CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

  "...she had that slightly forced elegance of the educated Negro woman, the continuing understated challenge to you to accept her on her own terms or, by not doing so, betray the prejudice she expected you to have. I cannot blame them for a quality of humorlessness. They carry the dead weight of all their deprived people, and though they know intellectually that the field hand mentality is a product of environment, they have an aesthetic reserve, which they will not admit to themselves, about the demanding of racial equality for those with whom, except for the Struggle, they would not willingly associate."

  —John D. MacDonald, Darker Than Amber

 

 

  "America is in trouble. [audience agreement] President Reagan is in deep trouble. [loud audience agreement] The country is so economically weak that the President in his efforts to balance the budget and prepare for the War of Armageddon, does not care how many black people he offends in getting ready...His priority is that America survive. And if America's survival means black folk out of work: let it be. If America's survival means the death of you: let it be. Because this country was not made for you, it was made for them and their progeny and you happened to come along to help them build what they stole. [ovation]"

  —Minister Louis Farrakhan, addressing a large group of black Muslims, Christians, Jews, Nationalists, Moorish Science Templars, and members of the Vice Lords, War Lords, Disciples and other street gangs—on the topic, "In Christ, All Things Are Possible," Chicago, Oct. 3, 1981. (This meeting constituted a major rapprochement between black Muslim and Christian groups, and other power blocs.)

 

 

  "At the level of individuals, violence is a cleaning force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self respect."

  —Frantz Fanon

 

 

  Roughly simultaneously, Dena was reaching the end of a thorough cry, and feeling no better than when she had started. Her eyes were sore, her head ached, she was too tired to think and too wired to sleep. She remembered a palliative for these symptoms, thought of the grass in her purse and wanted some. It was New York grass, legal and strong. She got up from the fold-out couch, got a joint and lighter, and hesitated. She usually did not smoke in the house, because both Russell and Jennifer disliked the smell. She was in a defiant mood now—but then again the apartment was already stuffy, and it might be a little cooler outside. She wrapped the sheet around her sari-style and went out to the garden.

  How, she wondered as she lit up, had everything gotten so fucking complicated?

  Only a week ago her world had been stable. Oh, the future had been uncertain, full of the looming question, what will I do when I can't dance any more? But at least she had known who she was now. She would have described herself as satisfied with what she had achieved, proud of what she had accomplished, and grateful for all that had been given to her.

  Now it seemed that everything she had was shit, and furthermore that she might lose it all.

  She took another toke and knew that somehow, somewhere along the line, she had been a fool. That triggered a line from one of her favorite childhood books, The Princess Bride: "Fool, fool, back to the beginning is the rule."

  Okay, then, she decided, let's review the sequence. Where did it start to go sour? Where is the beginning?

  Was it the assault in Harlem, on that first day in town?

  Up until then, Dena realized, she had built herself a world in which her blackness effectively did not exist, did not matter one way or another to anyone she came in contact with. She could remember having been pleased when the dance press had stopped referring to her as a "black dancer" and started calling her simply "dancer." She had enjoyed living in a world in which skin color was irrelevant. And then she had reminded, forcibly and suddenly, that in the reat world, skin color could still be a matter of life and death.

  And Russell and I never really talked about it afterward, she thought. We talked about how it affected Jennifer, and how to deal with violence in general in the future. But we never discussed the racial aspect. Neither of us has spoken Michael's name since that day. We've swept the whole incident under the rug, by unspoken mutual consent.

  But after all, she asked herself, what was there—what is there—to say?

  Nevertheless, she assured herself, something should have been said and was not, and now the chance is gone.

  Okay, what was the next sour note?

  Jerome, of course.

  Was there any way she could have handled that better, anything she should have done differently? No, the basic mistake had been made back in Halifax, when she had not asked Lisa who else would be in the company before accepting the job over long-distance phone. It had never occurred to her to ask. And from the moment she had learned that she would be working with Jerome, she believed she had behaved correctly in all ways. She had carefully examined her subconscious, honestly prepared to quit the job at the first hint of hidden yearning, of secret temptation, and had determined that it was not necessary.

  That established, she had devoted careful attention to convincing Russell. There was no way not to tell him—if nothing else, he would one day be reading Jerome's name in the concert programme. And would recognize it: she and Russell by now knew most of each other's past. She had planned it well, had told him in the best possible way at a good time, had looked into his eyes and let the truth show through hers while she promised him that he had nothing to fear. And she had read in his eyes that he believed her.

  Admit it, Dena, she thought now, that's not all you read. Oh, he believed you, all right. He accepted your sincerity. And still he was afraid. Not that you were lying—just that you were wrong. And again there was unspoken agreement not to talk about it. Again, what was there to say?

  Like the business of Russell's visit with his father and stepmother. Jennifer had told Dena the whole story the next day, but Russell had still never mentioned it. So Dena had never raised the subject either. What was there to say?

  Let's see, Dena thought. On account of me, he came to New York, a place he hates and fears. On account of me, he and his daughter were nearly killed. Out of loyalty to me, he estranged himself from his father and Jennifer from her Grandpa, and then he came home to find that for the next six weeks I'll be spending more time with an old lover than with him. No, nothing in there worth discussing with him.

  But there hadn't been time for long talks, there hadn't been energy for complicated subjects. The rehearsal schedule was heavy, and the work was hard. Setting up housekeeping routine in a strange city was time-consuming.

  Just walking the streets, being battered by all the people, was draining for a Haligonian.

