Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas Page A

a white john. The first few snowflakes were starting to fall. He muttered, “Merry Christmas.” She was pushing him back against the brick wall and behind a four-foot stack of milk cartons, which was their only cover. Brian grinned. His eyebrows twitched involuntarily. What was he doing here? His parents had gotten out of their immigrant ghettos—better diet, better education, and—
gestalt.
Brian left his academic folks befuddled, sped around drunk in his old man’s car like a broke, rebellious teen trapped in some dying mine or mill town. Brian, the stoned auditor; now he was stuck with us. In slumming, he had gotten a little dose of the void, if only vicariously, but now he was hooked, a true oblivion junkie. Morrison cried about some girl’s “gypsy soul.” Brian fingered an imaginary saxophone and then looked at me, still slouching, caninelike. He looked back down the alley, then back to me. He leaned in smiling crazily from his mounting adrenaline. He tried to make his face look serious and concerned, but he just looked scary and high. He placed his hand on my thigh.
    â€œDude,” he whispered, as though he was about to tell me a secret. I didn’t respond. I was too busy trying to fight off the growing sounds in my head of the rich boy’s murmurs and Sally’s breath.
    â€œDude. Is your dad white?”
    â€œDon’t answer that.” Shake was glaring at him in the rearview. “Fuck you, Brian!”
    Brian threw himself away from me and into the corner of the car as though Shake had lobbed a grenade into the back seat.
    â€œDude, it’s just a question.”
    â€œFuck that!” He found Brian in the mirror again.
    I looked past Brian into the alley. She was now on her knees. He’d knocked over the cartons with the spastic swing of his hand.
    â€œI just want to know.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œCause he’s my friend.”
    â€œNo. It’s because you want to know why you have tutors and he doesn’t. Why he’s a letterman and you can’t make any squad.”
    â€œBut you’re in AP math.”
    â€œYeah, but we have the same tutor. You see how I work.” He thumbed at Gavin, who was in the passenger seat. “I don’t see you asking him what color his father is.”
    â€œBut I know Gav’s father. I mean, I’ve seen him.”
    Gavin cleared his throat, waved a hand in the air, and assumed his highbrow accent.
    â€œMust you two do this all the time?”
    â€œDo what?”
    â€œDisguise your genuine contempt for each other with racial gobbledy-gook?”
    â€œGobbledygook?” Shake wanted to laugh, just because of the word, and that made him angrier.
    â€œYes. Well, I don’t know what either one of you is talking about. It just seems as though
you’re
looking for an excuse to beat his head in and
he’s
looking for justification to have his head beaten in.”
    â€œWhat do you know?” asked Shake, still watching Brian.
    â€œAbout what you’re talking about?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI just told you, absolutely nothing.” He emptied his beer, cranked down the window, and finger rolled it into a heap of garbage bags across the narrow street. He produced a pint of vodka from his breast pocket, took a pull, and without looking, offered it to me. I drank andheld on to it—something else to focus on. He started rolling his window up. It stuck a bit, moved unevenly, so he guided the glass with his free hand. Shake watched closely. He bit his lip, shook his head slightly and then more and more. “What I suggest is, if you really want to fight, let’s go back to that so-called party.”
    Shake ignored him. He was fixed on something else.
    â€œYou know what I know?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI know busing. I know white flight. I know glass ceilings. I know higher interest rates on mortgages. I know being put in the remedial reading