Tuff

  “ ‘Hip-hop community’? What the fuck is that?”

  “Young urban African-Americans—preferably bald-headed.”

  “ ‘Hip-hop community.’ Where the hell is the opera community? The heavy-metal community? How the hell you define people by the kind of music they listen to? And man, to be honest with you, I don’t even like rap music too tough. Inner city. Don’t get me started.”

  “Too late for that.” Spencer sighed.

  “And how come you never hear about the outer city? Tell me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t there only be one inner city per city? In New York City there’s umpteen thousand ‘inner-cities,’ none of them nowhere near each other. Where the fuck is the outer city? Anywhere niggers like me ain’t? ‘Inner city.’ ‘Hip-hop community.’ Give me a fucking break!” Winston mimicked Bruce’s midwestern twang: “ ‘We’re in the struggle together.’ Then how come whenever I’m strugglin’ I never see motherfuckers like Bruce around? Don’t get me started.”

  “That’s the second time you said that. Admit it to yourself, you’ve started. Now let’s see if you can work on finishing.”

  “I know, but I’m sayin’, though, I have had it.”

  “Winston, I think the real question you have to ask yourself is, why do you come to the meetings?”

  “I’m not going to any more dinners.”

  “But you could’ve said that after the second or third one. Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. The food. All Smush and them is talking is this stupid bank—” Winston caught himself. “Yolanda on my case about how much of the fifteen thou I got left, Ms. Nomura in another world, acting like I’m really going to win.”

  Winston dug his hand into his belt line and pulled out his automatic. “Sometimes it’s just easier being with you and those stupid people. Y’all don’t know me. I don’t care about y’all. So nothing that anyone says or does can really upset me, you know? I just have to listen and pretend.”

  Spencer was hurt. Did Winston really not care about him? He didn’t dare pose the obverse question: did he really care about Winston? “I learned something, though. Belgian beer. Some alternative political shit. And you know what’s a trip? In some ways these third-party motherfuckers are the only people that take me seriously.”

  Winston opened the glove compartment, placed the gun inside, and closed the door. After two choruses of fidgeting through “El Condor Pasa (If I Could),” he opened the compartment and stuffed the gun back into his pants. He looked at Spencer’s doleful expression and waited for him to say something. Spencer eased the car into a right-hand turn onto Seventy-second Street and drove east through Central Park, softly singing along to “The Only Living Boy in New York.”

  “Rabbi, you not going to say anything about my gun?”

  “If I say get rid of it, are you going to?”

  “Probably not. But you could show some concern.”

  “Winston, do you ever take any of my advice?”

  “I finally rented Schindler’s List.”

  “That’s a start. And?”

  “The shit was terrible.”

  “Yeah, the Holocaust was,” Spencer said, turning left on Madison Avenue.

  Tuffy continued his review. “I mean, the movie was terrible. I couldn’t get past that there were no Jews as tall as Schindler. In all of Germany the tallest Jew went up to Schindler’s belly button? Come on, man, too fucking easy. The flick’s unbelievable right there. Manipulative Hollywood bullshit.”

  “Poland,” Spencer said, his voice unable to hide the testiness he was feeling.

  “Poland? The movie ain’t Polish.”

  “The people portrayed in the film were Polish Jews.”

  “Fine, Poland, whatever.”

  Spencer looked for a street sign. Eighty-first Street—twenty-three more blocks and this black-hearted monster would be out of his car.

  Winston continued with his film review. “And the scene where the Nazi on the balcony just shootin’ at people? Don’t get mad, Rabbi, I know I was supposed to be like, ‘Ooooh, this is an evil motherfucker,’ but I didn’t understand it.”

  A taxicab nosed its way into Spencer’s lane and he slammed the brakes, narrowly avoiding a collision. “You stupid fuck!” he yelled out the window, leaning on the horn for good measure. The outburst relaxed him and he loosened his grip on the steering wheel. “When one dog barks, he easily finds others to bark with it,” he said in dreamy, far-off voice that scared Winston a little bit.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s a quote from the Midrash. It popped into my mind … just seemed like the right thing to say.”