  Even so, she had tried hard to ensure that her husband had no reason to feel threatened or unwanted. Over five years of a good marriage, she and Russell had worked out their sexual pattern: whenever she was in rehearsal, she became the passive partner, the one who is done to, and Russell ministered to her attentively. In between, they reversed roles. But for this past week she had made an effort to meet him halfway, not overdoing it but letting him know that he turned her on. She had really thought it was working. And then tonight he had reacted so strongly to her shaven head, and it had taken him so long to come, and then, and then that vile magazine...

  Damn it, when had there been time to talk?

  Ah, but there had been plenty of time to talk with Jerome, hadn't there? During breaks at lunch and after work? They had settled it between them on the very first day, baldly and in so many words—that he wouldn't mind fucking her again and that there was no way in hell she was going to let him—and had dropped the subject. But still he kept talking to her all the time. And if she and Russell couldn't talk about race, Jerome couldn't seem to talk about anything else. Race and politics.

  And that was where it had really begun to go sour...

  Jerome had always been a powerful personality, a fast talker and a gifted manipulator. But he had never been political. He had been too self-involved to be political, too cynical to be militant, too intelligent to buy anybody's cheap rhetoric. Now he was a walking encyclopedia of black political awareness. He appeared to know the entire history of worldwide racial struggle backwards and forwards. He quoted Fanon, Farrakhan, Salid, Wright, Cleaver, King, Garvey, he talked about the Rastas and the Muslims and the BLA and the American Mau Mau, he talked about Toussaint L'Ouverture and Chaka Zulu and Bobby Seale and Nat Turner. He talked about the recent bloody power struggle in the Black Muslim movement, in which a fanatic splinter group had taken over control from the Farrakhan/Salid axis. He talked at great length about the situation in Africa and how it affected American blacks—why they were asked to die to assure America's access to chromium and other rare metals necessary to the high technology which, he claimed, put more blacks out of work every day. He talked and talked and talked, and at first she thought it was just a smokescreen for trying to make her, but it was not. He was genuinely trying to educate her, to politicize her. He had heroes now, and he had not had heroes when she knew him before, and she had to admit he was a better person for them—however foolish his heroes seemed to her. He was not a True Believer, he did not proselytize for any particular organization or leader; rather he argued for a united front of all organizations and leaders.

  And for the last couple of days he had been talking vaguely of the necessity of armed struggle, in the near future...

  Dena had tried to argue with him, but it was hopeless.

  Jerome had always been able to argue circles around her.

  And he had devoted a good deal of time and study to this argument, while she—

  —had put it out of her mind years ago.

  "Jerome,"she had said this afternoon,"every black person in America has thought about armed struggle at some time.

  The only ones that keep thinking about it are the ones that can't do arithmetic. To try it would be suicide for all of us."

  "Not to try it is sure suicide."

  "We've come a long way since slavery. Not far enough by a damn sight, agreed—but a long way. It's gotten better just since I was born, in '59—we're getting there, slowly but surely. It'd be stupid to throw it all away now."

  "You're wrong, Dena-mite. We've gone as far as they're going to let us go, and they take a little more back every year. We'll never be any stronger: it's now or never."

  "Oh for Christ's sake—how far did the Panthers or the Black Liberation Army get? The Mau Mau fiasco was only a few years ago; have you forgotten it already?" The Mau Mau, essentially a re-run of the Black Panther Party, had first appeared in 1995. By 1996 they were involved in pitched battles with police in New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami. By the end of the year, the last of them were dead, in prison, or fled overseas.

  "The Panthers were visible. The B.L.A. thought small, and the Mau Mau were a special case."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "I mean real revolutionary leaders don't wear uniforms and get their pictures in the paper."

  So there it was, an open hint. There was some kind of black revolutionary underground. Was Jerome a member, or just an admirer? One more conversation that there didn't seem to be any sense in having.

  Dena sighed, threw her roach deep into the garden, and tugged the sheet closer around her in spite of the heat. God damn it, how were black people ever supposed to get anywhere—when every black who did succeed at all, who got as much as one foot out of the trap, was immediately belaboured with guilt for all those still in chains? She wanted to live in a sane world, in which skin color meant nothing, and had managed to build herself such a world.

  Was it her fault that it was not yet big enough for everybody? Jerome tried to make her feel that every oppressed black person in the world was her problem, just because she had a similar complexion, that for her to have anything somehow hurt them, that to throw away everything she had would somehow help them. He made her feel guilty about everything of which she was most proud.

  Was he getting to her? Was all his talk reaching her, was she communicating confusion and doubt to Russell in small unconscious ways and subliminal hints? Had Jerome seduced her mind, and was that why Russell had brought her home that damned magazine?

  And was that why it had upset her as badly as it had?

  With rigid self-honesty Dena admitted to herself that the magazine would not have produced such a violent reaction two weeks ago. Given to her then, by a husband with whom she had a secure relationship, it might have been enjoyable in a raunchy sort of way. The adultery theme would have seemed—as fantasy—pleasantly titillating, and she would have told herself that the skin colour of the participants was irrelevant. But now she was hypersensitized to race, and uncomfortable with it, and no longer absolutely certain that her husband trusted her and no longer absolutely certain that she trusted herself...

  Behind her in the apartment, the phone rang.

  It was awkward running in a sheet; it got snarled in the sliding-track of the security-gate, so she left it in the doorway and kept going. Jennifer was at the concert, it wouldn't be Lisa, it had to be Russell. She got it on the start of the fourth ring and said, "Russell?" Silence. "Russell, I'm sorry." More silence. "Come on home, baby, we've got to talk." Silence. "Russell, is that you?" Click.

