Free the King

I take seven slow breaths behind the door and listen before I step outside my pod—a meditation, yes, but mostly that hallway too damn slim for me plus anyone. But the Lillians are quiet as the dead. Soon as I open my door, they come upon it. I startle. They scurry. My neighbors are the kind of couple who, over time, resemble, like siblings. Worse yet, they dress similar and both wear their greasy hair in a bob, just one is more silver-grey than the other. The pair retreat into their doorway to let me pass. I greet the Lillians in the pale, yellow light with a tight, no-teeth smile and nod, which they return, sans smile. I feel like Fanon on the train. They peeped me with my bike the other day. I call her Gorgeous. She all black to match me and my wardrobe: onyx in various, supple textures, leather, velvet, suede, a tassel here, hardware there. My fleece bucket hat in hand, I swing my belt bag over my shoulder and feel my phone buzz inside. I know without checking it’s Sekou texting the location.

After I climb the five flights up, I meticulously seal my cyclist mask to my face before hauling open that last heavy ass door to the street. At first, when people wore masks for the pandemic, they complained it was hard to breathe. But then it became hard to breathe without one. Oil companies (with a stake in smog) tried their slick hand at R&D, and so the latest masks fit to the smallest wrinkle and pore, adhering with the natural sebum in your face. Those same companies drove the push underground, designing luxury living quarters below sea level, but the wealthy did not want to go down. Thus, spacious units were split into more, smaller ones for subsidized public housing at first. Now you can get as many as three bedrooms plus kitchenette for as little as 6k/mo. No one owns. I don’t want to own any carved-up, dug-up pod anyhow. More than space, sky is at a premium. I keep my job at the gallery largely because of the windows. Yeah, I love the art, but the sky be more artful than anything most days—and changes, moves. Look closely and you can observe speed, direction, duration, rotation, all that and more in the sky. And it’s benign behind glass. Win, win.

My phone buzzes a second time as I unlock Gorgeous. The first message reads “concession,” and the second “5 late,” which is perfect because so am I. Sekou and I been in sync since we were 12. We both sat in the back of class near the door, we both parked our bikes where we could peel out the quickest, we both ate our bagged lunches on the knoll behind school—so after some time, Sekou lifted his chin at me while unlocking his fixie. “Nice bike.” The relief I felt when he spoke first—whew. We been ridin’ ever since.

I pedal past a new encampment. Blue, orange and green tents and tarps pop up overnight, are bulldozed just as fast and reappear elsewhere, incorrigible. Everything feels sharper in flight, riding against the wind. Sekou is striking from a distance—straightest back in sight. I do our whistle as I approach. Sekou looks back and releases his brakes in the one motion, meets me in perfect time. We dap and keep on, weaving and whistling, signaling sometimes with a quick hand gesture to the one behind, alternating leading like musicians improvising jazz. We do this ride a lot lately, ever since Olrich acquired Untitled, 1982. We never go at the same time and keep a mental record of security shifts, traffic patterns, the light changing, but we also slow down to take in the work for a singular moment that feels longer because the thing is just so… magnanimous. The big, black skull with its gaping, angular mouth, everything gnashing—patches of bright sky blue, math peeking, strokes like spit but in vivid color. “Like there’s a whole nother painting underneath,” Sekou keeps sayin’ and I feel we are both trying to see through and under. I wish I knew what Basquiat at 21 wanted to cover over so bad, so vigorous.

Today when we get back to the pier, I have a surprise for Sekou. As he dismounts, his foot more than clears the seat, arches up into a point I can see clear through his kicks. Can’t say the man’s ten years of ballet training don’t show, but most don’t look to see it. Neither the seven years he spent studying German to read Marx in the original. My best friend loves art like me but refuses to visit me at work. “That place feels dead, bro, like a morgue.” He’s not wrong. “African art” is always some dusty mask or cracked ceramic and never Ibrahim Mahama’s monumental installations or Michael Soi’s satirical paintings. I know why Jan hired me: I’m the Authentic African. In my interview, I said I was born in Benin City, Edo State. My people come from Skokie, Cook County, but my cheekbones cast their own shadow, the smell of shea butter surrounds me and I keep my one-inch twists better than any salon. I tend to the parts every evening. Grammie piqued my interest in Black artists before I could talk, and so I mostly enjoyed grad school: Art History with a minor in Africana studies. Those kinds of programs were already beginning to disappear as I graduated, so now Jan needs someone like me. That’s why he gave me what I brought to share with Sekou.

