Paul Beatty - Tuff

“Suave.”

Turning the bill of his baseball cap to an even quirkier angle, Winston stooped to pet Murder. When the dog went to lick his hand, he quickly put its head in an armlock. “What up, nigger?” he said to the animal, who answered him only with pleading brown eyes and a try to yank himself out of the grip. Winston tightened his hold until the dog whimpered. Satisfied, he released Murder and he and Spencer crossed the street.

“Now are you ready to study?” Spencer asked, handing Winston a sheet of paper. “I made up a list of questions I think might be asked at the debate.” Winston took the paper and, without looking at it, rolled it into a tube. “Let’s walk uptown,” he said. “It’ll be quieter.”

Ahead of them a row of red traffic lights receded far into the distance. Spencer felt as if he were about to descend into the concrete depths of perdition, Dante to Winston’s Virgil.

It had been a while since Spencer had walked the streets of East Harlem at night. The last time was when he and Rabbi Zimmerman sat shiva on 117th Street with Bea Wolfe, her husband laid out on the kitchen table, dead of lung cancer. For seven days he shuttled between the apartment and the market, sprinting through the chaotic streets for cat food and candles, reciting the kaddish to himself.

He glanced about, looking for Mr. Wolfe’s ghost or another remnant of a Jewish presence. A vagabond wearing a weather-beaten sweater and grimy polyester pants sat cross-legged in front of a panadería . The smell of fresh-baked bread mixed with the stench of dried urine. There was an eerie lacquered sheen to the man, as if he’d been bronzed by gritty air and polished by the warm night winds. Catching Spencer’s gaze, the vagrant put his thumb and forefinger to his lips. “You got a square?” Not knowing exactly what a square was, Spencer shook his head, sidestepping away from the man with a patronizing smile he hoped would placate them both. Winston handed the man a cigarette.

“Do you know if any Jews still live in the neighborhood?” Spencer asked. Tuffy shrugged, saying he occasionally saw old white people taking baby steps to and from the market, or store owners collecting the day’s receipts and hopping into their Cadillacs. Maybe they were Jewish, he didn’t know. A war whoop rolled down the street. Ahead of them a brood of rough-looking young men blocked the sidewalk. The boys jumped up and down like freshly oiled pistons, feverish with the boundless energy that comes from being on a New York street corner after eleven p.m. En masse the group moved toward Spencer and Winston. Spencer braced for an act of violence. He was thankful Fariq wasn’t with them. Fariq would sense his fear, hear his insides knotting like a ship’s lanyard, notice his eyes avoiding the boys as if they were lepers and he a gentleman too polite to stare.

Tuffy pointed to a second-floor bay window. Tucked in the corner of the window was a small sign, RAYMOND TENNENBAUM — ABOGADO Y SEGUROS.

“You asked if there are any Jewish people in the neighborhood — Tennenbaum sound Jewish, don’t it?”

Spencer agreed, his head sinking toward the ground. The boys were within mugging distance. He could almost hear Fariq saying something about the irony of Tennenbaum making money off both ends: insuring the public against the crimes of colored boys like these, then defending the same kids after they’d committed the crimes.

“Rabbi, take your hands out your pockets,” Tuffy whispered. “And lift your fucking head up.”

Spencer did as he was told. The boisterous youths were only two steps away from him — so close he could feel the chill emanating off their ice-cold scowls. Winston walked toward the group, reached out, and, without breaking stride, shook the hand of the lead gargoyle.

It was the same with nearly every band of young people they met: a firm yet quick slide-’n’-glide handshake exchange that, like comets hurtling around the sun, seemingly propelled each party up the sidewalk to the next rallying point. “What up, kid?”

“Coolin’.”

“Tranquilo.”

“Stay up, son.”

Some handshakes ended with a finger snap, others with a light touching of knuckled-up fists. “Peace, God.” One man, whom Winston apparently hadn’t seen in a while, received a handshake that collapsed into a strong, spinning bear hug that chicken-winged their elbows out to the side. “Nigger.”

“My man. Fuck’s happenin’?”

Spencer asked why he warranted an embrace from Winston rather than the standard soul shake. “Rabbi, that nigger got stories to tell, but the fucked-up thing is, he so deep in the life, he can’t tell them.”

Not having spent much time with Winston on his home turf made it difficult for Spencer to determine if he was campaigning or just taking his leisurely nighttime stroll up the avenue. He knew so many people. And those who were too busy to hail him watched him knowingly.

“Winston, it’s too late now but you should’ve taken the election seriously — you probably could’ve won.” Tuffy looked at Spencer like he was crazy. He spat and put the rolled-up debate questions to his mouth. Through the paper megaphone he yelled to two sisters sitting on a fire escape three stories above them. “Where your brother at?”

“Wagner!” one shouted back.

Tuffy shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with many locals, but few received the bear hug. As with prime numbers, the farther uptown they zigzagged, the greater the distance between the persons who got the grip and the loving embrace. Between 109th and 112th Streets, Winston squeezed homeboys and homegirls 2, 3, 7, 11, and 13 like lost children found in the amusement park; 23, 29, and 37, all standing in line to get into the La Bamba dance hall on 115th Street, were crushed like sympathetic friends at a funeral. In the lobby of the Chicken Shack on 117th, Winston, 41, and his sister, 43, were hugged like football players in the end zone celebrating a Super Bowl touchdown. Now, at 119th and Second Avenue, Winston was tapping 73 on the shoulder.

Raychelle Dinkins was his first love. His first kiss. His first slow dance. His second fuck. His first regular drug customer. Back in junior high when Winston and Raychelle were an item, she was a thick-framed teen who had what Winston liked to call “a luscious, dark black, hard-ass gospel body.” A heroin addiction had eaten away her muscle like jungle rot. Turned her into a wisp of a woman so thin her pregnant belly seemed to account for half her body weight. “Winston!” Raychelle shouted, raising her bony arms to hug him. Winston tucked her head into his chest, resting his chin on her flaky scalp. The familiar scent of the perfume she’d been wearing since seventh grade flared his nostrils and caused an involuntary growl to rumble from his throat, the sweet smell taking him back to ditch parties at Kevin Colón’s house, where he spent school days sipping wine coolers and listening to Hector Lavoe sing love ballads he couldn’t understand. “You speak Spanish, what he sayin’, Raychelle?” Taking a break from notching a hickey on his neck, she would cock an ear toward the stereo. After a few bars she’d stick her tongue and her translation in Winston’s ear. “He saying, ‘Fuck math, fuck English, fuck me right now.’ ”

“Raychelle!” her boyfriend, an integer, a regular nigger, called from across the street. He was clapping his hands, a drill-sergeant coach urging his recruit through the obstacle course. “Let’s go!” As she turned to leave, Winston hooked an arm around her waist, swept a lock of stringy hair from her ulcerated face, and planted an affectionate kiss on her cheek. “How many months?”

“Seven and a half.”

The boyfriend, seeing the kiss, took three strides into the street. “Bitch, come on!”