famous tunic-shrink on the planet—”

The man with the handlebar mustache brought me a cup of coffee. After he departed, I told Kareem how much the man resembled African American CNN anchor Bernard Shaw. Anger flashed across his face before Kareem stashed it behind the barrier of a cold smile.

“That’s quite the set of facial reactions, Kareem. Tell me what they mean.” He said nothing. “By any chance were you going to tell me that I think all African American men look alike?”

He almost smirked, then ripped the expression into the shreds of a scowl.

“You were, weren’t you?” I said. “Except I was right, and you think I’m right, too, don’t you?”

“Some people say he looks like the lead singer from Cameo. That’s a funk band.” He paused, smiled against himself. “I’ll give you this, Doc…you’ve got a real pair of meteors, coming here like this. Anyway, could we get to the point, here? What do you—”

“Kareem, I’m worried about you, how you’re handling the passing of Hawk King. First your claims that someone conspired to do away with him, then your claims that he was an Afro-American, and then getting into a brawl at the funeral—”

“Number one, I haven’t ‘claimed’ any conspiracy—I’m
investigating
the likelihood. Two, I didn’t ‘claim’ Hawk King was a brother—I asserted what I knew from direct experience. Third, I didn’t ‘get into’ a brawl. I was attacked! What, you think I should’ve just stood there and let him beat me like I was Rodney King?”

“Well, as I recall, Rodney King
did
fight back—”

“What? How can you—”

“—but that’s not the point, Kareem. Surely you have to know how all these things will affect your electoral ambitions with the public, not to mention your membership status, which the F*L*A*C could—”

“The public wants to know, Doc. They’re sick and tired of being lied to, and sick and tired of
being
sick and tired. People want somebody who isn’t afraid to speak the truth. And as far as the F*L*A*C, well, just
let
’em try to throw me out now, after I revealed the truth about Hawk King. People’ll be in the kot-tam streets they try that foolishness now!”

Rather than engage Kareem’s delusions of popular support, I gestured to the decor: wicker chairs, a zebra-skin rug, what looked like a Masai shield, and finally a wall of framed pictures. The only face I recognized was that of dietitian Dick Gregory.

“That’s Marcus Garvey,” said Kareem, picking up on my curiosity. “That’s the Mighty Sparrow, Bob Marley, Son of Nat Turner, Paul Robeson, Rakim, Steve Biko, Redd Foxx, Fela, Sun Wosret, Richard Pryor, the Brother from the HOOD, Maximus Security, James Brown…and that’s Dr. Jackson Rogers—”

“The man you claim was Hawk King.”

“I don’t
claim
anything. I assert the truth.”

“Interesting that there’s not a single picture of a woman on the walls. And other than me, no women in here at all.”

Kareem appeared startled, as if he’d never thought of that before, and then startled further that he’d let slip his startlement. Finally he shrugged. “There
should
be pictures of strong sisters on the wall. I’ll mention that to Brother Larry.”

“These other men—they’re your old comrades from the League of Angry Blackmen, correct?”

He nodded, pointing them out where they stood or sat in front of murals of pyramids, primitive art, and African idols. “In the long black coat, almost see-through in the shadow, that’s the Grand High Exalted, Never Faulted, Rock of Gibralted, Atomic Sucker-Breaker,
the Dark Fantastic.
”

“That’s his name? All of that?”

“Yeah. We all had long titles in the L*A*B. Part of our mystique.”

“So what was yours?”

“The Kinetic Kemetic Magnetic Mystic Majestic.”

“Very colorful! And the rest of these gentlemen?”

He scowled, as if he mistook my delight in the L*A*B’s poetical (if juvenile) fixation for condescension. But he continued anyway. “In the pyramid hat over there, that’s the Pyramidic Gikuyu Mau-Mau Hip-Hop Master Blaster,
Ahmed Q.
Wearing the suit with the badge over his breast pocket, that’s the Universal Stimulator and General Overseer,
the Black Lieutenant
. Loves to yell—he was always saying how we’d ‘gone too far this time’—kind of our coordinator.

“In the cape, carrying the double-headed axe? That’s the Cosmic Soul Controller and Planetary Roller,
Shango.
Guy with the glowing knife is the Hyper-Gravitic Invincible Convincer,
Eldritch Cleaver.
Obviously the brother in the locks is the Political, Poetical, Polemical Dreadnaught, the
Dreadlocker.
”

“His hairdo is alive? Like Medusa’s snakes?”

“Yeah, but they don’t turn you into stone. They’re like tentacles. Over there with the ankh-staff, ankh-fez, and the black ankh turtleneck is the Star-Breathing, Hyksos-Crushing, Sucker-MC-Smiting Mystical Militant,
Professor Grim,
HKA
Grimhotep, the Living Ka.
In the bowler hat and the Edwardian coat, that’s the Righteous, Tonighteous, Fool-Smackin, Punk-Attackin, Preachifyin and Testifyin Upbraider,
the Player Hater.
And finally, the tiny dude next to him in the suit is the Litigious, Pernicious, Troublemaking, Shit-Shaking
Arnold Drummond,
HKA
Mofo Jones.
Brother clerked with Johnnie Cochran. He was the one who got us our HUD contract to protect Stun-Glas—”

“—before you lost it.”

“Before
some
body ‘lost’ it for us.”

“And who ‘lost’ it for you?”

