CONSCIOUS KNOWLEDGE

(A Story of Artifice)

For CB and AH

“Yo, Base-in-your-face. Open the door, nigga. I got Moet’ and liquor.”

My cousin. No more odious, perfidious man ever walked the planet. To the world, he’s MC Flow Jizzton, a rapper known to champion the logical absurdity he calls “conscious knowledge.” To me, he’s just Francis Shuttlecock. I had no desire to see him, but Suze wanted a reason to throw a party, a way to get on the good side of everyone here at the Inkwell, the black summer community of Martha’s Vineyard, and she insisted that my cousin was a better reason than most. The summer previous, Suze had been unofficially blacklisted because she’s white, but she’s not one to be spurned so easily. She wanted people to see beyond her color, to no longer be viewed as the racial arriviste of our small, tightly knit world. She wanted the impossible. Suze knew she could get it, though—especially from “People Like Us” if she threw a party with a minor celebrity in attendance, someone whose ties to the Inkwell were long and deep. Thus, the cousin at my door.

Before he became such a ridiculous caricature of young black masculinity, with his self-righteous posturing and macho rage, Francis was People Like Us. Although he’d never admit it, Francis still is People Like Us. He’ll say and do anything to preserve a xenophobic social order that seems egalitarian, yet maintains his special place in it. I warned Suze, I insisted that inviting Francis was a bad idea, but she wore me down and eventually got me to cave. Suze wanted Flow Jizzton, and Suze always finds a way to get what she wants.

I got his number from my aunt Evelyn, his mother, and called Francis up, inquiring if he’d like a party celebrating his recent, albeit minor, success. He refused, quickly getting off the line. Less than a quarter-hour later he called me back to agree, stating that it would probably be good for us to talk “man to man.” I had nothing to say to him. The last time we had seen each other we ended up in a fistfight, and so as soon as I heard his ridiculous “shout-outs” on my doorstep, I went into the kitchen and waited.

I heard Suze greeting him, asking him about his ride on the ferry and how long he planned to stay. I also heard another woman’s voice, one I didn’t recognize. I remained in the kitchen. I was more comfortable arranging food on trays than I was at the thought of seeing Francis again. Francis often makes jokes at my expense, and all his life he’s tried to turn people against me. I wanted Suze to learn that it makes no sense to open your home to someone like him. The party was her idea, and her having to speak to “Flow’ and whomever he had dragged along seemed a just reward.

I gathered my patience and left the kitchen to find that he looked, well, almost decent. Francis always did have a way with appearances. I’d seen pictures of the immature clothes he wears to prove that he’s down with the street, but for this party he was groomed, dressed in an “I’m-wearing-my-best-clothes-for-dressing-down-so-I’ll-look-dressed-up” sort of way.

“Yo Base, whaddup?”

“Sorry about that. I had to check on a few things in the oven before they burned.”

“What? Damn nigga, you playin with fire right here. Best come show me some love. Long time no contact, na’m sayin?”

He embraced me in the kind of modified bear hug/backslap that black men often use when they greet. Given how we last parted, I wasn’t sure if even this gesture was meant to offend. “Well—well what should I call you, Francis or Flow? I’m not sure.”

“Yo, don’t play me like that. We family. Call me Flow. And this,” he said, stepping aside, “is my escort for the night.”

“Flow,” she chided, punching him on the shoulder, “quit playin.” She turned to give a sheepish look of appeal first to Suze, then to me. I could see why my cousin called her an escort. She was a bit short, but proportioned like some oversexed boy’s hormonal fantasy, all breasts and hips and lips and ass. Francis has an IQ of 158. He could have done anything with his life, and here he was, appearing on my doorstep with someone who was either a “video ho,” or at the very least, looked like one. “Don’t be payin him no attention, cause I’m his girlfriend Lalondra. I um, I done heard a lot about you.”

Her clothes were absolutely gaudy, tacky. That and the way she carried herself let me know she was excited about what was no doubt her first visit to the Vineyard. She avoided my extended hand and instead hugged me, squashing her bosom against my chest. She smelled of baby powder and a perfume I guessed was probably Jean Nate.

