Free Tuff by Paul Beatty

handshakes and cheek kisses. Fariq frowned, looking down and away from the tardy pair. Winston drew his friend’s attention with a smack atop his head. “Never take your eyes off your opponent, even when you bow.”
    “Man, you an asshole.”
    Winston continued, his voice taking on a clichéd Chinese lilt. “It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon: don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”
    “Enough with
Enter the Dragon
bullshit. You late. And this ain’t a copy of
Karate Illustrated
.” Fariq held the magazine in the crook of his arm like Moses on the mount holding the commandments. “This is the June issue of
Black Enterprise
.”
    “No, not the
June
issue, my bad,” Winston said, sarcastically dipping his head in apology. “What so special about the June issue, son?”
    “The June issue lists the one hundred largest black businesses. If we going to make some real money this summer, we need some inspiration, and here”—Fariq slapped the magazine with the back of his hand—“are one hundred moneymaking entities run by punctual niggers who’ve achieved something in this doggy-dog world.”
    “ ‘Dog-eat-dog,’ ” Yolanda corrected.
    “Don’t mock me, Yolanda,” Fariq said, continuing his harangue, “Money and Allah are the keys—the keys that open the chains wrappedaround our hearts and minds. The Koran teaches one how to be a locksmith, and money allows one to buy the tools a locksmith needs. Then you can make the key to freedoms.”
    Yolanda’s lip curled into a lioness’s snarl. “ ‘Freedoms,’ the plural?”
    “Hell yeah, the motherfucking plural.” Fariq rubbed his chin, searching for an example. Finding it, his hands chopped the air, accenting each word. “When Lincoln gave the slaves their freedom, singular, could they vote? Own property? Fuck who they wanted to fuck? No. So it must be more than one freedom.”
    “So now it’s ‘the right to truths, justices, and the pursuit of happinesses.’ ”
    “College fucking you up, girl. What’s your major, anyway?”
    “Undecided.”
    “See, them crackers bending one of your free wills right there. Undecided. Black people ain’t got time to be undecided. And at the college you go to it’s only two majors anyway, undecided and tricknology.”
    “Trick who?”
    “Anyway, we, and niggers in general, need to keep everything in the community—lie black, die black, and buy black. Emulate the Jew.”
    Growing incensed, more so at Fariq’s rhetorical illogic than at his religious insensitivity, Yolanda glowered at him and asked, “ ‘The Jew,’ singular?”
    “Yes, singular. Jew.”
    “You mean there’s one huge Superjew out there?”
    “You know what I mean, Little Miss Grammar. The Jew is like that—Tuffy, what’s the name of that three-headed monster that be fighting Godzilla?”
    “Ghidrah,” answered Winston.
    “The Jew is like Ghidrah—three heads, one body working toward the same goal: kicking Godzilla’s ass.”
    “And who’s Godzilla—the black man, I suppose?”
    Fariq rolled his rheumatoid eyes at Winston. “I told you we shouldn’t have brought the women. Women don’t know shit about making money.”
    “Fuck you, Smush,” Yolanda said, looking to Nadine for gender solidarity.
    Nadine shrugged her shoulders. “He’s right.”
    “You know I’m right. Moneybags will back me up. Ain’t that right, Moneybags?”
    At the mention of his name, Moneybags, momentarily aroused from his stupor, sat upright. His soiled and skinny frame was crammed into the width of one mid-stoop stair, knees folded tightly into his chest, and the spongy souls of his flip-flops overlapping the stair like owl talons around a redwood bough. “Ain’t that right, Moneybags?” Fariq repeated. Mummified from a life of failed business ventures, crack, and old age, Moneybags stiffly raised his paper-bagged pint in agreement. “Ain’t but two bitches ever made money on they