Paul Beatty - Tuff

“That’s not a bad idea,” commented Yolanda, throwing a “so there” glance in Nadine’s direction. The testy young gun molls cinched in closer to their respective men.

The Bonilla brothers straightened their ties and badges. Miguelito strummed his flashlight across the wrought-iron balusters, turning the railing into a cacophonous harp. “Any more bright ideas, fat boy?”

“ Sí, claro, mamao. I was thinking we could pool our resources and make a movie,” Winston said, slipping the gun into his front pocket.

“Here we go.” Fariq perked up, temporarily suspending the discord with the Bonilla triplets. “Ever go to the movies with this motherfucker? My man be at the movies in places you didn’t even know had a theater. I went one time with this weirdo to see some Japanese flick at the YWCA, no less.”

“Stray Dogs,” added Winston fondly.

“They showing the film on a wall. I’m not excited about having to spend the afternoon reading in the dark, but to make matters worse you couldn’t even read the subtitles.”

“Too fast?”

“Naw, in a movie where everybody is pale as Swiss cheese, sittin’ in a white room, wearin’ a white linen suit, they got the subtitles written in white letters. I was lost from the giddy-up — trying to read that shit was like trying to find Whitey at a hockey game. The nigger with the big lips could act, though.”

“Takashi Shimura.”

“That was the last time I went to the movies with Tuffy. I don’t feel comfortable. Don’t be nobody in the audience but retired old white people. Not a nigger in the entire place. Maybe one or two toothy motherfuckers flossing some white bitch. ‘Oh yes, Cannes this year was incroyable.’ Faggots. No black couples in there, that’s for sure. How in the fuck you get interested in them foreign shits anyway, Tuff?”

“Playing hooky in the Village one day. Walked past a marquee on this little place that said 400 Blows . My ignorant ass thought 400 Blows was one of them kung fu joints, so I was like ‘One adult. Where the popcorn and soda at?’ Ready for some drunken-monkey style, know what I’m saying? Turns out the film—”

“Hear this nigger? ‘The film.’ ”

“Whatever. As I was saying, this French nigger and his crimey are …” Winston mumbled something under his breath.

Fariq cupped his ear. “What, son? I can’t hear you.”

Charles, who was sitting closer to Winston than Fariq, gladly explained, “I think Winston said, ‘looking for a poetry to explain their misunderstood lives.’ Then something that sounded like ‘Balzac.’ ”

Winston knew better than to give a heartfelt synopsis of a grainy black-and-white film that had inadvertently touched his heart and caused him to empathize with a loafer-shod French boy, Doinel, the young, unloved Parisian, running toward the sea in the last reel. Winston had wanted to chase behind him, clasp him on the shoulder. Wait up. Where you going? Can I come with you? What’s the story with this fat motherfucker Balzac?

Winston vibrated his lips in disgust. “I didn’t say nothing about no Balzac, I said, ‘Him and his boy be like balls out.’ ”

“But you did say something about poetry, though.”

Ready to resume his tête-à-tête with Bendito, Winston walked toward the cop. “Anyway, I got two ideas for movies, one underground, one commercial.” Bendito, growing testy but feeling the security of his badge and a partisan court system, held his ground. Winston and Bendito stood forehead to forehead, nose tips touching like Eskimo lovers. Tuffy spoke, his voice cold and steady. “My underground joint is going to be straight-up guerrilla filmmaking. A snuff film where masked niggers go round ambushing police officers, field-testing those bulletproof vests. The boys come out the Chino’s wiping they chins— kack! kack! Shit going to be called Officer Down . Sell them on the corner next to the bootleg Disney cartoons. All profits go to the families of those killed in police custody.” Winston took a deep breath and began reciting names drummed into his head by his father during the “police brutality” lectures he delivered during his infrequent custody weekends. “Ernest Sayon, Jason Nichols, Yong Xin Huang.” Droplets of Winston’s hot spit landed softly on Bendito Bonilla’s face and cooled in the light crosstown breeze. “Leonard Lawton, Frankie Arzuaga, Annette Perez.”

Bendito and his brothers slowly drew their flashlights from their holders. Winston backed up two steps, planted a loud kiss on each fist, and eyed the bludgeons dancing in front of his nose. Bendito lunged forward, eyes closed, hacking wildly at the space where Winston had stood a split second earlier. “I’m going add your name to that list.”

Fist cocked near his ear, Winston was poised to unload a punch when two thin arms grabbed him from behind and wheeled him back toward the stoop. Inez Nomura’s touch was as familiar to Winston as Yolanda’s. Emboldened by the sight of a small woman walking Winston away, the triplets raged on: “Let him go, you slant-eyed bitch!”

At one time Inez had admired the Bonillas’ spunk; at least the boys tried to stand up to Winston’s bullying. But the brothers had committed the unpardonable sin of joining the police force, becoming conspirators with the capitalist oppressors. Enrique stepped to Inez, his badge sparkling in the afternoon sun. “You goddamn zipperhead, don’t you watch the news? Communism is dead. The cold war is over. Cuba’s going to be the fifty-first state.”

“Fifty-second, man, después Puerto Rico!” corrected Miguelito.

“Fuck you — and shut up that dog!” snapped Winston. Inez and Yolanda calmed him with soothing words the Bonillas couldn’t hear.

“What y’all sayin’ to him?”

Yolanda turned and flipped a lavender acrylic talon at the trio. Inez raised a V for Victory into the air and teasingly shouted, “Workers of the world, unite!”

Bendito Bonilla replied, “None of these motherfuckers have jobs, so what you talking about, ‘workers’?”

The brothers turned to leave, scattering the crowd with shoves, snarls, and threats. “Maricón,” hissed Armello to Enrique, who, tugging Der Kommissar’s leash, turned and replied, “That’s Mister Maricón to you.”

When the triplets resumed patrol duty against a nearby brownstone wall, Inez asked Fariq what had happened. “It wasn’t nothing, Ms. Nomura. We was discussing moneymaking.”

“Why are you guys so preoccupied with money?”

“Because we don’t have none.”

“I don’t have any money either, Winston, but you don’t hear me complaining about it.”

“That’s because you too busy complaining about the system. And what you mean you don’t have no money?”

“You know how much I make running the school? Thirty thousand dollars a year. Not a whole lot of money.”

“Yeah, but you got a framed uncashed check for twenty thousand dollars on your bedroom wall next to the picture of you and your kids.”

“Doesn’t count. That’s blood money — a bribe from the United States government to be quiet, forget about the camps, and fall in line like a good American. A bribe that I never accepted. That restitution check is not my money, it’s a memento.”

Fariq shook his head. “You Chinese. If it was me I’d cash that check and put it right into the Hang Seng.”

“I’m Japanese.”

“The Nikkei then.”

“I get a restitution check too,” Nadine said meekly.

Fariq squinted at his girlfriend. “Fuck you talking about, Nadine? Niggers ain’t never got, ain’t never going to get, any restitution money.”