  Shit. Was that him, or wasn't it? Wrong number, heavy breather who chickened out, spurious signal from New York's overloaded phone system? Or was her husband about to come home? Or—oh God—could he have gotten mugged, and just made it to a phone booth before losing consciousness ?

  Stop that, she told herself. Even if that were true, there was no advantage to anticipating it, nothing she could do about it except go mad. She had to assume that he simply didn't feel like talking on the phone, that he was on his way home right now. There was a prospect that needed preparing for.

  When he did come in that door, what was she going to say?

  Dena girl, it is time to take stock. Time to identify your priorities and cut your losses. What have you got?

  Item: you've got one hell of a husband. Even from a totally cold-blooded and selfish perspective, he's a dancer's dream. He is retired, wealthy, mature, undemanding, intelligent, sexually sophisticated, and he's your biggest fan. He doesn't begrudge the time your career takes away from him, and he's free to travel wherever your career takes you, he doesn't care that your career makes beans, he supports you in a style to which you've always wanteld to become accustomed, he already has a child so he doesn't mind that you don't want to have any now...and he's the best friend you ever had.

  Item: you've got a hell of a daughter. Not only do you love her, you like her—and the feeling is mutual. You even have high hopes that the two of you might live through her adolescence without becoming mortal enemies. You've got all the good side of motherhood, without the pregnancy and dirty diapers and day-care and chicken pox.

  No question about it, girl. Tell that man as soon as he comes in the door. You're going to quit Lisa's gig and pack your family and get your black ass out of New York just as fast as is humanly possible. It's survival time, honey—don't wait another day, and pray to God you haven't waited too long already. It's a shame to lose what is probably your last big Swan Song performance at the Joyce, and Lisa will be madder than a wet cat, but fuck her. She has five weeks to replace you, and she'll either understand or she won't, but don't you dare screw up a good marriage for the ego-thrill of showing your stuff on the stage of the Joyce Theatre. End up all alone again, with a great last line on your resumé?

  Hell, no—get back home to Halifax, where there'll be all the time in the world to figure out just what went wrong here in New York and what has to be done about it. Step one: Remove hand from flame.

  Now why is he buzzing? Oh, of course, he was upset when he left, he forgot his keys. That was quick; he must have phoned from just around the corner.

  She buzzed back to unlock the foyer door, immensely relieved that he was all right, and glad that she had used her time to reach a decision instead of wasting it on worrying. She wished this building were modern enough to have security cameras—it would have been useful to study Russell's expression as he approached. She opened all the locks, and strained to see him coming in the fisheye viewer.

  It was Jerome.

  Dena had a dancer's atrophied sense of body modesty, but all at once she was acutely aware that she was naked. In a panic she snapped one of the locks shut again.

  He knocked. "Dena? I know you're in there. We've got to talk."

  "Shit." The clothes she had worn this evening were filthy and complicated to get into. She sprang across the room to the garden door and retrieved the sheet, tearing it slightly as she yanked it free. She slid the security-gate shut and locked it, closed the door, turned on a lamp, and arrayed the sheet so that she was totally covered. Then she returned to the hall door and said loudly, "Jerome you can't come in.

  Go away."

  "We've got to talk now."

  "My husband is not home. I cannot let you in."

  "I know he's not home, I'm the one that just called. I bet I even know why he's not home."

  "Go away."

  "It can't wait. You were supposed to come back to the studio for late rehearsal after you got your head shaved, I was going to tell you then. But you didn't come back."

  "I called Lisa and told her I was cutting."

  "Dena, I have something of life or death importance to tell you, and I'm not leaving until I do, and I am not going to yell it through a door!" He was shouting by now.

  "Tell me tomorrow," she shouted back.

  "I expect to be dead by this time tomorrow." He stopped, and went on in a quieter voice. "And if we don't talk, right now, you might be too. Your husband and his child too, maybe."

  The words were preposterously melodramatic, but Dena knew what Jerome sounded like when he was bullshitting and this wasn't it. With a premonitory thrill of fear, she opened the door—and stood blocking the way. "Is that some kind of threat?"

  He was genuinely wound up about something, but still he smiled when he saw her. "God damn, you look fine. You look like an African princess. No wonder your husband got upset—"

  "Say what you've got to say and go."

  "I mean, with that shiny head and that African robe, there's no way in the world he can keep telling himself you're a white woman with a deep tan—"

  She started to close the door.

  She expected him to try and stop her, was braced to repel him. Instead he stepped back and said quickly, "I am very sorry." He glanced toward the foyer. "Please let me in."

  She stopped with the door half-closed. "No way in hell.

  You can talk from there, I hear you fine."

  He glanced to the foyer again. "I am trying to save your life," he said in a low voice, "and I'm a target standing out here. Let me in. Five minutes and I'm gone, I swear by whatever we used to have."

  She hesitated, furious at the situation; turned and walked away from the door. When he had closed it behind him, she whirled and snapped, "Jerome, look at me. Watch my lips.

  Russell could get back any minute. If you are still here when he gets back, I will personally kick your crotch up into your lungs. Subject to that, you have two minutes. Go."

  So he sat down and was silent for a while, eyes closed.

  Just as she was about to throw something at him, he opened his eyes and started talking.

  "I've been rehearsing this for a week, and I still don't know how to say it. I don't know how much to say. I have to tell you enough to convince you that I'm serious and sane—but I can't trust you not to drop a dime on me, now you've married white. I shouldn't say anything at all—but once upon a time you cared for me and did me good and I owe you."

