Drop by Mat Johnson Page A

me as if the cathode ray had never been invented.
    ‘She left me.’
    It didn’t help to ask who. I asked when but he just shook his head not listening. I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ but David shook some more, then took the pint to his mouth and drained it. I was sitting before him saying, ‘Oh my God, man,’ and he handed me his empty glass, interrupted my ‘Jesus, I know you must be hurting—’ with ‘Fill her up for the boy, won’t you?’
    When I came back, walking slow and staring at my hands till I reached the table, he was excited again, joyous even. ‘Look at that, Chris, look at that.’ Pints safely rested, I glanced at the television. Someone had turned it to an American sports show and there was Jordan, still young and in an away uniform the color of cinnamon candies.
    ‘That’s why I hired you,’ David said. ‘That right there.’ On the screen was the night after he returned from months of injuries, before the rings and most of the shoes, when he went to Boston and flew over Bird for sixty-four points. Ripping that tacky parquet floor up years before the demolition.
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘Meaning? Look at that! Don’t you even know what you are?’ He was drunk already, I was suddenly sure, because sometimes when he was drunk he could get mad in an instant, start yelling, even if he wasn’t really mad at all. He was already spilling his beer, too. I looked back at the TV, listening to him talk behind me.
    ‘Do you see that? Look at him flying up to the basket, legs pulled so far behind him they’re about to smack his bloody head. He’s got that tongue out, right? And that ball, it’s pulled all the way back, see? Like he’s going to have to force it through the net.’
    ‘Beautiful.’
    ‘You’re fucking right it’s beautiful. You’re fucking right. That’s why I hired you,’ he said, pointing up to the set. ‘Only you lot can do that. Anybody else, anybody else would never even think of it. Anybody else would be like “Two bloody points? Who gives a toss how you make ’em.” But you lot, you’re fucking mad, you make everything this frenzied scream. It’s the same with everything. Blues. Jazz. That’s you. That’s you, do you hear me?’ He grabbed my arm. I turned back from Michael to meet David’s eyes. Just glass there, yellow and brown glass; did he even see me?
    ‘Nobody could do jazz but you, who would think of that? John Coltrane could never be English. We just don’t think like that.’
    ‘It’s just an Africa thing.’
    ‘Fuck Africa,’ he was yelling again. ‘Fuck motherfucking Africa. Who the hell needs Africa? What the hell have they done lately? It was you lot that put Africa on the map. It’s about America, and it’s about you, nobody else. Fucking exploding oranges! Oranges shooting all over the place!’ David started laughing, spilling more beer.
    ‘You guys aren’t too bad. Reggae, that was y’all.’
    ‘Fuck reggae. One man, Bob Marley, and he was a fluke. The rest is shite. And Red Stripe is a piss beer, too,’ he added, giggling. ‘And I’m not even that, am I? I was born in Crystal Palace. Fucking Crystal Palace! There’s not even a palace there any more, you know that? You’d think they’d rebuild it or change the bloody name. Not even a decent football club. Chris, that’s the last thing I know that you don’t: nothing good comes out of this place, nothing has in years. This whole place is dead, it’s true. If it wasn’t for Margaret I’d be in New York. That’s a place. This place, you can smell the rot, can’t you? You love it, you think it’s lovely and you know I’m glad since I’ve needed you here, but the whole place is a corpse, innit? And me, I’m its fucking mascot. I’m decaying right along with it. That’s the only thing left I’m good for.’
    ‘David, you’re the man.’ I clasped him around the neck, trying to pull his spinal cord into sobriety. ‘You made me happen, cuz. I would have never got out of Philly