Paul Beatty - Tuff

“Easy for you to say, you got money in the bank. You got ideas.”

Standing abreast at the bar, Fariq, Charley O’, and Armello looked to Winston like the Three Stooges in an army episode, lined up for inspection. He knew what happened next: the major would ask for a volunteer for a dangerous mission and they’d take one step backward. He’d be left standing alone having “volunteered” for who knows what. The Fourth Stooge assed out like a motherfucker.

“And don’t be handing us that”—Fariq was signaling for another beer and talking to Winston at the same time—“ ‘You niggers seem different’ bullshit. That sound like whitey talking.”

“What? I didn’t say nothing.”

“Not you, Charles. I mean real white people. You know how they always want to make like there’s friction between niggers. Niggers can’t coexist unless they on one fucking wavelength. Divide and conquer. These niggers are different from these niggers. Fuck that. Winston, you want to act a fool and hang out with a black fucking rabbi and playact like you running for City Council, that’s your fucking business. You always have been, always will be my and our nigger. So don’t come to me with that ‘Y’all seem different’ sad-song bullshit.”

Winston’s face flushed. “That’s on me, son. You talking good shit. Respect, nukka.”

“Tuffy, long as you don’t come between me and my money green, we will always be boys.”

Winston didn’t think the gap had been quite closed shut. But he knew that this sense of otherness wasn’t something to dwell on. He lifted his beer can off the bar. The condensation from the can left a wet ring on the wood. He thought of Musashi’s oneness with the universe, and knew no matter how different he felt, or was treated, he would never be different or removed. Not from these niggers at least.

Charles slung an arm around Winston and pressed a cold can of beer into his hand. “I’m saying, son, you runnin’ for office, that shit inspirin’, B. You thinkin’ big. You ain’t goin’ to win, but that don’t make no nevermind. Because we all thinkin’ big now.” Winston soon found himself drowning in an affirmative tidal wave of “uh-huh”s “word”s, and “true, true”s. From the earnestness in their voices, the greed in their grins, the way Moneybags had his back turned away from the group and was peering into the pour spout of his Budweiser, Winston could sense that some grand scheme was afoot. Something bigger than the three-card-monte con they’d all come to Brooklyn to learn, some score that couldn’t be discussed in public. He played coy, and looked up at the television screen. “You niggers ain’t shit. I need some new cellies. Antoine!” The loud hail for someone outside the clan signaled to the rest of the bar that the meeting of the East Harlem Thieves’ Guild was adjourned. Moneybags lifted his head. Forthwith all conversation was public domain, and the regulars turned the volume of their causerie up a notch. Tuffy continued to bellow. “Antoine! Why you showing this movie?”

The movie in question was Lord of the Flies . The troop of stranded boys was balkanizing into the savage and the civilized, and the bespectacled fat kid was vainly trying to maintain a semblance of prep-school decorum. “I have the conch. It’s my turn to speak.” Tugging on Tuffy’s shirtsleeve, Armello mocked the fat kid’s plea. “ ‘I have the conch’? Of course nobody is listening to his roly-poly ass — he’s carrying around an abalone shell like he crazy. Who’d want to hear what this fool has to say? ‘I have the conch.’ Please!” On the screen, the leader of the rebels eyed a nearby boulder. “I love this movie,” said Antoine.

“You would, you sicko. All excited over little white boys running around the jungle half-naked, ain’t you?” snorted Fariq, slipping his arm around Nadine’s waist.

“The leader — what’s his name, Ralph? — he got some muscles on him for a twelve-year-old. Look at those abs.”

“Change the channel,” Winston pleaded. “This one is exactly like the original.”

“I’m sure it isn’t exactly like the original.”

“You right, the original was in black-and-white and they wasn’t wearing designer drawers, that’s the only difference.”

“Look at the peter muscle on the redheaded boy with the spear.”

“Oooh!” the entire bar gasped. Jack, leader of the primitives, caved in the chubby boy’s head with a boulder, ending his filibuster and his life. “I have the rock!” Armello shouted gleefully. “Now that’s how you get people to listen!”

Winston pounded the bar top. “Man, I’m tired of the fat kid always getting fucked up. Why the fat guy always gots to be the star’s best friend? If you the star’s best friend, fat, and getting laughed at, you going to get fucked up. Plain and simple.”

“At least there’s fat people in the movies,” Fariq said. “If by some miracle a handicap person is even in a flick, he’s in a wheelchair plotting to take over the world, snickering like a fucking maniac. And I ain’t never seen a movie with two handicapped motherfuckers in it. You might see two obese motherfuckers, twins or some shit.”

Winston laughed, “Because you can’t have two crippled motherfuckers in the same room. Don’t think when the handicap van pulls up in front of the center I don’t see you trying to stare down the deaf and retarded waterhead niggers.”

“Very funny, son. But I’m sayin’, if it’s a handicap in the movies, he’s a bank-robbing mastermind.”

Nadine shushed Fariq. “Be quiet, Smush, you trippin’?”

“My shit,” Fariq apologized, quickly setting about covering his slip by harassing Antoine. “Hey, Antoine, would you consider yourself to be an expert on fagness?”

Winston rolled his beer across his forehead, trying to mollify his frustration with the can’s coolness. Charles’s we-got-to-think-big-now remark and Nadine’s admonishing Fariq for his “bank-robbing mastermind” comment made it obvious to him that one of the many golden nest eggs laid on the stoop was beginning to hatch. These stupid niggers fixin’ to rob a bank. This beer ain’t cuttin’ it . Leaning over the bar, Winston nimbly fingered a bottle of Idaho vodka off the shelf. Fariq and Antoine continued to flirt with one another.

“Yeah, I know a thing or two about fagness. Fagocity. Fagology. Fagistics. You want me to give you a lesson?”

Nadine placed her hands on her hips and looked Antoine up and down. “I don’t think so, not with my man, you fucking maricón .”

Antoine rolled his eyes. “Shoot, I’ll show you something too, young lady.”

Winston unscrewed the cap and sneakily filled his voluminous cheeks with vodka. The swallow produced a concussive sound in his head that clogged his ear canals, cleared his sinuses, and stiffened his fingers. While he was on top of the Empire State Building talking campaign strategy, his boys had planned something without him. After sixteen years of being consulted on everything from the rules for an afternoon game of kick-the-can to the proper attire for an evening of teen skulduggery, his friends had planned a robbery without him — a bank robbery, no less. It hurt that he wasn’t part of the heist’s planning, but he was also glad he hadn’t been. One less thing to worry about . The second swallow momentarily ceased all of Winston’s brain activity, dousing his synaptic impulse for bitterness and fusing his short-term and long-term memories into a lump of neurons concerned only with the here-and-now and the never-was. Good luck to you motherfuckers .

“I was down in the Village the other day, all these lesbos was holding hands.”

“You never see none uptown holding hands.”