  "Jerome, will you just—"

  "It's the Night of Power, Dena. Not that Muslim crap I told you about: the real Night of Power."

  "Oh, for—"

  "Listen to me. I am a member of a revolutionary underground—"

  "I know that, you've been hinting for a week. I must admit I'm surprised. I thought you had more brains than—"

  "You may be surprised again if you don't listen!"

  She was beginning to be more afraid of what he was saying than she was afraid of Russell coming home while he was saying it. "Go on."

  "An operation is going to take place tonight. I can't tell you how big, I don't have the whole picture myself, but the specific task I'm involved in is big. There will be a shitstorm. Riots, backlash. A black person in a white neighbourhood will be at extreme risk. If you were smart you'd get on the A Train right now and be north of 96th Street by midnight, but you're not smart so the next best thing is to fortify this place and hole up for a siege. At least a week, maybe longer..."

  There are black people who have no hope at all, and there are black people who have some hope. In North America since well before the Civil War, many of the latter group have lived in more or less constant fear that the former will one day rise up as one in rage and despair and precipitate the pogrom that will exterminate them all. Nat Turner's doomed fiasco was only one of hundreds of slave revolts in his time, and each brought savage and indiscriminate retribution. The fear is often admixed with guilt, especially in those who have achieved any measure of success in the existing society. An enemy could say, now that you've got yours, you don't want anybody rocking the boat. Dena was terrified—Jerome was not talking about a garden-variety riot, blacks tearing up black neighbourhoods, he was hinting at military insurrection in white territory. But she was reluctant not only to show her fear, but to feel it in the first place. She remembered the wretched people she had seen in Harlem, and knew she had no right to tell those people not to despair.

  Oh God, it's finally come!

  "I couldn't tell you before, Dena, can you see that? For the last week I walked around it, trying to decide whether I could get you to leave town altogether, whether I should try. But I couldn't take the chance. This is bigger than you and me."

  "Oh, yeah," she said weakly. "So the revolution is at hand, huh? What's the name of your organization?"

  "We don't have a name."

  "Come on," she said, hearing her voice get louder with each word, "you can tell me. AfroAmerican People's Front? Sons of the Panthers? The New Mau Mau? What do you call yourselves?"

  "We don't. No need to. I told you once, a real revolution doesn't issue press releases. It doesn't have any image at all."

  "How about The Detonators? You know, the little tiny part down at the end of the dynamite that destroys the whole—

  "In my mind I think of us as Michael's Brothers."

  "—Michael?"

  "Yeah, you know, I told you about him, big cat lives up in Harlem, The Man With No Spot—"

  "I know Michael. I met him."

  "You did? I didn't know that, why didn't you—"

  "Never mind. He's behind this revolution?"

  "Let's say it won't come as a shock to him."

  Dena was stunned. In her mind "revolutionary" was defined as someone whose common sense had been exceeded by either his anger or his ego. There had been no anger in Michael. Even when he had suggested the breaking of the heroin merchant's elbows he had not been angry, he had been...sad, sad and resigned. Dena had once seen a policeman who liked dogs shoot a rabid dog; his face had held that same grim acceptance. Was Michael an ego-freak, then, one of those who yearned so badly for a place in history that he had forgotten blood is the ink of history? He had seemed to her to be as egoless as a man could be and still be strong. To be so universally respected in Harlem, he had to genuinely care about people: those people had seen every kind of con there was. And he was not a bigot—he had gone to considerable trouble to protect Russell and Jennifer. There was no way Dena could reconcile her vivid memories of Michael with the news that he was a revolutionary leader.

  "Michael knows about this?"

  "He has counted the cost. We all have."

  "What time tonight?"

  "I can't give you the exact hour. You won't be in danger here before sun-up—but long before that, you won't be able to leave Manhattan."

  "What do you mean?"

  "What I said—it won't be possible to leave the island."

  "You mean physically possible? When? How soon?"

  "I can't nail it down, I shouldn't have said that much."

  "I see." Dena got up. "Stay there." She took great care to keep her face impassive and move slowly, but as she entered the bedroom her mind was on computer time, running dozens of alternate solutions for a problem with too many variables.

  How long have I got?

  Say we have three hours and Russell gets back in a half hour and Jennifer and José get back an an hour, say we just leave everything and go. Can we get clear of New York City in two hours by train? Not dependably at this time of night. By bus? Ditto. Cab? Not without more cash than we've got on hand. Steal a cab, maybe with José's help—but which way do we go? Two hours east is halfway to Russell's father's place, two hours west is deep Jersey, two hours north is Kingston or Bridgeport, which is better?

  Or can we try for the airport and hope for a red-eye flight to anywhere? Suppose José doesn't get Jennifer back for several hours—can Russell and I steal a car and get it ready? And suppose Russell decides to stay out there all night and sulk? Are he and Jennifer safe if just I leave?

  We've been out together a few times, some people in the neighbourhood—in the building—know he's married to a black woman. But if I leave him a note and just cut and run now, could he and Jennifer maybe check into a hotel and follow me whenever it becomes "physically possible" to leave Manhattan again? How much time have I got, and how far away is safe, and for that matter where is safe?

  This whole thought train took her only the time needed to close the bedroom door behind her and walk to Russell's side of the bed. She had to have more data, and she could see only one faint hope of getting them from Jerome; it probably wouldn't work, but it had to be tried. Planning how, she felt under the mattress, and by the time she had a plan she liked it seemed that she had been fumbling around under the mattress for a long time, so she got a grip and lifted and the gun just wasn't there, she could see the imprint of where it had been on the mattress-pad, and in the busily humming computer that was her mind the system crashed, the cursor froze, the screen went dark. She stood there, holding the corner of the mattress in the air, for a full ten seconds.

