A network car picked Macon, Andre, Nique, and Logan up on the deserted early-morning street outside WAKM and shuttled them across town to another unassuming industrial-gray building on an undistinguished block. This was the home of
Rise and Shine New
York,
a saccharine TV variety hour hosted by a fawning blonde named Kim Sheffield who interlaced cooking segments with celebrity chitchat. Why they wanted flyboy raceman asshole Macon Detornay was anybody’s guess, and probably some wire-service-combing intern’s fuckup, but it was high-profile and a welcome breather after Joe Francis and before the afternoon’s political roundtable.
The show, set in a faux living room before a studio audience, began with toothy grins, pressed-cheek introductions, and a tightly edited clip from last night’s edition of
Rebel Yells.
Macon felt underdressed and sweaty in his track suit and Nikes, and wished he hadn’t let Andre and Nique convince him that only schmucks dressed up for TV. Why was he taking fashion advice from a couple of Los Angelenos, anyway? People out there rocked shorts, socks, and flip-flops. Together. Actually left their homes like that.
“Fabulous,” gushed Kim when the clip ended, leaning over her own crossed legs to touch her new friend’s knee. “So we can expect more of this in your book?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess,” said Macon, sipping lukewarm tap water from the
Rise and Shine New York
mug on the coffee table before him. “If I ever get around to writing it.” Logan made a rounded hand motion from the front row, as if shooing poisonous fumes away from her nostrils.
Effuse,
she mouthed. Macon raked back his hair with an exaggerated overhand arm sweep, flexing his biceps and smiling as he did so. It seemed like something the kid from
Dawson’s Creek
might do. He wondered if Kim Sheffield had the foggiest notion who he was.
“Who are some of your favorite writers?” she asked, the question unnaturally sexy between her pouted lips. Macon couldn’t believe how much makeup they slathered her with. Not that he wasn’t covered in foundation himself. He felt like a powdered doughnut.
“Gunnar Kaufman, Raven Quickskill, and Daniel Vivaldo Moore,” he said. Kim nodded as if enraptured, and glanced past him at the next cue card. Nowhere she could go from there.
“I notice your studio audience seems to be all white today,” Macon bantered, taking advantage of the pause. “Why do you suppose that is?”
Andre steepled his fingers, pressed them to his lips, and leaned forward. This should be good.
“I’m sorry?” Kim smiled and batted her eyelashes, pretending to have missed it.
“What is this show about, anyway?” asked Macon, gripping the arms of his chair and pivoting to look over each shoulder as if in search of the answer. He tightened his left cheek until an adorable dimple, dormant since his sixth birthday, appeared. “I mean, it’s pretty much about nothing, right? It’s more a way to distract people.”
“Distract them from what?” Jovial noncomprehension glossed Kim’s face. She thinks he’s setting up a joke, Andre realized, exuberance mounting.
Macon took a final glance around and thought, Fuck it. Something about this set, this woman, the notion of millions of suburban housewives studying him from their couches, was too much. He had to bust this shit wide open.
Macon let flirtation edge his voice. “You know what the cop who arrested me said, Kim?” Nique and Andre exchanged nervous looks. “I’ll tell you, Kim. He said, ‘Niggers are lazy, stupid, and violent.’ I wonder what your audience thinks of that, Kim. I bet they wouldn’t say ‘nigger,’ would they?”
“N-no, of course they wouldn’t,” said Kim, a frown folding her lipstick in ways the sponsoring brand would never have approved. “It’s a terrible word.” She looked offstage, for her producer, but he was nowhere to be found.
“Oh, come on, Kim.” Macon caught her eye and took a stab at a disarming smile. “I think it sometimes, don’t you? Haven’t you ever found yourself thinking, Why are niggers always so loud at movie theaters? Or, I’m standing on this elevator with three niggers? Even though you don’t mean to? Even though you like black people?”
Oh shit, thought Andre. Kim Sheffield was nodding with Macon’s every word, her legs wrapped tight around each other, her facial furrows deepening each second.
