Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

The lodge was also Cyrus Marks's home, in addition to being Lester's and the property the Horizon storefront was connected to, so Lester made sure to get his newspaper down before Wendell's feces landed so as not to leave the slightest stain behind.

"Who are those kids? Are they visiting from a Catholic school or something?" Snowden asked, but Lester ignored him, focused instead on the dog crap being excreted, carefully bagging and removing it when Wendell was done. The storm grate on Horizon's facade was still down, locked. Compared to the other buildings on the block the lodge was not only much larger but also immaculate, as if some local superstition protected it from vandalism.

In the truck, Wendell sat on the floor beside the stick shift, staring at Snowden. Snowden couldn't figure out if the dog was looking to be entertained or was considering lunging at him. Lester began making a series of sudden, fast turns that forced Wendell to lie down, his paws outstretched for balance. After ten minutes of driving, Lester had managed to put only six blocks between them and the office, and Snowden was about to ask if they were lost when, before a red light at Adam Clayton Powell, Lester pulled the gear into park.

"We're being followed." Lester's hand shot in front of Snowden to reach in the glove compartment. Even Wendell was surprised by the action, bouncing to his feet to get away. Removing a heavily rumpled brown paper bag, Lester slammed the little door shut again.

"Listen, when I jump out this car, you get in the driver's seat. As soon as I get back in, you pull off." Then Lester jumped out, slammed the door behind him.

Snowden scooted over, looked out the side mirror. Lester was talking to the second car that was stuck on the narrow street behind them, the passenger responding with motions of misunderstanding and denial. Snowden watched as Lester lifted the brown paper bag and pointed it right up against the driver's head.

There was no job on earth, no dream Snowden could imagine, that would keep him from hitting the gas if he heard a shot ring out. It was a one-lane road, cars parked on both sides, and there was a little Toyota in front of the truck that he'd just have to roll over. Wendell started barking and then Snowden couldn't think straight, told him to shut it, please just shut up. When Snowden looked back in the mirror, Lester was gone. The driver still sat in his white Taurus, wiping the sweat from off the top of his bald pink head, his other hand dialing a cellphone.

"Drive to 345 East 117th Street. Between Park and Lex." Wendell stopped barking. Snowden jumped, but when he turned and saw Lester sitting at his right he played it off like he was adjusting his seat. Snowden pulled out halfway into the intersection before checking to see if the light was green. In the rearview mirror, the white car screeched into a right and was gone.

"These real estate agents from downtown, they have no ethics, no morals. He thought he was going to ghost us, cherry pick some new properties for his clients downtown. Just an opportunist. There's no love there." The explanation was unsolicited and pretty unwanted. Snowden's only desire was to drive, to get to fresh air to cancel out Wendell again.

"My man, you hungry? You need some breakfast before we get busy today?" The affection, concern, Snowden didn't for a moment think Lester was talking to him. Out of the corner of his eye, Snowden was almost sure he saw Wendell nodding yes. Lester reached in the brown paper bag just as Snowden was stopping at the next red light and removed his weapon from it: a shiny glazed cruller, already bitten into. Lester ripped another bite away, pulled the piece out of his mouth and threw it to his dog. Wendell ate it in desperate, choking gulps, immediately begging for more.

The apartment building was much like Snowden's own, a four-story tenement with kids and debris blowing around outside. From the look of the block, its narrow street of renovated townhouses, the shining doorknobs and newly stripped doors of the recent arrivals, Snowden knew that this was the building they all looked over at and wished they could blow up.

The only buildings in the world dirtier than New York City tenements didn't count because they were made from dirt itself. Floors, ceilings, and walls encrusted in thick, multilayers of scum, the product of a century of tenants too busy and exhausted to take care of anything beyond their own apartment doors, a testament to supers who were so in name only. That's why this building looked so dramatically different inside, why Snowden's neck rotated from awe. It was simply clean.

Lester on its pale white marble stairs, hand on the freshly painted rail, turned to see the frozen figure behind him.

"You look shocked. This is what it's supposed to look like." Lester kept climbing, his voice reverberating in his wake. "This is Horizon property now. You're looking at the new Harlem."

"What's up with it? We upping the rent?" We. Always use first-person plural when you refer to Horizon, a habit encouraged since training day. For Snowden, a lifelong I , it was more uncomfortable than wearing the banana outfit. It said, Erase the border between your own objectives and that of the company, loose your individuality in the sentiment of the many.

"Rent stabilized. Even if we wanted to up the rent, we can only do it by the allotted citywide percentage for the year, understand? Even on new tenants, we can only raise it fifteen percent of the existing rent." His suit was the color of dried roses, his shirt and tie variations of lighter petals. Lester wore many suits but was always a champion of scorned colors. "Even if random evictions were legal, we still wouldn't make money off of them. But see, it's not about the money." If they said it wasn't about the money, they were either lying or they wanted something even more valuable from you, Snowden thought. Dreams, time-shares, God, whatever they were pushing, salesmen always inspired in Snowden the same feeling of revulsion.

Lester stopped in front of a door on the third floor, dropped his tool bag and started unzipping it.

"You want I should ring the bell?" Snowden put his finger on the black button, looked over in anticipation of clearance.

"You can if you want to, but he won't be able to hear you." Snowden did, so did so, hearing the stiff chime echo on the other side.

"Why's that, he deaf?"

"No. He dead." Lester stood up with a crowbar in his hand, poking its bucktooth into the minute separation between the doorknob and jamb.

"Oh shit. I'm sorry." Snowden heard himself and immediately wondered who he was apologizing to.

"Don't be. He was an asshole. He wasn't supposed to change the locks," Lester strained as he leaned into the metal. The sound of his actions and words echoed from the tin ceiling to the marble floors around them.

Snowden took hold of the middle of the crowbar, leaned his own weight into it as well. The wood around the lock began to splinter along with the doorframe it was attached to. Before they could get theirs open, another door unlocked and opened three yards to the right of them. The head was so close to the knob, Snowden thought at first the person was elderly, but when a voice called behind her, a moment of distraction let the door drift inches farther. Though a child, the first stages of puberty had already begun elongating her legs out of proportion with the rest of her body, the man's T-shirt that already hung far above her knees would clearly cease to serve as a nightgown by the following summer. Her braids were the long elaborate strands of a woman, but the yarn woven in, its pink and primary colors, was more representative of the girl who wore them. Lester said, "Horizon Property Management, nothing to worry about," but the girl was already closing the door, disappointed by the sight of them.