POPE
What He Felt First
Albany Ave  ·  Frequency  ·  Love  ·  The Saying
Craig Jones  ·  Little Bunny
The PLT Press  ·  Book IX
Copyright © Craig Jones / Little Bunny / The PLT Press
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
First Edition
He felt it before he had the language.
The language was always coming.
— Old Pope, Long Island, Sunday morning
Table of Contents
Before We Begin
Something closed.
The night Brasi took the silver vial on a street in an undisclosed location in whatever city, something that had been open for decades finally rested in its frame. Old Pope felt it on Long Island without anyone calling him. He was already in bed and he lay still for a long time with his eyes open and let the feeling of it complete itself. Then he closed his eyes. Then he slept better than he had slept in thirty years.
Three thousand Soul Notes. Spanning three generations of a bloodline. The contracts his younger self made with djinns who recognized the frequency before he did and drained him without full consent. The decades of paying what he owed anyway — through the losing and the long bottom and the rebuild — because that was who he was and that was the only version of himself he knew how to be.
The debt cleared.
And something else opened.
✦
Pope felt it differently than Old Pope did.
Pope was on the stoop on Albany Ave when it happened. He had been on the stoop all evening. He was not doing anything specific. He was doing the thing he does every evening — reading the block, reading the frequencies, running the equation before the equation had a name. He felt the shift the way you feel a pressure change before weather arrives. Nothing visual. Nothing audible. Just the block feeling different than it had felt five seconds earlier.
He sat with it. He did not try to name it. He had learned years ago that naming things too early is how you lose them. You name a thing and it becomes the name. Before it has the name it is still fully itself. Pope has always been more comfortable in the before-the-name than most people. That is not a skill he developed. That is the signature of what he is.
That is what he felt first. Before Brasi had the language. Before the older family completed their ledger. Before the debt cleared and something opened. He felt it first. He just didn't have the word yet.
The word was coming. It had been coming for thirty years. It arrived the night his brother called.
✦
This book takes place in the nine days between the night the debt cleared and the night Brasi came to Albany Ave.
Nine days on the stoop. Nine readings. Nine people who came to the block and sat with Pope the way people have been sitting with Pope their whole lives — because the block has a frequency and Pope runs the block and being in Pope's presence is being in the frequency at its most concentrated point.
He doesn't prescribe vials. He doesn't run code switches. He doesn't build rooms for people who can't go to the hood. He stands on the stoop and reads everything and says the true thing when the true thing is ready to be said and not a second before.
He has been doing this his whole life. He will do it until he doesn't. The stoop is not a job. The stoop is what he is.
Evol has been here the whole time. Since before he knew her name. Since before she knew what he would become. The djinn and the man from Albany Ave who felt things first and waited for the language and is now nine days away from the conversation that names everything.
00
00 — The Phone
The phone rang on a Sunday night.
Pope looked at the name. He had been looking at this name for three years — every time it appeared on the screen he felt the specific thing that lives underneath the things you don't say out loud to the person who needs to hear them most. He let it ring. One time. Two times. He is not a man who answers without deciding to answer. He decided.
Three rings. Then he picked up.
✦
He doesn't tell us what was said. Not yet. You have to earn the saying. You have to understand what it costs — what it has always cost, what keeping it unsaid cost first, what the days before the saying looked like, who came to the stoop and what Pope read in each of them and what the stoop read back in him.
Nine days. Nine readings. Then the saying.
Start at the beginning. The beginning is the stoop.
01
01 — The Plug's Son
His name is Marcus. Twenty-two. His father ran one of the most efficient operations in three zip codes for eleven years. His father is in federal custody now — has been for four years — and Marcus inherited the spot at eighteen with the name and the corners and the loyalty that comes attached to a name when the name has been earned correctly.
He did not earn the name. He is wearing it. These are different things and Pope has known it since the first week Marcus started coming around. Marcus moves on corners that have always been his father's corners. He talks to men who will answer him for exactly as long as they are calculating whether the son is going to become what the father was. The calculation is ongoing. The answer is not yet determined.
He comes to the stoop every Monday. This is the third Monday. He doesn't know that it's a pattern yet. Pope knows it. Everything is a pattern. The stoop reads patterns the way a tuning fork reads frequency — not by trying, but by being the instrument.
✦
She's been on Albany Ave all day. She watches Marcus come around the corner from two blocks away — the specific walk of a young man performing a walk that belongs to someone else. The performance is not dishonest. It is genuinely who he is trying to become. She has seen this frequency a hundred times in a hundred young men across centuries of block. She knows what Pope will do. She settles.
✦
Marcus sits on the step below Pope. This is where he always sits. He doesn't take the chair beside Pope. He sits one step down. Pope has noticed this and has said nothing about it. The step below means: I know I'm not there yet. The step below means: I'm asking. You don't have to say anything for Pope to read it. The body says everything before the mouth opens.
"I had a situation this week."
Pope waits. He doesn't say tell me. He doesn't say what kind of situation. He just waits in the way of someone who has all the time that exists and is using none of it for pressure. This is the specific quality that makes men tell Pope things they haven't told anyone. Not warmth. Not safety. The absence of hurry.
"One of my corners — the one on Hendricks — one of my people made a move without checking with me. Not a bad move. The right move actually. He saw something and he handled it right and nothing went wrong."
He stops.
"I was angry. My first reaction was anger. He didn't check with me. And I was going to say something about it and then I didn't because I realized what I was actually angry about."
Pope says: what were you actually angry about.
"That he was right. That someone in my operation moved correctly without needing to run it through me. My father never had that problem. His people checked with him because they wanted to. Because he'd built something where checking with him was the right move because he always knew more than they did. I haven't built that yet. And Darius moving right without me is evidence that I haven't."
✦
Pope says: what did you do.
"I told him good work. And then I went home and sat with what his good work showed me."
Pope looks at him. The look he uses when someone has done the right thing and doesn't fully know it yet.
He says: your father's first year on his corners he made eleven mistakes he had to learn from. I know because I was watching. He made every one of them quietly and corrected every one of them without explaining himself to anybody. Darius moving right is not evidence that you haven't built what your father built. It's evidence that Darius is worth having. What you did with the information — the sitting with it instead of punishing the man who showed it to you — that is evidence that you might be building something worth building.
