Tuff (26 page)

Winston spoke very slowly in the lilting voice of the deeply intoxicated. “You going to poison the whole fucking place?”

“No, we just going to knock them out,” Nadine said. “Ain’t you listening?”

Armello clapped his hands, “I still got these date-rape pills from my baseball days. Roofies. Been saving them for something important.”

“That ain’t nothing new. It’s basically the chloroform dog-snatching bit. You on some coward shit, as usual.”

“It’s not cowardly, it’s slick. There is a difference. Want-to-be-brave, flex-they-muscles–type motherfuckers get shot. Like your boy Kennedy fittin’ to get.”

Turning back toward the television, Winston brushed the dust from the screen with his hand. The electrostatic crackle underneath his palm stood the hair on his arms on end. Kennedy’s limo was rounding the corner. Jackie’s left hand was atop her pillbox hat, keeping it from blowing away in the wind. The president was smiling like her right was buried in his groin. “All y’all, shut the fuck up.”

The dowdy white man halted the film and tapped the movie screen with a wooden war-room pointer. “Keep your eye on the limo driver. From this point on I’ll advance the film in slow motion, the chauffeur will turn around slightly, extend his right arm behind his head and over his left shoulder, you’ll see the gun, hear the shot, see a puff of smoke, and Kennedy’s head will snap back grotesquely. It wasn’t Oswald, the Cubans, the mob, it was the limo driver.” The film advanced frame by grainy frame. The driver turned his head. The driver’s arm reached back as if he were scratching the back of his neck. “Oh shit.” The report of a gun, the smoke, the snap of head, all the events unfolded exactly the way the man said they would. “Oh shit.” Amazed, Winston leaned in closer to the television,
examining the fuzzy black blip the white man said was the gun.
Is that a gun? That ain’t no gun. Fuck, I’m too high to see the gun
.

Charles walked in front of the television. “That’s what’s going to happen to you if you run, Tuffy.” He held up the
Fuckman #144
videocassette. “You mind?”

Winston shrugged, replaying the image of Kennedy slumped in the backseat of the limousine in his head. The echo of the shots reverberated, recalling his brush with death the last time he was in Brooklyn.
Man, this politicking dangerous. If I won I’d be dropping so much truth, niggers would have to shoot me
.

Charles backed away from the TV set, revealing a ponytailed middle-aged white man fingering a brunette who looked as if she’d been eighteen years old for all of ten minutes. Properly moistened with saliva and pillow talk, the young woman readied to receive the gray-bearded man, legs spread, eyes open. The lech, a saggy-skinned convulsion of grunts and grimaces, mounted the woman.

“You know he rolling, old man fucking with his socks on.”

“And his glasses.”

“But he ain’t doing no damage to the pussy.”

“Come on, bitch, get your feet into the fuck. Dig your heels in, girl.”

For the next few minutes the group watched the video in rapt silence, each caught up in a private pornographic peccadillo, Winston’s being that he loved watching a woman’s breasts bounce during sex. Armello, wringing his hands and bursting with the need to share, blurted out, “Ah shit, now she licking the asshole! Ever have your asshole eaten?” he asked, looking around, not really expecting an answer. “I did. I was in Memphis in a Budgetel. Mamí had
me
in the buck. I was the bitch, my knees all in my ears, her tongue showing a nigger’s anus much love. I completely forgot I struck out four times in that night’s game, twice with the bases loaded.”

Pointing emphatically at the TV, Fariq called everyone’s attention back to the video. “Now Fuckman working the pussy, that’s how you do!”

Whitey slapped Fariq in the back of the head. “Smush, what your scoliosis-crippled ass know about working pussy? You probably can’t even control your thrusts, flopping on the cock like a fish out of water. Bet you catch an epileptic fit on the pussy, talking about ‘Honey, did you spasm?’ ”

“Nadine, what you laughing at? When we get home, watch.”

“Look at this white girl, yo, she fucking like a wet blanket.”

“Any of you niggers ever tag a white bitch?”

Winston, beginning to sober up, spun around in his chair, raising his hand like a schoolboy. “I did.”

“Nigger, what? You ain’t never said shit.”

“You know me, before Yolanda I was sticking dick in all four inputs.”

The males nodded in agreement, though none of them, as they ran down the list of bodily orifices, could figure out exactly what the fourth input was.

“All right.”

“Word life, kid.”