“La-la-la” I’d forgotten her name already, but I knew her type. Had I grown up differently, or had I been less discerning, I might have found her attractive. Maybe.

“Oh, it’s Lalondra. And um, I know this might sound crazy, right? But all I wanna say is I know all about what you be doing with them kids and stuff, you know? And I just wanna like, thank you um, personally.”

“Aw, come on now peoples, it ain’t even like that.” Francis interjected, punctuating his speech with maniacal hand gestures. “You ain’t gotta thank him for shit, now do she Basil? That nigga’s just like me, a baller with a conscience,” he chortled. “Na’m sayin? Na meen?”

“What?” I had no clue why Francis kept referencing Vietnam in his speech, but neither did I care. Calls for a sort of third-world solidarity were tedious, especially coming from him. Francis had blown through a trust the size of Connecticut to establish his career as a rapper. And from what had been rumored, paid out hush money and child support to women across the Northeast. My cousin the genius. I couldn’t believe how much Suze admired him. Despite my repeated warnings about his true character, Suze still believes that Francis is a role model the poor can look up to, that he gives hope to the less fortunate. In her attempts to win me over, she even pointed out that Francis’ rapping name was actually a clever bastardization of phlogiston: an archaic, imaginary substance people once believed responsible for making things burn.

Suze had taken him aside and was already probing him with niceties, softening him up so that he’d impart the secrets of conscious knowledge to her later on, preferably in the spare bedroom. “Burn” indeed; the thought made me laugh. “Would anyone like a drink? Latissa?”

“Lalondra.”

“Lalondra, would you care for one?”

“Yeah, but we done brought some Alize. You want some? If it’s too strong for you we can add some cranberry juice. We got that too, it ain’t frozen or nothin.”

“Perhaps later.” Meaning no, but I had to be polite. I always am polite, but I needed to prove it. I kept reminding myself that this party was for Suze. If I make Suze happy, I thought, it will make me happy. I headed to the bar and poured myself a double Macallan’s on the rocks, liquid courage to last me the night. I was ready to drown myself in an ocean of alcohol if it meant surviving the horror of watching Francis disgrace the family name yet again.

“Suze?” She didn’t hear me. She’d already reached her confessional stage with Francis; soon she’d try to disarm him completely. She was recounting her teenage trips to Africa on safari and how it changed her, what she discovered there. Suddenly I felt tempted to shout out her real age. “Suze honey, you want a drink?”

“Oh, something in a highball, love,” she chirped. She began working in hints about her social background, too. How although she was well acquainted with the world of easy wealth—dressing for dinner and lessons on horseback and summers spent abroad—in truth, she cared deeply for the struggling masses.

She really does care, but it’s all too easy to understand why. Suze’s father holds a sizeable interest in two prized conglomerates; she would hold a Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy if she ever decided to finish her dissertation. She says academia bores her. She now tells people she only went to grad school at Harvard because she likes to read. Suzanne Elena van Anders: she’s really special in that way. What’s worse than her privilege is that she’s so honestly demure when talking about it, as if her money has had no bearing on who she is and what she’s been able to accomplish; as if, because of her money, she’s able to empathize more emphatically than anyone else. Suze: she’s really special in that way.

And there they both were, Suze and Francis, chatting each other up and attempting to win over the other by detailing their mutual love for the common man. How easy it would have been for me to make her a gin and tonic, and skip the tonic completely. Instead I waved Lalondra over to come and help me bring drinks from the bar. I felt bad for the poor girl, and wanted to somehow make her feel not so out of place.

“So, how long have you known Francis? Sorry, I should say MC Flow…”

“Him? We been together like a year and change, but I knew him from around the way already. See, I used to do nail tech for a livin, and all day long we always be, you know, just pumpin music and listenin to beats, right? So then, I had started thinkin bout rappin—cause you know Eve and Missy got it on lock—and I said let me just get like them, except let me go on the producer side, cause that’s where the money at, right? So like um, you know, after work I would go to the club—but it ain’t like I was a hoochie or nothin, I was just hangin, workin on my skills, you know—and I seent Flow perform once or twice. So then, um, one day we got to talkin backstage, right? And I like, gave him some beats I had done made. It had my phone number on it, but I ain’t expect him to call me. If he did, I expectet him to be on some kind of blase bipiddy, na’m sayin? But naw, he called me and said he really likeded my stuff, and so, you know, he put me on. And you know, one thing led to another, but I guess you could say like I been knowing him for a long time. For real.”