“How do you feel when you catch yourself?” pressed Macon gently. “Do you think it makes you racist?”
Andre looked down and saw that he was clutching his arm rests so hard his fingers ached. Macon’s just a little too happy to have an excuse to use that word, he thought.
Kim opened her mouth and said nothing. She leaned forward and grabbed ahold of Macon’s arm. “Yes,” she whispered desperately, nodding fast, nails digging into her guest’s skin. He wanted to pull away, but didn’t. “I, I . . . sometimes I do.” She pressed her palm to her breastbone, blinked, and gulped back tears. Macon offered her his water and she took it gratefully in both hands.
That was all the forces behind
Rise and Shine New York
were willing to sit still for. The cameras spun out toward the audience and Kim Sheffield rose and strode swiftly off the set, chin to her chest, heels clicking across the parquet floor. Her producer ushered her into his arms, lit her a cigarette, and walked her out into the wings. With burly efficiency, two security guards informed Macon, still seated, that his segment was finished, and escorted him to the greenroom.
Andre and Nique were huddled by the food table, smoking a joint, when he arrived. Logan sat on a leather love seat, a silver tray of bagels resting on her lap. She chucked one after another at the garbage can across the room, scoring with seventy percent accuracy.
Macon poured himself a cup of coffee, snatched the joint from Nique, took a quick pull, and drowned it in a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice before anyone could protest.
“Y’all motherfuckers are supposed to be prepping me. How the fuck you gon’ be blunted and shit?”
“How the fuck you gon’ ask Kim Sheffield if she thinks ‘nigger,’ nigga?” Nique retorted, gravel-voiced, still holding in his hit. “I should smack you in the grill.” A weed-induced tear rolled down his cheek and he flared his nostrils, exhaled through them, and turned on Macon. “You think her little breakdown makes you look good out there? You think people are gonna book you on their shows if they’re afraid you’ll pull that kind of junk?” He tapped his forehead with his finger. “Play smart, Moves. Don’t get ejected. You were scheduled for five more minutes.”
Andre fished the joint out of the juice and ate it. “Moving right along,” he said, “
Pedantic Perspectives
is up next. A weekly roundtable on current events. Nationally syndicated. Excellent ratings, for what it is. They try to mix it up: conservatives, liberals, random crusading celebrities”—he put a hand on Macon’s shoulder—“and the occasional miscellaneous loon. The moderator’s a pundit by the name of Eric Lyle, a real bastard. He writes a column called ‘Shut Up and Listen, You Idiot’ for the
New York
Post.
”
“I’ve read that,” said Logan. “He’s the guy who said we should draft homeless people into the army and use them as missiles.”
“Right. And yesterday he blamed school busing for creating what he termed ‘a generation of Macon Detornays.’ He says making blacks go to white schools disrupts the fabric of both communities and results in ‘confused values.’ ”
“He’s got a point,” said Macon, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“His solution is to give niggers standardized intelligence tests at age five, educate the top scorers at state-run all-black boarding schools, and teach the rest of us to repair refrigerators and air conditioners. He calls it the Talented Ten Thousandth Plan.”
Macon gulped his coffee and stretched a calf on the table as if he were a ballerina, squashing a plate of assorted Danish beneath his sneaker. “Lovely. Who the guests be?”
“Glad you asked.” Andre unfurled a finger for each name. “Conservative-as-hell black congressional hopeful and ex–New York Giants nose tackle Marcell A. ‘Jackfruit’ Preston. Grassroots Harlem organizer and owner of three Dream Weavers hair salons Alan Umfufu McDowell—not a fan of yours, by the way, called you ‘an unwelcome loudmouthed interloper in the fate of the black community’ in the
Amsterdam News.
” Dre dropped his chin and stared daggers at Macon. “I wouldn’t drop any n-bombs in front of him if I were you.” When no response was forthcoming, he continued. “And finally, Professor Andrea ‘I Want Some Black Dick’ Jenson, noted scholar and author, Columbia English professor, and one of your more outspoken supporters to date.”