“My boy.”

A quizzical look on his face, Armello stopped in mid-hurrah and began counting on his fingers. “Anal, oral, vaginal. Hey, yo, what’s number four?”

Winston laughed haughtily and said, “I be mind-fucking hos, stupid.”

“Where you meet this girl?”

“Remember in junior year we used to go to that underground spot in the meat district near the piers?”

“Uh-huh.”

“White bitch and black bitch about ten years older than us sipping Scotch near the speaker?”

“The redheaded freak?”

“You know when you see a white girl and black girl together at the club, the white one looking for some black dick, and black one wants to hook up with a white boy, ain’t no two ways about it. So I hit Red off with the digits on the sly. Trick called back and the next day I was up in her crib sucking titties and didn’t spend nary a dime on drink, dinner, or daffodils. What was her name? Holly, Markie, some shit. I think it was Holly.”

Nadine’s faced puckered. “Eeww. What’s a white girl like?”

“It was weird, man. She was so comfy all the damn time. She was a computer consultant. Had an office in the crib. I ain’t never been in no black person’s house with an office. I ain’t even heard a nigger say ‘I’m going to the office.’ I just let her carry on. Suck my dick right, you can talk about gigabytes and zip drives all you want. Then one day we chillin’, then out of the blue she start talking this ‘You know, when I was growing up I had a black nanny. I loved her like she was family. She loved me too. At her funeral her children told me so.’ ”

“She went there on you, kid?”

“She went straight plantation
Gone with the Wind
on a brother. My father used to tell me that every fool he knew who ever been with a white girl who was from even a little bit a money has heard that shit. Shoot, I was trying to be ‘peace and love, we’re all human beings’ with the bitch. I thought that madness my father was talking was old-fashioned. I’m like, ‘She white? Big deal, it’s the twenty-first century. People are people. So what if she brush her teeth with fennel-flavored all-natural toothpaste from Maine? So what?’ ”

“Wait a minute,” Armello interrupted. “What’s fennel?”

“Some nasty-tasting flavor.” Winston sighed, then continued, “ ‘Black nanny.’ Pissed me the fuck off. I’m like, ‘Why this bitch feel the need to tell me this? “Black nanny?” What, she think I want to know that shit?’ ”

“Why you think, God?” Fariq said, all too eager to answer Winston’s question. “What she was really saying was, your mother ain’t shit, and that you ain’t shit, because she’s the white princess who everybody loves and worships. She think she special because she was raised by a black woman.”

“Shoot, a black woman raised me too, but that don’t make me special. But I was in the cut behind that comment. Stuck in the back of my mind. We be having a good time, then I look at her and think,
This stupid bitch, said that stupid shit
.”

“You should’ve said, ‘Fuck her. Later for that bitch.’ ”

“If I could’ve would’ve should’ve, but you know how a white girl do. Ol’ girl was kicking out gear, jewelry, sucking balls. Set a nigger out with a pass to the entire New York Film Festival. One time that crazy ho grabbed my arm, cut me with some scissors, and started sucking my blood.”

“Come on.”

“I’m serious. Wiped her mouth, talking about ‘Now we are both Negroes.’ I was like, ‘Negro? You ain’t Negro, bitch, you delusional.’ ”

“That’s what you get for messing with a white girl,” Charles said, nodding his head knowingly. “I’m telling you, white women is evil. Why any motherfucker would fuck with a white girl is beyond me.”

“Charley, how can you say that? Your mother and your sister is white.”

“Then don’t you think I should know what I’m talking about?”

Fariq slapped palms with Charles. “Charley O’ right. Any nigger who marry a white girl is marrying her because she white and no other
reason. Unless a nigger meets a white bitch because they the sole survivors of an airplane crash and stranded on a desert island, he marrying her because she white. I don’t give a fuck what he say about true love, pretty eyes, and a nice disposition.”

“Who said anything about marriage? Me and a white babe, picture that. Smush, what you looking like that for?”

“I’m picturing.”

“Don’t even feel it. None of y’all would even know what to do with a dark-skinned babe. Yolanda is … man, please.”

“You and Landa still fucking?” Fariq asked, somehow phrasing the question in an innocuous manner.

“Of course.”

“You know what I mean when I say ‘still fucking’? Is she invisible yet? I’m not talking about when you be fucking and thinking, ‘Why am I fucking this bitch?’ but when you be fucking and thinking, ‘Why am I fucking?’ That’s when your woman becomes invisible.”