Marcus is quiet for a long time. The block moves around them. Then:
"He would have sent me away."
Pope says: who.
"My father. If I'd come to him at twenty-two with what I just told you — the being angry that one of my people was right — he would have looked at me and said nothing and I would have known to leave and not come back with that kind of thinking again."
Pope says: maybe. Or maybe he would have said exactly what I said and you wouldn't have heard it because you were twenty-two and you needed to say it to someone else first.
Marcus stands up. He straightens his jacket. He has the specific quality of a young man who is beginning to understand that the inheritance is not the corners but the way of seeing.
"Same time next week."
Pope says: same time next week.
He watches him walk back the direction he came. The walk is still the performance. But something underneath the performance is shifting. Pope reads it the way he reads everything — without announcing it. He files it. He sits with the evening.
STOOP READING 01  ·  THE PLUG'S SON
Albany Ave — The Stoop  ·  Monday Evening
FREQUENCY  ·  78    ████████░░
The specific frequency of a young man who received something he didn't know he was asking for. The anger at Darius moving right — that was the ask. The sitting with it instead of punishing it — that was the answer arriving. Pope read all of this in the first three minutes. The conversation was for Marcus to arrive at what Pope already knew.
LOVE  ·  91    █████████░
Three Mondays. Same step. Same posture. The step below is a form of respect that nobody taught him. The block taught him. That's a Love score you can't manufacture.
PROFIT  ·  84    ████████░░
Not transactional. The return here is long — a year, two years. Pope is planting something in the ground that will produce correctly when it produces. He knows this. He is patient with it the way you are patient with things you can feel the quality of even when you can't see them yet.
TAX  ·  22    ██░░░░░░░░
Low heat. Marcus is careful. His father's name is protection that hasn't expired yet. The corner situation with Darius is the only friction and Marcus handled it the right way.
STOOP SCORE  ·  82.8
( FREQUENCY  +  LOVE  +  PROFIT  +  ( 100 − TAX ) )  ÷  4
He inherited a name he didn't earn. He is figuring out that the name is not the thing — the seeing is the thing. Three Mondays on the step below. That's a man who knows what he's asking even when he doesn't have the words for the ask. Pope gave him the words this Monday. He'll be back.
EVOL'S READ
The frequency under the anger was the right frequency. He was angry at correct information — not at Darius, at himself. That's the beginning of the build. She marks it. The older family doesn't stir. This note belongs entirely to the block.
READING  ·  ◆◆  STOOP
02
02 — The Old Head
He doesn't have a name that gets used anymore. He's been on this block for forty years and everyone from those forty years calls him by a name that his actual name isn't. He doesn't correct it. The name from forty years ago is more accurate than the name on his identification anyway.
He is sixty-nine. He remembers the block when it was something else. He remembers Albany Ave before Pope was Pope. He remembers Pope's mother, who lived in the third building from the left and kept a window box of something that didn't grow well in the Long Island winter but she grew it anyway every year because it reminded her of somewhere she was from. He never told Pope he remembered his mother's window box. Some things you carry for the person and don't report.
He comes on Tuesdays. Has been coming since before Pope had the stoop — since before the stoop was Pope's — since the days when this corner of Albany Ave was just a corner and Pope was still figuring out that he was the kind of person corners wait for.
✦
He sits in the chair beside Pope. Doesn't take the step. Doesn't sit below. He has always sat at the same level. This is not presumption. This is accurate. He has the specific authority of a man who has outlasted the reasons anyone would challenge it.
They sit for a while without talking. This is not unusual. Half of the old head's Tuesdays are mostly silence. The silence is not empty. Pope reads it. The old head reads the silence reading him. Two instruments in the same room.
"Something shifted."
Pope says: Tuesday.
"Before that. Something shifted in the block. Not a bad shift. The opposite. Like — you know when pressure drops before rain? But the opposite of that. Like the pressure coming back in."
Pope is quiet.
"You felt it too."
Not a question. Statement. The old head reads Pope the way Pope reads the block. He has been doing it longer than most people have known Pope existed.
"I've felt two things like this in forty years on this block. First time was the summer Pope's mother died. Something left. I felt it leave. I didn't understand what I was feeling until three days later when I heard. Second time is now. Something came back in. Or — something opened. Not the same thing as something arriving. Something that was closed is open now."
✦
Pope says: what do you do when you feel something you don't have a name for.
The old head looks at him. The look of someone who recognizes a question being asked about the question-asker, not about the topic.
"I sit with it. I don't chase it. I don't explain it away. I wait for the name to arrive or not arrive. Most names arrive eventually. Some things don't have names and those are the most important things."
"Your father had that quality. Sitting with the nameless thing. Not trying to resolve it. You got that from him. I watched you learn it, actually — it's not entirely natural. You had to practice it. You practice it still."
Pope says: what do you do when the name is almost there. When you can feel it arriving.
"You stay still. Chasing it makes it go further. Staying still — being the thing the name can land on — that's how you receive it. You've been staying still for a long time, Pope. I've been watching you stay still for years. Something is close. The block can feel it. I can feel it. I imagine you can feel it too."
✦
The old head stands to go. He does something he hasn't done in the years of their Tuesday proximity. He puts his hand on Pope's shoulder once. Not a grip. A landing. Then he walks down Albany Ave in the direction of forty years of knowing this block, and he doesn't look back, and Pope watches him until he turns the corner.
He thinks: something is close. The block can feel it.
He knew before anyone said it. He always knows before anyone says it. The old head just confirmed what Pope has been feeling for nine days. The name is almost here. Stay still.
STOOP READING 02  ·  THE OLD HEAD
Albany Ave — The Stoop  ·  Tuesday Evening
FREQUENCY  ·  97    ██████████
Forty years of block frequency and he reads the shift before Pope names it. The I felt two things like this in forty years — the death of Pope's mother being the first — that is the highest frequency read in the portfolio. He isn't reading Pope. He's reading everything Pope is part of.
