Black Buck(76)

“Got it,” I said. I jumped up, grabbed his coat, and threw it at him.

The solution I found was so good, I couldn’t contain my smile. “Put it on.”

“Okay. Thanks for trying anyway, Darren. I appreciate it. I’ll see you around.” He slipped his coat on and grabbed his bag.

“What? No. I have an idea, a way for this all to get through your thick skull. But it’s going to be uncomfortable. You down?”

“Anything.”

“Good. So I want you to go to every deli from here to First Street. And you’re going to try to sell them a magazine subscription.”

“You own a magazine? I didn’t know.”

“No, you moron. That’s the point. You’re going to sell them a subscription to a magazine that doesn’t exist. The goal is to get as many of them as possible to give you money for a year’s worth of magazines.”

His crooked smile quickly disappeared. “I don’t know about that, Darren. It seems illegal. And, like, fraud.”

“Let me worry about that,” I said, pushing him toward the elevator. “We can return the money tomorrow if you want. The point is for you to get comfortable selling something, and there’s no better way to do that than trying to convince a stranger to buy something they’ve never heard of, especially face-to-face late on a cold night.”

“What do I even say the name of the magazine is?”

“Hmm, good question. Let’s call it”—I paused—“let’s call it Blackface.”

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, you know,” I said, massaging his shoulders. “Same as most magazines. White cooks appropriating Black dishes, white musicians appropriating Black music, white designers appropriating Black fashion, et cetera, et cetera. Use your imagination. And don’t take no for an answer. That’s an order from Sensei Buck.”

“Sensei Buck, I don’t know if—”

“GO!” I shouted, pressing the elevator button and smiling as he descended into the frigid depths of New York City.

An hour went by, and I figured he must’ve been doing pretty well, probably chopping it up with deli owners and taking their money, playing them for the chumps they were. Then another hour passed, and I shot him a text. All G?

No response. I started to worry, which reminded me of all the times Ma would text me after my phone would die, and I’d find her in the kitchen, up late, waiting to make sure I made it home okay. “Darren Vender,” she’d say. “Haven’ you ever heard of a charger?” I swallowed hard and pushed the memory out of my mind.

Another thirty minutes passed until I heard the buzzer. “Who is it?”

“Me.” He sounded exhausted.

When the elevator opened, Brian stumbled out with a bloody lip and a pair of eyelids that looked like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.

“What the fuck happened to you?” I asked, helping him to the living room. “You better not get any blood on my couch.”

He took his shoes off and leaned his head far back on a pillow. “Got a steak?”

“A steak? What do I look like?” I walked over to the fridge only to find a freezer full of pork-free pork.

“Thanks,” he said, resting a piece on his swollen eye.

“Now tell me what happened.”

“Well, I did what you said. I started off at one deli, on Fourteenth, and the owner didn’t speak too much English. He kept thinking I was asking for a black iPhone case, so I left. Then, at the next one, this Hispanic guy seemed curious, but a fight broke out with two customers and he took a knife out, so I ran. I thought about going back, but he seemed on edge. At the third, there was an Indian woman who kept saying, ‘Blackface? What is this blackface? I have brown face! When you have magazine called Brownface, I buy. Get out.’

“I kept on walking, grabbed a slice of pizza because I got hungry, then stopped at a deli on Fifth. There was a Black guy behind the register, so I figured this was the one. When I told him about the magazine, and what was inside, he looked at me like I was crazy and told me to leave. But, like you told me, I wasn’t going to take no for an answer, so I kept telling him I wasn’t leaving until he bought a year’s subscription. After that, he leaned over the counter and punched me in the eye. Then, when I was down on the ground, he punched me again in the lip and said if I don’t get my Uncle Tom ass up out of his deli, he’d lynch me.”

The frozen fake pork thawed in his hand, dripping water.

“So,” I said slowly, covering my face. “You’re telling me you didn’t sell one fucking subscription all night? And all you have to show for it is a black eye? Jesus, Brian. Did you learn anything tonight? Fucking anything at all?”

He sat up, smiling, dried blood turning a crusty maroon around his bulging mouth like a lip injection gone wrong. “I think . . . I think I learned that no one will be able to punch me through a phone, so selling that way will be a lot easier than this.”

I picked my head up and stared at him. He was right, and he had managed to learn a sales lesson after all. I put my feet up on the white oak coffee table and nodded. “Exactly, Grasshopper. I wasn’t sure if you’d get it, but you did. Now get the fuck out and be here tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. sharp.”