Paul Beatty - Tuff

Inez elbowed Winston in the ribs, then pointed out over the river. “I know I told you about the time we arrested the Statue of Liberty for false advertising.”

“You showed me the photos.”

“Winston, there was a time when I could make a call and evacuate any building in the city.”

“Mmm.”

Winston dug his hands deep into his pockets and leaned against the ledge next to Inez, his back to Lady Liberty. He studied her out of the corner of his eye. Inez looked tired but hopeful. She was developing bags not only under her eyes but over them. If nothing else, the Revolution was exhausting. She looked like an ex — prohibition-era pug: punch-drunk, permanently welted, stumbling from gin mill to gin mill rambling on about a promised shot at the title, a victory for the common laborer. All around, faces stared into the horizon. Fuck everybody look so optimistic about? That’s why she brought me up here. Catch some of that on-top-of-the-world fever .

Calling out to Inez and Spencer, Winston nodded toward the line waiting for the elevator. “Let’s go. I’ve got to meet Smush and them in Brooklyn.”

After a long wait the trio squeezed into the elevator. Winston tossed a piece of bubble gum into his mouth so his ears wouldn’t pop on the way down. The fortune read: “You are a responsible person. When something goes wrong, people always think you’re responsible.” With a loud pop he sucked a pink bubble back into his mouth.

“Ms. Nomura, you really going to give me fifteen K?”

“I’m cashing the check Monday morning.”

“Damn, a nigger goin’ to be liquid. I ain’t got to do nothing, right?”

“All I ask is that you make two appearances: the sumo exhibition in the park, and the debate a week before the election.”

“So should I be a Democrat or Republican?”

“You have a preference?”

“They all the same to me. I really don’t want to be neither.”

“Then don’t. But if you run as an independent, your party needs a name.”

“What, start my own party?”

“Why not? All you need is a name.”

“How about ‘The Party’?”

“Where did you get that?”

“I remember all them freaky-looking people rollin’ up in your crib talking about ‘The Party says to do this, and The Party says we should do that.’ ”

“Winston, ‘The Party’ has connotations that have nothing to do with you. Besides, it’s someone else’s thing. You need your own thing.”

“What about ‘A Party’? That shit sound kind of good. ‘A Party.’ Sounds like we having fun. Niggers will like that.”

A Party. Inez mulled the phrase over. A Party. She liked the way the name shifted between egalitarianism and hierarchy: A Party, one political party out of many; A Party, as opposed to B Party and C Party. “Niggers will feel that,” Winston insisted, “believe me.” Inez believed.

“Winston?”

“Yeah?”

“You know, your father was a beautiful man.”

“If you say so.”

“If you’d known him during the movement. Most men look stupid in a beret, but Clifford pulled it off. He used to stuff his natural into a black felt tam, tilt it so that one edge hung just above his earlobe. If you were to ask him what he did for a living, he could have said anything — revolutionary, concert pianist, poet, painter, professional Frenchman, dancer — and you would have believed him, and thought he was the best at whatever he said he did, even if you’d never seen him do it.”

“Ms. Nomura, you and my father have something going on back in the day?”

“You know, I think deep down Clifford is very proud of you, Winston.”

“You not answering my question.”

“On the grounds it may incriminate me.” The elevator doors opened. “Aren’t you supposed to go to Brooklyn?” Inez said, and then, feeling like Sisyphus, pushed Winston into the stream of tourists flowing toward the revolving doors. Inez waved and under her breath said, “ Gambate , Winston.”

Winston refused Spencer’s offer of a ride to Brooklyn but walked him to his car. On the way Spencer asked if he had something to fall back on in case Inez failed to come up with the money. Winston had it covered. “That’s why I’m going to Brooklyn. I ain’t too sure Ms. Nomura going to be able to cash that check, that shit older than baseball. So I’m about to learn some card tricks.”

“You’re going to be a magician?”

“Something like that.”

Brooklyn was in the throes of a muggy yet festive Saturday night. The borough, at least the area surrounding the Fort Greene projects, was one big outdoor juke joint, and the party was in full swing. There’s a weekend adage Brooklynites utter on nights such as this: “It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.” But Winston, feeling the effects of his Brooklynphobia, had no idea where he was at. He was nauseous and disoriented. Somewhere, a few blocks back, the east end of Myrtle Avenue had flipped up and attached itself to the west end, encircling Winston in a concrete band. The street began to spin. Dance-hall music boomed out of slow-moving sedans, and triplets of red and green dice bounded off brick walls. The ghosts of Demetrius, Chilly Most, and Zoltan circled overhead, spooking him into dropping his bottle of malt liquor. Winston was back in Coney Island’s Hellhole.

He took corrective measures. He truncated his gait and slowed his pace to a chain-gang plod. The appropriate amount of bounce was applied to his diddy-bop, just enough spring in his step to rock his torso and head in an autistic half-beat. His shoulders rolled so that his arms paddled stiffly through the humid air like oars to a cruising Phoenician warship. His face arranged itself into a Noh scowl: eyebrows cinched tight like zipper teeth, eyes squinted, jaw jutted to a position not seen on a hominid since Homo erectus . No oncomers held his stare longer than it look to think, Who that ugly motherfucker? Nigger look crazy . The street stopped spinning. His demons fled.

If he couldn’t help looking like an outsider, it was best to look like a dangerous one. Stopping at each intersection, Tuffy suspiciously looked both ways, as if he were on the lookout for the police when in reality he was searching for a landmark that would jog his memory of where his cousin Antoine lived. Where that nigger rest at? There was a post office, a laundermat kitty-corner from that, and a basketball court down the block. Cool, there go the laundermat . Relieved, he turned left and walked to the middle of the brownstone-lined block, stopping under an oriel window with a debauched red glow. Three preteen girls sat on the hood of a car parked out front, dreaming aloud, daring the world to listen. But the only person paying attention was a delighted little girl, elbows on the fender, chin in hands, a small tinker bell attached to a red nylon choker wrapped tight around her neck.

“When we sign our record contract, we going to be so big. Oh my God! I’m a buy a car, set Moms out. Damn, I can’t fuckin’ wait!”

“You iggin’, girl, we need to write some songs first.”

“We don’t need no songs. We don’t even need know how to sing. All we need is an image, some dance steps, and a good name for the group. The music comes last, yo.”

“So what’s our group called?”

“I was thinking of B-R-A-T-S.”

“What’s that stand for?”

“Being Real And True Sisters.”

“Hell naw, that’s too soft. We gots to come hard, know what I’m saying? How about S-H-I-T — Some Hos In Trouble?”

“We can’t be a cuss word. How we going to get any radio play. ‘Here’s the latest single by SHIT.’ I ain’t never going to get a pearl-gray Jaguar like this.”