  “You think I’m prejudiced.” Winston placed his chin on his forearm and spoke to his reflection in the side-view mirror. “Because I didn’t like Schindler’s List that mean I don’t like Jews, or some shit, huh?” Winston rubbed the butt end of his pistol and mumbled, “I don’t know, maybe it does.”

  “You upset with me, Winston?”

  “I’m upset with people trying to tell me how to think.”

  “Why?”

  “Because now I’m thinking.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. That’s the fucking problem. And nothing.”

  “I think the scene on the balcony was meant to convey the Jews’ powerlessness. How unreal the Holocaust must have been. André Breton once said something to the effect that the epitome of surrealism was shooting into a crowd.”

  “No, that’s backward. The most surreal thing is being in a crowd getting shot at. Now that shit is bizarre.” Winston ducked back inside the car and leaned against the headrest. “I guess I seen too much fucked-up shit in my life. You say the movie supposed to show how unbelievable those camps was, but man, I already believe it. I seen niggers set motherfuckers on fire. I seen niggers hold a gun to a mother’s head and piss on her babies because her man didn’t pay on time for some consignment rock. People are fucked up? Man, tell me something I don’t know.”

  The last weepy notes of “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” were losing out to the uptown din. “Make a right here,” ordered Winston. Spencer wheeled the car onto East 102nd Street. To his surprise the block was quiet. Rows of renovated brownstones and thin churches lined both sides of the street. The end of the block was dark, sealed off by the trestle for the Metro North train, which once past Ninety-sixth Street runs aboveground along Park Avenue. Branches of an overgrown oak diffused the streetlight, breaking it up into rays of imitation moonbeams. At the corner, on the right-hand side, barely visible through the oak in its front yard, was a decaying silt-brown building that loomed over the rest of the block like a haunted house. “Stop at the corner.” Winston got out of the car and vanished around the corner, entering the building through a side entrance.

  Spencer couldn’t decide what tape to play next; it was between Bread’s greatest hits and Harry Chapin’s. A commuter train rumbled slowly past, the slogging clack of the cars almost lending an aura of rusticity to the setting. Harry Chapin’s gritty warble clattered out into the darkness, buckled itself to the tracks, and took out after the departed Metro North train like a noisy caboose.

  When Winston finally emerged from the building, his eyes were bloodshot and an indelible smile creased his face. In his hands was a shoe-box full of marijuana and explosives. “Sorry about that, Money, but you know how it is when you doing business.” Winston held up what appeared to be a small stick of dynamite and examined it in the amber streetlight. “Besides, I ain’t been in that spot since I was twelve years old. Much memories up in there, boy.”

  “What is all that?”

  “Weed, nigger.”

  “I mean the other stuff.”

  “Ain’t nothing. Some M-80’s and cherry bombs, two half-sticks, but mostly smoke bombs.”

  “Smoke bombs?”

  “Yeah, I know some niggers who thinking about deprivatizing a bank, and supposedly the smoke bombs will fog up the surveillance camera.”
r />   “Winston, I’m going to have to insist that you never get in my car again with the intention of doing something illegal. If I find out that I’m taking you to or picking you up from some dope deal or something, then the Big Brother thing is over.”

  “Chill out. Don’t get all self-righteous on me, when you just pick me up from playing three-card monte to meet with Bruce of the New Procession Party—but that served your purpose, so it was all right, I guess?”

  “Progressive Party.”

  “Whatever. Man, I would never put you in no situation. Nigger, you’d be in my way.”

  Spencer started the ignition and asked his passenger to shut the door. Winston didn’t budge. “Just pull out, getaway-style,” he said. Gunning the engine, Spencer hit the gas and threw the car into gear, the momentum slamming the door shut just as the car rounded the corner onto Park Avenue.

  The Mustang idled in front of Winston’s building, neither man moving until Harry Chapin’s son had grown up just like him. “You still want me to come over tomorrow and help you prepare for the debate?”

  “Yeah, do that. But Yolanda got finals, so we have to do it outside.”

