“We don’t need you, nor that nigger dancer anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?”
“You came in here the day before yesterday and sold us that synthesizer that composes all of your music. You know, the one that you had that Jap make for you. We don’t need you anymore. Don’t you remember? You started crying, didn’t he, boys? Said that you were desperate for some more shit.”
“I did?” The men broke up. “Wait until Boy Junior hears about this. He needs me. He won’t stand for it. Where is he?” Fryer said, trying to make himself heard over the laughter.
“He got in his jet and flew to Greece because he heard that there was a sighting of a unicorn. You know, he’s been searching all over the world for a unicorn. Craziest spade 1 ever met, but the motherfucker is like a oil well, gushing in all of this money, right, boys? And to think. It’s all legit. Not like that other shit we used to do. Beatin’ up people and breaking their legs.”
Moog started bawling then. He slumped to one knee. He crawled on the floor toward Big Mike. The men started reaching for their toys.
When he got to where Big Mike was seated, he bent over and started cleaning Big Mike’s shoes with his tongue. Big Mike kicked him in the teeth, knocking out a couple. He lay there for a moment, sobbing. Finally, Mike said: “OK, boys. Get him outta here.”
When Moog awoke he was lying in a trash can next to the Acme Record skyscraper. Blood was all over his clothes. One of the many thieves who were crawling the urban nights was running away with his shoes. He didn’t know what to do now. He’d laid out a couple of million for that synthesizer. All he’d have to do would be to program some funk, hip hop, salsa, rap, blues, rock and roll, rock, rockabilly, C&W, bossa nova, heavy metal, African pop, bluegrass, and he usually would have an album in twenty-four hours. Moog headed back to his house.
17
Nance was hanging back, sucking on some scotch which he held in one hand, and, in the other, a shrimp and seaweed hors d’oeuvre. It was one of those U.N. parties, attended by people from all over the world, wearing the costume of their country. Some people were dancing to the native music of Gun, the African country that was hosting the reception. Phillip and Virginia, who’d gotten him into the party, were talking to some of the guests, and Phillip was thrusting his finger into their faces. He hated Phillip. Sometimes, while asleep, he thought of Phillip fucking his wife, his ex-wife, Virginia; he’d have to get out of bed and smoke a cigarette and couldn’t get back to sleep. That was before he became celibate. Weary of checking potential sex partners’ antibody status, he had sworn off sex. Now he could go through life without worrying about somebody penetrating somebody else, an obsession of his for the first thirty years of his life when being in love was like being the goalie in a game of ice hockey, trying to prevent somebody’s net from being pucked. He remembered about three months into his celibacy, the dream that came. These people from outer space were lining up American women and shoving them onto spaceships. They were the only ones who wanted them, he figured. American men with their mail-order brides were standing on the sidelines cheering, and his Jewish dentist who’d converted to Islam was standing with his new lady, and he was kinda leading the cheers. When one of the creatures pushed Virginia in she looked to him for assistance and he ignored her; he pretended that he didn’t know her, and that Flipachino who had threatened him about her daughter was putting up one hell of a fight, and when the spaceship took off, about three hundred feet up, they dropped her from the flying saucer. He awoke smiling. Celibacy meant that he could screw the women all of the time in his dreams. He could imagine what some of those guys up there next to the Pope dreamed about. They must have gotten surprises all of the time, like Robert Mitchum did in the scene where he returned to his motel room, and Jane Russell was lying on his bed. You couldn’t see her face for her bosom.
He was enjoying himself, swaying to the music, and admiring the Xmas decorations. Suddenly a commotion broke out in the middle of the room. He arrived at the scene just in time to see a man slap a woman and send her sprawling on the floor. Her dress slid up around her tan thighs, a sight that didn’t escape many of the men, regardless of the nationalities; even the American and British diplomats were staring at them. He recognized those thighs at once. They belonged to his friend, the journalist, Jamaica Queens. Noticing that some men were staring, she held her jaw and began to feign a scream. The man, a Latin-looking person, who wore a black eye patch and a prominent scar that stretched from his left eye to his jaw, approached Jamaica again and started to kick her when Nance walked up and knocked the fellow flat on his ass. A number of Latins ran up to assist him, and about fifty seconds later he came to and began to moan, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. Jamaica was holding on to Nance’s arm, looking down at her date. Virginia was standing next to her friend, and she was smiling at Nance. Her friend noticed the smile and glowered at Nance. Somebody mentioned the man’s name. Nance had read about him in the newspapers. He was the famous death squad leader and arms merchant. His friends helped him to his feet, and he approached Nance, said some words in Spanish, and left the party. “What did he say?” Nance asked Jamaica Queens. “He’s challenged you to a duel,” she answered calmly, with a slight smile.
“He what?”
“A duel. He’s quite good at it. In his own country he’s killed about twelve men. Don’t worry, Nance. I’ll talk to him again. He’s very jealous. He became angry because he saw someone light my cigarette. He treats me so mean. He’s such a knave and a crook,” she said, gazing at the man and his entourage as they left. Some of his friends looked back at Nance. One of them ran his finger across his throat. As they exited a couple entered the room. Whoever they were, they must have been important, because the cameras began to go into action. People surrounded them. A man who some said was the Ambassador rushed up to the couple, making his way through the press and admirers who were excitedly making comments and asking questions.
Nance and Jamaica Queens joined the others. He liked her arm on his. She knew that he liked it, her hip bumping against his, and he wondered if she did this to excite him or rather whether this was merely her style. It didn’t excite him. The night before he had fucked Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. He found as he listened to the man that this was the Prime Minister of Gun. The herald of a new Africa. One who would combine the high technology of Korea and Japan with the old traditional ways. One who was at home with the music, art, and literature of many cultures, who could converse as well about Bauhaus as Muslim architecture. Someone who knew about Western democracy as well as the old associations and clans.
The West was on the decline because it got stuck in a single design, modernism, and its intellectuals and politicians couldn’t grapple with the eclecticism of the twenty-first century. Africa, the continent which most had left for dead after the famines and plagues of the 80s, was making exciting gazelle-like leaps into the late 90s, and South America and the Caribbean were hitting their stride. They were calling this Prime Minister, who was so simple and elegant that he came to the party in economy class, the gust of transformation that was taking place on the continent. He called his own movement toward African renaissance Nostromham. Nance came up in the 60s and didn’t want to hear about his plans and his missions. He’d seen too many visionaries lying on the balconies of motels and the kitchen floors of hotels, their lives oozing out in rentable ballrooms or in the backseat of a car.