Paul Beatty - Tuff

“Uptown bound, yo.”

“No more Brooklyn Rambo niggers in camouflage pants.”

“Word. Fuck Brooklyn.”

“Spike Lee, Jackie Robinson, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Mary Tyler Fucking Moore can all kiss my black Manhattan ass.”

Winston tossed the last piece of bubble gum into his mouth, unfolded the comic that was, as usual, unfunny, and then read the fortune. Don’t carry grudges — they can weigh you down . Unmoved, Winston blew bubbles till the subway doors opened at 116th Street.

Like prairie dogs fresh out of their burrows, welcoming the cool desert night, the duo popped out of the subway station and stood motionless, gazing at a Spanish Harlem just emerging from its early-evening siesta. A foursome of sturdy tank-topped old-timers played a staid game of dominoes in front of the Laundromat. A frenetic salsa fell out of an upper-floor window like a Boriqua waterfall. Winston, roused from his momentary trance, giddily splashed around in the Latin percussives, stutter-stepping, shaking his hips, and singing the lyrics. No tengo miedo, tengo bravura, tú y yo, tenemos amor pura . Winston was back on the block.

“That’s Hector Lavoe.”

“You say everybody’s Hector Lavoe. That’s the only Spanish singer you know. It might be Marco Manteca from down the street.”

“Just change your drawers, son. You smell.”

Fariq pulled out a spare pair of underwear and walked into Kansas Fried Chicken to use the bathroom. Winston headed straight for the T&M Tienda, “Dos paquetes de seis de Bud, por favor,” then reimmersed himself in the nighttime bustle, snapping the gray hood of his sweatshirt over his head. After Fariq finished tidying up, the duo headed east toward Third Avenue, Fariq insanely jealous because Winston could walk and drink, while Fariq had to wait until they arrived at their destination before he could sip his beer. Winston stopped and held the can of beer to Fariq’s lips. Fariq took two gulps.

“My brother.”

“Tastes good, don’t it?”

“True, that.”

With a firm brush of his thumb Winston removed the suds from Fariq’s mouth. He considered telling Fariq about the gun but decided against it. Once people knew you had a gun, it was like having a car — everyone begging to borrow it, wanting you to use it to make their lives easier. Winston pointed to their usual drinking spot by the empty pool in Jefferson Park. They liked to sit on the edge, their legs dangling in the void, reminiscing about taking turns feeling up Henrietta Robles in the shallow end. Even Fariq risked rusting his leg braces for a few blind gropes.

Winston figured four, maybe five beers and Fariq would agree to lend him enough money to get him through the rest of the month. There was a pulse against his hip and Winston peered down at his beeper, illuminating the numbers. Fariq knew, from the sour look in Winston’s face, who was paging him. “You better get home, nigger, you a father now.”

“Mmm.”

Winston shut the beeper off and wrested another beer from the plastic ringlet, and thought back to that Sunday years ago at Coney Island, walking away from the Hellhole, crying and cursing his cousins. He recalled his father soothing him with promises never kept. That day was the last time he’d cried, the last time he’d held his father’s hand.

The beer slid solidly down Winston’s throat and bubbled in his nose. Winston pointed the half-empty can at the diving board. “Remember when Raymond Vargas dove off that fucker and smashed his mouth on the edge of the board?”

“Yeah, he used to talk about diving in the Olympics. Toe the edge of the board and say, ‘This is a Dominican Escape-from-the-Ghetto Inward One-and-a-Half Twist with a Cry-on-the-Gold-Medal-Stand-During-the-National-Anthem Pike. Degree of Difficulty: the fact white people think niggers can’t swim.’ Then, blam, the kid was at the bottom of the pool unconscious and toothless. Didn’t you go to the bottom and drag him up?”

“Uh-huh. Rebroke Raymond’s jaw a month later when he said that when I swam I looked like a big black oil spill.”

With some effort Fariq lifted himself to his feet, finished his beer, then, with one crutch, golfed the empty can toward the far end of the pool. It nestled about two feet from the drain and Fariq mimicked a golf announcer’s whisper: “That leaves Fariq Cole a short putt for a birdie.”

“Sit, you’re making me nervous.”

Fariq sat back down. “Tuff?”

“What?”

“Golf a game or sport?”

“Goddamn, you’re restless. Don’t you ever stop and chill? Look up at the stars? Look, if you can wear a watch at the professional level — golf, tennis, bowling — it’s a game or a pastime, not a sport.”

“I just wanted to say, good looking out today. Thanks, that’s all.”

Winston returned Fariq’s gratitude with an embarrassed nod. Taking his own advice, he lay back over the pool’s edge, gazing up at the twenty or so stars visible in the hazy New York City night. Using the can propped on his stomach as a sextant, Winston charted a course through the black sea above him, navigating an out-of-body escape from the madness.

TEN YARDS UP:I’m floating next to a middle-aged woman looking out her third-story window, elbows folded on a bath towel, and wearing nothing but a flimsy white slip, looking over the block like an urban hoot owl.

TEN THOUSAND YARDS:I’m riding a double-seater bike with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I’m in the back, E.T. steering through some thin cigarette-smoke-looking clouds. I tell him, “Pedal faster them pesky white kids gaining on us.”

OHE MILLION YARDS:The earth’s surface looks as if it’s been smoothed with wood-shop sandpaper. The Himalayas are the same height as the Indian Ocean and the Grand Canyon. The whole planet look like it’s been shellacked with sunlight.

OHE BILLION YARDS:I’m on the moon. I hot-wire the lunar buggies and joyride from the Sea of Tranquillity to the Bay of Rainbows.

TEN MILLION MILES:From here the earth is one of many small moth-eaten holes in a raggedy interstellar theater curtain. When does the show start?

ONE HUNDRED MILLIOH MILES:Allergic to the space dust in the asteroid belt, I sneeze. Fifty years from now a meteor will land in the desert with traces of mucus on it and scientists will lose their minds.

ONE BILLIOH MILES:The tilted ring around Saturn is the felt brim on the gaseous head of the solar-system pimp. Those bitches Venus and Uranus betta have my money.

TEN BILLIOH MILES:From here the sun is the size of a flickering match two football fields away. Goddamn, it’s cold.

ONE HUNDRED BILLIOH MILES:Set the boom box adrift, tune in radio static. Me and the constellations listen to an aircheck from 1937. Good evening to the East Coast, and to the West Coast, good morning. This program of ultramodern rhythms comes to you from the Savoy Ballroom, known as the Home of Happy Feet, located in Uptown New York City. It’s Count Basie and His Orchestra featuring Billie Holiday, and here’s “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” The constellations jitterbug, entrants in a dance marathon that’s been jumping since the dawn of time. Orion swings Cassiopeia around his hips. I slide Andromeda through my legs.

ONE TRILLION MILES:Color disappears. Everything is black-and-white. My mind and the universe are the same size. My father is holding court in a faraway lounge, conferring with ancient poets, saying, “See I told you so, everything is everything.”