Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

Don't carry any more five-dollar bills, Snowden told himself. He could do that. The key to irrational fear and superstition is getting them to work for you. It wouldn't be hard to get rid of all his five-dollar bills; Snowden always considered himself more of a one-dollar-bill man.

Snowden leaned forward, started kissing on her neck, wanting to make sure that if another night like this one didn't happen he had covered every inch of her.

Snowden tired. Snowden drunk. Snowden left Piper's and was back at his building as the sun's first rays streaked across the sky. Not caring about previous arrangements or responsibilities, just that he had to pee, and then he had to go to bed, and hopefully in that order. Snowden ran into Jifar sleeping across a step on the flight that separated their apartments and thought, Come on, man, not now, give me a break, but didn't register much more until he unwrapped the boy's blanket and saw the child's unconscious face, its new symmetry with a swollen eye on one end and a busted lip on the other. Snowden said his name, crammed in a progressive number of grim conclusions before Jifar blinked back at him. "What's wrong with you?" the boy managed. Snowden lifted the boy up, kept walking. First it was just the weight of Jifar in his arms that kept him from going back down and banging on the door so the father would come out and Snowden could pound even harder. Then, after he'd laid Jifar on his couch and was forced to pause in contemplation for those two minutes standing before the porcelain bowl, it was a combination of exhaustion and rational thought. Snowden allowed himself to walk out of the bathroom and continue straight to the bedroom by pledging, I will take care of this. I will do whatever I have to to change this situation, tomorrow.

SNOWDEN WOKE UP late because he didn't want to do it. Then he heard the bastard singing "Super Freak" from his bath as the water pipes whined, and he'd had enough. Two sets of knocks and then Baron Anderson answered the door.

A bathrobe nearly as worn and frayed as he was, both of them dripping. Jifar walked between his father and the door, the plastic shopping bag of ice cubes Snowden had given him discreetly removed from his face. Anderson didn't ask where his son had been, gave no more than a casual glance noting Jifar's presence and appearance. If there was guilt, if there was concern there, it was not being offered for public consumption. Just annoyance. Just a motion to close the door that was aborted with the look at Snowden still standing there, shoulders squared.

"What?"

"Could I talk to you?"

"I got work to do. I got things I got to accomplish." The door seemed leaden, its weight pulling it shut with little resistance.

"Jifar's a good kid."

"That's right, Jifar's a good kid. I don't need you telling me that, I'm his father. I got to go to work."

The door had almost closed when Snowden's foot shot forward to halt its progression.

"Look, I wanted to tell you, I know about this special boarding school. I think it'd be good for him. It's right in the neighborhood. I think I can — "

"Don't think, man. Don't think. That's your problem, you're spending your time thinking about shit that don't got a goddamn thing to do with you." Grunting out the last words, Baron Anderson turned his energies away from polite conversation and toward trying to shove his front door closed despite the sneaker blocking it.

"That boy's face — " Snowden gave up and started pushing awkwardly to keep it open, hoping Jifar was in his own room behind a closed door so at least he didn't hear the grunts of the struggle. Anderson kept muttering "nothing to do with you," like if he said it enough times Snowden would believe him.

"You know what, I got to see that boy in these halls all messed the hell up, so it's got something to do with me. I got to hear you abusing the kid through my floor all the time, then it's got something to do with me. Don't think I won't call the police on your ass." It was the last, hollow threat that got the door to stop shaking.

"What the fuck? Man, I don't need this. I don't need this from the likes of you. Call the police, then. You know what? Call them. I want to know what my boy's doing up in your apartment all the time. I know he's there, I can hear him watching his cartoons through the ceiling. Get them coppers in here looking at you."

Like most smelly, feral animals, when cornered Mr. Anderson could display impressive pugnacious ingenuity. Particularly the ability to locate weakness and exploit it immediately. "That's right fool, and I want to know what the hell he was doing sleeping up there last night. I woke this morning, didn't see him, I was worried sick. That's right, punk. You don't mind your business, I'm a give those cops a call, figure they'll want to know too. You like prison? They sure like your kind in prison, I can tell you."

Snowden had a property to clean later that morning. A tenement, much like his own but farther along in its process of being converted to a decent building. Of its nuisance tenants, three overcrowded apartments' worth had belonged to the superintendent, a grumbling grub of a man who for over a decade had made a habit of demanding bribes to provide the most basic of his duties. He'd had a verbal agreement with the previous owner to house his entire extended family in exchange for keeping the repair prices down, an arrangement that immediately dissolved when Horizon purchased the building. (Apparently, the entire gene pool was now creating havoc out of a one-bedroom apartment in Paterson, New Jersey.)

The other problem tenant was the guy on the third floor who liked to club and who liked to come back from the club and continue the party back home even louder, speakers in every room as well as aimed straight out the window, and dance or screw at an even louder volume. His greatest skill was his ability to turn off his music and lights as soon as the summoned squad car pulled onto the block. Then one night he went out and a couple of days later the other residents realized they'd had a suspiciously quiet string of restful nights. The only reason anyone finally noticed he'd gone missing was he'd left his shower dripping. After a week it'd managed to swamp the whole apartment and leak through to the one downstairs. It was the middle of the night; firemen had to break in the door with a battering ram. He never came back home. Everyone chalked it up to another victim of the gay life. It was horrible what happened here, Snowden thought. It would take three layers of varnish just to bring the floor's shine back.

Inside the Horizon office, Snowden could tell it was Halloween because Lester wore a black suit, orange shoes, plastic ghost cuff links, and a large pumpkin on his tie with a smirk much like Snowden's own.

"The importance of style is not to impress, nor to conform to the expectations of the masses, Snowman. It is to manifest an aspect of your soul externally."

Lester walked around his office whistling. It made him seem relaxed. Too relaxed, it suddenly seemed, and Snowden was hit with the guilty thought that Lester had seen Piper's article, that he knew where she got the idea and, when he least expected it, Lester would fire him. It was an attractively paranoid thought, but it made Snowden smile to himself at its absurdity almost immediately. Everybody knew no one read the New Holland Herald. It was absolutely dreadful. That was the existential beauty of the paper: It was reading material for illiterates.

"Can any child, or at least one that a Horizon employee recommends, be admitted to the little Leaders League?" Snowden asked to get his mind off of it. This question had actually been planned in bed that morning, made moot by Baron Anderson soon after, and was only offered to inspire further questions, as it did. Snowden, in the mood for the catharsis of confession, told Lester all of it. What the boy's beatings sounded like through the floor, the shade of Jifar's bruising the night before, how gentle the kid was, Baron Anderson's implicit threat of blackmail, and even a description of what the bastard's voice sounded like singing "Brick House."