Logan tossed her last bagel. “I still haven’t heard a plan,” she said as it thunked against the inside wall of the trash can. “I hope you’re building up to it.”
“Relax,” suggested Macon, pouring himself a refill. “Everything’s under control.”
Chapter Seven
“Maybe I should start speaking with a Southern Baptist accent,” Macon mused, sitting backstage as a makeup man repainted him. “You know, like MLK or Cornel West. Those cats can be ordering some super-sized fries and it still comes off like the most spiritual, profound shit ever said.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” said Nique, squeezing kiwis from the fruit tray in pregame boredom. All these greenrooms were identical, down to the food. He shook an underripe banana at The Franchise. “Don’t forget, we want cats to be completely perplexed that anybody ever thought you were black. So keep it nasal, homey.”
“We’ll be watching on the monitor,” said Logan. “Good luck.” She kissed him on the top of the head, prompting Andre and Nique to do the same. Macon followed a production assistant into a muted burgundy-and-oak studio and took his place around a shin-high coffee table. The other guests were already seated. Squat Jackfruit Preston, clean-cut in a two-button navy suit and FBI shoes, stared down at his folded hands. Lanky Alan Umfufu McDowell rocked a black-and-yellow dashiki and chatted with Professor Jenson, who was seated next to Macon. She was an elegant, birdlike woman in her forties, tall, thin, and draped in pink silk. A short plume of black hair spiked from her head.
“Hello, Macon,” she stage-whispered. “Pleasure to finally meet. Do you know Alan?”
“Hi.” They shook hands. Macon turned to Preston and repeated the ritual, unsure whether he should be fraternizing with the enemy.
Eric Lyle entered last: a tall man with a perfectly trimmed beard who dyed his graying hair a ludicrous jet-black and thought nobody out in televisionland could tell. An easy, limber gait brought Lyle to his center seat, just higher than the other chairs. He folded himself into it, crossed his legs regally, and made a show of examining his cuticles while he waited for his presence to silence his guests.
It took only a moment, but Lyle waited another before looking up. He swept his slate-gray eyes across each of their faces without pausing on any one, then set his gaze on the camera and ran his hands over his hair without touching it.
“Welcome.” He nodded left and right, eyes still trained on the lens, and smiled—at the resonance of his own voice, it seemed to Macon. “So good to see you all. I can tell this is going to be a fantastic show.”
“On in five, Mr. Lyle,” a techie shouted. Macon cracked his knuckles. Jenson flashed him a sympathetic smile. “Nervous?” she whispered. Macon didn’t answer. The question made him feel like a kid, reminded him he was the panel’s amateur. He gave her a twitch of a smile, so as not to offend his only ally with rudeness.
Lyle pulled his shirt cuffs more prominently from his suit coat. “No biting, eye gouging, or kicking,” he joked by rote.
“Three . . .”
He licked his pinkies, smoothed his eyebrows, and dropped his fists onto the arm rests like a pair of gavels. “And remember, it’s my fucking house.”
“One.”
“Welcome to
Pedantic Perspectives.
I’m your host, Eric Lyle, and today’s topic is that most persistent of American conundrums, race relations. Joining us, as always, are four experts in the field— including one, Macon Detornay, whose recent exploits have drawn national attention and regalvanized discussion of the issue. Welcome, Macon. We’ll begin with you. What do you see as the biggest obstacle in improving the state of race relations in America?”
“White people,” said Macon. He sat back and crossed his legs.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Professor Jenson blurted, fastest racehorse out of the gate. “Until more white people commit to opening channels of dialogue—”
“Forget channels of dialogue,” interrupted Macon. “That lets them off the hook too easy. How can you even start talking without a basic acknowledgment of culpability?”
Jackfruit Preston threw his bulky ex-athlete’s frame forward and pushed his overlarge glasses against his forehead. “The last thing we need to do at this point is worry about assigning blame, Eric,” he said, holding his palms a foot apart as if clutching an invisible football. “Our duty as a nation is to move beyond the problems of the past and embrace the principles of equality on which this country was founded.”
