âYou heard the man.â He takes another tissue from the box and wipes his hand before looking up at me. âWe get final cut, yeah?â
A beef Wellington is waiting when we arrive at the restaurant, but the next is two minutes away, so Nati decides to take that and give methe older one. The place is empty, the kitchen closed but for Natiâs production line. There is no suggestion that I be given a menu. A great beef Wellington that has spent a few minutes under a hot lamp is still, by my reckoning, likely to be a great beef Wellington. And itâs deep into the night, not near a meal time for me anyway.
Smokey is on his way to his new daughter, finally.
The table, set for two, has a bud vase crammed with small red plastic flowers and a tea-light candle in a bowl.
While my dinner spends its final minute under the light and his is being plated up, I ask Nati what makes this his favourite meal and he says, âItâs just the best. The pastryâs flaky, the duxelleâ¦it tastes real good.â He lifts his chin a little and sets his hands on the table. I notice a tiny pilled ball of tissue lodged in his moustache, where Smokey dabbed a Kleenex dipped inPerrier to clean away the blood. âIt tastes refined. I believe they add cream, which many people donât. And the mushrooms are straight from Italy.â
There are no deep truths to be mined in his dinner choice, no heartfelt connections to bring to the surface. Heâs more concerned with sounding like an aristocrat, someone who has lived and Wellingtoned anywhere a person should.
As our meals are served, I ask him what music meant to him when he was younger and he tells me, âI liked the sound first, the way cool guys had it coming out of cars.â He picks up his fork. âThen I see that Jay Z come from Brooklyn and he the richest dude.â
âMos Def, Notorious B.I.G.âthey were from Brooklyn, too, werenât they?â I can talk music endlessly. I want to look as if Iâm doing just that, but itâs Brooklyn I want to take us toâthe past,always the reluctant past and the light it might throw on the conflicted present.
âThem too, but I only knew about Mos Def from when he worked with Kanye in âbout 2010. Anyway, he got a different name now.â He cuts into his beef Wellington and a rush of steam comes out. âAnd Biggie, well, I was young then.â
Young when Biggie was shot dead in LA is what I think he means. By my reckoning, Lydell Luttrell Junior turned two that year.
âI met his mom, though,â he says. âMs Wallace. She call him Christopher, but.â
âSo you talked about him with her?â
âNo. Itâs what I hear.â He sticks his fork into the pink beef. âYou donât want this to get cold.â
âHow did you know her?â Iâm imagining a young Lydell, hand in his motherâs, Voletta Wallace bending down to talk to him. She was a preschool teacher, maybe still is.
âJust in the neighbourhood.â He lifts the fork to his mouth and sits back to chew, appreciate.
Itâs another in a series of probing moves that could lead him to his parents, but not one does. Whatever story there is, heâs scrubbed it bare of detail and itâs plain Iâve got all Iâm going to.
It should mean everything, this picture I have of them in my mindâtwo mothers meeting on the street, one of a dead rapper, the other on her own downward path, her boy soon working his own rhymes. It should be a pivotal moment, with Biggie SmallsâChristopher Wallaceâthe Icarus of the tale, a parable from LyDellâs own neighbourhood. Iâm picturing Natiâs mother with the plum-coloured shoulder bag that sheâll never see.
But Nati gives me none of that. He keeps me at bay the whole meal.
His connection to Smokey is on his motherâs side, âSome kind of cousin.â No more detail thanat the start
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