LOVE  ·  98    ██████████
The hand on the shoulder at the end. In years of Tuesday proximity he has never done that. That gesture costs something from a man of his economy. He gave it. The Love score reflects what that costs.
PROFIT  ·  79    ████████░░
Not transactional. The return is in the confirmation — Pope has been staying still, waiting for the name to arrive. Having that confirmed by the only person on this block who has been watching long enough to know the difference between waiting and stalling is worth more than a lot of things that look like profit.
TAX  ·  11    █░░░░░░░░░
Lowest Tax in the portfolio. Two instruments in the same room. No friction. No cost. The silence is communication.
STOOP SCORE  ·  90.8
( FREQUENCY  +  LOVE  +  PROFIT  +  ( 100 − TAX ) )  ÷  4
He sat at the level. He always has. Forty years on the block and he is the only person Pope has never had to read because the old head has always already done the reading himself. What he confirmed this Tuesday is the most important thing anyone has said on Albany Ave in years: the name is almost here. Stay still.
EVOL'S READ
She has known the old head for as long as Pope has. She has watched him carry the memory of Pope's mother's window box for decades without telling Pope. She watches him confirm the shift tonight. She marks nothing. Some moments are not for the ledger. Some moments are just true.
READING  ·  ◆◆◆◆◆  LEGACY
03
03 — The Teacher Who Came Back
Her name is Denise. Thirty-four. She grew up four buildings down from Pope — same block, different floor, different window view of the same Albany Ave. She left at seventeen on an academic program that was designed for exactly the kind of student she was — the one who clearly does not belong in the room she's in and is going to leave and make everyone in the room either proud or uncomfortable about what they didn't notice sooner.
She made it completely. Undergrad, graduate school, curriculum development, district-level work in three states. She came back to Long Island eight months ago. She teaches eighth grade English at the school six blocks from Albany Ave — the same school, the same building, different era. She did not have to come back. She chose it. She has complicated feelings about the choice.
She comes on Wednesdays. Has been coming for five weeks. She doesn't come for product. She comes because being near the stoop when she was growing up was the closest thing to a room where she could think clearly, and she has been trying to recreate that quality in her classroom, and she wanted to understand what made it so she could build it deliberately rather than hoping it shows up.
✦
Wednesday. She watches Denise come down Albany Ave and feels the specific frequency of a woman who has two competing truths running simultaneously and has not been able to decide which one is more true. Evol has been watching this woman for five Wednesdays. The competing truths are: I came back because this is where I'm supposed to be and I came back because I was afraid of what staying away would make me. Both true. Neither defeating the other.
✦
Denise sits on the top step — neither at the level nor below it. The step beside the door. This positioning is not calculated. She was a kid who sat on this step when she was twelve and she is doing what twelve-year-old her decided was the right place to be and the continuity is part of what she's trying to understand about the stoop.
"My kids don't read."
Pope says: which ones.
"Most of them. They can read. They just don't. And I know every teacher on the planet says this but — I went to school here. I sat in that building. I read everything I could get my hands on because the books were the way out. And now I'm standing in front of kids who have the same way out and they're not taking it."
"And I know why. I know exactly why. The way out through books only works if you believe there's somewhere to go. And I'm not sure these kids believe in the going anymore. And I don't know how to give them that belief when I'm the one who left and came back."
✦
Pope says: what did you go and come back to.
"What do you mean."
I mean you went and came back. Not the same thing as not leaving. What is it that came back with you that didn't exist in you when you left.
She thinks about this. Not performing the thinking. Actually doing it.
"The block. I left and the block came with me. I couldn't stop seeing everything through Albany Ave. Every school I worked in I was measuring it against what I knew here — what was missing, what they didn't understand about what they were dealing with. I thought I was leaving it behind. I was carrying it everywhere I went."
Pope says: so the belief you're looking for — the somewhere to go — you have it. You've had it your whole life. It's the block.
"The block isn't a somewhere to go. It's the place people are trying to leave."
Pope says: you came back.
Long silence. Then she says it.
"I came back."
He says: so did I. So does everyone who belongs here. The going and the coming back are the same motion. You teach them the motion. Not the leaving. The going and the coming back as one complete thing. That's the belief. That's the somewhere.
✦
She leaves at eight-fifteen. On the walk back to her car she thinks about the motion — the going and the coming back as one complete thing. She thinks about her classroom and the specific way she will rearrange it on Thursday morning. She thinks she might have something.
Pope watches her go. He thinks about the motion he is nine days into completing. He thinks: I went and I came back too. Or — Brasi went. And is coming back. And the distance between the going and the coming back is where the saying lives.
STOOP READING 03  ·  THE TEACHER WHO CAME BACK
Albany Ave — The Stoop  ·  Wednesday Evening
FREQUENCY  ·  89    █████████░
She came back carrying the block without knowing she was carrying it. That is the signature of Albany Ave in a person — the block travels with you whether you intend it or not. Pope read this in her the first Wednesday. Five Wednesdays later she said it herself.
LOVE  ·  94    █████████░
Four buildings down since childhood. The specific step she chose without calculating it. The continuity of a person who still knows where she belongs even when she forgot that she knows.
PROFIT  ·  88    █████████░
The classroom is going to change on Thursday. The motion — the going and the coming back as one complete thing — that is a teaching framework that will reach thirty kids a year for the rest of her career. The return on this Wednesday is compounding for decades.
TAX  ·  18    ██░░░░░░░░
No heat. She is a teacher. She is welcome. The only friction is internal.
STOOP SCORE  ·  88.3
( FREQUENCY  +  LOVE  +  PROFIT  +  ( 100 − TAX ) )  ÷  4
She came to understand the stoop so she could build it in her classroom. What she left with is something the stoop gave her without trying: the motion. Going and coming back as one thing. That's not a teaching technique. That's the truth of every person who ever left Albany Ave and spent the rest of their life carrying it.
EVOL'S READ
The competing truths resolved. Not because one defeated the other but because Pope gave her the frame that holds both. She went. She came back. Both completely true. Both the same motion. Evol marks this note with particular attention. It describes something she has been watching Pope do for thirty years.