Macon burst out laughing. “That’s funny for so many reasons,” he said. “You think the black community should just forgive and forget and look ahead? Ahead to what? All those great token jobs? Getting shot by cops, talked past in school, turned down by banks, and thrown in jail? Ahead to leadership that tells them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, learn to fit into white society, and laugh at racist jokes around the water cooler?”
Alan Umfufu McDowell thrust a splayed hand into Macon’s line of vision. “And what makes a twenty-year-old whiteboy such an expert on the black community?” he demanded. “What we need is to be left alone by outside agitators like you and bourgeois politicians like Brother Preston and allowed to build our own economic and political power bases.”
Macon turned and smirked at him. His discomfort had melted away under the heat of good old-fashioned open antagonism. This was just like sitting on the couch at Lajuan’s crib—and none of these fools was anywhere near as hard to interrupt as Jihad. “Economic and political power bases, huh?” he asked. “You think white people are gonna stand for that? Not in a million years. We’ll be in there slanging St. Ides and gentrifying blocks before you can say ‘Each one, teach one.’ Unfortunately, the fact is that y’all can’t rebuild the black community unless white people decide to let you do it.”
Lyle, sensing that Alan was seconds away from leaping across the coffee table, stepped into the fray. “So you contest that the burden rests solely on white people, Macon?”
“The word
burden
shouldn’t even be used in the same sentence as ‘white people,’ Eric. The burden is being treated like a criminal when you walk down the street, getting convicted twice as often as whites in courts of law and incarcerated twice as long for the same crimes. And you know what? Even if white people do decide to get down with some dialogue, the burden will still be on black people to try to explain what’s wrong.”
“The days of white people apologizing for their sins are over,” said McDowell ominously.
“Thank you,” said Preston, smoothing his yellow club tie.
“When did they start?” asked Jenson. “Malcolm said whites should be walking up to every black person they pass on the street and asking for forgiveness, but it’s never happened.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” mused Macon. “It won’t change anything, but it might be good for white folks to humble themselves like that.” He stroked his chin and
boom.
“What the hell,” he decided. “Let’s do it. On behalf of the Race Traitor Project and in the name of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, I hereby declare this Friday to be the first annual Day of Apology in the City of New York. I want white folks to meditate on what it is they’re apologizing for and then to follow Brother Malcolm’s advice and walk right up to black folks on the street and say they’re sorry. Don’t expect forgiveness; the point is to acknowledge how fucked up—whoops, sorry—how messed up things are and to take a little bit of personal responsibility. How’s that?”
“That’s the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard,” sputtered Jackfruit Preston, sweating through his suit. “Black people need to take responsibility for their own lives. This is more preposterous than welfare and affirmative action rolled into one.”
Alan Umfufu shook his head and stared at Macon. “An idea like this makes a mockery of the problems facing the black community,” he seethed. “What’s next, Take a Nigger to Lunch Day?”
“What’s wrong with white people acknowledging the roles they’ve played in oppression?” asked Jenson. Macon wanted to kiss her.
Eric Lyle was outraged. “I take umbrage at the suggestion that moral, law-abiding white citizens have anything to apologize for,” he thundered.
“The death threats they’re going to send me for saying they do,” said Macon, “will prove it.”
“Annnnnd cut,” came the voice from on high.
“Great segment!” said Lyle, clapping McDowell on the back with one hand and Preston with the other.
Alan Umfufu stood up, straightened his dashiki, and pointed a hostile right index finger at Macon. “You’ve got some nerve,” he said. “If I have to spend my weekend fending off guilty white people hell bent on apologizing to all of Harlem, I’m going to be really annoyed.”
“Relax. Maybe white chicks will start sporting weaves and double your business.”
“Fuck you. I hope whatever blue-eyed soul brothers you send uptown catch a serious ass-whipping.”
Macon’s face lit up. “Wow, yeah,” he said to McDowell’s back as the activist stormed out. “I didn’t even think of that. That would be fantastic, wouldn’t it?”