For a moment, the thought that he was about to be assassinated, cut down where he stood in sudden gun spray from the front row, flashed through Macon’s mind. He shrugged it off. None of his premonitions ever came true. It was enough, though, to convince him to wave thank you and retreat from the hallowed circle hollowed for him, to make the exit Nique had advised: Head for the sunset with applause still jangling your ears, Moves.
Andre and Nique flanked him and the cadre hustled unmolested through the pliant, cheering crowd. An MTV cameraman duck-walked beside them, filming Macon’s getaway; the Franchise grinned into the camera, glowing, waved good-bye as he and his team outpaced the guy and made a clean escape.
“I can’t believe how smoothly that went,” Andre said a block later, spinning to look back at the still-knotted crowd. Laughter rippled through it; someone else must have taken the stage.
“Hey, Macon. Did I miss the show?” Logan was walking toward them down the quiet street, swinging the strap of her knit purse in wide arcs. A pink tank top exposed her lean shoulders; Macon studied the tattooed snake curled around her upper arm with interest. She gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek, then turned to his friends. “How’d he do?”
“I’m sorry,” said Macon, off-balance again in her presence. “Andre, Nique, this is Logan. We met the other night, at the Nuyorican.”
“Back when he was nobody,” said Logan, smirking. She punched Macon in the arm. “You were supposed to call and tell me when you were reading again, man. I had to hear about it from my girl.”
Macon snapped his fingers. “Oh shit,” he said. “That reminds me. Nique, gimme your phone.” He rummaged through his pockets until he found the page ripped from the screaming inmate’s copy of
Native Son,
and dialed the number scribbled on it. “This might solve all our problems,” he told them as the phone rang. A man picked up the line, and Macon’s face clouded with confusion. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and flared his nostrils. “What the hell is Justin’s?”
“Puff Daddy’s restaurant,” said Logan. “Why?”
“Lemme get a table for four in half an hour,” Macon said into the phone.
Chapter Five
Justin’s was all unseen light sources and supple curves, heaps of cream and ice-blue laced with dashes of mahogany and gold, as if whoever had designed the spot was begging for a movie to be shot there but only had the budget for music video opulence and had cribbed his sense of luxury from MTV regardless. It was a cavernous, multi-leveled room on Twenty-first Street, flashy on a nascently hip block, soul food for the new-money black bourgeoisie and their attendant wannabes. Anita Baker crooned on the sound system, barely audible, as R&B-looking slicksters in suits and band-collared shirts leaned over appetizers toward impeccably made-up women. Jewelry and teeth flashed. Almost every table was full. It was the kind of place at which Andre would have liked to feel at home, but didn’t.
“The Puffster’s restaurant, huh?” Nique muttered as the hostess showed them to their seats. “What do they do, mix together scraps of food more talented chefs cooked in the eighties?”
Andre deaded the small talk as soon as the barbecued salmon, fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread hit the table. Logan had lost cool points by ordering the smothered swine chops, but they let it slide without comment. Her affinity for filthy and treacherous animals, pigs and serpents, was less noteworthy to Nique and Andre than the fact that Macon had apparently taken a liking to a girl with little titties and virtually no ass.
I would have thought he’d like black women, Andre mused, running a visual inventory on Logan from across the table. She wasn’t pretty, per se, but something about her made your eyes happy. A revelation tickled him: Macon likes white chicks on some transgressive shit. Like he’s a brother. As if he’s crossing some line.
Had Andre broached the subject of racial preference, Macon would have shrugged and said he dug all women. The dregs of New England Puritanism swirling through his upbringing kept him embarrassed about things like pornography, so Macon would not have mentioned the role a certain well-worn videotape had played in the formation of his sexual politics.
Macon had owned one fucktape in his life, and he’d stolen it from Jihad; he’d never buy one. It was called
Black Anal:
one low-resolution clip after the next of hugely endowed brothers dicking down sisters, spreading their asses with brutal indifference. Macon had watched it plenty, since it was the only show in town, and slivers of silver intimidation had rubbed off the tape and lodged in Macon’s brain, frustrating his logical mind. Here was the metaphorical big black dick made flesh, the rudder steering the ship of white America’s frenzy and fear and fascination, everything Macon didn’t want to believe, tried not to believe, but did—did, and benefited from. Just being down with the brothers gave him a bigger dick by association, swelled his masculinity like it did that of every kid thugging it up in front of his bedroom mirror, rhyming along to a rap song. That was where most of those kids’ relationships to blackness began and ended: It was an ideal against which to measure your pubescent self, a Staggerlee costume to try on, arms swimming in the sleeves for a shameful minute, an ironic hour, a strutting day, then push as far back in the closet as it would go.