  And then she heard the apartment door open.

  "Dena—" Russell's voice began, and cut off.

  She danced across the bed and burst out of the bedroom.

  Russell and Jerome were staring at each other. Russell was spattered with dried blood; for a heart-stopping second she thought it was his own. Both men turned to look at her, both absolutely expressionless. She realized suddenly that one of her breasts was exposed and yanked the torn sheet closed over it.

  Tableau.

  Her husband's eyes had the wild glitter of a wounded man in shock. But there were no holes visible in his clothing, and he simply could not have lost that much blood and lived. Had he killed someone? Had the God damned revolution started early?

  "Russell—" she began.

  "Shut up."

  Shocked, she obeyed. He fixed his gaze on Jerome. She saw that Russell's right hand was in his windbreaker pocket. He usually kept his keys in his pants. Oh Jesus, she thought, he's going to shoot the only man who can tell us what we need to know. But before she could cry out, he spoke to Jerome.

  "Can you get me up to see Michael right away?"

  The pause seemed to last forever, and then Jerome burst out laughing. Dena very nearly joined him, but caught herself in time.

  Russell frowned, and said over the laughter, "There is a plot against his life, and I only have a few hours to warn him."

  Jerome only laughed harder, waving his hands to indicate that he could not help himself and would stop as soon as possible.

  Russell sighed and took his hand from his pocket. Again Dena began to cry out, and again lost her voice. Russell's hand held, not the gun, but a pair of red sunglasses. The effect on Jerome was as dramatic as if they had been a gun.

  His laughter chopped off at once, and his face grew tight and dangerous.

  "You've got a pair in your breast pocket," Russell stated. "I can see the shape."

  A quizzical note crept into Jerome's expression. "If you've got those, what do you need me for? Call Michael yourself."

  "I tried. I don't have the right passwords."

  "You won't get them from me."

  Russell put the glasses away, and when his hand reemerged it held the gun. "Then you make the call. But if I don't see Michael in an hour, you and he are both going to die. I'd prefer to avoid both."

  "Russell—" Dena tried.

  "I told you to shut up." He spared her a glance. "We'll talk when there's time. Jerome?"

  Jerome went into Street Nigger, the persona he generally used on whites. "Yo, sure, homey, I can straighten you. Try, anyroad—Michael be lookin' at a busy night this evenin'.

  Who tryin' to burn him?"

  Russell shook his head. "For all I know you're on their side." He put the gun back in his pocket and gestured toward the door with it. "Let's go."

  "I'm going with you," Dena said.

  He glanced at her, and she knew from his face that he was going to ask a terrible question, and he did. "Can I trust you?"

  There was no time to be hurt or angry. He had cause to ask.

  "Yes. Always and forever."

  He nodded. "Get dressed and leave a note for José—we'll be back late." She started to turn away, and he added, "Give him Dad's address and phone code in case we don't get back at all."

  She opened her mouth, then saw his expression, bit her lip and did as she was told.

  =

  Russell led them all in silence to an all-night game arcade on Third Avenue. As they approached it he called a halt and turned to Jerome. "I tried my call in a place over on First. I had to lay a man out and show my gun to get out in one piece. If anybody in here figures out that I'm holding a gun on you, you will die and then I will die and then Michael will die. Be measured."

  "I hear you."

  At this hour the arcade was almost empty. The few patrons were all black, and two wore red sunglasses. Dena would have bet serious money that a bloodstained man walking into a videogame arcade in the middle of the night in New York would go completely unnoticed, but the three of them drew stares. Seeing this, Russell stopped, looked around, and ostentatiously put on his sunglasses. Jerome put on his own. The starers looked away.

  "You take first licks," Russell said to Jerome, who picked a machine at random and dropped in two quarters.

  And for five minutes, to Dena's astonishment, they played games.

  After a time a subtle observation came to her. Both Jerome and Russell punched the keys too fast for her to tell what they were programming—but she became convinced that it was not related to what appeared on the screen. A plausible game played itself out there, but they were not directing it.

  Of course. The sunglasses. They were not seeing what she saw. Infrared lenses, perhaps? Or some other filter system...

  She glanced around the arcade. The three of them were still being surreptitiously observed, and her subconscious alarms began ringing. She reached up to tug at her hair, in a nervous mannerism she had not known she had, and became aware of it when her fingers failed to find hair there. That's it, she thought, let them all know that you've only just shaved your head, they'll be more convinced than ever that you're some kind of double agent. She tried to look like a militant, and realized she did not know how.

  Well, the first step was to stop being timid. She picked out the nearest man with sunglasses on and looked him square in the eye, projecting the message: look elsewhere, fool, you're compromising security. Dancers are actresses who don't use words; he bought it and looked away hastily.

  Russell and Jerome finished their game. "Let's hit the street, my sweet," Jerome said to her, still being Street Nigger. She knew he was speaking for the benefit of their audience, and knew that Russell knew it too—to be plausibly in character, she had to be with Jerome, not with Russell—but she also knew that it got to Russell, and that Jerome had intended it to. They were in Jerome's world now, in which everything they had taken for granted for five years was unthinkable. He took Dena's arm and led them from the arcade, strutting it with dancer's grace.

  "What happens now?" she asked as soon as they were outside.