We lean our bikes on the frame of what used to be a bench. There were also guardrails on the pier, but those kinds of infrastructures and the people who maintained them been defunded for decades now. There’s still plenty CCTV of course, and somewhere some sad, sleepy peon watches us chill. We bare our feet to the breeze and stretch out the ride a bit. When I pull the orange out of my pocket, Sekou gasps loud. I pass it to him wordlessly. He holds the orb to his nose, cradling it, inadvertently kissing the rind. I did the same when I got it alone, so I give him a moment.

“Man, this shit smells fucking amazing,” he says exhaling.

“I know, right? When Jan lobbed it to me, the smell reached me first, hit hard, took me right back to Grammie’s kitchen.” I had been waiting to tell him.

“May she rest,” Sekou offers under his breath.

“Jan threw it wide—you believe that?”

Sekou’s trance broken, he opens his eyes to gawk and scoff, “Idiot! Reckless ass! Of course, I believe it. Jan don’t know the value of any kind of art.” Sekou pronounces Jan with a hard ‘J’ instead of the ‘Y’ sound every time to underscore his dislike.

I chuckle and finish his thought, “From oranges to oil paintings.”

“Precisely,” says Sekou, holding the orange up to the light before handing it back to me, shaking his head. “Threw it. Wide.”

“Tossed it like it was nothing, as if everyone eats oranges everyday anymore.”

“Some people do!”

“True, you right.” I shake my head. “Grammie said she ate oranges that grew in orchards in Florida. Imagine.”

“Whole state is basically one big hurricane path now. All swamp and marsh.” Sekou sighs.

“Grammie’s why I can catch anything high or low left or right,” I say, lost in memory. “Taught me to peel an orange in one too.” I use my thumb nail to carve a circle around where the stem used to be and lift the skin away from the flesh then slowly push my thumb around and down to peel one perfect spiral.

“You gonna hang it in the kitchen like she used to?” Sekou might be the only other person who remembers Grammie’s kitchen. It’s a balm.

“I might… I might seal it in a Ziploc and huff it on low days.”

“True, true.”

I hand Sekou exactly half of the treasure, adding, “Jan met with some major collectors, bragged about the spread, said there should be more meetings, so who knows what’s to be had next time.”

“You think a mango is too much to ask for?”

“A mango?! Inshallah.” I make the cross and bogle.

We savour each segment slow. We don’t talk about it because there aren’t words. When we finish, Sekou speaks,

“Thank you Olo.”

“What I can when I can, brother.”

The gallery is always slow and I enjoy the quiet, but my favourite is when we get a school group. The rule is the group stands outside with a chaperone and they visit in sets of five with a teacher for ten minutes. I do the tour I’m trained to do and squeeze in a lil extra if there’s a Black child in the group. Today, there’s nothing on the books so I sit at my desk and watch the sky out the window. The phone rings Jan’s ring and I pick it up on the first ring.

“Yes?”

“Meet me at the address I’m about to message you immediately.”

“Lock up?”

“Lock up.”

“Take a car?”

“Take a car.”

