Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

Imitating the ghost, Snowden slapped the little box's ass four times before taking his teeth to the cellophane and folding the lid back. Looking off for a distraction from the meaning of his actions, he found one in the newly arrived edition of the New Holland Herald. The stack still had its white packing strips lying loose around it where they'd been cut. Snowden was looking at it, trying to discern what it was that made the front page look odd, and realized that the letter from the editor, the consistently well-written and intensely insane column that was one of his favorites, was missing, the absence of its always boltled text giving the tabloid a naked quality. Then he saw her name, and he thought, I shouldn't have tried to kiss her. They'd been at the door downstairs, and even though Piper Goines seemed a bit distant at the end, he'd gone for lips during the parting gesture, she to his cheek, both landing at an awkward place in the middle. Snowden scratched that spot like it itched him, saw the tide ACCIDENTS HAPPEN? above Piper's byline, and that same hand shot out to bring it closer, HISTORIC HARLEM EXPERIENCES DISPROPORTIONATE NUMBER OF ACCIDENTAL DEATHS.

Snowden would never find a better time to begin his new hobby. Back in the truck, he was through his second cigarette and on to his third when he got the strength to pick up the paper from his lap, shake off the ash, and turn it over.

The first skim was just a hunt for a name, his own, a blissfully unsuccessful one. The facts that presented themselves on the second read were actually less painful than the dread with which Snowden anticipated every word. It made the damaging point that life was a little shorter above 110th Street, the coroner's office was quoted as saying on examination that the number of accidental deaths in the last year in Harlem were almost as much as the number of similar fatalities in the rest of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island combined, but the commentary that he sounded "surprised" was provided by the author herself, not the source, and the piece didn't depict the anomaly as anything more than what it was. It was certainly nothing to promote the real estate renaissance of Harlem, but it didn't seem to be anything to destroy the fragile boom either. It wasn't like they were muggings, rapes, drive-by shootings, or any of the other man-made calamities that would fuel the imagination of the outside world that Harlem was the hellish ghetto they feared it to be. The people there were just clumsy.

Inching back up the FDR with the rest of the late rush-hour traffic, Snowden felt relief replace the hollow flash of anxiety. By the Seventy-second Street exit, he was glad that this was all he had shared with Piper, that he hadn't had any more sensitive information for her to expose. By the time he'd reached the Ninety-sixth Street exit, Snowden was overwhelmed by a feeling of betrayal, all of Bobby's drunken admonishments flooding back to him. He was sure he had given Piper Goines his number, and even if days had gone by without him calling her, he wasn't the one with the reason to. Turning left onto the exit for 125th Street, it was this that stuck with him, that she'd used information from their private conversation, information given in an informal and confidential setting, and had used it to further her own career, her own ambition at getting a front-page story, and hadn't even bothered to give him notice of her actions. Snowden wasn't the type of person to feel justified indulging in self-righteousness that often, so as such relished the novelty of it, drove straight to Piper's home instead of dropping the truck off.

The brother-in-law answered the door, the one she obnoxiously referred to as "Dumbass." Snowden recognized him, smiled, then recognized his reluctance to open the door. Relieved that Snowden was there to speak with Piper and not sell him something, the man's response was a quick smile and wink before turning around to yell a name Snowden didn't recognize. Flopping down the stairs, barefoot and pajama-bottomed, two feet on every step before going to the next one, was Piper. There was no rush, and when she finally got to the door she didn't open the screen for him. She didn't even ask, "What?" just her face did, and it didn't do it particularly politely, either. Snowden the Pious used this as motivation.

"I saw your article," Snowden challenged. Piper said nothing. She just kept looking at him, mouth closed, a big woman in a tall doorway.

"I can't believe you — "

"No!" Piper barked back at him. Snowden stopped, started. He waited for her to say something else. She didn't. For a moment he was glad there was a screen door separating them; she was like a bear.

"What do you mean, 'No!'?" Snowden demanded.

"I mean, no. I'm not arguing with you. I'm not going to accept being yelled at at the moment."

"But I don't think you understand. I have the right to be upset here. You took what I told you in intimate conversation! You even pulled me along to get more, and then you published it for the world to see without even telling me. I could have lost my job! I'm the wronged party here."

"Fine. You're a wronged party. How about you come over in about three days, how about Saturday night, maybe? You can yell at me then. I'll set time aside, I'll make sure nobody else is home so you can really get loud if you want to, and then you can come over and yell at me. We'll make a date of it. I'll order pizza or something."

" But. . I don't want to yell at you in three days. I want to yell at you now." It didn't seem true anymore. She'd exhausted him, derailed the passion he'd mustered. Now he was just thinking she looked cute like that: the man's white overshirt loose except at her breasts' roundness, the red plaid pajamas below. She had chipped paint on her toenails and for no reason that could make sense to him Snowden found that immensely exciting.

"Look, I'm not saying you don't have a right to yell at me. I should have told you, I wasn't sure if I'd go farther with it when you were telling me. It wasn't supposed to be on the front page. It wasn't even supposed to be printed at all; the typists, they picked it up by mistake during production and nobody caught it. I've been getting yelled at all day, three different people chewing me out. So if you want to yell too then you're too late, I'm completely numb now. You can come up, relax with me, because I'm in the process of getting drunk, but if you just came by to yell, then come back Saturday."

They made it as far as the entrance hallway just past Piper's apartment door, then spent the next hours on the long strip of rug there. The light in the hallway leading up to it was out and Piper held out her hand for Snowden behind her. It was small but strong, the plains of skin holding his fingers hard and round. Piper opened her door with one hand and in response to the darkness Snowden pulled his own back to him. Piper didn't let go, turned around and pulled him in fast, and Snowden's reaction was to kiss her. Snowden stepped back to check his libido with reality, save himself further misunderstanding and a potential parole violation and ask her if he should apologize for the gesture or offer more, but Piper didn't open her eyes, just leaned her head in for more.

On it, in it, during the moment. They could have easily gone left to the couch or right to the bedroom but they were on the hall rug and their knees were already bending, going down, and where was the drama in practicality? Piper thought, I need this right now, I deserve this distraction, he is a pretty man, I am a woman, and don't I deserve to just once use a pretty man?

When Snowden awoke, Piper was at the windows, the ledge starting at her knee and rising nearly to the ceiling. Her pajama pants were on her and not inside out and in a ball next to him anymore. The way the streetlight came in through the blinds, hung in yellow bars on her and created a silhouette with the stripes of light on the wall behind, made Snowden want to go over and pull those pajamas off again, throw them in the same ball where they had fallen the first time. He got up with that intention, walked over to her, saw the stiffness in her stance, and remembered that she was a stranger, that no moment had been guaranteed beyond the one they'd just had, that if he touched her and she pulled back or was immobile the loneliness he was already starting to feel would crush him and he didn't even have his pants on.