“It’s a Black Thing”: RNPN (Racialized Narcissistic Projection Neurosis)

T
he X-Man snorted. “That
is
the question, isn’t it?”

“So you don’t think it had anything to do with the L*A*B’s antiwhite rhetoric?”

“Being ac
cus
ed,” he sneered, “is
not
the same thing as being guilty. But in your line of work, I suppose that’s difficult to understand—what with Freud blaming mothers, sexual perversion, and everything else for causing the planet’s problems except for the white power system and the people who own it—”

“And you don’t regard that as antiwhite rhetoric?”

“Hey, if the hood fits…”

“It’s exactly that kind of language, Kareem—”

He held up an index finger, yelled toward the counterman. “Brother Larry, can you turn that up?”

I looked behind me at the television that had caught Kareem’s eye. According to the news report, now that word of Omnipotent Man’s resignation had become widespread, tributes were piling up for him outside the fence of the F*O*O*J’s Fortress of Freedom—thousands of bouquets, drawings, cards, and action figures, and tied to the fence, red-white-and-blue ribbons and capelike flags with the letters
OM
on them.

The images were followed by a shot of dozens of tiny Egyptian statuettes in tiny cardboard boats set adrift by citizens across Eaton’s Bay toward Sunhawk Island.

“Disgusting,” growled Kareem. “Hawk King’s death is world news, right? So why is it when that steroid-popping bozo up and quits for reasons I wouldn’t buy on an expense account, suddenly everybody forgets the King and starts celebrating the kot-tam jester?”

“How does that make you feel, Kareem?”

“That the best you can do, Doc? ‘How does that make you feel?’ Maybe it’s time to buy a new CD, y’know?”

“Why are you afraid to discuss your feelings?”

“
Afraid
’s got nothing to do with it. But didja ever consider that maybe what people
think
is more important than what they
feel
?”

“Don’t overthink, Kareem—that’s where you’ll get blocked—”

“What I
think
is that the day I announce that Hawk King was a brother, grieving for him dries up from millions to dozens. But when some brain-canned putt-nuts submits his decades-overdue resignation, he suddenly gets the honors due a genuine hero!”

“So all of this is about race for you? Omnipotent Man has been a celebrated hero for decades, cofounding the F*O*O*J back in the forties—”

“Man’s a fraud—even the fascist Squirrel said so. You ever read Zenith’s
Unsafe in Any Cape
? If Wally’d been named Kwame, Ali, Juan, or Sanjit, you think the press would’ve overlooked his Peter Sellers routine all these years and crowned him ‘world’s greatest hero’?”

“What makes you think the public even accepts your claims about Hawk King’s secret identity? Enough that they would actually reject him posthumously?”

“What’ve I just been saying about the tributes drying up?”

“The resignation of Omnipotent Man
matters
to the public, Kareem, whether you respected him or not. And if you think others believe your racial claims about Hawk King, I’d suggest that’s more a matter of projection that observation.”

Kareem snorted. “In all his papyri and public statements of the last ten years, Hawk King called the ancient Egyptians ‘Brothers on the Nile.’ You think that was an accident? You think it was coincidence that after he went into exile in the Blue Pyramid, the only domestic Hawk King sightings were in black neighborhoods? That he—”

“There are also sightings of Elvis, the Gold Glider, and Poe-Bot around the country every year. Surely
those
aren’t evidence of anything other than wish-fulfillment and self-delusion?”

“What about breaking exile to destroy Hutu militias in Rwanda after the F*L*A*C refused to intervene? Think that’s nothing?”

“If you’re right, then why didn’t he intervene more often? Overthrow apartheid or something like that?”

“Because Hawk King wasn’t simply living out a self-imposed exile in the Blue Pyramid! He was living more and more of his life as Dr. Jackson Rogers, trying to understand the struggles flesh-and-blood human beings have and how we can fix our planet without the ‘help’ of a bunch of phonified freaks hyped up on their own zap-powers. Dr. Rogers, he was old and sick, even depressed. He spent the last twenty years in a wheelchair, the last three unable to speak without his Data-Vox. I don’t think he had the energy to transmute himself back into Hawk King very often anymore—”

“Then even if you’re right, doesn’t that suggest he
wasn’t
murdered? That this ‘Dr. Rogers’ simply died of natural causes?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Look, I was in touch with Hawk King
reg
ularly, and while he wasn’t well, he wasn’t dying—”

Suddenly I became aware that Kareem’s former gang had been staring at us throughout our discussion and was even then menacing in upon us like a fleet of gaily spotted leopards.

“World’s smartest hero,” yelled the Black Lieutenant at me, “dies of ‘natural causes’ but fails to predict his own death? Get the hell out of my office!”

“And the planet’s strongest ‘hero,’ ” rumbled Grimhotep, his voice like the unmuffled motor of a dump truck, “up and resigns only a couple of days later, with no previous indicators?”

“And all of it happening,” said the Dark Fantastic, a shadow in voice as well as form, “when the man’s F*O*O*J is in a leadership and membership crisis?”

And then another voice rose up barkingly from behind their dark phalanx, amused and vicious at the same time, like that of a disgruntled carny vowing vengeance against every townie on the midway: “Which one a you buncha ignant-ass negroes gots to be blown fore the Fly can get hisself some service round here?”

T
he wall of men parted down the middle, revealing the Brotherfly standing behind them.