The text comes in seconds after he hangs up, and I copy and paste it into the ride app. I assume Jan needs me to show up as his personal assistant and pack the newest tablet, his business cards on the primo paper stock and a cold bottle of the alkaline water he likes. In the car, I search the address and nothing comes up, which means it must be residential. Awkward. I arrive at a discreet, grey, four-story building with no signage. At the door I text Jan, “Outside.” A slot opens in the door with a camera light, a monotone voice booms “O-lo-kun” and I reply “Yes,” even though the voice jacks up my name. The door opens and the voice says “Suite 401.” I take the elevator up to the fourth floor and it opens directly onto the suite. I am momentarily struck still by the pure, natural light streaming in the floor-to-ceiling windows, and everywhere there are real, massive, thriving plants. I recognize monsteras, fiddle leaf figs and bamboo palms bigger than I have ever seen, all gloss and shine, not an imperfection in sight—I know people who aren’t this well hydrated. A three-foot spread of charcuterie lays untouched on a gleaming, teak table with artisanal everything—meats, cheese, crackers, olives, nuts and these beautiful, bountiful fat, matte green and red grapes. I try not to stare. Jan stands with a group of three men in identical navy-blue suits, all backs remain to me. I understand my role and perform it. I sidle up just shy of Jan’s left elbow and hand him his water. He reaches over, cracks the bottle open and sips without ever looking in my direction. I take out the tablet and await instructions, but Jan just continues in conversation. Whenever they move, I follow along two feet behind.

“What Tadashi wants, he gets,” one of the suits snaps.

“The Olrich will never have as important an acquisition,” Jan says, shaking his head.

“1982 was truly his best year.” Another suit.

“I’m told Tadashi will keep it in his home in the south of France.” The third suit.

“No one will ever see that work again.” The first suit again.

“I will get one last look on Wednesday then.” And with that Jan gives me the exact information I need.

I met Sekou at our usual haunt. The club didn’t always use to be a panopticon, but that’s how I’ve always known it. Grammie described dance floors open like fields, made for moves that take up several cubic feet, flips and reaches, sweating and spinning, everyone together, touching and feeling…. Now we have private, mirrored six-by-six squares with banquettes on three sides and the door on the fourth. I hear VIP sections get a little more room but nothing like before. On one side of the door the floor-to-ceiling glass has a window for servers and security who pass at regular, irregular intervals unless you buzz. The other side is a split screen of live monitors showing all the other booths. So, surveillance on either side basically. Our screen shows me sitting tall in head-to-toe black acid wash denim facing the door, knees wide, one hand resting on my thigh, the other curling a twist at the nape of my neck under my bucket hat. I look good. We watch each other and everyone knows they are (or might be) being watched so no one fucks around or fucks for that matter. (There are other clubs for that.) Sekou ‘n me like the DJ here on Thursdays, and Sekou’s play cousin works the door so we come every week. I smile listening to Sekou make the woman at the window laugh and shake her head. Her box braids transition from black to aubergine just below her ears and she wears lipstick to match. Her septum piercing glints and catches light in the dark. He tries to keep her as long as he can, knowing she has to go, with his little French and soft eyes. She’s Senegalese, he’s Senegalese, neither of them ever been but still it means something. They connect on that disconnect even. When he turns back to me, her smile is wide, his smile is wider, and they both shine black in the blue light. He reaches out to hand me my bottle, metallic lilac, my favourite champagne vape. I pull the floral flavor long, haul hard through the plastic reed and lean back to exhale. DJ Diallo is playing ndombolo and a pair of mascs in one of the monitor screens go off. I talk soft.

“They gonna move the king next Thursday.”

“Shit. This is it then.”

“You think you can get a truck?”

“Certain.”

“Then I’ll sort the rest.”

We clink bottles and Sekou grins. His teeth glisten and I know we got us.

Dearest Grammie, 

I know you understand the King can’t be locked up somewhere. Basquiat wouldn’t want that. We took the work where it’s needed, École Toussaint L’Ouverture. You used to say segregation wasn’t all bad. These kids have got to see the painting. I worked up a couple IDs and the paperwork on a free software, and I already knew all the transfer/handling protocols from work. We wore matching suits like I seen the pick-up people wear. Sekou secured the truck, all steadfast composure and courage. When we arrived, the King was all ready, wrapped for transit and the gallerist just signed off. Til now I don’t think they could tell us from any other two ‘Black guys’ in hats, coveralls and gloves. Of course the school understands they will have to be discreet. The art teacher made me a promise. She is beyond grateful. I am writing this letter to you to burn as part of our protection rites. We used your anointing oils. I keep everything you gave me safe. You keep me safe. Thank you for watching over us. Sekou sends his love.  

Love all ways,

Olo