  "We wait for wheels," Jerome said. "Won't be long."

  "We're going uptown?"

  "That's right."

  She turned to her husband. "Who is it that's trying to—"

  He put his hand back into his windbreaker pocket and spoke to Jerome. "What do you think of the Black Muslims these days?"

  Jerome looked at the pocket. "You wanna take yo' hand out from there, Jim. Brothers behind you got their orders by now."

  She glanced over her shoulder; people were watching them from the door of the arcade, hands in their own pockets.

  "I see them," Russell said. "They'll have been told not to shoot unless we try to go before the car gets here. Answer my question."

  Puzzled by the question, Jerome dropped Street Nigger, spoke in his normal voice for the first time since Russell had come. "Black Muslims? The reconsolidated, post-Farrakhan one true Nation of Islam? Overall they've been good for the community, a positive force. Their theology is as whacky as anybody else's, and they hate a little too hard for my taste. And I can't say I like what happened to Farrakhan's man in the power-grab. But they make themselves clean and strong and pure, they keep their word, they help others, just like Muslims always did. The last fifteen years they've been making a special effort to get along with Christians and other groups. Personally I'm not a big fan of their present leader, Mustapha Khan, but he's only one man. I wouldn't be a Muslim, submission to Allah's will is not my style—but overall they're okay, I guess. Why?"

  "You told Dena a lot about Muslim lore."

  "Sure. I told her about the Maroons, too, and the Rastas and the African National Congress and both kinds of Mau Mau.

  So what?"

  Russell turned to Dena. "This is true? He's not affiliated with the Muslims?"

  "Yes."

  He took his hand back out of his pocket slowly and carefully, empty. "I don't know what you people are planning for tonight. Some kind of guerilla activity, that's clear. Well, the Muslims are planning a doublecross—or at least, Mustapha is. He plans to assassinate Michael tonight."

  Jerome was startled, but recovered quickly. "What's that to you?"

  "When my family and I first got to New York, we were forced to drive through Harlem. Michael saved our lives. I owe him."

  Jerome's eyes widened. "You know what's going down tonight and you want to save Michael's life? You're telling me that your personal gratitude to him outweighs your loyalty to your race?"

  "I have no race!" Russell snapped. "My body does, maybe, but my brain is a member of the human race. It hasn't got many members. I've met Michael and whatever the fuck is going on tonight I know that he too is a member of my race. I will not see him betrayed."

  Dena was suddenly very proud of her husband, and wanted to say so, but just then the car arrived. In the front seat were two men in what she was coming to recognize as an inconspicuous uniform, shaved head and red sunglasses.

  Both men looked professionally inscrutable. The passenger-side man got out and opened the back door for them; he was enormous and heavily muscled. Dena automatically moved forward to get in first, and then a second car pulled up even with the first and came to a stop in the middle of the street. She had time to see that it was full of white-robed and -turbaned Muslims before Jerome hit her from the side and carried her down onto the sidewalk. The big door-opener moved at the same instant, intercepted a hail of machine gun bullets meant for Russell; his shoulder burst and the arm was blown entirely off. His scream coincided with the sound of the shots, curiously light for machine gun fire, and as he dropped, Russell went down too—she could not tell if he had been hit. Suddenly the air was full of thundering gunfire: their driver, people in the arcade doorway, Muslims, all blasting away. The car windows exploded above Dena and showered her with glass; the arcade windows shattered and collapsed; someone called someone a cocksucker and someone else was weeping like a baby. Jerome rolled off her to a prone position and with methodical care and a gun she had not known he possessed he began blowing the tires off the Muslim vehicle. With six shots he got all four, and at once the Muslim car began to move forward noisily, rolling on the rims. All the shooting was from the sidewalk now, and it was all missing the driver, the car was up to thirty kph, it was going to get away, and Russell stood up straight and tall, assumed combat stance, and fired carefully. The rear window starred at the right, the front window exploded outward at the left, and the car slowed to a spasmodic crawl, like a crippled insect. Nothing moved within it.

  The man who had saved Russell was thrashing on the sidewalk, convulsing in silent agony. The whole incident had taken less than ten seconds. Jerome went to the wounded man and examined his ruined shoulder. "You might live," he said. "Bellevue's not far away."

  The man shook his head. "No...I might...start talkin' shit...in Emergency...lotta shade raise there...don't lemme fuck up, brother."

  Jerome nodded heavily, stood and slipped a new clip into his gun. Russell stopped him. "My responsibility," he said.

  To the wounded man he said, "Thank you for my life," and shot the man through the forehead. The force of the shot burst the skull; the corpse's legs spasmed a ghastly few times and were still. "Get in the car, Dena."

  She could not get up. He and Jerome simultaneously moved to help her, then stopped and exchanged a glance. Jerome said, "Yours again," turned away and set about dragging

  the dead driver out of their car and cleaning the seat.

  Russell hoisted Dena to her feet. Trembling violently, she got into the back, making spastic attempts to sweep broken glass from the seat. Russell got in next to her. Jerome slid behind the wheel. The car was still running in Park. After some difficulty getting his door to close, Jerome pulled away from the curb, laying rubber, and roared away past the Muslim vehicle, which was still limping forward with its cargo of corpses, tires flapping wearily.

  "Lucky only the side windows are fucked," he called back over his shoulder. "Roll them down, this car'll look no worse than a thousand other wrecks. Those guys were amateurs, they shot high."

  "We got good covering fire from the arcade," Russell called back.