READING  ·  ◆◆◆◆  AVENUE
04
04 — The Detective
His name is Raymond Okafor. Forty-seven. Homicide, then cold case, now community liaison — a position that was created specifically for the situation of a detective who has been in the precinct twenty-two years and knows the block better than almost anyone on the job and has relationships on both sides of the thing that the job requires a side to be taken on.
He grew up three miles from Albany Ave. Close enough. He became a cop because the block taught him that the people who had the power were either the people with the badge or the people without it, and he made a calculation at nineteen that determined which category he was going to fall into. He has spent twenty-two years making peace with that calculation while also knowing it was the right one.
He comes on Thursdays. Has been coming for two years. The first time was professional — something he needed Pope to know that he couldn't transmit through official channels without it creating a problem for someone who didn't deserve the problem. He came, he said what he needed to say, and Pope received the information with the specific economy of a man who understands that some information is given not as alliance but as respect. The Thursday visits became a pattern. Neither of them calls it what it is. Both of them know what it is.
✦
He sits beside Pope. At the level. The positioning of a man who is not asking and is not instructing. Two equals from opposite sides of a thing, sitting at the same level, which is the only place where anything useful can be said.
"I had a meeting this week. Department is rolling out a new initiative in three precincts. Community engagement program. Partnership between the precinct and block-level operators — their word, not mine — to share information that prevents situations before they become situations."
Pope waits.
"They want me to bring you in. Formally. Officially. A seat at the table."
Pope says: whose table.
"The department's. They've identified twelve people across three precincts who have what they're calling community influence. You're one of them. They want regular meetings. Formal information sharing. They're calling it a partnership."
Pope says: what does the partnership require.
"That's the part I came to tell you. They are going to call it a partnership. It's going to feel like a partnership. It isn't a partnership. It's a surveillance architecture with a chair in it for you."
✦
Long silence. The block moves. Someone calls out from across the street. Pope nods.
"Why are you telling me this."
Raymond says: because the version where you take the chair and find that out later is worse for everyone. The version where you know what the chair is before you decide whether to sit in it — that's the only version where you have any real options.
Pope says: and what does Raymond Okafor think I should do.
"I think you should tell them you'll consider it. And then never accept and never decline. And I think the fact that they are building this architecture means they know things are shifting and they're trying to get positioned before the shift completes. And I think you should know that they know things are shifting."
Pope says: what are they reading as the shift.
"That's what I can't tell you. I don't have that information. But somebody does. And they're moving because of it."
✦
Raymond stands. He straightens his jacket the way a man straightens his jacket when he has said the thing he came to say and the rest is not his to carry. He says: I'll see you Thursday. Pope says: Thursday.
After he's gone Pope sits with the information. The department reading a shift. Something opening and the institutions around it already moving to position themselves relative to what's opening. He thinks about the old head: something opened. He thinks about what the old head couldn't name and what the department apparently can't name either but is moving in response to anyway.
He thinks: whatever this is, it's large enough that it has institutional weather. He stays still. The name is close.
STOOP READING 04  ·  THE DETECTIVE
Albany Ave — The Stoop  ·  Thursday Evening
FREQUENCY  ·  91    █████████░
He came to give Pope clean information at personal professional risk. The gift of accurate intelligence from the other side of the line — that's a frequency reading of a man who knows exactly what he is doing and has decided that what Pope does with the information is worth the exposure of giving it.
LOVE  ·  82    ████████░░
Two years of Thursdays at the level. Neither calling it what it is. Both knowing. That is one of the rarest trust architectures on this block.
PROFIT  ·  77    ████████░░
The chair not taken is a form of profit. Pope knows what the chair is before he sits in it. That knowledge has value that doesn't show on any ledger the department can read.
TAX  ·  41    ████░░░░░░
Higher Tax than most stoop readings. The formal architecture being built around Pope is a real exposure regardless of whether he takes the chair. The department knowing things are shifting means Pope is in a visibility he didn't seek.
STOOP SCORE  ·  77.3
( FREQUENCY  +  LOVE  +  PROFIT  +  ( 100 − TAX ) )  ÷  4
He didn't come to make a deal. He came to give Pope the information that makes the deal unnecessary. That's not the behavior of a man playing both sides. That's the behavior of a man who has decided which side of the line contains the things worth protecting. Pope knows the difference. The stoop knows the difference.
EVOL'S READ
The institutions are reading the shift. They don't know what opened but they are responding to the fact of something opening. Evol watches Pope absorb this information without flinching. The older family registers this moment — the outside world beginning to orient around what they designed. They do not speak. But she can feel them paying attention.
READING  ·  ◆◆◆  BLOCK
05
05 — The Shorty
He is seventeen. His name is DeShawn. He has been watching the stoop from across the street for three weeks before he comes over. Pope knows. Pope saw him watching from day one. He let him watch. Some people need to watch before they approach. Watching is research. You don't interrupt research.
He comes on Friday. The day of the week with the most ambient noise on Albany Ave — the end-of-week energy, the money moving, the block at its most visible. He chose Friday deliberately. Not consciously — he doesn't know he chose it. But Pope knows. Friday means: I want witnesses. Not to the conversation but to the approaching. To me being the kind of person who approaches this stoop.
He stands at the bottom of the steps. He doesn't sit. He is not sure yet whether sitting is something that belongs to him here.
"Can I talk to you."
Pope says: you are talking to me. Come up.
✦
She watches the seventeen-year-old come up the steps and feels the specific frequency of a person standing at the exact moment Pope was once standing. Not the same situation. Not the same block configuration. The same moment in the development of a man who is going to be something and doesn't know yet what the something is. She has seen this frequency a small number of times. It is rare. It is always significant. She marks the session open before he sits down.
✦
He sits on the step below. Same step as Marcus. Pope notices the pattern — the under-twenty-fives all find the step below. The over-forties all sit at the level. There is a middle range that sits on the step beside the door. The block has a seating chart that nobody drew up.
"I'm trying to decide something."
Pope waits.
"I got an offer. College prep program. Full scholarship. I go away for two years and come back with a diploma and connections and they say a career path. My mother wants me to go. My boys think I'm going to lose something if I leave. And I don't know."
