The cold snapping spritz of a newly opened Budweiser called Winston to the end of the bar. There the television loomed over his head at an angle that reminded him of being in a jailhouse day room. A beer can on a collision course with his own slid toward him. Fariq hobbled over and intercepted it, crutches swinging from his arms like pendulums. “Much faggots up in this piece, yo. I was surprised you suggested this spot, this being Brooklyn and all. Faggots and all. You right, though — ain’t nobody going to look for us here.” Fariq blew a kiss to Nadine, then raised his voice. “It was kind of tight coming through the disco, though. I remember back in the day when a motherfucker you didn’t know looked you in the eye, you’d be like ‘Hey my man, Fifty Grand, what’s happening? Stay safe.’ Now a motherfucker look you in the eye it mean he want to shoot you or stick his dick in your ass. Times is changed.” The rest of the gang thumped their Budweiser cans on the bar to show their approval of Fariq’s commentary. From the far end of the bar in a testy voice Antoine said, “How come boys always think that anal sex is the worst thing that could possibly happen to them?”
“I can think of something worse than being booty-busted.”
“What, Fariq?”
“Having a dick in your ass and one in your mouth!”
Though he found Fariq’s quip funny, Winston didn’t laugh as hard as he normally would. The feeling of being an outsider again crept up on him. He was within an arm’s length of his best friends, and yet he felt as if he were back atop the Empire State Building looking down on them through the reverse end of the telescope. They were in focus but very far away.
His discomfort had only a little to do with his antipathy for Brooklyn and being surrounded by men in search of ovaries arguing about whether or not they were homosexuals. It stemmed more from the fact that by bringing Spencer into his life and accepting Inez’s money he’d made a half-ass commitment to his life. He knew his friends saw him as turning his back on them, but that wasn’t the case. In the war zone that was his neighborhood Winston wanted to be a neutral nigger. He wanted to call time out, steal a Popsicle from the corner store, and rejoin the game when he felt like it. But for Tuffy there was no middle ground. He was either real or fake. Down or invisible.
He’d felt this way before, during a Rikers shakedown that didn’t involve him. During a cell-block search someone had handed him some contraband. He didn’t know what to do with it: swallow it, tuck it under a roll of fat, or give it back? He ended up with two months added to his sentence.
Watching his friends guzzle beer and chat, Winston wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He had a notion to call Spencer and seek some Big-Brotherly guidance. But the phone was near the transsexuals, one of whom was flitting his tongue like a disturbed snake. Winston let out a cry of frustration. “What’s wrong with you, son?” asked Armello.
“You niggers seem different.”
“Fuck, you talkin’ ’bout?”
“I don’t know, Whitey, it’s like tonight I don’t know y’all.”
Fariq moved from behind Nadine. He was a little drunk, and held his beer unsteadily, his middle finger off the can and pointing at Winston. “Nigger, you the one changed. Got a Jew and Ms. Inez running your fucking life. Man, I wouldn’t run for no white man’s City Council for no amount of money. Not fifteen thousand or fifteen million thousand.”
“Easy for you to say, you got money in the bank. You got ideas.”
Standing abreast at the bar, Fariq, Charley O’, and Armello looked to Winston like the Three Stooges in an army episode, lined up for inspection. He knew what happened next: the major would ask for a volunteer for a dangerous mission and they’d take one step backward. He’d be left standing alone having “volunteered” for who knows what. The Fourth Stooge assed out like a motherfucker.
“And don’t be handing us that”—Fariq was signaling for another beer and talking to Winston at the same time—“ ‘You niggers seem different’ bullshit. That sound like whitey talking.”
“What? I didn’t say nothing.”
“Not you, Charles. I mean real white people. You know how they always want to make like there’s friction between niggers. Niggers can’t coexist unless they on one fucking wavelength. Divide and conquer. These niggers are different from these niggers. Fuck that. Winston, you want to act a fool and hang out with a black fucking rabbi and playact like you running for City Council, that’s your fucking business. You always have been, always will be my and our nigger. So don’t come to me with that ‘Y’all seem different’ sad-song bullshit.”
Winston’s face flushed. “That’s on me, son. You talking good shit. Respect, nukka.”
“Tuffy, long as you don’t come between me and my money green, we will always be boys.”
Winston didn’t think the gap had been quite closed shut. But he knew that this sense of otherness wasn’t something to dwell on. He lifted his beer can off the bar. The condensation from the can left a wet ring on the wood. He thought of Musashi’s oneness with the universe, and knew no matter how different he felt, or was treated, he would never be different or removed. Not from these niggers at least.
Charles slung an arm around Winston and pressed a cold can of beer into his hand. “I’m saying, son, you runnin’ for office, that shit inspirin’, B. You thinkin’ big. You ain’t goin’ to win, but that don’t make no nevermind. Because we all thinkin’ big now.” Winston soon found himself drowning in an affirmative tidal wave of “uh-huh”s “word”s, and “true, true”s. From the earnestness in their voices, the greed in their grins, the way Moneybags had his back turned away from the group and was peering into the pour spout of his Budweiser, Winston could sense that some grand scheme was afoot. Something bigger than the three-card-monte con they’d all come to Brooklyn to learn, some score that couldn’t be discussed in public. He played coy, and looked up at the television screen. “You niggers ain’t shit. I need some new cellies. Antoine!” The loud hail for someone outside the clan signaled to the rest of the bar that the meeting of the East Harlem Thieves’ Guild was adjourned. Moneybags lifted his head. Forthwith all conversation was public domain, and the regulars turned the volume of their causerie up a notch. Tuffy continued to bellow. “Antoine! Why you showing this movie?”
The movie in question was Lord of the Flies. The troop of stranded boys was balkanizing into the savage and the civilized, and the bespectacled fat kid was vainly trying to maintain a semblance of prep-school decorum. “I have the conch. It’s my turn to speak.” Tugging on Tuffy’s shirtsleeve, Armello mocked the fat kid’s plea. “ ‘I have the conch’? Of course nobody is listening to his roly-poly ass — he’s carrying around an abalone shell like he crazy. Who’d want to hear what this fool has to say? ‘I have the conch.’ Please!” On the screen, the leader of the rebels eyed a nearby boulder. “I love this movie,” said Antoine.
“You would, you sicko. All excited over little white boys running around the jungle half-naked, ain’t you?” snorted Fariq, slipping his arm around Nadine’s waist.
“The leader — what’s his name, Ralph? — he got some muscles on him for a twelve-year-old. Look at those abs.”
“Change the channel,” Winston pleaded. “This one is exactly like the original.”
“I’m sure it isn’t exactly like the original.”
“You right, the original was in black-and-white and they wasn’t wearing designer drawers, that’s the only difference.”