  Jerome came to a red light and obeyed it. "Car full of blood, two pieces on us, this is no time to get stopped." He glanced back over the seat. "Russell...I don't hate you as much as I did an hour ago."

  "Back when I was working," Russell said conversationally, "people used to ask me where I got my crazy ideas. I always told them, 'Right between the eyes,' and they always thought I was kidding. That's what that poor son of a bitch back there got. A shiny bright idea, right between the eyes. Ten days I've been here in New York. I think things are truly starting to pick up now—" Without warning or transition he was crying, explosively and silently, at the same cyclic rate as the idling engine.

  Jerome didn't seem to hear.

  Dena was recovered enough now to realize that her husband was in shock. She called his name, pulled him to her, and they rocked together while the car pulled away from the light and sped uptown.

  =

  * * *

  =

  Marcus Garvey Park looked different by night. The parking space Jerome found was no more than thirty meters from where Dena and her family had first met Michael. The night was windless and muggy, the trees still. Car and foot traffic were light. Music was playing somewhere—music was always playing somewhere in New York—but it was distant and muffled. Dena felt unseen eyes on her as she got out of the car behind Russell.

  So did he. "You wait here."

  "No way in hell," she said, and slammed the door.

  He gave up, took her hand with his left and followed Jerome across the intersection to the park. When they reached the far side he slowed, allowing the gap between them and Jerome to widen. "We haven't had a chance to talk," he murmured.

  "No." On the way uptown, after Russell had finished shaking, he had told her the story of his walk through Kips Bay Towers. But there had been no time to talk of the quarrel that had sent him walking, and the presence of Jerome had inhibited them both. "Russell—"

  "Dena—"

  There was too much to say, and not enough time. Neither knew where to begin.

  "If this goes sour—" he tried, and Jerome interrupted.

  "Come on," he whispered sharply. "We're targets out here."

  They hurried on into the park. Did Jerome know what he had interrupted? She refined what she needed to say down to a few words, and started to say them, and Jerome and Russell both shushed her at the first syllable.

  So she concentrated on squinting into the darkness for lurking assailants. The park appeared to be deserted, and either there were no lights or they had all been smashed.

  Dena thought of Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, through which she had walked in safety many a night—in which she had met Russell!—and wished mightily that she were there with him now.

  They came to a bench which looked like any other, and Jerome sat. "Now we wait," he said softly. "You understand I've got to have your gun?"

  Russell handed it over carefully. "I don't like it, but I understand. Does Michael live in this park?"

  "No. Michael's a Spotless man."

  "I don't understand."

  "Street talk. Your spot is where you live. Your spot is on East 31st, mine's on the Lower East Side. Everybody has a spot, even if it's just an alley or a piece of sewer pipe. But Michael has no spot. He sleeps in a different place every time. There aren't many black people in this town that'd turn him away—or hispanics or asians either. Aside from sleeping, your spot is where you keep your shit—your belongings —but Michael doesn't own anything." Jerome had apparently abandoned Street Nigger for good. "But he hangs out here regularly. Tuesdays and Thursdays, anybody with a bad need to talk to him knows they can probably find him here. In return, they mostly leave him alone the rest of the week, unless they're really hurting too bad to wait."

  "What do they talk to him about?"

  "Where they hurt and how bad. Usually how it goes is, they come up to him with a problem it takes about a thousand words to tell, and they get out the first sentence or so, and he says five or six words and they go home straightened.

  Once I was thinking seriously about suicide. Too long a story to tell now, and I didn't get to tell it to Michael either.

  As soon as he knew where I was going, he reached out and grabbed me by the damn throat, started strangling me. I fought like crazy and couldn't break his grip; he's strong.

  Then he let go, just before I blacked out. 'You want to die,' he said, 'all you had to do was stand still.'

  "So I figured out that the easiest thing to do was to go put my life back together, and I did that instead."

  "Was that when Michael recruited you?" Russell asked.

  "He didn't. He and I have never exchanged a subversive word."

  "How do you know, for sure, that you're in his army, then?"

  "Because a man I trust told me so, and because Michael has a special way of looking at you if he sees red sunglasses on you."

  Dena suspected that Jerome was being so loquacious to keep her and Russell from having a chance to talk. She decided to wedge her way into the conversation. "I hope he gets here soon."

  And from less than a meter behind her, the deep voice she remembered so well said, "I've been here a while, child."

  They whirled around. He stood behind the bench, both hands lightly gripping the back of it, one of them centimeters from her shoulder. He seemed even taller than she remembered. The man at his right was nearly as tall, and even broader; at his other side was a shorter and slighter man who held himself with military erectness. In the darkness she could tell nothing more about them, but she had the distinct impression that if she did anything that Michael's broader companion did not like, he would crush her skull in his hands.

  Michael addressed Russell. "Did I talk with you about half an hour ago?"

  "I said I was the white Canadian who gave you a lift downtown two weeks ago."

  "And you said you...knew how especially busy I was tonight, but that you had a message that wouldn't wait. Even on the Night of Power."

  "I do."

  "You said it was worth your life to deliver."

  "It is."

  "I'm here."

  "You trust these two men with your life, Michael?"

  "With much more than that, son."

  "I don't know exactly what it is that you are doing tonight.

  But a man named Mustapha Khan is planning to betray you.

  He'll try to kill you tonight."

  Michael's shorter companion visibly flinched and made a small exclamation, but Michael and the broad man did not react physically at all. After a short pause, Michael asked, "How do I know what you say is true?"

  "You don't. I don't. All I know is that a man named Willie Ray Brown died telling me it was. I found him dying. If the light were better here you could see his blood on my clothes."