"I've been watching this stoop for three weeks because I wanted to talk to someone who — I wanted to talk to someone who knows both sides of that decision. Someone who stayed and built something that matters. Because everyone who tells me to leave already left."
✦
Pope says: what do you think you'll lose.
"Myself. I think I'll go and come back different. And the different might be better in ways I can't see from here. But the different might also mean I come back and this doesn't fit anymore. And this is the only thing that has ever fit."
Pope says: you said this is the only thing that's ever fit. What is this.
"The block. Knowing how things work. Reading people. Being from somewhere specifically. Being from here."
Pope is quiet for a moment. He says: let me tell you something about being from here specifically. It doesn't require you to stay here to be true. I know men who left and came back and brought the block with them the whole time. I know men who stayed and lost the block while standing on it. The leaving and the staying don't determine whether you're from here. What you carry does.
"What do I carry."
Pope says: everything you just described. The reading people. The knowing how things work. The being from somewhere specifically. You carry all of that already. Nobody can give you that and nobody can take it. Not the program, not the leaving, not two years anywhere they want to send you.
✦
DeShawn sits with this. The block noise moves around them. He says: so you think I should go. Pope says: I think you should decide. I think you already know what you're going to decide and you came here to have someone confirm that it's a real decision and that both sides of it are survivable. Both sides are survivable. Go or stay — you are still from here. Take that with you.
He leaves at seven. He walks back across the street with a different posture than he came with. Not better. More settled. The decision has not been made yet but the ground under the decision has been confirmed. It is solid. He can stand on it.
Pope watches him go. He thinks about seventeen. He thinks about the thing he felt at seventeen that he didn't have language for yet. He thinks: that's what I was at seventeen. That frequency. That question. Watching the stoop from across the street and deciding whether to cross.
He crossed. He's been crossing back and forth for thirty years. The crossing is the thing. Not the side you land on.
STOOP READING 05  ·  THE SHORTY
Albany Ave — The Stoop  ·  Friday Evening
FREQUENCY  ·  96    ██████████
The same frequency Pope was at seventeen. Rare. Significant. He watched from across the street for three weeks before crossing. He chose Friday. Both of those things together — that's a person who is going to do whatever he does with extraordinary intentionality.
LOVE  ·  87    █████████░
He came because everyone who told him to leave already left. He needed someone who stayed and built something. That is a form of love for the block that Pope feels in his chest.
PROFIT  ·  91    █████████░
Whatever this young man decides — go or stay — he is going to carry the reading correctly from this point forward. The return on this conversation is not in what DeShawn does next. It is in every decision he makes for the rest of his life with the understanding that being from somewhere doesn't require him to stay there to be true.
TAX  ·  9    █░░░░░░░░░
No Tax. No heat. A seventeen-year-old on a Friday evening. The most uncomplicated stoop reading in nine days.
STOOP SCORE  ·  91.3
( FREQUENCY  +  LOVE  +  PROFIT  +  ( 100 − TAX ) )  ÷  4
He came to have someone confirm that both sides of the decision are survivable. Pope confirmed it. That's the whole session. Sometimes the most important thing you can do for someone is confirm that the ground under their decision is solid. They'll figure out the decision. They needed the ground.
EVOL'S READ
The frequency she marked when he sat down — she has seen it four times in her centuries of watching blocks. Each time it has preceded something significant. Not for the block. For the frequency itself. What this young man carries out of Albany Ave is going to matter in ways that cannot be measured from this stoop tonight. She marks the session. She closes it carefully.
READING  ·  ◆◆◆◆  AVENUE
06
06 — Lakeema
Her name is Lakeema. She has been in Pope's life for eleven years. They are not married. They are not dating, exactly. They are the specific thing that two people become when they have been honest with each other about everything except the thing that would require the relationship to become something with a name, and they have managed the not-naming so completely that the not-naming has become the structure of the thing.
She is thirty-seven. She grew up two miles from Albany Ave. She works in housing advocacy — the specific work of fighting for people who are being pushed out of the neighborhoods that formed them. She chose this work because she understands, at a cellular level, what it costs a person to lose the place that made them. She fights for the place because she knows what the losing does.
She comes on Saturday. Has been coming on Saturday for eleven years. Not every Saturday. Most Saturdays. The specific Saturdays where something in the week has built up enough that she needs the block and what the block holds.
✦
Saturday. She watches Lakeema come down Albany Ave with the specific walk of a woman who knows she is about to say something she has been not saying. Evol can feel it in the approach — the building of the Saturday that is different from the other Saturdays. She settles in the corner that is hers. She waits.
✦
Lakeema sits in the chair beside Pope. She has always sat in the chair beside Pope. The chair beside Pope is her chair. This is understood by everyone who comes to the stoop. No one takes that chair when Lakeema is coming.
She says: can I ask you something about us.
Pope says: yes.
"What are we."
The question has been waiting eleven years for a Saturday where it could be asked. Pope has felt it approaching for nine days — since the shift, since the debt cleared, since something opened and the things that were being held in place by the not-naming started to move. He has been staying still. The question has arrived.
He says: what are we to each other or what is the name for what we are.
"Both. Are they different answers."
He says: the answer to the first question is: everything I trust, I trust to you. Everything I can't say on the stoop I can say to you. Every version of myself that doesn't live on Albany Ave — the one that is afraid sometimes, the one that doesn't always know, the one that watches the shift happen and doesn't have the name yet — that version only exists inside your knowing of me. That's what we are to each other.
"And the name."
Long pause.
"I have been not giving it a name because I didn't want the name to be smaller than what it actually is. Every name I had available — girlfriend, partner, together — none of them fit the specific thing that you are in my life. And I didn't want to put a smaller name on a larger thing."
"But I've been staying still waiting for the right name and the right name hasn't come and I've started to understand that maybe the name isn't the point. Maybe the point is the saying. Maybe what it is between us is exactly what I described — the trust, the only place where the afraid version of me exists — and the name for that is yours. Whatever name you want to give it. You name it. That's the right name."
✦
Lakeema is quiet for a long time. The block moves around them. Saturday night Albany Ave.
