Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

"Shit man, I was working for Mr. Marks writing press releases on his first election bid when I was going to journalism school up at Columbia, when he lost his wife. I was there when he got the call." Lincoln Jefferson looked up for a moment before continuing, made sure no one was hovering unseen behind him before going on. "Raped and murdered, can you believe that shit? What a way to go. Riverside Park, in the morning no less, down in the bushes below the wall. Didn't die quickly, either. Bled to death, throat cut. Something like that, the only thing you can hope for is that she was unconscious the whole time."

"That's beyond rough." Snowden could think of no better comment to make. He wanted to say, "That's no excuse," but that wasn't appropriate. Lincoln nodded, then shot to the left to pull two drinks off a passing Wolof's tray.

"I mean, we all got our sob stories, but that's just beyond. Lester too. He's had his share of low times. His lover passed last year. Jesse Himes, a sweetheart. Everywhere he went he'd bring this little dachshund, had sweaters and shit for it. Overdose. I knew he'd struggled with it for years, but still, the guy couldn't have been more than forty-five. I thought Lester was going to crack after that, but he didn't. Both of them are like that, that's why they've always worked so well together. Most people, you hit them with so much adversity, they just split in half, lose it. But these guys, they still got the dream keeping them going. They believe in this place, in making our world better. Now look what they've imagined!" Lincoln, both glasses still in his hand, motioned around the room and then at Snowden before drinking them.

Bobby could admit it: The evening was not going as he'd planned. It had indeed been planned, over a week of creative and intensive effort, so at least he could be certain it was not due to lack of initiative. The reason was as simple as it was unhelpful: In the meeting of "girls," planning simply didn't work. Attractiveness coild not be learned, nor could the amount of personal wealth and power it took for some woman to ignore one's physical deficiencies. Bobby felt that he had just enough physical positives (height and clear skin) that he could compensate for what he lacked by using confidence, ease, and charm, but he seemed unable to successfully convey those attributes either. So Bobby relied on what he could master, words. So Bobby relied on cue cards.

For each of his three premier opening lines, Bobby had written three realistic responses, then equally impressive ripostes, repeated this until he felt confident that he had mapped his way from casual banter to a full-fledged discussion. By the end of the week, the three sets of possible conversations were represented in triangles of blue cards on his walls, taped to the spines of The Great Work on the shelves. Then he memorized them.

The pyramid scheme didn't work. On Bobby's first run-through, at the Buders' residence, plate of okra and plantain held high to shield his heart, he was faced with the chaotic impossibility of it all. Lovely-seeming woman, hair pulled back in an intelligent knot, dressed in riding boots, jodhpurs, a hunting jacket. She seemed perfect for the "Let me guess, you thought this was supposed to be a costume ball — so you came as the most beautiful woman in the world" tangent. She was not. While she didn't tell him to piss off or reach for her rape whistle, her response hurt Bobby more than the times in his life those other things had happened to him. She did nothing at all. She didn't smile, she didn't frown, she didn't tell him to go away. The only thing that kept Bobby from repeating the line louder was that she did look over at him as he said it, only she looked away just as casually when he was done. Sipped her drink, tapped her feet to the light music. After a few seconds, Bobby turned around and went back outside.

Climbing back in the saddle, telling himself he'd drawn his joker for the night, Bobby's next target was a woman he selected because she was as tall and slight as he was. Wrapped in evangelically natural fibers, hair just as coarse, uncompromising and severe, she seemed someone who would appreciate Bobby's intellectual and radical passion. It turned out she appreciated the company of her existing acquaintances much more. Bobby really felt he was making inroads, getting five stages down with his "All this evening needs is Van Vechten to save it for prosperity, right?" tract, when another woman walked up to them, said "Sharon?" and struck up a completely different conversation that in no way involved or acknowledged his existence. It wasn't even a particularly driven conversation. There was a lull, an awkward silence into which Bobby tried interjecting commentary, but the second woman just started talking over him once more, about how hard it was to find parking. Again Bobby simply turned and walked away, more defiant in his defeat this time, pretending the women cared enough that the gesture could be taken as an insult.

He would burn the cue cards later. He would take great joy in burning them, slowly, individually, and he wouldn't feel guilty about lighting them on fire, either. He would try harder, smarter. If it was a matter of confidence, there was always hypnotism to strengthen his mental state. If he truly reeked of failure and desperation as he was beginning to fear, he would buy pheromones to mask the taint. Success could always be attained through detailed orchestration.

By the time the lights flickered and Lester's voice came from within the crowd to urge it to take its seats, Bobby'd managed to save himself from falling into a reactionary depression. It wasn't until he'd sat, placed his napkin in his lap, turned to his right and saw that the large woman seated next to him was Piper Goines, that his self-pity hit free fall.

She started talking before he could get up. "So you're here. I saw your name there, I wondered if that was you, if you were going to show."

"Look, now I'm sorry about that tape. If — "

"No, you look. I finally picked up your book the other night, I figured I'd see you here, and I told you I'd read it. To be honest, I picked it up a couple of times and couldn't get through the first couple of pages. So I finally did. It's. . it's amazing. Absolutely amazing. I've read it twice already. I got so much more the second time, it's so rich, I could just keep going back. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It's genius."

Bobby tried to contain his emotions, his imagination, failed at both miserably and instantly.

Bobby in bliss. He really had found her. Piper Goines was the one, he'd been right all along and she was more than he'd ever been capable of imaging. Piper Goines was his soul mate, but she was so so so much more than that, he could see this now. Piper Goines was what Bobby Finley wanted even more than love itself, what he'd ceased daring to even hope for. Piper Goines was his reader.

The food was good, but the pain in the ass was that people kept standing at the front of the ballroom and talking. It kept Snowden wondering: Was he the only one who found the speeches to be so unbearable? When were they going to shut up so he could really get down to burying his sorrows with what was on his plate? One speaker would finally end but Snowden wouldn't even have worked his way through a mouthful before someone else was talking, again with the thank-yous, again with the congratulations to Horizon Realty and Harlem, again with the history lesson nobody needed about the bright days of the past and the assurances about the equally glowing future, personal anecdotes thrown in. Picking at his chicken with his hands (what? what? we're all folk here!), Snowden was tempted to shove it in his ears instead. If it didn't taste so good, if he wasn't basically on the job at the moment, he would have done it. Swear to God. Everybody else was probably just as lit too. Who would notice?