What We All Long For by Dionne Brand (most important books to read txt) 📗

ago had apparently annoyed her to the point that she didn’t want to see him, even as a friend. But maybe all of it was only in his mind and Jackie was going about her business being Jackie, who appeared and disappeared as she liked, and could have sex with him at the Lula with three hundred people dancing two feet away and forget it the next day. So he would make an ass of himself calling her. He felt like a child with her, not the man he wanted to show her; the man who would be devoted to her, who would love her. Christ, just thinking this made him cringe at her response. Jackie could be so cool, so off-centring, so distant.

The phone rang early. He grabbed it before his father could reach it upstairs. It was one of his “boys” from Eglinton. Kwesi.

“Hey, what’s up, man? You awake?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m cool.”

“So we’re down for next Wednesday. You know, like, at Syreta’s.”

“Yeah, man, I know. I’ll be there. Why you calling me so early?”

“Just checking, man. You know. What you up to later?”

Kwesi was the guy with the black Navigator. Oku hung out with him now and then when he needed “smoke” and a few dollars. Kwesi had taken a particular liking to him even though Oku didn’t seem to be interested in his schemes to get rich. “You’re a smart brother,” he told Oku. “We could do some great shit together.”

Oku usually laughed at this flattery, saying, “Yeah, man, but I’m not into that shit. It’s too time-consuming.”

But Kwesi persisted nevertheless, as if he thought that one day he would wear Oku down or one day Oku would face the inevitable. Kwesi and most men he knew lived by their wits.

Kwesi’s business was a mobile store held at his girlfriend, Syreta’s, or at her friends. The latest Nike, Reebok, leather coats, bags, designer dresses, anything you wanted, could be had. Racks of dresses, blouses, stands of shoes would be moved in just like at a department store and discreet invitations would be put out, though invariably too many people would be lined up outside a house or apartment on the appointed day. Oku helped with the traffic. Everything was marked down to thirty per cent of the original price. There was a slight sense of danger for Oku, but it was understood that he’d go no further—despite Kwesi hassling him about how he didn’t need a university degree to make money. Oku called it capitalist bullshit and Babylon, and they both laughed, but Kwesi’s logic sat uneasily with him. Kwesi was driving around in a Lincoln Navigator, had a leather coat for every season, a nice apartment. Oku couldn’t help but be envious sometimes. Envious not only of the money but of the balls, the certainty. He had a dilettante’s curiosity about Kwesi’s life, though he was much more tempted lately and found his objections wearing thin. If he continued his friendship with Kwesi, he would have to commit to going the whole way.

“Listen, you wanna help me pick up the stuff today?” There was the usual hesitation from Oku’s side. “You know, I’ll give you—what?—three per cent?” Kwesi was talking about pick-ups. He had other guys who helped him do this, but Oku knew that he wanted to draw him in deeper. “No sweat. No hassle. It’s inside stuff.” Three per cent would certainly get rid of his anxiety about his dwindling student loan. “Come on. You down with this or not?”

“Got things to do today, man.” Oku wimped out, and he felt like it. There was a disturbing feeling in his stomach. His voice couldn’t take on the aloof quality it usually did with Kwesi. “I’ll check you at Syreta’s Wednesday, all right?”

“Cool, bro. But you know what I’m saying, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Peace, man.” Oku rang off.

His own logic was falling apart. He could get busted at one of the sales just as much as on the other side of the deal Kwesi was offering him. He had convinced himself that being caught actually and undeniably stealing stuff was worse than being caught selling it. He knew he was splitting hairs and Kwesi was testing him and would punk him out soon.

Oku had stayed good friends with Carla and Tuyen because he’d found hanging with the guys exhausting. Yes, he could become the bad public hard-ass kind of black man everyone appreciated. Everybody knew it was bullshit. The leather coats, the dark glasses, the don’t-give-a-shit attitude. Life was all about getting the car, the bling-bling, the honey. All that television talk had made it to the street, or was it the other way around? You slapped a few bitches in the mall and faced down a few dickheads in the alleyways. Underneath it all you loved babies, played video games, and loved your mother’s cooking and loved nobody like your mother. So much energy put out just fronting. And you sometimes forgot you were only fronting. You were dangerous. There was a kind of romance about that dangerousness, and Oku teetered at times in that alluring space. Which man wouldn’t want to be thought of as dangerous? Yet who wanted to have that mantle drawn around his shoulders all the time? Some, but you couldn’t crack into the full register of yourself.

One night when Oku was eighteen, he was walking up Beverley Street. It was about 2 A.M. and he’d just left a blind pig on Baldwin, and he was thinking how quiet it was and how he loved the city. He was thinking that he was all out of money and had to walk home, and he was thinking that it wouldn’t be so bad because it was balmy, and anyway, the quietness of the city would help him write a poem as he walked. He was high. He’d had two beers, but mostly he’d smoked ganja and danced by himself. He was at Baldwin and Beverley. A car sped south, leaving a