Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

"Let me tell you what's going on," Lester whispered as soon as Snowden'd risen all the way back up. "In a minute the cops will be here, coming to this apartment, guns drawn. Mr. Trevor Barber down there goes to open the door thinking it's his pizza fix and as he does the cops get nervous and shoot him. End of story. We go back to the bar. I'll buy this time."

Snowden thought about the scheme for a moment, particularly its lack of demanded action and the fact that it was probably impossible to calculate the improbability of it unfolding successfully without a very large military grade computer, and offered Lester his unbounded enthusiasm and admiration for its construction.

"Aren't you going to ask why they're going to shoot him?" Lester wondered.

"No, no, I like the plan just the way it is, no need to question it. I mean, I'm sure the police officers have their own personal reasons, but why pry?" Snowden told him.

"Because as he goes to the door, you're going to shoot a hole through it. Don't worry, I knocked out the lightbulbs in the hallway and he keeps the light in the living room on, so when the officers hear the shot and see the hole glaring through the door, they'll get the picture."

Snowden got the picture too. The picture was that there was no way he was going to shoot the gun as suggested, so he began immediately setting up his excuse. "Hey man, I've never even shot a gun before. I'm nervous. What if I shoot him by mistake?"

"That's fine, the bullet should pass right through him and still do the job. The way his body should look at the end of this, no coroner will have reason to question it."

"But the cops, man. It ain't right, setting up the people sworn to protect this place. That's not the Horizon way." Snowden was suddenly excited by the discovery of a rational argument by which the irrational might be swayed. "That ain't right! I mean, did you even check this over with Congressman Marks. Congressman Marks has friends in the department."

"And those friends have enemies, and that's who's scheduled to show up tonight. Now be a good boy and bend over."

Snowden hung upside down over the edge of the building for six minutes, his sinuses taut and painful, his back aching and promising great reprisals if he ever tried to straighten out again. He knew six minutes had gone by because at the top of every one Lester complained about police tardiness, that someone should be there by now.

"This is deplorable. Really, what if an innocent really was being shot at? You think he'd have to wait this long on the Upper East Side?"

Lester was so busy complaining he didn't hear it when the downstairs door buzzer was finally rung. The dunce did. Snowden watched Barber rise from the couch holding his wallet, walking slowly backward so his eyes never had to leave the television screen, buzzing them in without even checking the intercom.

"Really, Snowden, do you think? Because I've never lived on the Upper East Side. What was that?" Lester asked. That was a bit of bad luck, because just as Snowden had begun to hope that the moron had his TV so loud that the police would come and go without Lester's knowledge, a moment's pause in the starship action gave the apartment's doorbell silence in which to assert itself.

"This is it, wait till he gets right in front of the door," the voice said from above Snowden. As if he could see the moment the subject stepped into the proposed line of fire, when the guy did Lester continued with, "Shoot it."

Snowden wanted to shoot himself. The guy he was now pointing the gun at, he only had one dirty white sock on. From behind, the brown crack of his ass peeked through his drooping sweatpants belligerently, threatening to go lunar with every step. It was a sad life he was watching, and it made his life seem that much sadder that this boar was worth risking it for. "The trigger, pull it or I'm dropping you!" Lester punched Snowden in the ass. Trevor Barber paused a yard from the door, stretched his head so far back Snowden became afraid he'd see him, and over top of the sound of screaming Klingon the man produced a fart so momentous even Lester heard it. Vicious abuser of the weak, unrepentant parasite of the downtrodden, now also freakishly flatulent: Snowden suddenly wanted to kill him. Even so, it wasn't until he could feel Lester starting to let go of his legs that Snowden fired the gun, and even then he waited until the moment the bastard got his door open and the cops had a chance to see him clearly.

Snowden aimed at the patch of dried dirt by the trash cans far below on the ground. He saw the cloud of dust when the bullet hit, then heard the echoes as the sound bounced off the backs of so many tenement walls. Then Snowden realized it wasn't echoes, and that was when he looked back in the window and saw Trevor Barber dancing, except that that wasn't dancing. That was getting shot. That was glass breaking on the back windows. That whining was the sound of bullets shooting by. That hot rain pouring onto Snowden's face was him peeing himself.

By the time Lester pulled him back up, Snowden's mind was as much a mess as his clothes. Lester tried to hug him, calm him down, but Snowden pushed the man away. The gun was not his friend, it was not a natural extension of his arm, and Snowden slammed it down in front of himself and as it bounced yelped in fear at what he'd just done. Lester just picked it up, then pulled Snowden by his arm out of there.

Snowden found himself standing atop an entirely different roof at least five buildings over and didn't remember walking there, climbing over the small brick walls that divided each of them. Lester was talking. Lester was saying, "Snowden, listen to me, I'm so sorry that I didn't just trust your judgment, your timing. I don't know what came over me, but I would never have dropped you. You know that, right?"

"I let him get to the door, open it." Snowden finally started talking. Actually, this wasn't strictly true: Snowden had been saying "shit" repeatedly since he reached solid ground, but now he was moving on to complete sentences. "I let him get to the door. He opened it. They saw him standing there with his wallet in his hand and they shot him anyway. They shot him. They shot him so many times."

"Oh my God," was Lester's response. He pulled away, walked hands to his head ten feet on only to say, "I can't believe it," and walk back again. Snowden, who'd taken to hugging himself, pulled his head up to watch the man. There were so many emotions, too many things to be reacting to, moments and things to feel, but Snowden looked at Lester's shock and felt hope. He realizes, he finally gets it, the insanity of all it all. He finally gets it.

"You get it," Snowden said when Lester returned.

Lester smiled back at him. "Are you kidding? I get it! I totally get it. The wallet, letting them get a glimpse so they thought it was a gun when they heard the shot. The Amadou Diallo shooting, right? I'm just. . I mean. . awe. You improvised that hanging there? Forget Bobby Finley, you're the artist. All I can say is, 'Wow' An homage?

They went back to the Lenox Lounge. Lester insisted on this, and then he walked so fast Snowden could barely drone stiffly behind him. As soon as they were inside, Lester wrenched off his coat, yanked his watch, and laid it faceup on the table. "We stay till at least one," Lester said as he ripped through his organizer in search of the leather pouch, cursing till he found it then shooting off to the bathroom.

Lester came back a half hour later, sat down at the table, and then nodded for another half. They weren't sitting in the same seats as before. This was a good thing because their new seats where secluded far in the back by the leopard-print wall, and Snowden was just coming back to himself enough, was just starting to worry about less significant things like the fact that he was sitting in a public place absolutely soaked, in part by his own urine.