What He's Poised to Do

“Why not Tail?” you said. “You should call me what you want, and I know you want it.” It was a burlesque only. I could no more have touched you that way than I could have killed you. I kissed you chastely and went off to work, hoping for the best. I didn’t get the best. I didn’t get anywhere near the best. The demonstrations started peaceful but didn’t stay that way for long, and before you knew it there were cars burning and bricks crashing into windows. What would Lee Johnson have said about any of it? I was at work again, imagining I had a new job, which involved keeping the people calm. I was at work again, failing. The calls were pouring in about how the neighborhood had already slipped out of civilization and the city was soon to follow. In the afternoon I took a call from an older white man. “I’ve been listening to your show, and I have a solution,” he said.

“Sir?” I said.

“You should go back to Africa.”

I had heard it before, of course. We all had, and much worse. But this time it sounded different. The man wasn’t angry. He had the appearance, at least on the phone, of a rational being. “Sir?” I said again.

“You heard me,” he said. “Go back. We don’t need you here.”

His comment went through my head, brick-through-window-style, and with it went many other things: affronts, confusions, challenges I had to his remark, ways I could respond. I reversed the process, pulled the brick out until the window was intact again, and in the reflection I saw a clear picture in which I had the man down on the ground, my hands around his throat. I was squeezing hard, yet it was eliciting only laughter, flushing his face a healthy pink from his cheeks to the roots of his hair. I tried to kill the pink and instead I intensified it; his face went red, then purple, then darkened until it was like mine, then darkened further until it was like yours. I put the phone to my ear and heard only the dial tone.

I left work, crisscrossed streets where I shouldn’t have felt safe but did. A store that sold fish tanks was burning. Pause. Get it? I directed myself to believe that fire was a refining force, just as I had once believed that humans are capable of kindness, or that jokes offer an adequate defense against cruelty. You weren’t at the apartment. I went to the library, then I went to a liquor store—both intoxicants, neither lasting—and then I went home and called a travel agent and asked how much it would cost to fly from Kennedy Airport to Blantyre.

“Blantyre?” the girl on the line said. She wasn’t being rude, just curious.

“The one in Malawi,” I said, “not in Scotland. Though I can see how my accent may have confused you.” It was possibly the last joke I had in me, and not one I was particularly proud of.

“Yes, sir,” said the girl, flustered, and got right on it.

When she told me the arrangements were made, I asked her if I really wanted to do this.

“Sir?” she said.