"I've been doing the same thing. Waiting for the name that fit. And what I've decided the name is, is: Pope. What we are is Pope. The word for what I am to you is me. And the word for what you are to me is you. And if we can call it that, if that's allowed, then I think I'm okay with the not-naming."
Pope looks at her.
"That's allowed."
She takes his hand. They sit with Saturday evening on Albany Ave doing what Saturday evenings on Albany Ave do. The block noise. The lights coming on. The specific comfort of being in the right place with the right person without needing the right word for it.
✦
Later, when she leaves, Pope sits with what happened. The not-naming named. The structure of eleven years confirmed as the structure it always was. He thinks about names. He thinks about the name that is coming — the one that will arrive when Brasi comes — and he thinks that maybe all the most important things wait the longest for their names and the waiting is not absence but accumulation. The name arrives carrying everything the waiting built.
He thinks: I know what we are now. Three days until I know what else is true.
STOOP READING 06  ·  LAKEEMA
Albany Ave — The Stoop  ·  Saturday Evening
FREQUENCY  ·  93    █████████░
Eleven years of Saturday frequency and this is the Saturday that was different. She felt the shift too. She came to the stoop to say the thing the shift made possible. Pope read the difference in her walk before she reached the steps.
LOVE  ·  100    ██████████
Perfect Love score. The only one in the portfolio. Eleven years of everything I trust I trust to you. The name for what we are is us. The score does not go above one hundred.
PROFIT  ·  88    █████████░
The return on eleven years of not-naming that finally gets the right frame. The investment is clear. The naming is the return.
TAX  ·  13    █░░░░░░░░░
No external heat. The only Tax here is the specific cost of waiting eleven years to say something this true. That cost has been paid. It will not be paid again.
STOOP SCORE  ·  92.0
( FREQUENCY  +  LOVE  +  PROFIT  +  ( 100 − TAX ) )  ÷  4
She asked what are we. He answered with the most honest accounting of what they are that the English language can hold. She answered back with the most accurate naming available: Pope. The word for what I am to you is me. The word for what you are to me is you. That is not sentiment. That is precision. The stoop has never heard something this precise said this quietly.
EVOL'S READ
The shift is working through every relationship Pope has. Lakeema felt it and came to say the thing it made possible. Evol has been watching this relationship for eleven years. She has never seen Pope say something this true to another person while sitting on the stoop. She marks it. The debt is clear. The opening is showing itself in everything.
READING  ·  ◆◆◆◆◆  LEGACY
07
07 — Old Pope Comes to Albany Ave
He doesn't call ahead. He never calls ahead. He drives from Long Island on a Sunday morning and he parks on Albany Ave and he sits in the car for thirty seconds and then he gets out.
Pope sees the car from the window before Old Pope is out of it. He knows the car. He knows the thirty seconds. He goes to the stoop. He puts two chairs out instead of one. His father doesn't get the step below or the door step. His father gets the chair.
Old Pope walks up Albany Ave with seventy-one years on him and all of them visible in the way of a man who has paid everything he owed and is carrying none of it anymore. He looks lighter than Pope has ever seen him. He looks like the version of himself that was promised and delayed for decades and is only now arriving in full.
He sits in the chair. Pope sits in the chair beside him. For a long time they do not talk. Albany Ave does what Albany Ave does on Sunday morning. The block is quieter on Sunday. The block breathes differently on Sunday. Both of them know this. They let the Sunday morning do its work.
✦
"I felt it the night it happened."
Pope says: I know.
"The whole weight of it. I didn't know it was going to feel like that. I thought I would feel relief. I felt relief. But underneath the relief — something I don't have a full name for yet. Something like — like I could finally stop holding the thing I'd been holding so long I forgot my hands were clenched. And I unclenched. And the unclenching was the feeling. Not the empty hands. The act of opening."
Pope says: what does it feel like now.
"Like before I started. Like I'm nineteen years old and everything is possible in the specific way things are possible when you haven't eliminated any of the options yet. Except I'm seventy-one and I have the knowledge of everything that comes between nineteen and now. Nineteen with everything I know. That's what it feels like. I don't know what to do with that yet."
✦
Old Pope looks at the block. He used to know this block. He knows it differently now — from the outside, the way you know a place you are connected to but no longer live inside.
"I owe you something."
Pope says: no.
"Not money. Not the operation. Something I've been not saying because the saying required certain other things to be said first and those things are being said now. Or are about to be said. And what I owe you is this: I knew what you were before you knew. I watched you feel things I couldn't explain to you because I didn't have the language yet. And I let you feel them without giving you the frame for what you were feeling because the frame wasn't mine to give — it had to come from the feeling itself. But I want you to know that I saw it. That I've always seen it. That the whole time you were feeling what you couldn't name I was watching you feel it and I was — I was proud isn't the right word. I was something larger than proud."
Pope says nothing for a long time.
"What is the word."
Old Pope says: I don't have it yet either. Maybe that's a Jones thing. We feel the true things before we have the words. The words come later. The feeling is always first. Your brother —
He stops.
"Your brother is three days out."
Pope says: I know.
"You've always known."
Pope says: I've always known.
✦
Old Pope stays until noon. They talk about the block. They talk about the old neighborhood and the version of it that exists now and the version that will exist in ten years. They talk about Marcus and the step below and what the step below means when it comes from the right place. They talk about Lakeema. They do not talk about what is three days away — it doesn't need to be discussed. It is coming. Both of them can feel it coming the way you feel something whose arrival has been earned.
Old Pope stands to leave. He looks at his son. He says: your stoop is better than mine was. I mean that completely.
Pope says: your stoop made this one possible.
Old Pope nods. He walks back to the car. He gets in. He sits for thirty seconds. Then he drives back to Long Island. Pope watches the car until it turns the corner. Then he sits alone on the stoop with Sunday morning and what is three days away.
The words come later. The feeling is always first. He has been feeling this for thirty years. Three days.
STOOP READING 07  ·  OLD POPE COMES TO ALBANY AVE
Albany Ave — The Stoop  ·  Sunday Morning
FREQUENCY  ·  99    ██████████
The highest frequency in the portfolio. Two people who read everything reading each other for two hours on a Sunday morning. The I knew what you were before you knew — that is the most significant thing said on this stoop in nine days.
