Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

"Just because I suffer from a chemical addiction doesn't mean I'm a bad person." Snowden heard the voice and opened his eyes and there Lester was, sitting on the foot of his bed, fully and impeccably clothed. No, jou're a bad person because you kill people, Snowden kept thinking later. "Quite the contrary, I hope you've realized that by now. Everything I do I do out of love, for the betterment of our people." Crisp shirt, pants pleated, starched tie, hair greased into its permanent currents, the only evidence that proved to Snowden the reality of the night before was the fact that it was six A.M. and Mr. Lester Baines was sitting there on Snowden's mattress.

"I've had my sorrows, my weakness, like many men. I understand loss, I don't take what we're doing lightly. It eats at the soul, I'll warn you, but we too must pay a price for our goal."

"Yes, sir. I totally understand. You have my word. Really," Snowden said, politely waving him away, but Lester just took a seat beside him on the bed.

"I lost someone. He was very dear to me. It makes things, I find things. . difficult. At times, difficult."

"Me too."

"No disrespect to you, your home, then," Lester said standing up again.

"None taken."

"I've decided that, outside of work, you can call me Lester.

Respect."

"Respect," Snowden repeated back to him. Then Lester was gone. Snowden listened to his boss walk down the hall and lock the front door from the outside with his own set of keys, then spent two unsuccessful hours trying fall asleep again.

TO BE BOBBY Finley on the following morning was a beautiful thing. The night before it seemed a dire lot for sure, but the next day, when Bobby woke up in the fetal position on his bathroom floor, his spirit traced the sunbeams back out the opaque window, past the sky and into the starlit heavens far beyond. When he got to his feet, Bobby realized he wasn't drunk anymore. It was as if in that last bit of violent vomiting before he passed out he had rid his body not only of the remaining alcohol but also of the months of romantic indulgence he had poisoned himself with. Such foolishness, that Piper Goines thing. It seemed now only one more bitter taste in his mouth to be spit into the Irving Howe with the rest of his bile.

Bobby was very much a man who believed in lessons. From every misfortune, no matter how grave, he searched for the golden rule to be salvaged, that thing to keep the experience from being a complete loss, to comfort himself that the same situation wouldn't happen again. On November 7, right there in the bathroom of Apartment 16, 342 East 123rd Street, Bobby Finley declared the End of Romanticism. No more carelessly using the L-word, misusing his heart as if it was no more than his liver. From this moment forward, Bobby swore that he would treat his own affections with the solemnity and respect they deserved, not throw them about without care and then become hurt when others treated them in a similar manner. When the one came, he would take his time in identifying her, would not be foolish enough to be confused by something as insignificant as the cut of her clothes, the relative pleasantness of her face, or her physical conditioning. When looking for a soul these were all just hindrances. As a popular song of his youth had put it, "Never trust a big butt and a smile." This shall be my motto, Bobby decided.

So much is said about being in love, finding love, losing it, why had no one raised the trumpet for having no love at all? Devoid of the phenomenon, Bobby felt light, buoyant, prone to giggling fits and whistling, both of which he stifled on the job, particularly around Snowden whom he was no longer mad at but was punishing by pretending he was for the remainder of the week. Of course, the woman Piper Goines could clearly not have been the one. The one would be his complement in every way, she would certainly share his passion, his idealism and dedication to uplifting of the race, his artistic fury. There was no way a goddess such as that could be attracted to the likes of Snowden.

Snowden was attractive in the purely physical sense, granted, Bobby could see that, but Snowden was so determined to believe in nothing he'd made that a belief system in itself. The man was dedicated to no more than getting unharmed from one day to the next one, shrugged lazily at this Horizon opportunity when it should have sent his heart soaring. Snowden preferred tuning the radio to the Top 40 station and never got sick of those same songs over and over. Although he claimed to be a book lover, the only thing Bobby'd seen Snowden read consistently was the sports section of the New York Post. For the love of God, the guy was a Bo Shareef fan. Snowden provided entertaining company, true, and Bobby did enjoy him as a complement to his own admitted intensity, but that the Goines woman had chosen Snowden as a lover was irrefutable proof that Bobby had been blissfully mistaken. Snowden's betrayal was a blessing, actually. It left no echo of doubt in Bobby's mind that an error had been made.

Snowden, for his part, adopted a demonstratively sullen posture he'd abandoned years before. It started at work as a ritualistic display of submission for Bobby, like a dog rolling onto its back to show its belly, but Snowden noticed his mood remained the same when he was off the job as well, home alone with no one to perform for. The week that followed was a somber one. Regardless of the time he spent on the dilemma, no alternative course of action that didn't involve himself in jail for the rest of his life and all the little Leaders being sent off to foster homes presented itself. During his most optimistic moments, Snowden hoped that Lester and Cyrus Marks would decide that enough community pruning had been done and forget the whole thing.

Aside from brief encounters with the clients in the morning, Lester was barely around at all. Snowden appreciated this greatly. Wendell was left behind in the cab of the truck, a patch of mange over his right hip leaving it scabbed and balled and making him particularly irritable. There was to be no slacking under his watch. Wendell demanded vigilance via incessant barking, ensuring that the three worked quickly just to escape from the racket.

Horus was deputized to go over the inventory with the clients at the end of the day and get their signatures, a duty he boasted of daily, throwing in comments like, "Y'all better get used to the way I run my ship. I'll let you come for tea when they give me my brownstone!" Though a big man, Horus provided little company. As soon as he and Snowden ran out of merits to debate between the 1996 Bulls and 1968 76ers and the conversation slowed, it was Horus's habit once again to remove his laminated cutout photo of his dream Mercedes and hijack the discussion to one about the merits of the CL-class coupe versus the SL-class roadster, pointing down at the faded image like he already owned it.

After work on Sunday, a good four days after his conversation with Robert M. Finley, Snowden finally admitted to himself that he'd become a truly unhappy person. He wanted to get drunk but didn't feel like getting drunk alone, and the TV lineup was so bad he couldn't even be bothered to flip through the channels as he was apt to. Left with his thoughts, there were no distractions to keep him from realizing that the majority were not happy ones.

Throughout his life, Snowden was sure he'd seen people on the street and behind cash registers, heard them on the other end of phone lines, who were perennially pleasant. Truly happy people among us. Snowden could barely imagine them even crying, but he was sure they did, short bursts never louder than their normal talking voice, things they wiped away like mucus before returning to their state of happiness once more. These people often seemed bland and stupid as well, but what a small price to pay for true happiness. The ones Snowden envied the most were those who seemed to be happy just because they believed in something, something so big it shrank all their own obstacles down to minutia. It didn't seem to matter what that thing was, either, just as long as it was big and depended more on faith than reality. Nursing his anxiety, Snowden wished he could believe in something big and beautiful, even this Horizon insanity he was being pushed into, that he could rid himself of the certainty that eventually it would engulf him.