you, sir. And Mr. Oberstein . . .”
Flowers frowned at the whale attorney, plainly searching for the kind of fitting summary he liked to bestow on people, an epitaph for every headstone.
“‘Keepin it real,’” Nat suggested.
“No doubt,” said Moby, beaming. “True dat.”
“Mr. Jaffe,” Flowers concluded. He pressed his lips very thin.
“Councilman.”
A silence followed, deeper and more awkward than it might have been because Archy had forgotten to turn over the record on the turntable. It was rare, very rare, to see Flowers at a loss for words. Was there guilt on his conscience over changing his mind about the Dogpile deal? Had he come in, this lunchtime, manned up to break the bad news himself? Or was he so caught up in running his own big-time playbook, in setting up his line to defend against the scramble, that he’d forgotten he might run into some resistance at the front counter of Brokeland?
“Archy Stallings,” Flowers said, and Archy, confused, knowing he probably should play it cold and hostile with Chan Flowers but in the lifelong habit of looking up to the man, gave himself up to a dap and a bro hug with the councilman.
“Your dad around?” Flowers said, not quite whispering but nearly so.
Archy drew back, but before he could do anything more than squint and look puzzled, Flowers had his answer and was moving on.
“I seem to remember,” he said, letting go of Archy, “somebody telling me you had left a message for me, Mr. Jaffe. At my office, not very long ago. Thought I would stop in and inquire as to what it might have been regarding.”
“Probably did,” Nat said, still without looking up. At times his protean hum took the form of an earful poured into the councilman’s office answering machine or, when possible, directly into the ear of one of his nephews, assistants, office managers, press secretaries, Nat complaining about this, that, or the other thing, trash pickup, panhandlers, somebody going around doing stickups in broad daylight. “Huh.” He feigned an effort to remember the reason for his most recent call, feigned giving up. “Can’t help you.”
“Huh,” the councilman repeated, and there was another silence. Awkward turtle, Julie Jaffe would have declared if he had been present, making a turtle out of his stacked hands, paddling with his thumbs.
“Now, hold on! Look here!” Flowers noted the baby, who had fallen asleep on the bottle. His eyes went to Archy with unfeigned warmth but flawed mathematics. “Is that the little Stallings?”
Flowers reached out his hand for a standard shake, and Archy took it with a sense of dread, as if this really were his baby and all his impotencies and unfitnesses would stand revealed.
“I know it might seem impossible,” said Flowers, holding on to Archy’s hand, still working the room, “but I remember when you were that size.” Everybody laughed dutifully but sincerely at the idea of Archy’s ever having been so small. “Child looks just like you, too.”
“Oh, no,” Archy said. “No, that is Aisha English’s baby. Rolando. Mr. Singletary’s grandson. My wife and I got like a month to go. Nah, I’m just babysitting.”
“Archy is practicing,” Mr. Mirchandani said.
“It is never too early to start,” Flowers said. Though well provided with nephews and nieces, little shorties all the way up to grown men who had played football with Archy in high school, Flowers was a bachelor and, like Mr. Jones, had no children of his own. “It can definitely sneak up on a man.”
“Maybe I should start practicing being dead,” Nat said too loudly, though whether the excess volume was deliberate or involuntary, Archy could not have said. Before any of them had the chance to fully ponder the import of this remark, Nat added, “Oh, yeah. I do remember why I called, Councilman. It was to ask you to come on by and slit my throat.”
Flowers turned, taken mildly aback. Smiled, shook his head. “Brother Nat, I will never tire of your sparkling repartee,” he said. “What a treat it is.”
“Also, I have that Sun Ra you were looking for,” Nat said, banking the anger, using his smile like a valve to feed it nourishing jets of air. “I don’t know, maybe you want to wait and pick it up at that new Dogpile store of yours. I hear their used-wax department is going to be straight-up bangin.”
“Nat,” Archy said.
“Duly noted,” Nat replied without missing a beat. “Warn me again in twenty seconds, okay?”
“I can certainly understand your distress at the possibility of the level of competition you are going to be facing, Brother Nat,” Flowers said with perfect sympathy. “But come on, man. Show some faith in your partner and yourself! What’s with the defeatist attitude? Maybe you want to consider the possibility your anxiety might be premature.”
“I have never actually experienced anxiety that turned out to be premature,” Nat said, always happy to keep punching in the clinch. “It usually shows up right on time, in my experience.”
“Just this once, then,” Flowers suggested. Itching to get out, tugging at the lapels of his jacket. “Premature.”
“Are you saying that Gibson Goode, the fifth richest— What is it?” Nat turned with an audible creak of his neck bones to Garnet Singletary, who drew back, tight smile noncommittal; in no way, shape, or form interested, not being a fool, in openly taking up against his favorite enemy from way back in the day. “Fifth—?”
“I believe I read in Black Enterprise that he is currently the fifth most richest African-American,” Singletary said carefully. “I didn’t see my own name anywheres on the list.”
Again all the men in the store laughed, happy to let Singletary break up the tension, all the same feeling sympathy for Nat, Archy was certain. The place was part of their lives, including the life of Chan Flowers, who had for years come every week to get his hair cut by Eddie Spencer and afterward never lost the habit of stopping by.
“Are you saying, Councilman, that Gibson Goode does not have an open field ahead of him, thanks to you, to start putting in this Thang two blocks down from here, thus effectively cutting not only my throat but the throat of this great big ex-baby of whom you are so very fond? Because what we heard, and I believe we even heard it from your lips, was that Mr. Goode was having serious trouble with some of your friends on the zoning commission, and that because of that, in this climate, was the term I believe you employed, the banks were giving him a hard time.”
“If I told you that,” Flowers said, “I was only reporting what I knew to be the case.”
“So what changed? Or let me rephrase that, how much change did it take?”
“Nat, here’s that warning,” Archy said.
“How much cheese. Right, Moby?”
“I— What am I agreeing to?” Moby said.
“Jesus, Nat,” Archy said.
“You had better watch what you say, Mr. Jaffe,” Flowers suggested. He was looking at Archy when he said it. Not quite in appeal, not quite making some kind of threat. Inquiry widening his eyes when he looked at Archy, something that he would have liked to know. Archy wondered if this question Flowers did not feel comfortable asking in front of a crowd, and not Nat’s call about a Sun Ra record, lay behind today’s visit from the councilman.
“I checked out Dogpile,” Nat said. He smiled at Moby. “Last summer Archy and I went down to play that wedding in Fox Hills. It was, truly, extremely bangin. They had a sweet Nubian Lady, Roy Meriwether. The pricing was more than competitive. What’s more, I got into a very interesting discussion, forty, forty-five minutes, with the manager of the used-vinyl department. Young guy, college guy, black, good-looking, very passionate about Ornette Coleman. Making a case that Coleman basically rediscovered the original tone of the New Orleans cornet players, basically thought