The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead Page 0,65
bullshit? This species of paperwork had always confounded and vexed. He’d have Yvette explain it again when she got in the next day.
He got off at the City College stop on Broadway and peeled off up the hill. It was warmer than it was supposed to be for March, but he remembered more than one April blizzard in Manhattan and wasn’t ready to call it spring yet. “It happens right after you put your coat away,” he said. Millie told him he sounded like some batty hermit who lived in a cave.
Camille’s was on the corner of 141st and Amsterdam, the anchor retail of a seven-story tenement. The Daily News review described the place as nouveau Southern, “down-home plates with a twist.” What was the twist—that it was soul food made by white people? Chitlins with some pale pickled thing on top? A neon Lone Star beer sign blinked in the window and a halo of battered Alabama license plates surrounded the menu by the entrance. He squinted—his eyes weren’t what they used to be. Despite the hillbilly warning signs, the food sounded good and not too fussed over, and when he got to the hostess station, most of the patrons inside were neighborhood people. Black people, Latinos who probably worked in the area, for the college. Squares, but their presence vouched.
The hostess was a white girl in a light blue hippie dress, one of that clan. Chinese-character tattoos scrolled up her wiry arms, who knew what they said. She pretended not to see him and he started up a round of “Racism or Bad Service?” He didn’t get far into his calculations before she apologized for the wait—the new system was down, she said, frowning at the gray glow on her stand. “Would you like to sit now or wait for the rest of your party?”
Years of habit made him say he’d wait outside and then on the sidewalk came that too-familiar disappointment—Millie had made him quit. He pushed a tablet of nicotine gum out of the foil.
A warm late-winter evening. He didn’t think he’d been on this block before. Up on 142nd he recognized a building from an old job, back when he was still on the truck. He still felt the old days in his back sometimes, a twinge and a quiver. This was Hamilton Heights now. The first time one of his dispatchers asked where Hamilton Heights was, he said, “Tell them they’re moving to Harlem.” But the name persisted and stuck. Real estate agents cooking up new names for old places, or resurrecting old names for old places, meant the neighborhood was turning over. Meant young people, white people are moving back. He can cover office rent and payroll. You want to pay him to move you into Hamilton Heights or Lower Whoville or whatever they come up with, he’s glad to help, three-hour minimum.
White flight in reverse. The children and grandchildren of those who’d fled the island years before, fled the riots and the bankrupt city government and the graffiti that spelled out Go Fuck Yourself no matter what the letters said. The city was such a dump when he arrived, he didn’t blame them. Their racism and fear and disappointment paid for his new life. You want to pay to move to Roslyn, Long Island, Horizon is glad to help, and if he was getting the hourly wage back then and not paying the hourly wage, he was grateful that Mr. Betts paid on time, in cash, off the books. Didn’t matter what his name was or where he’d come from.
A West Side Spirit stuck out of the garbage can on the corner and he made a note to tell Millie that he wasn’t doing the interview. When they were going to bed, or tomorrow, so as not to spoil the evening. A woman in her book club sold ads for the paper and told Millie she’d put his name up for a feature they were running, spotlighting local businesses. “Enterprising Entrepreneurs.” He was a natural—a black man who owned his own moving company, employed local people, mentoring.
“I don’t mentor anybody,” he told Millie. He was in the kitchen, tying a garbage bag into a knot.
“It’s a big honor.”
“I’m not one of these people who needs everybody’s attention,” he said.
It was simple—a quick interview and then they’d send a photographer to take some pictures of his new office on 125th Street. Maybe one of him standing in front of the