LOVE  ·  99    ██████████
The word that is larger than proud and has no name yet. The father and the son acknowledging the fullness of what they are to each other without needing to finish all the sentences. One point short of perfect because the one thing still unsaid — the larger word — will arrive eventually.
PROFIT  ·  96    ██████████
What this morning produces cannot be measured in the immediate. The clearing of the air between a father and son who have been operating in the same direction for thirty years — that produces everything that comes next.
TAX  ·  8    █░░░░░░░░░
Sunday morning. No traffic. No heat. The lowest Tax possible in a conversation of this depth.
STOOP SCORE  ·  96.5
( FREQUENCY  +  LOVE  +  PROFIT  +  ( 100 − TAX ) )  ÷  4
He drove from Long Island without calling ahead. He put two chairs out. For two hours the founder of the operation and the man who runs Albany Ave sat at the same level and confirmed that they have always been seeing the same thing. Your stoop is better than mine was. I mean that completely. That is the most complete thing anyone has ever said on this block.
EVOL'S READ
The older family. She feels them the moment Old Pope sits in the chair. Not auditing. Not collecting. Witnessing. They have been watching this bloodline for three generations. This is the first time they have come to Albany Ave. They do not speak. They are here because what happens on this stoop in the next three days is what they built toward. She understands this completely now. She marks the session. She marks it twice.
READING  ·  ◆◆◆◆◆  LEGACY
08
08 — The Night Before
Tuesday. One day before Brasi comes.
Pope is on the stoop alone. No readings tonight. The block comes and goes and Pope nods and says what needs to be said and the block understands without being told that tonight the stoop is occupied in a different way. This is one of the qualities of Albany Ave — the block reads the stoop the way the stoop reads the block. The communication goes both directions.
He sits for a long time with what is coming.
✦
She's been here all evening. She's been here all nine days. Tonight she doesn't read the stoop or mark sessions or watch the frequencies. Tonight she just sits in her corner and is present with the man she has been collecting from for thirty years. There is something she wants to say to him. She has never spoken to him directly — the contract doesn't require it and the design doesn't permit it. But tonight she is close to it. Tonight the contract feels like a different kind of constraint than it has always felt.
✦
Pope thinks about what he knows.
He knows: Brasi is his brother. This has been true since before either of them could have known it. Old Pope on two different sides of himself, producing two sons who found each other on the block and the boardroom and the stoop and the re-up and the on-and-off and the years of proximity without the word.
He knows: the word is the thing. Not because naming changes what it is. Because saying the name is what makes the thing fully real for both people at the same time. He and Brasi have been real to each other for years. The naming makes them real to themselves as what they actually are.
He knows: Brasi is close to understanding what he is. Old Pope said you'll understand it more completely. Pope felt it first and still doesn't have the full language. When Brasi gets here — when they say the thing — the language might arrive for both of them.
He knows: the stoop has been building toward this. Every reading in nine days has been a preparation — Marcus and the inheritance, the old head and staying still, Denise and the going and coming back, Raymond and the institutions moving around what opened, DeShawn and the carrying, Lakeema and the naming, his father on the stoop Sunday morning. All of it pointed here. All of it arriving at Wednesday.
✦
She stops herself. She was going to say something. She pulls back. The contract doesn't permit it. But she is going to find a way to tell him — not tonight, not directly — that she has been here. That she has always been here. That what he built on this stoop is what she was collecting and that the collecting was never extraction — it was preservation. That every note she marked went somewhere that kept it. That the Albany Ave frequency exists in a ledger that does not forget, that does not depreciate, that does not lose what is given to it.
She will find a way. Not tonight. After the saying. Some things have to wait for the right moment and she has been waiting for the right moment longer than she has been auditing this block.
✦
Pope sits on the stoop until midnight. He is not worried. He is not afraid. He is in the specific state of a man who has been feeling the true thing long enough that when it arrives he will be ready. He has been ready for years. He was just waiting for his brother.
Tomorrow. The stoop. The saying. The name for everything that has been nameless.
He goes inside. He sleeps well.
09
09 — The Saying
Brasi comes on Wednesday evening.
Pope sees the car two blocks away. He knows the car. He has always known the car. He puts two chairs on the stoop. He goes back inside and comes out with two coffees. He sits down. He waits.
Brasi pulls up. Cuts the engine. The thirty seconds. Except it's longer tonight. Pope counts. He gets to a minute and a half before the door opens.
He thinks: Nreal is settling something bigger than a room tonight.
✦
She has been settling this stoop since before Brasi was born. She did not know, then, what she was settling it toward. She knows now. She watches Brasi walk up Albany Ave toward his brother's stoop and she feels the specific weight of a design completing — not in the mechanical sense of a calculation reaching its result but in the way a long piece of music resolves into the chord it was always moving toward. The chord was always there. The movement was the experience of arriving at it.
✦
Brasi comes up the steps. He takes the chair beside Pope. At the level. He always has — from the first time he was on this stoop he sat at the level without considering the alternative. Pope always noticed this. Two people from the same source sitting at the same level without needing to discuss it.
Pope hands him the coffee. Brasi takes it. They sit for a while without talking. Albany Ave on a Wednesday evening. The block doing what the block does.
✦
Then Brasi says: I took the silver.
Pope says: I know.
"I saw something. In the fixer's room. I saw myself — what I actually am. Not what I do. What I am."
Pope says: tell me.
"I am the room. I'm not building rooms for people. I am the room. The code switch, the sessions, the thirty seconds in the car — all of it is the room generating itself. And something is using the room. Something has been using it the whole time. And I've been operating like it was my design. But it isn't my design."
Pope looks at him.
"Whose design is it."
✦
Pope says: I felt something when I was seventeen that I've been trying to name for thirty years. A frequency. A quality. Like everything I looked at I could read — not the surface, underneath. The actual thing. The thing underneath the thing. I've been running that my whole life. This block, these people, the operation — all of it runs on the reading. But I never designed the reading. I arrived with it.
"You felt it first."
Pope says: I felt it first. You'll understand it more completely.
"Old Pope said that."
Pope says: he said it to me about you.
