Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

— You didn’t buy them?

— Fuck no.

— Who?

— So we got the exclusive rights to film the concert.

— They hired you to film the concert? Didn’t know you were a cinematographer.

— There’s lots about me you don’t know.

— Clearly.

— You want a mai tai? It’s a piece of shit but it’s free.

— Nah, I’m fine. So what’s the favor you’re gonna do for me? And what do you want?

— You always this crass? Hey, where’s my fucking drink? Look, buddy, I only want to help you out. Here’s the thing. You want to get in with the Singer, right? You wanna be so up and close that it’s only you and him?

— Well, yeah.

— I can make you part of my crew. You’ll be the journalist or some shit.

— I am a journalist.

— See? You’ll play along just fine. Brother, I have unprecedented access to the Singer. Nobody ever had that before and nobody ever will again, certainly no film crew. Hired by the label boss himself and we’re to film everything. Hell, we could probably film him taking a shit or fucking that Libyan princess he’s supposed to be schooling on mandingo sex. I’ll film some of your interview for the doc, but you can use it for whatever you want.

— Wow. That sounds really cool, Mark, but why?

— You travel light, Pierce?

— Always. Easier to run.

— I got some extra luggage that I need someone to take back to New York.

— Why not just pay the extra money?

— I need it to get there before me.

— What?

— Look. I make you part of my crew. When you fly back to New York, you take one of my bags for me. Simple.

— Except nothing is ever simple. What’s in the bag?

— Film stuff.

— You’re giving me the Singer in exchange for a baggage tag.

— Yup.

— Appearances are deceiving, Lansing, I swear I only look like an idiot. Cocaine or heroin?

— Neither.

— Pot? You’re shitting me.

— What? No, what the fuck, Alex? There’ll be somebody to take that bag from you at JFK.

— What are you, the spy who came in from the cold?

— Rasta don’t work for the CIA.

— Haha.

— Been watching too much James Bond, have we? The bag will contain footage.

— Of what?

— What the fuck you mean, of what? Of the doc. This thing is on rush order, buddy. His boss wants it to air the day after it’s filmed. Right now as soon as we film it, we ship it.

— I see.

— I hope so. I don’t trust strangers and those fuckers in customs will expose that film like the fucking idiots they are, unless somebody white explains it to them very carefully. You wanna come to 56 Hope Road tonight?

— What? Fuck yes.

— I can either pick you up or you can meet me at the gate.

— Pick me up. What time?

— Seven.

— Cool. Thanks, Mark. Really.

— No problemo. When you supposed to leave?

— End of the week, but I was planning on staying a little longer.

— Don’t do that. Leave.

— Huh?

— Leave.

T hree-thirty p.m. I checked the Timex. Just as I was about to leave the house for Hope Road, my mother dials me to say to come at once to the house. That’s exactly what she said, come at once to the house. For some reason it made me think of Danny. Somewhere in the U.S. with a wife by now or at least a girlfriend who knows where he’s coming from and who didn’t give a moment’s pause the first time he brought up oral sex. He must be married by now. I don’t know what that means, the man that got away. One time I was cleaning up my parents’ house because they went on a trip and I thought to surprise them. I’m arranging my father’s fishing equipment in the back room when his tackle box fell. Inside it was a letter he wrote in red ink on yellow legal paper. It took me thirty years to write this letter , that’s how he started it. The woman that got away is what I was thinking. Then I wondered if everybody has that person that haunts them, the one that got away.

On the radio news at twelve, the Women’s Crisis Center was threatening to stage another walk for peace all dressed in black and carrying a coffin. Upper-middle-class women here love to feel they can cause drama, but they’re just looking for shit to do. I’m not sure why I’m thinking all this stuff and it’s way too early to try to find some big cosmic Carlos Castañeda thing to tie it all together. I was still shaking from cussing out my sister. I didn’t shower even though I couldn’t remember if I took one when I got home last night, excuse me, this morning.

I took a taxi to my parents’ house thinking about what the embassy said when they turned down my visa a month ago. I didn’t have enough ties, nothing in the bank account, no dependents, no gainful employment — yes they said “gainful”—nothing to reassure the American government that I won’t disappear once I land in the big old USA. As I was leaving the embassy this fat man wearing a yellow shirt and a brown tie came up to me like he knew the look on my face. Before I could imagine the countless pathetic women who have come out of this same embassy with that same face, he asked me if I want a visa. I usually don’t listen to that shit, until he opened his passport and I saw not only a visa but stamps from Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports. Him know a man who know a man who know one American in the embassy who could fetch me a visa for five thousand dollars. That was salary for half a year. I didn’t have to give him the money until I saw the visa, only a passport-size photo, which I already had in my bag. I think about the news report a month ago about ten people shot. I don’t know why I believed him but I did.

I didn’t get to my parents’ house until about one p.m. Kimmy opened the door. Wearing a dress. Except it wasn’t one of her dawta jeans dresses or long skirts with dust all over the hem. A she-not-joking-good-girl purple dress with no sleeves, a sheath they call it, as if she’s just about to do the interview section of a beauty contest. No shoes. She behaving like the little girl in the house. She didn’t say a thing to me and I certainly wasn’t about to say anything to her, even though I had to bite my lip to not ask if Ras Trent deh ’pon the premises. She opened the door looking away the whole time, as if she was only letting in a cool breeze. She can kiss me ass, is what me thinking. And it’s getting easier and easier to think it. Let’s hope this is just my mother asking me to go get her prescription at the pharmacist who dishes out an extra few pills or something, one of those things she never asks Kimmy to do.

My mother is usually crocheting or cooking whenever I visit. But today she’s sitting in the red velvet armchair my father sits in whenever Dad’s Army is on. She’s looking away from me even though I said hello twice.

— Mummy, you tell me to come over here. What can’t wait?

She still isn’t looking at me, just pressing her knuckles into her lips. Kimmy is at the window walking back and forth, not looking at me either. I’m surprised she didn’t just jump at me saying that it’s not like Mummy is taking me away from anything important. There’s a new crochet on the coffee table, probably from Mummy working all night. Pink thread and my mother hates pink. She also usually crochets into some animal-shaped thing and this doesn’t look like anything I recognise. She crochets mostly when she’s nervous now and I wonder if something happened. Maybe she saw one of the men who attacked her, maybe it was the gardener next door and maybe they feel somebody is watching the house. Maybe they came back and stole something and threatened my parents to not say shit to the police. I don’t know, but her being nervous is making me nervous and Kimmy hovering around like she couldn’t do anything about it until I came makes it feel even worse. I look around right then to see if anything is out of place. Not that I would know if it was. Kimmy is pacing and pacing.