drift. He had no idea what to expect, where he would go, what would happen to him after this afternoon. The only thing he could do was yield; every muscle in his body was relaxed. It was a relief to finally give in to the gnawing, hollow feeling in him, a dark, perplexing desire. As though something was waiting for him. As though he was holding something back. This was the real reason he was hardly ever home. A few weeks back he had taken Malika and the kids to Coney Island. It was a Sunday. An unusually fine day in October. They had picked up his eldest daughter Amina at Queenie’s and then went to the beach. It was sunny and warm. The light was white and misty, and from the boardwalk you could barely see where the water stopped and the sky began. The children went on the merry-go-round. They ate ice cream on the beach. He listened to the clear sound of their excited voices, saw how Amina fussed over the little ones. Amina had just turned eight. He looked out to sea, a thin, light-blue ribbon in the distance; he wanted to play with the children, had brought a ball and tennis rackets, but for one reason or another he couldn’t get close to them, as though he was observing them, and himself, from a distance. Malika didn’t lose sight of him for even a moment.
‘Talk to me, Umar,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. Those suits. The shoes. You can’t afford them. What’s up?’
‘Nothing, not a thing. A little windfall, that’s all.’
‘You can’t snow me with a bit of coke, you know.’
‘Is that what I’m trying to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ She looked the other way. He saw her disappointment. He felt like a traitor, but not because he was fooling around with Ameja. Ameja had nothing to do with it. Even when he had sex with her, when he let himself slide along with the warm flush of the cocaine and whispered gentle, sexy things in her ear, drove her crazy with his words and his tongue, even then it was as if he was watching a shadow of himself, an imitation Umar Bin Hassan.
Still, he went back to her apartment every afternoon. He took off his shoes and walked across the deep white wool carpeting that ran through every room. The heat was turned up. He switched on the TV and watched a game show or an old Western. He lay on the floor with a pillow. He forgot all the hustle and yelling and swearing in the diner, the pale fluorescent light by which he made salads, hamburgers, and fries, quick quick, the light that made his eyes sore, the depressing white bathroom tiles and the dirty plates stacked in the dishwashing sink. The hiss of hot oil on the grill. The heat of the subway. Sweat beaded up on his forehead and ran down his back. He always ran that last stretch, from the subway to 79th and Columbus, as fast as he could, as though the devil was nipping at his heels.
He heard a noise from the kitchen. He turned and saw Zaid stagger into the room, flop onto one of the leather sofas, prop his feet on the coffee table, and stare blankly at the enormous lighted aquarium opposite them. It was dark by now, and the aquarium shed a blue glow over the living room.
‘Ameja won’t be back for a while,’ Zaid mumbled.
‘Maybe.’
‘Poets and preachers have a lot in common, don’t you think?’ he laughed. His eyes were closed. A blissful smile played around his mouth. ‘Both looking for inspiration. Am I right?’
‘Get outta here, man. How do you do it? Are they crazy at the Nation? Haven’t they got you figured out yet?’
‘The first time it’s like coming, but, like, with your entire being. A sort of heightened, supernatural orgasm. No pussy even comes close.’
‘I know.’
‘You don’t know nothing. Come with me to the kitchen, Umar. What else are you doing here? You’re just like me. Too proud to just give in, but I see what’s smoldering in you, man. A little turn-on and a quickie isn’t enough for you. What you’re looking for, no woman can give you. Nobody can. Didn’t I say poets and priests have a lot in common?’
‘You’re bullshitting.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Nothing, brother Umar. I just can’t sit here and watch you throw your life away. You belong in the Nation. You know you do. You’ve got something to say.’
‘Bullshit. I don’t belong anywhere. No muthafucka’s gonna tell me where I belong, you understand me? This is totally insane. Have you seen yourself lately?’
‘Come with me to the kitchen.’
‘She’ll throw me out.’
‘So what?’
‘Shut up, Zaid.’
‘Shhh … ’ Zaid put his index finger over his lips and sank into the sofa. His head flopped back. From one second to the next he had fallen into a deep sleep.
Umar looked at the big orange and red fish in the aquarium. He heard the gentle gurgle of the water pump. A pleasantly restful sound. Zaid started to snore. His mouth hung open. He was as thin as a rake. The way he lay there … As defenseless as an old man.
He went to the bathroom and took a piss. So many mirrors: he saw himself from all sides. The shiny white dress shirt that hung loosely over his trousers. His round head. His dick in his hand. He shut his eyes. Missed the rim of the toilet. He heard the splatter on the tile floor. If Ameja only knew. He zipped up his fly and wiped the floor with a towel, then threw the towel into a corner. He went back to the living room. Zaid was lying on his side. His knees bent, legs curled up. Umar stood there looking at him, as though watching over a child, waiting until he woke up. Zaid’s words had gotten under his skin, they reverberated in his head. He was like the devil, that guy. He’d been badgering him for weeks. Umar had laughed at Zaid’s reaction when Ameja read the reviews of Suspenders out loud to them both: ‘Last Poet Convincing As Playwright,’ the critic wrote. In a New York review!
‘You’re one of them, Umar,’ Zaid had jeered. ‘What’s your next move? Hollywood? Get outta here. You’re nothing more than a black mascot for those theater folks, you know that as well as I do.’
It had only taken a few lines of coke to make Umar’s euphoria over his success last the whole night. And the next morning he got up at six-thirty and took the A train to the diner. No one there read The New York Times.
Sometimes it felt like he was a prisoner of his own thoughts. He had received a letter from a professor at a university in Michigan who taught a class in poetry and the black nationalist movement in the ’60s. Wanted permission to include ‘Niggers are Scared of Revolution’ in a reader for his students. The poem was a classic, the man wrote, it exposed the heart of the problem with which blacks, black men, had been wrestling for years. Niggers are lovers. Niggers loved to hear Malcolm rap but they didn’t love Malcolm. Niggers love anything but themselves.
He didn’t write back. As long he wasn’t producing any new poems, he didn’t have the nerve to discuss his work. As though he didn’t deserve to. He could hardly bring himself to listen to music anymore. He had turned off the record player when Malika put on Kind of Blue by Miles one night. It hurt to hear those familiar sounds, the subtle twists and repetitions, the trumpet’s warm, sultry whisper, searching for the right tone. Miles was a strange guy, slippery, but his music cut straight to Umar’s soul. Behind every note a word was hidden, a mood, an atmosphere, but that night he didn’t see a thing, no images,