I smiled. “That’s very nice. And so very nice of him too, don’t you think?” I really didn’t know what to say, but I’m always polite. “Do you want to know what he was like as a little boy?”

“Yo, nigga, quench that shit. I got ears and shit, homey. You start telling tales, I might tell me some things too.” Francis raced over and thrust himself in front of his date. “Don’t you be talking no bullshit about me behind my back.”

“I wasn’t.” I had no intention of telling her bullshit. I was simply going to mention how young Francis had turned down full academic scholarships to Exeter and Andover because he was struck with fear at the thought of leaving home. I might have mentioned how from age ten onwards Francis would come out and summer with us. How he often literally begged me to play Dungeons and Dragons with him, and loved to fill me in on all the Dr. Who episodes I neglected to watch. “I was about to tell her how you were a holy terror, a ravager, a menace.”

And he was a menace. This Flow Jizzton, who never attended his Freshman courses at Columbia, and instead used a false social security number to enroll in some backwater community college; who painstakingly crafted an identity ripped whole cloth from the films of Jean-Paul Belmondo; the rapper whose popular regional hit consisted of him rhyming in the rhythm of a Chopin etude over a hip hop drumbeat. Francis may be considered a rising star in the rap world, someone on the verge of national attention, but Flow Jizzton annoys me. Flow Jizzton is a fiction and a sham, but even those who know of Francis’ past refuse to acknowledge it. People are so invested in his living a lie that it helped to put my father in the grave, and so troubles Evelyn that she all but lives in seclusion, afraid someone might hold the mother responsible for the antics of her son.

“You trippin, Base. You always be trippin.”

“Will you stop calling me that, Francis? You know my name, speak it correctly. It’s Basil: like ‘dazzle’ with a ‘B’.”

“A’ight then, Dazz-leb. It’s like I said. You trippin and the party ain’t even started yet. You invite me up here and now you act like you don’t even wanna be around nobody. Whassup with that? You down with the conscious knowledge or what?”

Conscious knowledge. Suze had explained Francis’ half-baked street philosophy to me once, and even tried to explicate its subtleties. Just hearing the basics was enough to make me gag. Apparently, conscious knowledge has rules, or as Flow Jizzton raps about, “tenets in the building of life.” According to Francis, possessing conscious knowledge means that one should always strive to do the following: “get paid,” “get more paid,” “make sure other people pay you,” and “then pay back what you owe,” respectively. My favorite of all his philosophical gems, however, is the “rule zero” of conscious knowledge: “recognize.” I recognize, all right. My cousin is a buffoon.

********

More guests arrived than I would have liked or expected. I prefer more intimate, less raucous affairs, but I did my best to make everyone feel welcome. Throughout it all, while I struggled to greet those who until recently had stopped associating with me, Suze orbited Francis like a planet to the sun. I don’t think she was consciously trying to flatter him, not as much as I could tell they enjoyed each other’s company. I began to worry they’d start to finish each other’s sentences.

But that’s not the half of it. When the room was crowded enough, after glasses had been drained and filled again, Suze made a surprise announcement. True to WASP form, she did it by tapping a piece of cutlery on the edge of a glass. She said she was proud to present a “masterpiece-in-progress,’ a demo track from my cousin’s upcoming CD.

Of course Francis moved next to Suze, leaving Lalondra alone in the corner by my stereo. Poor girl, he’d been leaving her to fend for herself all night.

