Lot

Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize 2020

Bryan Washington

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786497857
• Subtopic: Literature General

· · Winner of the 2020 Dylan Thomas Prize · ·

· · Winner of the 2020 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award · ·
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· One of Barack Obama's "Favourite Books of the Year" ·

· A New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2019 ·

'A superb book' Max Porter, author of Lanny
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Stories of a young man finding his place among family and community in Houston, from a powerful, emerging American voice.

In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys.

This boy and his family experience the tumult of living in the margins, the heartbreak of ghosts, and the braveries of the human heart. The stories of others living and thriving and dying across Houston's myriad neighbourhoods are woven throughout to reveal a young woman's affair detonating across an apartment complex, a rag-tag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, and a reluctant chupacabra.

Bryan Washington's brilliant, viscerally drawn world leaps off the page with energy, wit, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot is about love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.

WAUGH

Poke lived in a one-bedroom with five boys and a window. The complex sat on Montrose, just across from St. Thomas. They rented it from a woman who couldn’t be bothered with a lease, or regular maintenance, or even a deposit; Rod had talked her down so that she wouldn’t raise the charges on them. Rod was the one who spent the least time fucking around. He was always out tricking. Most of them were. But, on the rare mornings Poke awoke on the fading carpet of the room, he could watch crowds from the chapel drifting up the block. The apartment sat next to the Chevron on Richmond and the pharmacy on Yoakum, with the diner in between, and Poke would hover by the window, humming at the sink, willing the tap into something a little nicer.

Usually he was cleaning up from last night’s john. Poke tried to keep things local. It made life easier. Most guys were fine getting jerked off in their cars, or driving Poke and the other boys a block from the bars on Fairview—but others insisted that they had to be comfortable, and these were the ones who took Poke home with them.

Although, once, Poke ended up at Memorial Hermann. He’d been sucking off some doctor and the doctor was on call. The doc’s pager went off, and he wouldn’t leave Poke at his place, so he drove him to the hospital and stuck him in the waiting room. Poke sat beside a pair of bleached blondes waiting for painkillers, three bespectacled Mexican women, and some whiteboy with his head in a bandage. The whiteboy looked broken, and he slumped beside his girlfriend, but even through the gauze he was the only one who stared.

When Poke finally asked what’d happened to his face, the whiteboy’s girl grabbed her guy by the shoulders.

The whiteboy said he’d been cooking and he poked himself.

Poke smiled, but he didn’t laugh.

The other boys Poke lived with were fine: Scratch and Google and Knock and Nacho. They worked the same bars, the same apps, hustled the same set of clubs. They looked out for one another well enough—like when Google’d told Poke about dragging his heels, so he wouldn’t track shit from the street into a john’s house; or when Nacho’d advised, after staring for months, that Poke find himself a shirt that didn’t scream pato.

But it was Rod who’d given Poke his crew’s rules of engagement: don’t do anything you wouldn’t do twice; never, ever, ever double-wrap your rubbers; never give your government name, find some shit that’s cool on the ears, and when Poke told Rod that he didn’t really get that since his name was his name and it’s what he was called, Rod christened Poke as Poke.

That’s what got you a regular, Rod said. You established patterns. Patterns became routines. Routines meant a sure buck most days of the month, and that’s what kept the lights on.

When Poke asked Rod about his new name, he never got a straight answer. The dude always dodged him. But one day Google told him: it was because Poke was thicker than the rest of them. All of the other boys wore one another’s clothes, all Supreme and Adidas and Urban Outfitters and Gap, except for Poke, who Rod made solo purchases for.

Rod wasn’t their pimp, but you’d be a fool to tell him that. He took rent from the boys. He bought food from H-E-B. He kept the carpet decent. He scrapped with the white-boys on Yoakum. He made the rounds at all the shelters for handouts, kept roaches from colonizing the kitchen, and, once, after Nacho’d asked who the fuck made him king, Rod broke his thumbs launching him into the wall.

Poke called a cab to drop them at the Urgent Care on Westheimer. Rod’s thumbs swelled like a pair of pale cucumbers. Nacho had a sprained ankle and three bruised ribs, and he wouldn’t step straight for the rest of the year. But Rod iced Nacho’s ribs. He brought pho from the noodle bar and menudo from the taquería. And although Nacho still called him el pinche pendejo blanco, there was warmth in those words from there on out. Not respect or gratitude. Nothing akin to praise. Just acknowledgment. An acceptance of the way things were.

It took months for Poke to ask Rod why he’d done that. When Rod answered, it was like he’d been waiting for the question.

Because one day someone’s gonna kick the shit out of me, he said. They’re gonna beat my fucking ass, and then we’ll see what you do.

