Angry Black White Boy by Adam Mansbach Page A

safety, except for the occasional date-rapist football player. Even the bums, thought Andre as he and Macon descended into the cleanest subway station in Manhattan, seemed handpicked for their effusiveness.
    They stepped off the train at West Fourth Street and crossed Washington Square Park, New York University’s no-campus-having answer to Columbia’s pristine, sequestered lawns. Students, locals, and outtatowners shared twilight space on the green wooden benches and around the central fountain. Backpacks nudged briefcases, and fresh-cut grass mingled airborne with pretzels and cigarettes. Rastafarians in red-green-and-gold tams leaned together over one chess table, gesturing at the wooden pieces with long fingers. A crew of high schoolers held down another, sneaker treads gripping the smooth marble as they chewed brown-bagged soda straws and girl-watched. Mutts and pedigrees sniffed each other’s asses with studious democracy inside the fenced dog run; the owners greeted each other’s dogs with enthusiasm and each other with indifference.
    “So what kind of job did you find?” Andre asked.
    Macon watched a yellow cab tear past the park, swerving to avoid pedestrians, and bang an illegal right turn as the traffic light clicked red. The driver conducted a symphony of angry horns with his middle finger as he caromed out of sight.
    “I drive one of those,” Macon said with pride.
    “Word? You must overhear some interesting shit. People probably assume you don’t speak English.”
    “You’d think so, but so far it’s been pretty boring. Lot of single fares.” Macon fingered the wad of bills clogging his pocket and wondered what he was going to do with the money, nearly two hundred bucks. He considered buying Andre dinner, then worried his roommate would think he was trying to pay reparations.
    “Huh,” mused Andre. “You didn’t want to wait and get a campus job?”
    “I’m not work-study eligible. My grandfather put away dough for my education back in the day, so no student loans. I’m still broke on the day-to-day tip, though.”
    “Parents won’t help you out?” asked Andre, wondering whether to take Macon’s stark financial portrait with a grain of salt or an entire pillar. Those suede Tims his roommate was rocking looked about a week out of the box.
    “I won’t let them.” Self-reliance had been Macon’s economic policy since leaving home, and like communism it worked well in theory. In practice, he had shame-facedly accepted cash infusions twice so far: once just after bouncing to Lajuan’s crib, so he’d have weed throw-down scratch—the definition of a good houseguest in Macon’s circle being a cat who sponsored blunt sessions—and again only two weeks ago, when he’d wanted new gear for school. Macon soothed himself with the knowledge that Cuba had been surviving on handouts for damn near forty years now.
    They made their way across the park, movements tracked by more than two thousand hidden security cameras installed by the City of New York for an amount of money that, had it been distributed amongst the ten to twenty drug dealers the cameras were intended to monitor, would have allowed all of them to retire in comfort.
    It seemed to Andre that a different homeless cat approached them every few feet to request assistance, as if the park were sectioned into tiny, invisible fiefdoms. He brushed past each supplicant without bothering to slow his pace or eye-flicker an apology. Macon, meanwhile, threw on the brakes at every timid “Excuse me.” Three times, Andre realized he was walking alone and doubled back to gather up his roommate, only to find Macon listening with botanically enhanced patience to whatever involved plea or bogus medical history the guy was running down. Macon’s sidewalk manner was impeccable: constant eye contact, sympathetic head-nodding. He let the vagrants run through their whole spiels and make their requests before letting them know he had no money and