He waited until all eyes were on him before he spoke. “Yeah, first off, I’d like to thank the lovely Miss Lalondra for all the work she did on this track, na’m sayin’?'” He didn’t even gesture in her direction. “And I’d also like to thank y’all, too, cause y’all my people, my real peoples, na meen?” He received enormous affirmation from everyone, save me. “But yo, y’all gotta recognize conscious knowledge flows through everyone. Recognize the knowledge we was all slaves to the white man once. Recognize he still think we his slaves today—no offense, Suze.”

“None taken, Flow. I didn’t choose to be white; sadly, I was born that way.” I knew Suze didn’t mean a word of what she said. She thinks Francis is politically progressive, and Suze always voices support of progressive views.

“Cool. See? See that’s conscious knowledge y’all, and I’m bout to drop some more conscious knowledge on you.” He looked to Lalondra and pointed. “Check this out.”

I was subjected to a barrage of hyperactive drumbeats and electronic sound. As soon as I heard his opening lines, something about Frantz Fanon crying in his grave, followed by the inevitable reference to slavery, I tuned out. Slavery, as in the plantation slavery of the South, is something no Shuttlecock has ever experienced. The Shuttlecock line goes back to 1804, when a black whaler and a recently manumitted servant joined in holy union. Since then, there’s always been a Shuttlecock on the Vineyard; it’s where we’re from.

After that insipid song had ended, Suze pulled Tina Holland aside and, judging from Tina’s smile and nods of agreement, had her completely engaged, thoroughly swayed. It was Tina who initially led the charge against Suze’s presence in this part of the Vineyard, but since that night, Suze has cemented a reputation as a terrific person, a fantastic host. More importantly, Tina now describes Suze as the person able to bring our most prodigal cases back into the fold. Suze is now honorary People Like Us, welcome in every home in the Inkwell.

But that’s the thing. Sometimes the games just get to be a bit too much. Sometimes we love the thought of who we are more than we love ourselves. People Like Us like too much to pretend, and in a room full of pretenders we had the biggest pretender of all. Everyone there praised Francis’ music. Some even thanked him for sharing it. My cousin, who thinks it’s impossible to live a lie if you somehow convince everyone else to live it along with you. “Conscious knowledge,” my ass; I had to leave.

********

“Yo, there you is, Base. What you on, playa?”

I should have known Francis would come looking for me. Only he and Suze know to walk the wraparound deck to the corner nearest the beach, where I occasionally go to be by myself and listen to the waves. To his credit, he had on a jacket—which was good, because the nights sometimes turn when the breeze comes off the ocean. Even mid-summer, there’s always the chance of fog.

“Hold this.”

He gave me a cigar, not knowing that I quit my feeble attempts at smoking over two years ago, when my father had had his second-to-last heart attack. At the time, Suze had so desperately wanted to quit that she suggested we both stop. I agreed, although I never smoked much. We made a pact, but I still catch her sneaking cigarettes nearly every day. I occasionally have a cigar, but it’s rare when I do. Suze hates the way they smell.

I took his paltry bribe. “What do you want, Francis?”

“Walk to the beach with me. I gotta ask you something.” He was easy and loose, drunk enough to feel comfortable about coming out to find me. The night of my father’s wake, Francis told me how he hadn’t been to Columbia in over a year, and instead had spent the money Evelyn had been sending him to, as he put it, “earn cred.” Once I understood what he was doing, of course we ended up fighting. How could we not?

“I don’t want to fight with you again, Francis, if that’s what you want.” Suze was conducting the party with the ease of an aristocrat, more than successfully holding her own among our fair-weather guests. I was tired of being nice to people who cared little for me, and thought that getting out among the saltwater spray would do me good. It always does.

“Naw, we ain’t finna fight.”

I went with him to the beach. The nearest illumination came from the house and a brilliant sliver of moon. Francis sat down in the sand and I sat beside him, watching him fumble with something in his lap. I paid no mind. I was lost in the peaty haze of my own thoughts, my own worries. We both said nothing for a while.

“Yo, do the cops still patrol down here at night? I wanna ask you something about my moms. Yeah, I wanna ask you something about Evelyn—and I wanna smoke.”

“You forget the police only come when they’re called. Smoke what you’d like.”