  The shorter man made a sound in his throat. Although Dena could not make out any of their faces in the dark, she knew from the sound of Michael's voice that his face held that same deep sorrow she recalled so clearly. "Willie Ray is down. That's bad. He was a good man."

  The shorter man spoke for the first time. "Why would Captain Brown give his message to you? Even if he was dying, you're white."

  "He thought I was one of you. He saw Michael ride downtown in my car a few weeks ago. He gave me his sunglasses, and enough hint to figure out how to use them."

  The questioner pounded himself on the hip with clenched fist. "Damn. Michael, I think he's telling the truth."

  Michael glanced at his other companion before he spoke.

  "He is, Tom."

  "That treacherous bastard—" Tom began savagely.

  "Now, Tom, we knew he was a treacherous bastard from the jump. We just mistook him for a smart one."

  "Maybe he's not smart, but the son of a whore is cunning. I never had a sniff of this, I wasn't expecting it for at least two or three days yet."

  Jerome spoke up. "Michael? I am Private Jerome Turner.

  My cell leader is William Latimer. Our objective is the 59th Street Bridge, but I'm not essential to the operation.

  Kind of a utility infielder. I'd be honoured to kill Mustapha Khan for you."

  "Thank you, son, but he's my personal responsibility. My bad judgement has already killed Willie Ray. I'll fix it."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Michael, no," Tom protested. "Motormouth and I can—"

  "—see that I'm not interrupted," Michael finished. "We're getting ahead of ourselves." He turned back to Russell. "I don't know your name, son."

  "Russell Grant. This is Dena St. Claire."

  To Dena's surprise, Michael bowed to her and said, "I'm sorry I won't get to see you dance, Dena."

  "So am I," was the only reply she could manage.

  "Russell, Dena, I am very sorry, but I cannot let you go home now."

  "For how long?" Dena asked at once. "Our daughter is going to be getting home from a concert any time now, and—"

  "There's someone with her?"

  "A very good bodyguard," Russell said.

  "Does he really care about her?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm glad to hear it. I won't be able to let you go for a week or more. And it might be a day or two before I can spare a car and manpower to have your daughter picked up. I'm sorry, I know it's poor reward for warning me, but that's the way it is."

  The broad silent man had moved nothing but his head since his arrival, but all at once he swiveled to their right and half-crouched. A few moments later the rest of them heard approaching footsteps. By that time the broad man had relaxed. A shape loomed up in the darkness, and a voice said softly, "The objective has been secured, General.

  Ready for you and Michael any time."

  There was immense satisfaction—or was it relief?—in the voice of the man Michael called Tom. "Excellent, Lieutenant! We'll be right along. Any uproar?"

  "No sir. They took it quick and quiet—we're the only people outside the building who know." He went away.

  Slowly, Michael nodded. "So it begins," he said softly.

  "After all the—"

  "Michael!"

  "Eh? Yes, Russell?"

  "I'm very sorry, but you have not thought this thing through."

  The broad man did not react, but the general stiffened in anger. Michael put a hand on his arm. "What did I miss?"

  he asked Russell.

  "Have I repaid you tonight for saving our lives?"

  "That you have. With interest you cannot imagine."

  "Then hear me. I don't know where you plan to take Dena and me, or how long you will keep us there. But I am not going to leave my daughter Jennifer with a hired gun, even a good one, on this night of nights. Sometime between now and dawn I will either escape you or die trying. Probably the latter. Now wouldn't that be a hell of an omen for the Night of Power?"

  "It surely would," Michael said thoughtfully.

  "No way," Tom snapped. "Michael, I'll buck you on this if I have to—I'm grateful to the man too, but he stays on ice—

  "Please, Tom," Michael said softly, and the general shut up. "Russell, have you a suggestion I can live with? Tom is right, you can't go free."

  "I think I have. Jerome just said he was not essential to his operation. Send him to bring Jennifer and her bodyguard to us."

  Dena flinched. "Would you—"

  "—trust Jerome? I trust him to obey Michael, and I trust him not to make you sad."

  Jerome said nothing.

  Dena knew somehow that Michael was sensing and interpreting the undercurrents here, weighing and measuring, and a part of her marveled at how much attention he was sparing to what must be a very trivial situation at this moment in history. "Jerome, are you willing to do this thing for Russell and Dena?"

  Jerome only hesitated for a second. "If it's what you want, Michael."

  "Thank you, son. Bring the child and her guard to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, main entrance. You'll receive further instructions there."

  "Yes, sir." He turned to Russell. "What's the bodyguard's name?"

  "José Johnson. He's tough and smart and suspicious and more dangerous than he looks. How you convince him you really come from us is, you tell him three things. You tell him the Smith & Wesson was in the top drawer, and you tell him that Shaw has a nose full of Epsom salts and you tell him that I said you're a black person and not a nigger."

  Dena was horrified by the last clause, but all Jerome said was, "What's the difference?"

  "We talked about it once. José is half black himself. A nigger, by his lights, is someone who would hate Jennifer because her mother is black."

  Jerome was slow in answering. "I take your point," he said at last. "I don't hate her."

  Was there extra emphasis on the last word?

  "If I thought there was the slightest chance you did," Russell told him, "I'd leave her with José and hope for the best. But I want José to know that—so tell him what I said."

  Jerome repeated back all three clauses, and got up from the bench. He stood directly in front of Dena. "I'll bring your little girl safely to you," he said to her, and strode away into the night.

  "Please come with us now," Michael said.