“Why are you looking at that? There’s nothing for you there.” He dismisses the books with a sweeping wave. “Fucking trembling Anglicans, telling me about the nature of death and God.”
I wave, more like a gesture of benediction than a greeting, “Between the idea and the reality. Between the emotion and the act falls the shadow — for life is very long.”
He waves back. “Between my foot and your head sits your ass—for my boot is very big.” He jab-steps at me. I jump back then gather myself, embarrassed that he startled me. He doesn’t seem to have noticed any of it. We shake. He pulls his hand back, then steps away — right and forward and left then back — with an unrealized desperation, like a broken toy robot, forgotten, trapped in its last command.
“No seriously,” he nods, still moving. “You look good, man. Real good.”
“Thanks, Shake.” He’s wrapped his long dreads under a dirty turban. Through the graying beard, he’s very handsome — strong-jawed. His eyes are slightly sunken. His dark skin, even though wet with sweat, is a bit ashy. His lips are thin, and his eyes look out like those of someone who hasn’t completely woken up from a horrible dream. And although these aren’t necessarily signs of age, they act in concert to connote miles, experience, hardship — a great weight hauled.
“Please don’t call me that anymore.”
I watch him move. He’s still well muscled and looks as if he could spring up and dunk a basketball or dribble past a defender with ease, but those muscles that used to move him in such an elegant way now seem to jerk him from corner to corner of his little box.
“Don’t mind this. It’s just the psychotropic waltz. It’s nothing.” He looks at the books in the window, pushes his chin at one. “Ain’t that your boy?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Who’s that other fool? I never heard of him.”
“I suppose he’s the heir apparent.”
“What the fuck is he inheriting, the right to talk bullshit?”
“I don’t know, Shake.” He jab-steps at me again, glaring, as though a punch will follow. I go to slip it, but he slides back to his original motion, retaining the glare.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“So that’s your boy? So this fool is your replacement — that’s funny.”
“Not really.”
“Hey man, take it easy. Why don’t you give the man a call?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Why? His book’s in every motherfucking store window, big and small, and it ain’t even February. He’s gotta have something for you, you know?”
“No.”
“No he doesn’t?”
“No. I’m not going to.”
“Well why not?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Fuck you then, be a fool. Walk these streets all hangdog dog-raggedy.”
“It’s out of my hands now.”
“So put it in his. Make that call.”
“No.”
He shakes his head, stops, then pats his coat pocket like he’s looking for a cigarette.
“You smoke now, Shake?”
“No. Don’t call me that. Nobody out here knows me like that — Donovan, remember?”
“I’m sorry, Donovan.” It feels so strange to say it.
He nods, loses the glare. “What’s the matter with you anyway?”
I kick stupidly at the slab. “I’m broke.”
“Broke,” he jumps back then starts waltzing again. “Shame on you. And you used to call yourself a metaphysician.”
“I did?”
“Well, I called you one. I guess I still do.”
“Aren’t you one?”
“Me, no. I’m insane.” He cackles. It’s sharp. It seems that it would have cut him on the way up, but he stands there, unscathed. Right before he was committed he applied to the NEA for a grant to enslave three white people for thirty years and study the effects chattel slavery had on them. He was going to write a play based on the results.
I try not to, but I can’t help but watch him be yanked back into the spastic steps. Now he adds a hand to the sequence — waist to nose and back again — and each pass seems to create and build nervous energy in him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he snaps, springing forward — still not punching.
I try to cover. “Like what?”
“Like you’re angry or you pity me — whatever — you don’t know.”
“Covering all possibilities with that, huh?”
“Well, I have to.”
I look up into the night sky and wait for it to do something, it’s crisp azure — autumnal — the stars are bright yellow. Shake grunts like he doesn’t want the silence. I want him to go away. He resumes his dance.
“What’s the matter, nothing to say?”
“You know what,” I kick at the sidewalk again. “Forget it.”
“Forget what? You didn’t say nothing.” He turns, walks in a tight circle and then is yanked back to the square. “Damn, man. You’re fucked up.” He starts shaking his head violently, raises his hand to speak, aborts the attempt, and drops it. Then, like the gesture was a feint, he mumbles, “I didn’t tell you to marry a white woman.”
I step back, shoot a hand up. “Good night, Shake.”
He stops. “Donovan,” he says quietly, with a tremble. It stops me. “My name is Donovan.” He waits until he’s sure I won’t leave and then exhales fully. The pent-up energy seems to go out with his breath. He closes his eyes, either trying to see something inside or to focus on keeping his feet still. He starts swaying his shoulders, moving through the sequence, but slowly and on a smaller scale. He opens his eyes and looks down at his feet to make sure that his near stillness is real.
“I didn’t tell you to marry her, but I never said it was wrong. It’s not something I would do, but I’m not paying your bills, taking out your trash — whatever. Come on. I’m just saying that if you were with a black woman, she could tell you something. When you stand in the dark with that question on your face, she’d at least know there was something on your mind — right? And she knows, maybe not innately or anything, but it’s something she saw in her daddy’s face when he didn’t know she was looking. It’s on her brother’s now, too. And she’s not gonna hesitate, you know, she’s going to, on her terms, know. She might be completely wrong — hell — she might be just a fool,” he slaps his cheek violently twice, “but she won’t be locked out by this. There are so many other barriers in place, but not this one, your color. Your wife doesn’t have that. She probably looks at you and thinks, ‘I don’t know that.’ But she thinks, everybody thinks, whether they admit it or not, that the skin is the thing. At least with a black woman you could hunker down together and start something — start hurling assumptions at the world. What happened to that painter you were with back home?”
“She’s famous.”
“No, what happened to you two?”
“She stopped calling.”
“Why — you wouldn’t fuck her, would you?”
I think about hitting him, but I hold back because there doesn’t seem to be any malice in his voice. I exhale, too. My hand probably wouldn’t close anyway. “She didn’t like my poems.”
He grins and then shakes his head violently to erase it. “At least you would have someone you could talk about them with. Someone you could lie with. But with you, you look and all you can see is her white face — everything it stands for, all the ways it rejects you: Your wife’s white face. And you’re locked out. It can’t tell you true, not a damn thing, except maybe how far out you really are. That’s lonely. And then where do you go — for comfort — huh? Maybe you have that moment when you dare to say, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ or ‘I’m beyond that.’ You may not say it in words, but you act it. But what does your boy say—“. . redeemed from fire by fire.” You’ll forgive him his abstract crimes against humanity. . what about her? But I don’t know why any brown person on this here earth in their right mind would pass through fire of any kind for someone white. I mean, why would you do that?” He shrugs his shoulders. “Miles and miles of bad motherfuckin’ road. No road, sometimes.