Macon had considered acquiring a white porno just to promote image equality, so he wouldn’t be objectifying black people in isolation. The sexual voyeurism of porn didn’t faze him, but as he lay on his bed, cock in one hand and VCR remote in the other, it became increasingly difficult for Macon not to think about the fact that the masters had liked to watch the slaves go at it, too, from time to time. Not to mention the sport they’d made of rape; it had been America’s national pastime back then. Macon shuddered and turned away from the TV, unwilling to even contemplate the implications of all that. He could convince himself that black dudes’ acceptance of him might be legit, but not black women’s. If a sister wanted to take him to bed, it didn’t mean he’d passed a test, it meant she’d flunked one. As much as he would have liked to feel otherwise—and as much as some black women seemed to appreciate him—that was the only way Macon could make himself see it. How might the world change, he wondered, if science could somehow prove to the satisfaction of every white man that all races were hung equal? Or was that after the fact, besides the point? He remembered hearing that the Nazis thought the Jews had horse-cocks, too.
Eventually, Macon had said fuck it, and thrown
Black Anal
away. It wasn’t even his fetish, he reminded himself one final time, staring across his bedroom at the garbage can in which he’d buried it. He couldn’t be held responsible for any of this. It was Jihad’s goddamn tape.
Logan’s presence at the table had sent Nique, too, into a mental tailspin; he smoothed his sweatshirt, eased back into his velvet chair, and theorized about the wisdom of having Macon seen in public with a female companion, and furthermore with a white female companion, and on top of that a weird, tattooed, punk-rock-looking white female companion. Not that a sister would send quite the right message, either, Nique supposed. A left-out-of-the-conversation minority member might add an interesting dimension . . . a Filipina honeydip, perhaps? Nique was on the verge of concluding that women were too problematic, emblematically speaking, to deal with at all at this point in Macon’s career when Andre chopped the heels of both his hands against the table, as if showing them how long a fish he’d caught, and hunkered down to business.
“All right, kids,” he said. “I’m not sure why we’re here, or how we’re gonna pay for twenty-five-dollar-a-plate soul food, or why some dude Macon met in lockdown is our new
Zagat Guide,
but I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is the fact that we have twelve hours’ worth of interviews requested tomorrow, ten minutes to confirm, and an interviewee who’s still stalling about what he wants to do. Not to mention what he’s gonna say. You care to address any of this, Mr. Franchise, or would you like to hear a few compelling arguments from Nique and myself concerning why you’ve got to do the shit?” He sliced a piece of salmon and added a daub of mashed potato to the fork. Andre ate like he was painting.
Macon wiped barbecue sauce from his mouth, refolded his napkin, and looked around. “I asked for hot sauce like ten minutes ago,” he complained. “How I’m supposed to eat this mac and cheese without no hot sauce? Man, Puffy is slipping. Frank White must be spinning in his grave.” His dinner companions stared at him. Nique went so far as to begin drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
“Sorry,” said Macon. “Sorry. Okay. No, you don’t have to convince me of anything. I want to do it all. Being in front of that crowd tonight made me realize I’ve got to run with the ball.”
“The end zone,” Andre prodded, “being where, exactly?”
“That I’m not sure yet. I tend to, you know, think on my toes.”
“Only on your toes?”
Macon ignored him. “It’s just a question of going in there, answering whatever they ask me, and coming up with some kind of brilliant plan on the fly.” He shoveled a heaping pile of greens into his mouth and crossed his arms over his chair.
Andre took an agitated pull of sweet tea. “That’s so Zen it makes me want to smack you in the mouth. This isn’t a grade-school book report, dude. People are gunning for your ass. Don’t you think we should brainstorm a little?”
Macon shrugged. “If you really want to help me,” he said, “figure out how to make white kids think I’m cool enough to listen to when I tell them to do shit they don’t wanna do. How do we make feeling stupid and vulnerable sound cool?”
Andre rested his elbows on the table and brushed cornbread crumbs from his fingers. “Sounds like you’ve already got a plan.” Hope and suspicion mingled in his tone.
“Not really. I just know I’ve gotta put some pressure on white people. Challenge them.”
“That’s good,” said Logan. She slid her knife and fork to one side of the plate, and gestured at Macon with a gnawed-clean swine bone. “The best defense is a good offense. And believe me, you’re gonna need one—do you know what people are saying about you? In the mainstream media, I mean. Sure, the backpack crowd is gonna like you, but have you read the
Wall Street Journal
today?”
Six eyes stared at her. “You read the
Journal
?” asked Nique.
“I have to. I’m a financial consultant. Pricewaterhouse-Coopers.”
“Get the fuck outta here.”
“Hey, I got sixty grand in student loans to pay off before I can go open a pottery studio in Vermont or some hippy-dippy shit like that. I cover the tattoos with a suit, gel my hair down, and tell companies how to spend their money. Except I don’t tell them to stop wasting it on financial consultants. It sucks, but you gotta do what you gotta. I try to steal as many office supplies as possible. Anyway, the point is that the press is covering you like you’re a dangerous lunatic, not some great new thinker. Even the folks who like you think you’re nuts. You’ve got to change that.”