He lit up, sucking in his drugs before passing them on to me. Naturally, I declined. “Francis, what is it that you want? Or is your trying to get me high some kind of way to again make me look bad?”

He blew out smoke and chuckled. “You funny, Basil. You still ain’t changed. You know, when I was a kid I wanted to be like you so damn bad, na’m sayin? But I’m a grown man now, and yeah, I needed my ass kicked that one time. I probably shoulda went to Columbia, even Lalondra told me that.”

The fresh air helped. “You were saying something about Aunt Evelyn?”

Fresh air always helps. Despite the fact that Evelyn is my aunt only by marriage, she’s still all Shuttlecock. She owns half the slums in Baltimore, and is deeply invested in commercial real estate throughout the mid-Atlantic. When he first started out, Flow Jizzton was able to burnish his lies of a hardscrabble life by insisting the stories of tenant horror his mother knew—told to her by the managers of her property, of course—were his own.

“Evelyn, yeah. You know, Lalondra, man, she really feels you, playa. Bitch digs your shit, na meen?”

Fresh air helps me to clear my head and avoid manipulative bullshit. “I have a very serious girlfriend, Francis, you know that. And I didn’t ask you to bring up a woman for me, if that’s what this is about.”

“Naw, nigga,” he said, a little annoyed. “Just cool one, na’m sayin? Her niece is in your program.”

Fresh air blows the stink of every lie away. “What’s her name?”

“Shaunice Hicks.”

“Shaunice.” At least he’d done his research. Shaunice was a model student; one of the teens who prove the Foundation really works. I’ve been called everything from a misguided liberal to a conservative Uncle Tom for starting a foundation that takes inner-city kids and pays for them to attend top boarding schools. Girls like Shaunice have helped me to secure more funding than anything short of a mention on Oprah. She’ll be in her last year at Choate this fall, and Stanford, Princeton, and my own alma mater, Harvard, are already jockeying after her. Still, we honestly didn’t have to do much for Shaunice, save remove her from her environment and train her to be articulate. Shaunice would succeed. Once kids like her are taught that they can, they always do. And then, who knows? With the right career choice and a smart marriage, one day her grandchildren might even be able to take on the mantle of People Like Us: the talented tenth; the scions of the race. “You know Shaunice Hicks? You?”

“Chill, nig. I’m just telling you cause Lalondra probably won’t, na’m sayin? She private like that, but her sister want her to make sure her four other kids go.”

“Is that what this is about? Francis, of course they can be beneficiaries of the Foundation. That’s my job. That’s what I do.”

“Naw man, chill. I ain’t worried about that shit. If they go, they go, na meen? They smart enough already, and besides, them kids ain’t none of my goddamned babies, so fuck ’em, na’m sayin? But shit, Lalondra, man.”

“Well if you have a school in mind, then just tell me. Northfield Mount Hermon will take almost anyone I send. Still, I should warn you that just because one person in a family does well—”

“Basil? Yo, just listen to me—”

“—it doesn’t mean automatic acceptance into the Foundation. I have an executive board to answer to, after all, and,” I thought for a moment. “I know, why don’t you have Shaunice write a letter to me mentioning—”

“Damn nigga, is you drunk? I’m trying to tell you I might hafta marry Lalondra. I mean, if I put my shit with her on lock then my career is gonna blow the fuck up, for real. She got connects like you wouldn’t believe, not like them other bitches. And all I’d hafta do is spend some time with her for like, another two-three years before I’m solid, right? But yo, she ain’t gone just give me something for nothing, na meen? She told me straight up she expecting me to pop the question real soon. Otherwise—”

“—the names of her siblings and then I’ll—You what? What did you say? Francis—Francis what’s the matter with you?”

“Who is you now, my mama?”

“Oh, cut the crap and speak English to me Francis. Just because you’re into the hip-hop homeboy stuff doesn’t mean you can’t speak properly. This isn’t the time for all that coonery, this is serious.”

