The Fugitivities, стр. 36

mother down to the Forty-Second Precinct on Washington Avenue to pick up his uncle, who had been taken in on a domestic abuse complaint. His mother had told him then and he had never forgotten it: “Boy, don’t you ever do anything in this city that might land you anywhere near a police station. You can’t afford it. People disappear in this system. Don’t matter what you did or say you did. Once they have you, they can make you go away. We love you. But we won’t be able to do nothing for you. Once you in their hands, you belong to ’em. Right and wrong ain’t got nothing to do with it. That’s just how it is.”

But that was before he became a star. He found himself laughing uncontrollably. These bastards have no idea, he thought. They’ve arrested an innocent man, an innocent black American who also happens to be a famous basketball player. And they had busted him for trying to be a Good Samaritan! If only he had a Topps card. He was detained for three more hours until finally an officer came in and led him out to the reception area. The girl from the train was standing at the desk talking to one of the officers. When she saw Nathaniel come out, she was visibly moved. After hearing her story, the police captain said he was satisfied that the man they were holding was not a criminal, but that he still needed to clear up some issues about his identity and background. The young woman told them she refused to leave until he was released. She insisted he be let out from the holding cell, so they moved him to a bench in the hall. She sat down next to him. It was then he realized that she looked familiar.

“Thank you,” she whispered in English. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“It’s okay.”

“Do you recognize me, from the university?”

“Yes, it’s you—I’ve seen you, well, I saw you outside the tabac, the Ravaillac.”

“Ah yes, everyone goes there…except you. I guess you don’t smoke.”

“Hell no! I’m an athlete—or I was—I seem to be out of shape. A few years ago I would have caught those guys easy. Taught them how we get down in the Bronx. I used to play basketball.”

“Of course.”

“Of course?”

“You’re so tall. You stand out in the amphitheater. I’m not the only one who noticed. All the girls talk about you.”

“Is that a fact?”

“This is so terrible. I’m so sorry they are treating you so bad. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” she added after a moment. “My name is Laura. Laura Petrossian.”

“Nathaniel Archimbald,” he replied. “You can call me Nate. Hey, you know, your English is really excellent,” he added after a moment.

She burst out laughing.

“Your French is very bad!”

The university courses took place in a grand amphitheater with a waxy fug. A professor would stand center stage and discharge the lecture in rolling waves of latinate complexity. Laura’s attendance was irregular, so Nathaniel never knew if he would see her. He was learning about the history of France, and Napoleon’s conquests were carefully and rather lovingly examined for their triumphs of grandeur, cunning diplomacy, and personal hubris. Inevitably, Haiti came up, though more as a footnote than a fatal and world-altering check on French dominion. Nate was primed for this and eager to intervene. But this was not allowed of him, nor of any of the other students around him, who dutifully took down their notes in the same bemused, impassive way they took down everything else. But just hearing about the treacherous and dishonorable treatment of Toussaint Louverture made Nathaniel’s blood boil. Every day after class, he needed a couple of hours just to decompress. He found a corner of the Tuileries Gardens where he could stretch and skip rope in the evening. His shoulder blades flexing, his posture proud and linear like one of the Louvre’s Egyptian statues, his feet tapping like a ballerina, Nathaniel would skip rope staring with a severe, disciplined intensity. He strengthened himself in rhythm, murmuring to himself the names of his mother’s ancestors, the heroes and generals of the Haitian Revolution. François Mackandal. Georges Biassou. Cécile Fatiman. Capois-La-Mort, the Black Achilles.

It was after such a session, returning in the evening to his hotel suite, when Nathaniel first met Claude, the new desk clerk on the nightshift. At first, Claude’s English was so good it had Nathaniel suspecting he must have an American parent or attended an international school. But Claude smiled and insisted he had only taken the usual classes in school. Everything else he learned by listening to hip-hop.

When Claude learned that Nathaniel was from New York City, he was ecstatic. His whole face, round as it was already, glowed with excitement and admiration. His questions were endless. Nathaniel couldn’t make an inch through the lobby without a symposium on the state of hip-hop, the situation in New York, the possibilities for blacks in America. Did he have a position on West vs. East? Biggie vs. Tupac?

The night clerk’s queries took Nathaniel back. All the way back to the distant memory of his father’s voice, and the voices of his friends scrapping around the blocks of Morrisania and Melrose, the Hub off Willis and 149th Street, the dead buildings that scorched the neighborhood, barbecues and summer jams, block parties. Night games on basketball courts where every drive to the hole was also a shot at someone’s character. The rattle of subways and the smell of peanut butter crunch and musty bodegas. The sound of a watermelon-red Buick guzzling up Third Avenue, and girls in high-tops sitting on stoops, laughing, calling out his name. Nathaniel spent more and more evenings hanging out in the lobby with Claude late into the night. Within a few weeks, Claude had convinced him to leave the expensive hotel and move in with him and his friends in Maisons-Alfort, a suburb to the south of