‘Hey nigger brother!’
Ninety-Eighth Street. I turned my head. Two black guys with a big dog cocked on its leash.
‘Fuck this shit, man. I think my dog go bite one of them white dudes.’
‘Fielding,’ I said tightly. ‘Is this smart? Let’s get the car. This is fucking pangerland.’
‘Walk on, Slick, with your head high. Nothing’s happening.’
He was wrong. Fielding was wrong. Something was happening, for sure. When you’ve brawled around for as long as I have your senses get to know the kind of fix that you can’t just walk through or away from. You get to know when you have to give satisfaction. Less than a block ahead the scatterings of low-caste colours had begun to solidify into a group or gauntlet. I saw loud T-shirts, biceps, facial hair. These people, they had nothing to tell us except that we were white and had money. Perhaps they were also saying — you cannot go slumming, not in New York. You just cannot go slumming, because slumming pretends that slums aren’t real. They were real. They would show us that much. By now I was obeying instinct or habit, checking the chain for strengths and weaknesses. Avoid the left. Stay kerbside — yeah, that sick-looking little guy there. Burst in with blending fists and run like a bastard for the green slope ahead. I let my eyes flick sideways. Fielding raised his right arm, an instruction to the Autocrat, but his gaze and stride were direct, unfaltering. The car surged up and then idled on snuffling treads. Fielding slowed. He made an elaborate gesture, explanatory, supercandid. And nothing happened. The path cleared and we walked on through.
‘Columbia, Slick… Chicago, LA, wherever — in America our seats of learning are surrounded by the worst, the biggest, the most desperate ratshit slums in the civilized world. It seems to be the American way. What does this mean? What is its content? Now over here John, we get a really superb view of Harlem.’
I took a look at Columbia. I checked it out. I’ve seen these pillared, high-chinned buildings, their deep chests thrown out in settled cultural pride. The place had nothing to tell me that I didn’t already know. With Fielding’s wrist on my shoulder I now approached the castle’s steep rampart. We leaned on the railing, and peered down through the littered lattice of cross-angled trees, their backs broken in their last attempt to scramble up the cliff. Beyond lay the square miles of Harlem — part two, the other, the hidden half of young Manhattan.
‘What happened?’ I asked, and lit another cigarette, still heavy from the unburnt fight fuel, the awakened glands.
‘It was the car, that’s all.’
‘Did our guy have a gun on them? I didn’t see.’
‘Nah. Well, he had his gun ready, I guess. But it was no big deal. The car would do it for a minute or two. That’s all we needed.’
I suppose I understood. The Autocrat, the chauffeur, the bodyguard: this showed them the gulf, the magical distance. How did Fielding’s gesture go? One palm arched on the heart, the other turned in polite introduction towards the car, saying, ‘This is money. Have you all met?’ Then the hands brought together, face up, an offering of the simple proof. And they backed off in that stumbling, hurried, slightly reckless way that traffic pulls over for ambulances or royalty. I said, ‘Why?’
‘Sightseeing. Local colour. The car’s all yours, Slick. I’m going to run on back.’
I watched him jog off, the head held high for the first twenty yards, to promote oxygenation, then tucked in low as he measured out the rhythm of his pace. I turned and looked out over the slanted, foreshortened wedge of streets and stocky tenements, and for once the strain in my ears found the appropriate line, the right score. With a low hum of premonition my eyes panned Harlem, as if out there among the smokestacks and flarepaths lay my damage, my special damage, waiting for birth or freedom or power.
——————
There is only one Earthling who really cares about me. At least, this human being loyally follows me around the place, keeps tabs on me and rings me up the whole time. No one else does. Selina’s never there. All the others — it’s just money. Money is the only thing we have in common. Dollar bills, pound notes, they’re suicide notes. Money is a suicide note. Now this guy, he talks about money too, but his interest is personal. His interest is very personal indeed.