  “We’ll walk around the neighborhood or something.”

  “Cool. One thing though, Rabbi—don’t wear those shoes you got on.”

  “These? The clogs?”

  “Yeah, nigger, the clogs. Don’t wear them. If you think I’m going to be clippity-clopping merrily up the ave with your ass, you crazy. How much them things hit you for anyway?”

  “One hundred and forty dollars.”

  “What? And they sweat us for buying sneakers that cost that much! It’s the spending habits of you bougie niggers they need to address. A bill and a half for some wooden blocks! Shit, I’ll cut up a two-by-four in two pieces, glue on some socks, and sell them to you for fifty bucks, yo.” The belly rolls of laughter eventually rocked Tuffy out of the car. He stuck his head back in and offered his hand. Spencer hesitated, not sure if Tuffy was proffering the traditional or the soul shake. They shook quick and firm like dignitaries departing for their respective helicopters. “That’s the diff between a nigger like me and a nigger like you,” said Winston, backing out of the window. “One forty for some clogs or some tennies.”

  “White people can’t tell the difference, though.”

  “True indeed.”

  “But it really hurts when other black folk can’t tell the difference. I expect the white people to clutch their purses, and cross the street.”

  “Yeah, back in the day if I saw you coming, Rabbi, I’d cross the street too, but I’d be coming over to your side to take your money.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Well, Rabbi, at least you sound white. You got that going for you. You spend the rest of your life on the phone, your shit be straight hunky-dory. But I got one for you, though. What’s the difference between white people and black folks?”

  “Is that a riddle?”

  “No, I’m serious.”

  “White people eat ice cream year-round, even in the winter. And when they give you a ride home, they drop you off, then drive away as soon as you get out of the car. Black folks wait until you’re safely inside.”

  “Thanks for the lift, Rabbi.”

  “Easy, Winston.”

  “All right then.”

  The boys standing in the vestibule parted like canal locks; Winston floated through, and they closed ranks behind him. Spencer waited a minute or two, then drove off with a tire squeal, closing the passenger door getaway-style.

  20- INFIERNO — DEBAJO DE NUEVA ADMINISTRACIÓN

  The butt end of a flauta de pollo disappeared down Winston’s gullet. His napkin already saturated with grease stains, he licked his fingertips and wiped his mouth with the corner of the linen tablecloth. “I don’t know where all these Mexicans came from, but I’m glad they decided to move here. Fucking food is good.” Spencer paid the bill and they left Puebla Mexico, Winston savoring the last of his cold horchata.

  Headed north, they walked in silence, digesting the meal and their surroundings. Like the moors of the English countryside or the bogs of the Louisiana bayou in a late-night creature feature, at night the streets of East Harlem undergo a metamorphosis. Only fools and monsters trod in the darkness. Spencer splashed up Lexington Avenue, jumping at every hoot-owl screech. Winston slipped upstream, an urban alligator skimming the swamp’s surface, eyes peeled for prey.

  At 110th Street locals jammed the intersection. Oblivious to the automobile traffic, they dashed between cars, yelling and furiously signaling to one another like traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor, closing bell be damned. “It’s hot out here tonight!” Winston remarked with a relish that made it obvious he was referring more to the street frenzy than to the muggy evening. Spencer read the lettering above the gated windows of the post office on the far side of 110th Street, ‘HELL S GATE STA ION.’ At their feet were a couple sitting on milk crates and dressed in T-shirts, cut-off denims, and foam-rubber thongs, watching a black-and-white television powered by an extension cord alligator-clipped to the innards of a lamppost. The Yankee game was in extra innings, and the play-by-play in melodramatic Spanish. The woman, her newly hot-combed hair dipping like an aileron behind her head, looked away from a pop-up and greeted Winston with a broad smile. “Hey, Tuffy Tuff.”

  “What up, girl? How you feel?”

  When her man saw Winston, he grabbed and held his dog, a stocky black-and-brown rottweiler named Murder, by the collar. “¿Qué te pasa, bro?”

  “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 bra
ced 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’?”