Black to the City

Ring. Buzz buzz. Ring. Buzz buzz. Martin picks up his phone.

"Dude, I sent the check out already. Just have patience."

"Right," says Ray, "but the rent was due last week."

"I don't control when the rent is due! You fix that," Martin hisses, then he angrily taps his phone's screen to hang up on Ray.

His parents have been as accommodating as always, and this chance to hide has proved itself a welcome break from all things to do with the city except for Ray. Ray is being a dick. For five months Martin has sent a check for his half of the rent on time, and the one time he's late, Ray begins to call him every day to remind him that he's late. Seriously, what a dick.

Money has become less of a problem for Martin, but at the same time his comedy career as he knew it has all but evaporated. Without Herb and The Glorious Hole, he realized that he was a nobody. He wasn't a famous comedian. He was just a club regular, and that sucked. It wasn't good enough.

So instead of working to get gigs at other places, he moved in with his parents, but only temporarily, that's what he told himself. His parents didn't allow alcohol in the house. This made getting himself righted and back to living in the city remarkably urgent. Martin had been able to score a miniscule bag of pot from a wannabe white gangster up the street, but in the end he had paid too much for a product that didn't live up to its description.

Now he was neither high nor drunk, just staring at the different documents and websites open on his screen. Martin had managed to grab several freelance comedy writing jobs that paid very little but were highly rewarding in terms of exposure. Coupling this meager income with most of his expenses removed by parental housing and a strict alcohol policy, it was pretty easy for Martin to make rent these days. He had even chipped in a few bucks toward paying back Michelle, though they had begun to talk less and less after he escaped the city.

The third ghost that had haunted him all the way from the city was Tess trying to apologize and tell him that she wouldn't follow him around anymore, but he said very little back to her and what he did say was harsh. Landon never came to her defense.

"Martin, what do you want for dinner?" Martin's father yells up the stairs, and though most people say his dad looks like Morgan Freeman, he certainly doesn't sound like him. This dinner question is the nightly struggle, even though his mother usually has something planned. His father is too meek to remind her of this, however, so he asks Martin for a suggestion.

"I'll just eat whatever Mom's making!" Martin yells back, and he can hear his Dad trudge away from the stairs. Whether or not this answer is satisfactory is beyond Martin's scope of knowledge. It's certainly satisfactory to Martin. His mother has been in the kitchen all her life, inheriting generation after generation of recipes and techniques from a proud line of Southern black women. In short: when you eat a meal of hers, it stays eaten.

In a few minutes, Martin's polished off another small article, and this means another paycheck. Glorious. He's also under the impression that having fans on the Internet isn't such a bad thing. Maybe he can get a proper turnout when he's on stage now.

Dinner ends up being another of his mother's extravagant feasts set out for twenty people despite a guest list of three. Martin watches his parents eating silently as he takes a couple of bites of everything. It's all delicious, but it's too rich for his skinny frame.

"So Martin," his Dad starts, "how's the writing going?" Okay, maybe he does look a little like Morgan Freeman, but his eyes are too sad. Martin's father looks like a weathered man, like a coastal rock face that's had the ocean bearing down on it for as long as it can remember, and while it may not look different to you, you're certain it's changed.

"Just finished another piece, actually," says Martin. "I'm hoping I can get a few more done this week. If I can get some more regular publication then I'll probably head back into town and try writing from there."

"No need to feel rushed," says his Mom. "You can stay here as long as you'd like."

"No, I know. I just want to get back there at some point. Might as well have a goal." He wants to say his Mom looks like an older Queen Latifah, but for some reason that seems racist to Martin. He really has no idea where to draw the line. Martin is reminded of Kiefo for a moment, an odd memory to be cropping up now, but hey, the guy's black.

"Maybe you should write a book," his Dad says, just like he's said every day since Martin told him he was trying out written comedy.

"Yeah, maybe."

"Or you could try writing for the newspaper," his Mom suggests. It's more practical, but it still has nothing to do with his writing.

"That's true. I'm probably just going to do more stand-up, though."

"When do you think we could come to one of your shows?" asks his Mom, and Martin is choked by the guilt. They always ask when they can go to one of his shows, but he doesn't like the idea of swearing and talking about sex in front of his parents. Martin can see the shame and anger they'd feel after he accidentally makes some fantastically racist joke just before remembering that they're in the audience. They've raised him and given him a home. He doesn't need to remind them that they're a different ethnicity. "Your sister must go to your shows sometimes, right?"

