"No, he didn't say anything. Just, 'I am Robert M. Finley and I will not be leaving my apartment.' Then he hung up."
Piper ate both omelets. Then she went back to work, more determined than before. It was difficult reaching contacts on a Sunday, but she searched the Internet for home numbers. On her next job interview, if they asked her what her weakness was, Piper would say, "I work too hard. I'm too thorough. News is the compilation, synthesis, and disbursement of information. I can't stop looking until I know everything, and there is always something more to know, another facet to uncover, which changes the view of the whole. I live for deadlines," Piper would tell them. "It's the only way I can stop myself from looking."
The doorbell rang and Piper's first thought was, It's him. Jumping down the steps, surprised at her elation, the nature of it, trying not slip or produce a rhythm that betrayed excitement. At the door, it wasn't him. It wasn't Snowden either. It was just odd.
The reason Piper unlocked the door wasn't that she recognized the man. She did, but he wasn't the type with whom familiarity bred comfort. He looked like someone who would hurt someone. He didn't look particularly mean, not like he brought pain out of any sadistic enjoyment or malice. It looked like his nature, as if soft things bruised and hard things just broke in his hands. No, the reason Piper opened her door was that not even the most criminally insane would come to do someone harm dressed like that. Like an admiral in the Martian army.
"You're Horus, aren't you? The underwear freak. Did Robert send you over with those?" Those were flowers. Birds of paradise, Piper assumed a dozen, their screaming red beaks just adding to the messenger's otherworldly presence.
"You mean Bobby? Hell no. I was sent here by the man. The man!" Horus pushed the flowers forward. When Piper didn't react by actually taking the massive vase, Horus just pushed it toward her farther till she did, then removed a letter from inside his jacket.
" 'Former Congressman Marks of New York City's Fifteenth District and current high chairman of the board and COO of the Horizon Foundation, hereby formally invites you to join him in a moment of fine conversation at the company office this very evening. On behalf of Congressman Marks, I, Horus Manley, his humble servant, have been empowered to both invite and escort you. Let me add that the congressman would be greatly honored by your presence, and that he apologizes in advance for such short notice, as it in no way was intended as a slight against your person.'"
Finished, Horus stood frozen, eyes skyward, arms behind his back.
"What? You mean now?"
"Yeah, that's right, now. Look — I want you to look at it, it's all there. It's all true, see? Except for that servant part, I'm more a junior partner if you want to get real about it."
Piper spent most of the walk marveling at her judgment's complete inability to overpower her curiosity, even for long enough to say the word no. Horus spent most of their walk talking. A bunch of teenagers passed, at least ten of them, goose-down jackets puffing them up like blowfish, and one yelled out to him, "Who's your tailor? Marcus Garvey?" but Horus was not to be interrupted. Horus was from Chicago. Horus was a legend in that town. As a baby, Horus took Old English with his Enfamil. Finally noticing the lack of response, Horus turned his sentences into the form of questions.
"So what's that Bobby shit? I thought you were kicking it with my man the Snowball."
"Robert's a kindred artistic spirit. I'm enamored with his literary skill, that's all." In a wave of practicality, Piper thought to ask if Horus was also going to walk her home but stopped when she couldn't decide if he was really that less scary than anything else she might run into.
"I like the way you talk, you talk real educational. So you into brothers that write. I write too, you know that? I got me a book, it's going to be printed and everything." Horus snapped his fingers, pointed at her. They were long digits, each joint its own distinct ball. Horus's knuckles looked like he used them to walk on.
"That's great. What's it about, who's publishing it?" There were moments in conversations that Piper found for whatever reason to be particularly strained or laborious, when she thought, How am I ever going to get through this? How am I ever going to string enough words to get through to the other side}
"Well, OK, you see it's not really one of those get published kind of books. I'm thinking of getting it photocopied and spiral-bound at Kinko's, though, that's what I'm thinking of. It's called People I'm Gonna Kill When I Get My Gun. It's not actually a story in the traditional sense. More of a list, I guess you could call it. Yeah, it's a list. People who pissed me off, people who tried to fuck me over, play me for a sucker — you get the idea. I started it when I had to take this. . class-type thing. It felt so good, I just kept working on it after I got out again. See, I do a name, then a strategy, you know, break it down line by line. Don't get the wrong idea, it's more a fantasy thing. I mean, I been had my gun since I started it, I just kept the tide 'cause it sound so good. Man, I get in a zone, you'd be scared how I pump out them pages!"
"I bet I would," Piper said through clenched and smiling teeth. Don't run, she kept telling herself. Nuts are like rabid dogs, trying to run away from them only makes things worse.
It was only a conversation like this that could inspire joy at the sight of one Olthidius Cole Sr., as it did when Piper saw him waddling out of the Horizon storefront, pulled forward by his dented aluminum cane. Piper used him as an excuse to break away, yelling, "Hi, boss! Did you get a chance to read my draft?" to drown out everything else that was being said. Cole looked so Started to see her that Piper thought for a moment he might try and whack her with the stick, but instead he rolled his eyes, flapped his cheeks, wagged his head at her impudence, and kept moving.
"So now you know all three of us, who you think is going to make it all the way? Who you think is going to win?" Horus asked as he unlocked the front door.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." Piper wasn't
sorry, she wanted to be inside, beyond him.
"Oh, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, you do," Horus insisted.
"First let me confess, I'm already a fan. I've been following your byline since your revealing article on the accidental death rate." Cyrus Marks wore a smoking jacket, silk, Asian markings. He seemed to think this jacket made him charming, or at least added to his charm, this Piper gathered from the dramatic ritual he made of repeatedly tying and untying its belt, a gesture she found both absent and vain.
"The one I got scooped on. Well, I'm glad somebody saw the original piece. The Times ran a very flattering likeness of you, I remember."
"Yes, well, I have been reading your work with great interest ever since. Olthidius Cole was just in that very seat telling me how thorough your research into the fire at 121st is, I look forward to seeing the final draft. I love your movie reviews as well. Even when they forget to print your initials I know if it's you because you're the only one at the Herald who ever dislikes anything made by another black person."
"I'm just honest, but I also try to be fair. There's usually some good even in the worst, when there is I mention that too." It was a small black world. Piper wondered which mediocrity's creator Marks was related to, and why it had taken this long for her call to task. Her last printed review was a dissection of Bo Shareef's new hit, Don't Go There, where she traced the book's three central cliches back to their origins in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Birth of a Nation, and Nigger Heaven, going on to list the book's uncanny plot similarities with episode twenty-three of Malcolm