“What, every serious nigga’s supposed to speak German? Come on Basil, man, I’m asking you a favor. And if you want me to be all proper about it, then I’ll be proper: Ich frage um einen Gefallen bitten. Look, just do me this favor and butter up Evelyn'”mir zu Gefallen‘”a’ight? Come on Basil, you gotta convince my moms to be down with this. She likes you. Lalondra likes you. And Lalondra still thinks I got me some serious funds, na meen?”

I was silent for a moment, dumbfounded. I never got past the basic reading stage of German, despite studying it for well over a year in school.

“What, that ain’t good enough? Then how bout this then: ‘Oh cousin Basil,'” he began, in a mock Victorian accent, “would please you be so kind? I’d be ever so happy if you could get my dear mum to approve of a marriage to someone of lesser birth. Why, we’d be no bother, to either you or anyone else a-tall. And here now, just think, we’d go so far as to reside quite some ways away; in Hill’s End, the small cottage by the woods, where you’d always be welcome to come ’round for tea.”

“This is why we don’t get along, Flow. You’re smart, but you’re also a smart-ass. And why do you want to get married to her? Francis, she’s—”

“Don’t say it.” He took a heavy drag of his spliff. The waves sounded a gentle roil in the distance, and he dropped his hyper-inflected language of thuggery. “I know what you’re thinking and I thought about it as well. So please, don’t say it.”

The wind picked up slightly. He knew how I’d respond; it was true. Out on the beach, the light from the house outlining his figure, Francis looked so small. We weren’t so far apart in age, but he was so much more immature.

I had to say it. It had to be said, no matter how he felt. “Francis, you know how Evelyn will react. That girl is just not like us.” I tried to appeal to reason, to the innate sense of right and wrong I knew he still had deep inside him. “Francis—“

A thick cloud passed overhead, obscuring the moon. I imagined the contortions of his face, the attempt to physically hide his recognition that I was right. He agreed to accept Suze’s invitation to come up because more than likely he had wanted me to say what shouldn’t be said, to voice what he didn’t want to admit, not even to himself, about himself. No matter how hard he tried to hide or run from it, Francis was a Shuttlecock, and some things about us are just too strong to be changed or discarded on a whim. Francis Arthur Shuttlecock, son of Arthur Lucius and Evelyn Adelle Shuttlecock, wanted me to talk him out of marriage to someone from the ghetto.

“Francis, think of the family. Think of all the struggles we’ve had to endure and overcome, just to—”

“You’re full of shit. You’re as full of shit as the rest of the people up here. ‘She’s not like us.’ Fuckin’ bitch-ass nigga, why do you think I changed my name? I see right through you, Basil. You put kids through school just so you can sleep at night. You do it to feel superior, that’s why you do everything. ‘Think of the family.’ What about you? What about your living up here with a white girl, huh? What the fuck you think family got to say about that?”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t the one who had anything to be ashamed of. I wasn’t the one thinking of marriage as a way to further my “career.” I might have humored Suze and her parents once or twice, but the subject of marriage hadn’t seriously come up. The fact is, Suze’s parents were much too enamored of me, to the point where her mom had once threatened to rip the Norplant out of Suze’s arm because she wanted us to have children immediately. Patricia still waxes dreamily about the babies Suze and I would have together, and there’s nothing more disconcerting than a grown woman describing her wishes for little “almond joys’ at the dinner table. Besides, my mother would never approve. If I married Suze, Mother would probably stop speaking to me.

“Suze—Truth is, if Suze were poor I wouldn’t deign to talk to her. ‘Suze and I,’ what makes you think that all I care about is Suze’s money or her color? No, what I cared about was how much Mother disliked Suze. Mother, as if she didn’t apply the paper bag test to any girl I brought home, as if she didn’t lust after acceptance into borderline-racist high society. Mother hated the van Anders because they represented perfectly what she aspired to be. People Like Us don’t like it when our secret desires are reflected back to us in so blatant a fashion. I’ve lost track of how many Shuttlecock relations and acquaintances have spent fortunes on speech classes, social clubs, and loveless marriages designed to ‘lighten things up.’ Luckily, I’m different. I know I am. I have to be. ‘Francis, Suze is in love with me but I’m not in love with her. I date her because—”

“You’re lying. Basil, you’re a sack of lying, drippy shit. I hope you choke on your own vomit, you wannabe superior, snooty-ass bitch.”