"Michelle? Yeah, she goes every once in a while, but I don't really tell her when the shows are. It's really not a big deal, y'know. Just a hobby."

"I'd still like to go sometime."

"Alright, well I'll try to let you know when I've got something good coming up after I get back to the city. Maybe I can get a good time slot in a grocery store parking lot." When his parents laugh, Martin feels a lot better. If he focuses on his goals, everything is right in the world.

"Oh, I read about your book," says his dad. "Saw it in the paper."

"What?" Martin's father can be a bit...forgetful sometimes, but this is confusing in that it sounds like a new topic. "What book?"

"The one about you," says his father. Martin sits up straight. "By someone named Jess something."

Martin had assumed. He had made an ass out of him and himself. When Tess stopped bothering him, that should have been the end of it. She didn't pay him anymore, she didn't follow him, and there was nothing to write. What could she have written?

"Tess," his mother corrects.

"Oh right, Tess. She called us a while after you moved back here, asked us some things about how you were growing up."

"No," Martin says, standing up. She had sidestepped him completely, and his parents were much, much too kind.

"Well the book's about 'Marcus Ivory', but we'll know it's you," says his Dad, still happily eating.

"Excuse me," says Martin, and he runs upstairs to his computer, quickly typing in the fake name along with Tess's. The book is simply titled The Comedian. Not bad so far. Martin looks for the synopsis, but he's distracted by a video that automatically plays on the book's website.

"We're here with Tess Carter, author of the new novel The Comedian. Hi, Tess."

"Hi."

"This book is fairly remarkable just for some of the stories you've come up with, but I'd say that disbelief gets ratcheted up a notch when you say that this is all true, that's it's about someone you know."

"It is, though. The names have all been changed--"

"Except yours."

"Well right, except mine and Landon's."

"Landon's, yeah."

"But I was there for a lot of this or I talked directly to people who were there, so I'm willing to go out on a limb and say this is at least ninety-nine percent true."

"That's bold." The interviewer and Tess both laugh.

"It's pretty close."

"And your main character, Marcus, he's an interesting guy. A young white boy and his sister are adopted by a black family, then he moves to the city and lives under the radar as a mildly successful stand-up comic."

"Right."

"And you say a number of times in the book, well, excuse my language, folks, but he's an asshole."

"He is, and he'd admit it."

"And you also say he admits it because that's the reputation he wants."

"Exactly, see, this whole experience started when I just thought he was an interesting person. I wanted inspiration for my art, normally paintings, and he seemed to stir up something in me that I can't quite elaborate on. I figured it would be worth my time to learn more about him, and in doing so I found out that he's quite different than how he appears most of the time."

"He's a good guy, you mean?"

"More or less." Oh no.

"Like this one time he repossessed his friend's car and then borrowed money to get it back for her?" Oh no.

"Yes! I couldn't believe that when I first heard it. Everything about him seemed to rub the wrong way, and yet people loved him. I knew there was something about him I wasn't seeing."

"And he's generally a sensitive guy?" Oh no.

"I don't know if that's the right word. He's a human being, I guess. That's more obvious with some people than it is with others. He hides it well, or at least he distracted me from it for a long time. This is a man, though, who grew up without his biological parents, then he and his sister graduated near the top of their classes in high school. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from an Ivy League school after she graduated from a prestigious business school. Then he decided that his best bet was to follow his dreams and be a stand-up comic. His sister works in the financial district. In some ways, I think that's the thing I find most inspirational about him. He followed certain societal expectations for a long time in his life, but when it came time to actually make a living, he did exactly what he wanted. He lives in a cheap house with a roommate, he drinks too much, and he can seem very heartless sometimes, but I think that in the midst of all that he is still a great person, not in the sense that he's good for everybody else, just in the sense that he is exactly who he wants to be." Oh fuck.

Martin pauses the video and stares wide-eyed at Tess's stupid face. She knows everything. He needs to get back there, back in the city to clean this all up. Martin had a reputation, after all, a small one, but it was growing and growing exactly how he wanted. Tess is set to nuke that reputation with a poorly masked tell-all that has no reason to exist except for her own idiotic whims.

Martin grabs his phone and flips through his contacts.

"Hello?"

"Hey, this is Martin. I need you to get ready for my homecoming, because you and I have some serious brainstorming to do, okay?"

"I'll set out some bowls of lightning and clouds. Maybe some cats and dogs or something." Ah, "brainstorming". And "raining cats and dogs".

"Wait wait. I thought you didn't like animals."

Ian snorts into the phone. "Just the ones that come out of my brain, dude."