Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

— Fine don’t tell me, I don’t need to know.

— Know what?

— I swear, my cousin Larry with Alzheimer’s has a sharper attention span than you.

— Oh, excuse me.

— No, you’re not excused. Now I’m going to have to tell you a joke now.

— Lord, Mr. Ken, not another nigger joke.

— Oh good heavens, no more of those, please. It was about Alzheimer’s. Funny, people with the big A joke about people with the big C, as if there something at least about not remembering you’re sick that makes that disease better.

— So are you the big A or the big C? The big P? D? My family in Jamaica is all about the big D.

— Big D?

— Diabetes.

— Of course, and P for Parkinson’s? Sometimes I wished I had a medieval disease, like consumption, or the bloody flux.

— What do you have?

— Let’s not turn this into a movie of the week so soon, shall we? Because then I’ll feel like I’m living in my daughter’s TV. In fact this whole scene needs to be less Imitation of Life and more Gulliver’s Travels .

He walks over to the doorway and picks up his cap and scarf.

— Let’s go.

— What? Go where? Lilliput? The pizza man soon come.

— Oh I never eat that shit. They’ll just leave it in the stairway and charge it to our account. Let’s cut this place loose, I’m fucking bored.

The truth is, I really wanted to leave. All the slave-era furniture that you just knew was made only a few years ago was getting on my nerves. Somewhere in this house Miz Colthirst was keeping every single issue of Victoria . And probably Redbook for anytime she felt like making her own icing.

— Where are we going?

— Who the hell knows, maybe you’ll take me out for dinner in the Bronx. So I take it you’ve read Swift.

— Jamaican schoolers read Gulliver’s Travels by the time they’re twelve.

— Oh my. What surprise will she reveal in the next forty minutes? Inquiring minds want to know. Let’s go.

This man wasn’t joking about the Bronx. I’m not sure why I didn’t say anything either when we just jumped out of the cab as soon as it reached Union Square, went to the subway and jumped on the 5, heading right back where we came from. We both sat in a three-seater by the door. I didn’t want to look up to see if anybody was looking at me. The graffiti was inside now too. Until we got to 96th, the car was mostly white people, old men and women who probably had nowhere to go and school children in no rush to get home. Between 110th and 125th most of the white people had come off, leaving the Latinos and some of the blacks. By 145th the car was almost all black. None of the groups could resist looking at us. I wished I had dressed like a nurse and he didn’t look like Lyle Waggoner. Maybe the black men would think this man must be something special to be able to handle a black woman. Or maybe they were wondering if he’s really traveling this far for a call girl. Worse, since we’re going to 180th I had to sit and wait till the train ran out of people to look at us.

— You live around here?

— No.

— Was just asking.

— You know it’s not safe to be on this train heading to this place this time of day, right?

— What are you talking about? It’s barely five in the afternoon.

— It’s five in afternoon in the Bronx.

— And?

— You own a TV?

— People decide on what they should fear in this world, Dorcas.

— People who live on Park Avenue can decide if they feel like having some fear today. For the rest of us it means don’t go to the Bronx after five.

— So why are we going?

— I’m not going. You’re going. I’m just following you.

— Ha, you’re the one who told me about the jerk chicken on Boston Road, and I told you I haven’t had Jamaican food since 1973.

— And so it goes, every white man must have his own Heart of Darkness experience for himself.

— I don’t know what I should be more impressed by, the fact that you’re so well read, or the fact that the farther we get from Fifth Avenue, the bolder your tone gets with me.

— What next, Mr. Ken? You speak English so well? Americans don’t read books in high school? As for tone, since my hiring was a mistake, I think you can rest assured that you won’t be seeing me or anybody from the agency tomorrow.

— Wow, that would be a mistake of disastrous proportions, he said, not to me but to whatever he was looking at out the window. I survey the car to see if anybody was looking at that exchange.

— I think I know what you’re doing, I say.

— Really? Do tell.

— Whatever it is that you have, clearly it’s giving you a death wish. You don’t have to be afraid of anything anymore so you can do whatever you want.

— Maybe. Or maybe, Freud, I just want some fucking jerk pork and yam, and rum punch, and don’t give a fuck about your fucking dime-store pop psychology. You ever fucking thought about that?

Two men look up.

— Sorry. I just get all of that shit from my son and his wife already. Don’t need it, especially from somebody I’m paying for.

Three men and two women look up.

— Well, thanks for letting everybody think that I’m a prostitute, I say.

— What? What are you talking about?

— Everybody heard you.

— Oh. Oh no.

And then he gets up. I open my handbag wide and wonder if my whole head can fit in it.

— Look folks… I ah… know what you might be thinking.

— Are you serious? They’re not thinking anything. Sit down.

— I just want to say, that Dorcas here, she’s my wife, not some prostitute.

I know that in my mind I screamed. I don’t know if I did it in public but in my mind I sure as hell screamed.

— We’ve been married for what now, four years, honey? And I gotta say, it’s just like the first day, isn’t that so, precious?

I can’t tell if he’s failing badly at protecting my reputation or if he’s really enjoying this. Meanwhile I’m looking very hard at people trying hard not to look. An older woman is covering her mouth and laughing. I want to laugh just to make it clear I’m outside this joke too, but the laugh just won’t come. The funny thing is I’m not even mad at him. He’s holding on to the railing, swinging with the train almost like he’s about to dance. The train stops at Morris Park.

— This is our stop.

— Oh? But this is Morris Park. I thought we were coming off at Gun Hill Road?

— This is the stop.

I jump out as soon as the doors open and don’t wait for him. I don’t even look back. I almost want him to stay on, go the fuck to Gun Hill Road all he wants. But then I hear him breathing behind me.

— God that was fun.

— Embarrassing people is fun?

I stand at the platform, waiting for an apology because I’ve seen movies, this is what you’re supposed to do.

— Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re so easily embarrassed.

— Wah?

— I love it when you talk Jamaican.

— You serious?

— Oh for fuck’s sake, Dorcas. You don’t know a single person on the train, you’ll never see any of them again, and even if you do, you won’t even remember what they look like, so who gives a shit what they thought?

Jesus sweet Lord, I hate when I’m not the one in the room making sense.

— We should wait for the next train.

— Fuck that. Let’s walk.

— You’re going to walk. In the Bronx.

— Yep, that’s what I’m gonna do.

— You know that they find a body in Haffen Park almost every morning.

— You’re gonna talk to a veteran about dead bodies?

— You know crime is not like how you see it on Police Woman .