✦
They sit with this. The design they didn't design. The frequency they arrived with. The thing that has been running through the bloodline across Old Pope's deals and Old Pope's paying and Albany Ave and twelve sessions and the fixer's room and the debt clearing and the older family and Evol and Nreal and everything that has been operating underneath everything they could see.
"Are we supposed to know what it is."
Pope says: I don't think knowing is the point. I think the point is the running of it. We run the frequency. Something uses the frequency. Something is kept by the frequency. That's the economy.
"The Soul Economy."
Pope says: the Soul Economy.
They say it at the same time. Then look at each other. Then something that has never happened on this stoop happens: Brasi laughs. Not politely. Not controlled. The full laugh of a man who has been holding something serious for so long that the release of it sounds like the purest possible version of relief. Pope hears it and feels it and then he does the same thing he has not done on Albany Ave in thirty years of running this block — he laughs with him. Both of them on the stoop on Wednesday evening on Albany Ave laughing at the economy that has been running underneath everything they thought they were doing.
✦
When it settles Pope says: say it.
Brasi says: you say it.
Pope says: I'll say it if you say it at the same time.
Brasi says: that's the only way I'll say it.
Pope looks at his brother.
Brasi looks at his brother.
✦
They say it at the same time.
✦
The block receives the word the way the block receives the true things that are said on it — without ceremony, without announcement, simply as the addition of something to the record that will remain in the record from this point forward.
Evol feels it from her corner.
The older family receives it across whatever distance separates their register from Albany Ave. The word said at the same time by the two who were produced by the same source through the design of the contract and the decades of paying and the bloodline frequency and the three generations of accumulation. The word closes the last thing that needed closing. Everything is open now. The design is not complete — the design is alive. A thing designed to run continues running. They do not speak. But something in the ledger — the oldest ledger, the one that predates the formal Soul Economy, the one that has been building toward this since before Old Pope was born — something in that ledger settles. The way a chord settles. The way water settles. The way a thing that has been moving for a very long time settles when it arrives where it was always going.
✦
They sit until the coffee is gone. They talk about Old Pope. They talk about the operation — both operations, the stoop and the sessions, and how they have always been running parallel and what it means that the parallel is now a conversation. They talk about what comes next.
"I want to build something."
Pope says: I know. What.
"I don't have the full shape yet. Something that uses both sides. The boardroom and the block. The code switch and the stoop reading. The vials and the frequency."
Pope says: something that runs what we each run but together.
"Something that only works if both of us are running it."
Pope looks at the block. Wednesday night. Albany Ave. He says: I've been waiting for someone to say that. I've been waiting for someone to see that the stoop needs what the sessions have and the sessions need what the stoop has. I didn't know it was going to be you. I should have known it was going to be you.
"It was always going to be me."
Pope says: it was always going to be you.
✦
Brasi leaves at eleven. He walks to the car. He cuts the engine. He sits.
Pope watches from the stoop.
The thirty seconds.
No. Longer. Much longer. Pope counts to two minutes before the car starts.
He thinks: Nreal is in that car. She is sitting with him in whatever it feels like to have the thing named. He watches the car until it rounds the corner. Then he sits alone on the stoop for a long time with Wednesday night on Albany Ave and everything that just opened.
The block is quiet. The frequency hums. The stoop holds everything it has always held and a few new things and all of it in the record now, in the keeping, in the ledger that doesn't lose what is given to it.
Pope stays until the block tells him to go inside. Then he goes inside. Tomorrow is Thursday. Thursday is the stoop. The stoop is what he is. He is still what he is. He is more of it now.
Epilogue
Thursday morning. Eight a.m. Pope is on the stoop before the block wakes up.
He has a coffee. The block is still. The specific Albany Ave stillness of early Thursday when the week is finding its footing again after Wednesday. He sits in the quiet and lets the morning be what mornings are before anyone needs anything from them.
His phone rings. He looks at the name. Brasi. He answers immediately. No calculation this time. No letting it ring. The word has been said. The calculation about whether to calculate is over.
"Sunday."
Pope says: Sunday.
"Albany Ave."
Pope says: Albany Ave.
"Bring the chairs."
Pope says: I'll bring the chairs.
✦
He puts the phone in his pocket. He picks up his coffee. He looks at Albany Ave in the Thursday morning light — the block that has been his for thirty years, the block that has held every reading and every frequency and every person who needed the stoop and the old head and Lakeema and Marcus on the step below and DeShawn watching from across the street and his father on a Sunday morning and now his brother, arriving on Sunday with whatever they are going to build.
He thinks: I felt this. Before anyone said anything. Before the debt cleared. Before the fixer's room and the silver vial and the word said at the same time. I was seventeen years old on a corner in Long Island and I felt something I couldn't name and I stayed with it for thirty years and the name came.
The name came.
✦
Albany Ave. Thursday. The stoop. The frequency running.
Sunday coming.
Whatever opens, opens.
Whatever is built, is built.
The block holds it all.
Pope is still on the stoop when the block wakes up.
About the Author
Craig Jones (Little Bunny) is the founder of the PLT Framework and the author of the PLT Doctrine Series. Pope: What He Felt First is the ninth book in the series and the third novel, following Evol's Love Story and Brasi: The Love of the Game. The Albany Ave universe continues.
#PLT  ·  #Pope  ·  #AlbanyAve  ·  #WhatHeFeltFirst  ·  #ProfitLoveTax  ·  #LittleBunny
The PLT Series
NON-FICTION
Book I  The First Calculation  ·  Craig Jones & Lakeema Jones
Book II  The Calculation  ·  Little Bunny
Book III  Know What You Are  ·  Little Bunny
Book IV  Profit. Love. Tax.  ·  Little Bunny
Book V  The Soul Economy  ·  Little Bunny
Book VI  The PLT Daily  ·  Little Bunny
FICTION
Book VII  Evol's Love Story  ·  Craig Jones
Book VIII  Brasi: The Love of the Game  ·  Little Bunny
Book IX  Pope: What He Felt First  ·  Little Bunny
#PLT  ·  #ProfitLoveTax  ·  #LittleBunny  ·  #WeAreTheArchitects