Rod kept tabs on all his boys, but he kept Poke a little closer. He’d have denied it if you’d asked him, but he felt for the kid—there was something in the way of kinship.

Poke had no history. He’d hit the streets straight out of the shelter. Rod hadn’t seen him swapping needles on Almeda, or huffing paint in Hyde Park. This made Poke, Rod figured, a true victim of circumstance. So Rod kept Poke in clean socks. And Rod told Poke which cabbies to dodge. And Rod snuck Poke into Minute Maid Park on an off night during the playoffs, a favor from an ex, and they walked from aisle to aisle palming the backs of every seat, mouthing the names of Astros who’d walked the field before them—Biggio, Oswalt, Peña, and Altuve—muttered like saints under their breath.

One night they sat in Katz’s huddled over a Reuben and a milkshake that Rod insisted on despite the extra dollar. Most Thursdays found the boys on Fairview, waiting for the bars to leak their patrons into the morning. But Rod said he had news. Big news. And Poke’d learned not to sleep on an empty stomach.

They rarely ate out, and Poke thought maybe he’d come into some money. It was about fucking time. Maybe he’d found them a bigger spot. Poke envisioned wood floors, painted walls, no rodents, but Rod only sighed, and shut his eyes, and told Poke that he was sick; he’d finally caught the bug.

The two boys eyed each other across the table. Rod with the lighter skin. Poke’s a little darker. Rod with the tapered fade, shaved to the neck, and Poke’s close-cropped, curly at the top. One a little older, the other a little shorter. Both of them brown in the eyes.

Poke took a long bite from his half of the sandwich. He asked if Rod was sure.

Sure enough, Rod said. The rapid looked sure. Nurse sounded fucking sure.

Okay, Poke said. So take another rapid.

That was the third.

They glanced at the diner door as it yawned open and a gaggle of drunks stumbled in from the cold. Poke blinked through the men, glancing at their ring fingers, wondering how much he could pull. Then he pinched himself.

Rod sipped their shake. He didn’t use the straw.

So find a fourth, Poke said, but his voice was cracking.

They didn’t know much, but they knew about HIV. They knew the way it hung over Montrose. They took their precautions. And then there was the rule, Rod’s rule—you got sick, you were gone. No questions. No exceptions. Your ass was on the street.

And yet, Poke thought.

There was froth all over Rod’s lips, strewn with half-chewed pastrami. Poke flicked the end of the straw against his nose.

Fuck, Rod said. What’s fucked is I don’t even know who it was. I can’t even tell you who threw that shit to me.

Poke wanted to say that he’d thrown it to himself—and that’s what didn’t compute. Not with all Rod’s yelling about safety. All the precautions he ran them through. All the grief he gave them. But those words dissolved on Poke’s tongue, and he shook his head instead, and he rubbed the nape of his neck with his palms.

Poke started to ask Rod who else he’d told, but he already knew the answer. So he asked when Rod planned to tell everyone else.

Rod took a long sip. He watched the crowd by the window. One of the men laughed, then glanced at their table. He turned away. Then he glanced again.

When Poke reached for the rest of the Reuben, Rod slapped his hand. Soon, he said. I’ll figure something out.

Rod stretched in the parking lot, bending toward the high-rises, and the gleam from the streetlamps made his shadow bloom in the night, and the reek of deli meat mingled with the tinge of gasoline, and Poke tightroped the curb alongside the cars congesting Westheimer. It was late. The roads were stuffed.

Rod said he was tired. They should start heading back.

Poke looked at his shoes, kicking at the concrete.

Sure, he said. But it was still only eleven. They had the whole night ahead of them, and when was the last time they’d taken one off?

Rod told Poke that was good and fine. But, really, his night was over.

You’re a big boy, though, Rod said. You go on and do your thing.

Just, y’know, Rod said, be safe, and he flashed a grin.

Poke watched Rod saunter away, and then he peeked through the diner’s windows. He felt in his pockets for the space where the thread thinned.

Which was how he ended up at Emil’s. It was a short walk. The brownstone sat in that patch of grass before the sidewalk dissolved into marsh, littered with bottles and cardboard and dog shit, dampened flyers from the most recent mayoral election. Poke punched the buzzer, and then Emil’s voice crackled and the door unlatched itself.

Emi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Lockwood
• Alief
• 610 North, 610 West
• Shepherd
• Wayside
• Bayou
• Lot
• South Congress
• Navigation
• Peggy Park
• Fannin
• Waugh
• Elgin
• Acknowledgements
• Read on for an exclusive extract of Bryan Washington’s stunning debut novel