“And you’re a bastard, Francis. You play superior games, too. You’re nothing but a socially manipulative narcissist. Why do you think you’re so in love with play-acting as a rapper?”

I’ve been kicked before, on accident and on purpose. It’s always worse when you don’t see it coming. When you’re kicked on a beach at night, you don’t see the sand. You only feel it as it hits your mouth and eyes. What could I do but turn on my back and let him beat on me for a while?

The odd thing, though, was that for all of his street posturing and, well, his rapacious braggadocio, Francis still couldn’t fight. I’m no champion boxer, but Francis punched like a kid, muttering obscenities and grunting, swearing epithets against the family and everything we supposedly stood for. I didn’t blame him, but it was almost too easy to trip him and proceed to hold him down.

“Let’s not start,” I warned. I felt nothing, watching him struggle. He moved like a fish at the bottom of a rowboat, wild and frenetic until it slowly quits its motions and resigns itself to death. “Do you love that girl? If you really love her Francis, then you wouldn’t care about Evelyn’s permission, or her money. You’ve got money of your own now, so spend it.”

I was upset, but I still knew the difference between right and wrong. The teat of the Shuttlecock fortune was something we both liked to suck on, and almost all rappers live beyond their means. MC Flow was no exception. In that moment, holding him down, him squirming beneath me, I knew what he wanted me to do. And I knew I’d do it, too, because it had to be done. The fight was just pretext, Francis’ way of baiting me with extra incentive. Francis wanted me to break up his relationship. Everything else he’d said and done was just an elaborate game, a complex way to make his preferred outcome seem an acceptable solution to all. Because I dated Suze, half the Inkwell already considered me arrogant and obnoxious, so really, what choice did I have? Once he stopped struggling, I walked away. He could find his own way back.

********

I returned to the house to find who else but Lalondra, leaning out over the railing of the deck with a drink in her hands, looking for Francis in the wrong direction.

“You seen Flow?” She was obviously tipsy, holding her glass at a dangerous angle and swaying slightly.

“You seen Suze?” I paid no attention to her furrowed brow. I wasn’t in the mood to make nice. I could be polite, yes, but nice was out of the question.

“Dang, you know? Okay, why he always be havin to all the time just up and run off on somethin without me, you know? You feel me? Like he all that.”

I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but I knew what she meant. The thought suddenly crossed my mind to ruin everything. To go inside and walk over to Suze and Tina Holland, and casually ask Tina how she now felt about white women with black men. But Suze had worked hard to be liked. If I wrecked her moment of triumph, she’d never forgive me. I knew it was better to keep Lalondra company, so I reached out. “There, do you see that? That’s him, he’s smoking pot.”

She smiled an innocent, pretty smile, without implied knowledge or accusation. “And you was down there with him.” She grabbed and turned me around, brushing sand from my back. “Listen, I um, I’mma be real with you. I don’t think it’s good that you be smoking.”

I must have reeked of Francis’s pot and cheap cigar. Because of it I almost began to tell her about the innumerable capitulations that define being in a successful relationship, only I realized Lalondra hadn’t meant what I’d thought. She didn’t know about Suze’s aversion to cigars.

“But um, it’s okay, cause you know what?” She turned me around to inspect her work. “I done made up my mind bout you already. You a good person. Just don’t let them drugs mess up who you is, okay? You a role model. You gotta think about them kids and the work you be doing and stuff.”

She made a point not to place her hands too low. Were the circumstances somehow any different, I might have applauded Francis for his choice. I’ve never used drugs, but Lalondra was right about one thing: I am a good person. I’m nice. Yet there are things more important in the world than being nice. I had to be loyal, to both my blood and my background. I’m always loyal, especially to my family, but now I had to prove it.

