A DO RIGHT MAN

Tyree (Flyy Girl, 1996) returns, this time, fortunately, focusing less on Afrocentric theorizing and more on character- -resulting in a good deal more engaging read. The first-person story centers on Bobby Dallas (the ``do right man''), who, despite the weight he's obliged to shoulder as a prototypical Good Black Man, manages to come off as likable, complex, and utterly confused. Bobby has always wanted to be ``in'' radio. And so at Howard University he interns at a couple of stations and makes contacts that ought to be useful in the future. Just before graduation, though, the campus babe and slick New Yorker Pearl Davis takes a shine to Bobby, leading him to throw over best friend Faye Butler, who's been expressing romantic interest in him for years, and follow Pearl to Manhattan, where the talk-radio scene is as cut-throat as the city streets. Sure enough, once Pearl's modeling career takes off, she dumps him fast, and Bobby moves back to Washington to make a real run for his dream job. But while he hooks up there with lots of smart and beautiful women, he finds he can't stop thinking about Faye. After finding professional success, with women of all kinds banging down his door, Bobby is all the more convinced that Faye, his soulmate, was the one he let get away. It will take a coincidence and an act of bravery to gather all the ragged threads of Bobby's life together into a cohesive strand. Tyree in a new, more subtle mode.