Andre nodded through Logan’s last few sentences, and when she finished he reached over and patted the back of her hand, as if they were an old married couple. “I couldn’t agree more, Moves. You’ve gotta hit them with some history. Some scholarship. Quote DuBois and shit. You know.”
“Start an organization,” Logan suggested, sweeping her crumbs into a little pile and then mashing them into the table with the heel of her hand. “The second people hear
association
or
foundation,
they start taking you more seriously.”
“The space you want to occupy,” Nique chimed in, “is Black Media Radical. As long as there’s TV there’s gotta be one. Malcolm was the first, and the best. Farrakhan doesn’t want the job anymore. Khalid Muhammad’s too extreme, Jesse’s too mainstream, Reverend Al’s too ghetto. You’ve gotta be part demagogue so they can use you to scare white folks, but still come off as credible enough for whites to assume you speak for all black people. There’s never been a white one, obviously.” He moved a bite of yams from fork to mouth with casual precision, wagged an I-ain’tfinished forefinger at Macon, and parked the food in his left cheek so he could speak.
“But that’s a Crow Jim law I’m willing to topple.” Nique glanced at the waiter and tapped his empty Jack-and-ginger glass. “Right now, I think airing white folks’ dirty laundry and scaring them shitless is the most important thing.” He pointed a sharp pinky at Logan and downed the final drizzle of his drink. “I like the organization thing. Makes it seem more real.”
“How about something with ‘Evil is white people’?” suggested Andre, wanting to say something. It was important to provide Nique with speed bumps when he started to rev up. Otherwise he’d hit the red and you’d be plastered flat against the passenger seat until he ran out of gas. “That’s our sound bite, right?”
Nique grimaced. “Too out, dude, too crazy. If we stick with it, we’ll alienate the world.”
Macon looked at Logan’s hand, resting flat against the table, and noticed her long, slim fingers and perfect ovaline nails. Then he thought about Vermont and pottery wheels and Logan in little terry-cloth shorts, legs smeared with blue-gray clay, nipples poking through a cotton undershirt as she threw pots late at night.
“The Race Traitor Project,” he announced, with an air of finality.
Nique’s lips pooched in evaluation and he looked like the catfish he’d just devoured. “Not bad.” He nodded. “Catchy but scary. Forces reporters to ask you what it means, so there’s a built-in launching pad.”
Macon turned to Logan. “You want to be the CEO?”
“Hey,” said Nique. “Hold on a minute there.”
“I think it’s gotta be an all-white organization,” explained Macon. “So I can talk about how white people need to get their own house in order, police each other, stop burdening black folks, shit like that.”
“We should get advisory titles, at least,” persisted Nique. “Right, Dre?”
“Man, I don’t give a fuck.”
“I wanna be Minister of Information.”
Macon threw up his hands. “Fine.”
“And Andre can be Chief of Staff.”
“Whatever.”
“All right,” said Nique, “now that that’s settled, I’ll get on the horn and book your ass.” He pulled his cell phone like a pistol and yanked the antenna with flair. “So start working on a plan.”
“Trust me,” said Macon. “At least as far as you can throw me.”
The waiter laid a round of peach cobblers on the table, vanilla ice cream dolloped on top. “Compliments of the gentleman in the corner.” He leaned in close. “Give those crackers hell, Macon,” he whispered, then straightened. “No offense.”
Macon smiled. “None taken.” In the corner, waving, fork in hand, sat Professor Umamu Shaheed Alam.
Macon waved back. “Ballsy fucker. I guess I should go over, huh?”
Dre raised his glass to Alam in tribute, then glanced at Macon and found him clocking the professor with cagey, narrowed eyes. “I’ll come,” he volunteered. “Might as well lock down my easy A.”
They sauntered over and Alam wrung both their hands without standing. Unwedging his belly from behind the table, which was covered with so many dishes that the tablecloth was practically invisible, looked like a procedure of almost surgical complexity. “I’d like you both to meet my fiancée, Anna-Lena,” he said, indicating the young Swede seated beside him, blond bob shimmering in the soft light. “I was just today telling my colleague Professor Jenson,” Alam said, cheeks blubbering up into a smile, “how fortunate I am to have discovered you, Macon—not so far in advance of the world, I’ll admit, but nonetheless. I’m looking forward to more discussions like the one we had in class the other day—an account of which, incidentally, I’ve just sold to
Transition.
” He took Anna-Lena’s hand and winked at Macon. “Two brothas like Alam and Detornay, it sells itself.”
Macon opened his mouth and Dre spoke first, preempting hell-fire. “We’ve really got to get back to our friends,” he said, familiar Princeton-Eastham diplomatic instincts kicking in. “Thanks again for the desserts. It’s nice to see you.”