“Come on now, we been going out for two years, married for one. The attraction piece there, but hey, it ain’t easy. Before we get down to business I be sitting on the edge of the bed sipping a brew or smoking some cheeb, sometimes both. Gettin’ primed, know what I’m sayin’? Yolanda looking at me all sad, holding her breasts like food, like she’d give them to me if she could, if it would make me happy. She say, ‘Why you have to drink and smoke that shit before we make love? Shouldn’t I be enough?’ and I’m hitting the joint for all I’m worth, talking about, ‘Yeah, bitch, you should.’ ” To show his precoital exasperation, Winston took two hard pulls on the imaginary marijuana cigarette in his hand, then said, “I be like, ‘Man, this shit ain’t hitting right.’ ”

When the laughter died down, Nadine tried to bring the conversation back to the lovemaking distinctions between the Caucasian and the Negro. “You never said, was there a difference in how a white girl fucks and how we do it?”

“It ain’t like I been with a whole bunch of white girls. All I know is Latin babes like to pull on your ears, but I’d say, no difference in the coochie—pussy’s pussy.”

“I fucked a woman who didn’t have a pussy,” volunteered Armello, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the sex video. “
Una vieja
—bitch was about fifty. Met her in Zebulon, North Carolina. She didn’t have a pussy, had a hysterectomy when I got with her. Stuck my entire hand up in
there,” Armello slowly opened and closed his fist. “So much room in that mug, I could feel the wind blowing.
Coño
, if I’d’ve had a flashlight, I could have made shadow puppets on the insides of her stomach.”

Using the light from the television, Armello illustrated his sexual escapade by producing shape-shifting silhouettes, substituting the bedroom wall for some aging southern belle’s cervix. Barking canines metamorphosed into jellyfish. Pachyderms transformed into craning swans. Finding Armello’s story a repulsive anaphrodisiac, Winston excused himself from the room.
“Me voy. Smush, dame chavo.”

“How much?”

“A pound.”

Winston took the five-dollar bill from Fariq, and said his goodbyes. “Tell Antoine I’m gone.”

Making his way downstairs, Winston could see the party was winding down. The living room smelled of musty men and spilled beer; plastic cups were strewn across the sticky floor. The bay windows, fogged from the night’s activities, were beginning to clear. The few remaining couples held hands and made out in the corners of the living room. A tall man slow-danced by himself, spinning, dipping, and softly crooning lyrics to a saccharine love ballad.

Once out the door Winston saw the little Joad girl sitting alone on a car bumper, fingering her bell, the preteen divas having gone home for the night. “Your moms still ain’t come out?” Winston asked.

The girl shook her head no and asked, “Did you see her in there?”

“What she look like?”

“Like me, but a little older.”

Suddenly, Winston was in a hurry to get home. He held the door open and waved the girl inside. Crossing the threshold, the girl stopped and punched him in the stomach. Before she could scamper inside, Winston lifted her by the collar, ripping the bell from her neck before setting her down. “You don’t need to let her know you coming, you just let her know you there.”

O
n his way to the subway he hoped that Yolanda would still be awake when he got home. He pictured her wearing a sheer silk teddy, two sticks of Black Love incense burning, a bottle of baby oil resting on the nightstand.

To avoid the stifling heat of the subway station, he waited at the top of the stairs, ears cocked for the roar of the next Manhattan-bound train, eyes on a group of cornrowed turnstile jumpers hurrying past him into the bowels of the transit system. He thought about what Fariq had said earlier: how women become invisible. Sex becomes routine. A salvo of gunfire rang out on the street above him. Winston was looking forward to the routine.

Girl, you my shorty, my wisdom, my Earth
.

L
ook at Ben Franklin
. Tuffy, holding a starched one-hundred-dollar bill up to his face, was scrutinizing the old statesman’s portrait.
Nigger look upset. Like somebody just told him, “You discovered electricity? So what, the radio ain’t been invented yet.”
Crisp notes of the same denomination as the one in his hands swelled his pockets. So much so, he barely had room enough for his keys and bubble gum, much less his pistol, which he now toted in his sock.
And Ben look like he about to say, “Motherfucker, if I was twenty years younger I put my pilgrim shoes so far in your ass …”
Winston smelled the bill, aahed, then stuffed it back into his pocket.