“Come on, I want to show you something you might like.” I walked her down the steps, gently guiding her shoulder so that she wouldn’t fall. “And thanks, Lalondra. Thank you.’ We went under the deck to a space about eight feet in height where the ambient light from the house wouldn’t obscure the view. Where we could still see by the light of the moon. “There, isn’t this much better? You could watch him all night and he’d never know.’

We shared a comfortable silence, both of us looking out at the stars, the sea. I didn’t want to break the moment, but I had to. “I know you’re related to Shaunice Hicks’¦’

She gasped, exclaiming in a throaty, unburdened way, as if the knowledge was enough to somehow connect us together and estrange everyone else. I knew she was about to offer an explanation, but I refused to let her continue. It was better if she didn’t talk. “Sit down, Lalondra. Sit down.’

I told her exactly how the Foundation works and what I did there. I told her things I shouldn’t have and might one day learn to regret, such as how I’d fast track all the Hicks applications. I told her how under the deck used to be my favorite place as a child. I could sit and stare at people on the beach without ever going noticed. We talked quietly and joked, winding our way towards confessions. I said too much, solely so I could say, “Francis doesn’t deserve you.”

I said it because it was true. Even drunk and out of her element, outclassed and under a porch with an almost total stranger, she knew who was the better person, much better than Francis would ever be. I told her she was kidding herself if she ever thought she’d have anything lasting with him, and then I gave her details, all the reasons I knew to prove it.

The dam had been broken, the damage done. She cried a little. Afterwards we gave each other a few consolatory hugs, then everything came easy. Perhaps it was just the spirit of the night, but I pulled her close and grabbed her arm, the back of her head. I made mention of Shaunice, of Flow, of Suze and how difficult it was for People Like Us to live in the Inkwell, what with its constant public judgment, its scrutiny of your every action. I asked for her help. I needed her to help me find myself, and maybe lose myself too. She didn’t try too hard to shy away. She was silent, compliant, and to be honest, it excited me. I began to tug at her shirt, not letting go until she took it off.

********

“I waited up. Where were you last night?”

Suze had her hand on my private parts. She’d teased me awake by giving me an erection. “And just for the record, if you say something dumb and masculine like ‘out,’ then I’ll squeeze till it pops.”

When I looked at her it all came back to me. Francis and I at the beach, my somber walk back home, my seduction of Lalondra under the porch and the false shock I pretended when Francis “caught” us. Once, after a particularly nasty fight, Suze told me that smoothing things over with someone you care about is the hardest part of living. At the time I thought it profound. “I ended up getting into a fairly long conversation with Francis.”

“Then how do you explain this?” she poked. “Or this?” she prodded, and I involuntarily shied away. “Tell me Basil, does Francis like it rough?” She straddled me, working the heels of her palms into my sides. “You’ve got bruises.”

I squirmed in pain, only half-mockingly asking her to stop it before I sighed, caved, and told her what she already knew. “Francis and I got into another fight.”

“Oh? What about? Tell me.” She arched her eyebrows and looked me in the eyes. I could feel her adjusting, settling her pelvis onto mine. “Was it the weather, the food, the way you ogled his girlfriend all night? Tell me honey, what made a rapper want to fight you?”

I always hated the mornings she woke up horny. It meant she’d pester me until she got what she wanted. Francis got what he wanted, but if I told Suze the truth, there would be nothing I could ever possibly do to smooth things over, make things even keel again. “Nothing, really. Jealousy perhaps. It was just another stupid fight. I told you he’d come up looking for a fight.”

“Ooh, was it violent? Did you two wrestle each other to the ground? Was he brutish and nasty to you, so nasty that you had no recourse but to meet him on his level? Tell me honey, did he force you into it?”

“Okay Suze,’ I responded, “now you’re just trying to get my goat.”

“Got that right,” she purred. She lifted up and arched over me, letting my penis stroke her belly and rubbing her nipples slowly up my chest. “Lover—”

“Yes?” I tepidly answered. Being bruised and sore definitely made me feel less in the mood, but I knew what was expected of me. Lowering her face to mine, almost lip to lip, I kissed her in lieu of giving an answer. I kissed her, and she kissed me back. I kissed her again, and then, as if on cue, she asked, “Who won?”