'Man, it's time to go,' the little mean kid with the buzz cut said.

'Put the fucking knife away,' the dumb one told Divinity.

'Get outta my face!' Divinity spat. 'You fuckheads leave, now. I got business to do and a nice new car to ride.'

'We leave you, Smoke will kill us,' the dumb one matter-of-factly stated.

'You don't and I'll kill you,' Divinity promised.

The three guys ran off. They disappeared around the corner toward Robinson Street. Divinity pointed the knife at Brazil's throat, moving in.

'I thought you wanted to be alone with me,' Brazil said as if nothing had ever scared him or ever could. 'What kind of way is that to start?'

'Don't fuck with me,' Divinity said in a soft, menacing voice.

'I thought that's what you wanted me to do. Fuck with you.'

'When I'm finished with you, baby, you won't be fucking nothing no more.'

Brazil pointed the remote key at the BMW's door and the lock clicked free.

'You ever been in one of these?' he asked her as the knife caught light.

He knew he could grab her faster than she could stab, but he would get cut, probably badly. He had something else in mind. He opened the car door.

'What do you think?' he said.

Divinity couldn't keep her eyes from wandering inside, taking in the dark, soft leather upholstery and thick carpet.

'Climb in,' Brazil said.

She looked uncertain.

'What's the matter? You afraid to be seen with me?' Brazil asked. 'You afraid your boyfriend will do something?'

'I'm not afraid of nothing,' she snapped.

'Maybe I just need to look the part, huh?' Brazil said. 'Maybe I'm not dressed right, huh?'

He sat sidesaddle in the driver's seat. He pulled his Polo shirt over his head and tossed it in back. Divinity stared at his bare chest. Sweat was rolling down it. He picked a Braves baseball cap off the dashboard and put it on backward.

Divinity grinned. She lowered the knife.

'I got Nikes on already.' Brazil held up his right foot. 'So all I gotta do is roll up the pants leg and then you climb in with me, baby. And we'll drive the night away.'

Divinity started giggling. She started laughing harder when Brazil reached down and started rolling up his right pants leg. She gasped when Brazil was suddenly pointing the Colt Mustang between her eyes. The switchblade clattered to the pavement. Divinity started running. An old shark-gray Lemans roared around the corner and slammed on the brakes. The back door flew open and Divinity dove in. Brazil stood in the middle of West Gary Street, the gun by his side, his heart pounding.

He thought about chasing them, but his better judgment told him to leave well enough alone. The Lemans was gone so fast, Brazil got only a glimpse of a Virginia plate. He got back in his BMW and drove along West Cary toward home.

The first time the Lemans rolled by slowly, its muffler was dragging the pavement and making a terrible noise, sparks flying as if the car were a match trying to light the street.

The bass was up so high the night throbbed worse than Weed's head, and he had scraped both palms when he dove into a ditch just in time. He had peeked through weeds and made out four people jumping around to the rap inside the car. One of them turned to look back as she drank out of a bottle. Weed had realized with horror that Divinity, Beeper, Sick and Dog were in that car and probably looking for him.

It was past ten the second time Weed heard the awful rumble of the souped-up engine and the clanging of the muffler and the boom-boom of the bass coming from a distance. He vaulted over a wall and crouched behind a spruce on the property of some rich person who lived in a brick mansion with big white pillars.

The Pikes disappeared down the road. Weed waited a good five minutes before he came out of hiding. He climbed back over the wall at the precise moment a small sports car purred around the bend, its high beams on and pinning Weed against the night like a moth against a window.

Bubba was too busy to take so much as one sip of Tang, which had been room temperature when Honey had spitefully filled his thermos, and therefore would still be room temperature if he ever had time to drink it. There wasn't the slightest chance Bubba would make it to the break room to microwave his Taco Bell Lunchable, which Honey had not ruined because she couldn't.

Bubba had not a moment to think about the Icehouse or Molson Golden or Foster's Lager filling the refrigerator in the mud room, waiting for him when he finally rolled in, exhausted, around half-past seven every morning except Tuesday and Wednesday, his days off. Bubba did not eat, drink or smoke anything that wasn't Philip Morris. He would have bought nothing but Philip Morris stock if he didn't spend so much on its products and his Jeep and tools.

Bubba Fluck's feelings were lacerated to the point of rage. He was being treated like shit as he tried like hell to speed things along in Bay 8. Sure, there had been a lot of rejects flying into the bins on the floor, destined for the ripper room, where they would be fed into a machine, the precious tobacco separated from the paper and reclaimed. Bubba refused to accept defeat. He figured if three shifts could crank out thirty million packs of cigarettes every twenty-four hours, then he, by God, could whip out an extra half a million cigarettes or twenty-five thousand packs before shift change.

Bubba worked like one possessed, dashing back and forth between the computer and the maker. When the resistance to draw got a little too close to the red line, Bubba was right there making the adjustment. He intuitively knew when he was going to run out of glue and made sure the attendant pulled up the cart early. When the tipping paper broke again, Bubba spooled it back through the air channel, up into the feed rollers, threaded it into the garnisher and hit reset in a record thirty-one seconds.

When the paper broke another time, he realized he had dull knives in the cutting head and summoned a fixer to take care of the problem. Bubba sweated through more lost minutes and worked even faster to make up the time. He ran three hours without another mishap, without stopping, and by four A.M., the production report on the computer screen showed Bubba was only 21,350 dual-rods, or less than two minutes, behind Bay 5.

Production supervisor Betty Council monitored quality and oversaw fixers and electricians, and coordinated shifts. She had been keeping her eye on Bubba for weeks because he seemed to have more technical problems than any of the other operators. Gig Dan had told her he was getting fed up with him.

'How are we doing?' she called out to Bubba as the vacuum in the maker sucked blended tobacco down, and rods formed almost faster than the eye could follow.

Bubba was too busy to answer.

'You don't have to kill yourself,' said Council, who was on her way to being promoted again because she was smart, hardworking, and several months ago had increased production three percent by encouraging competition among the bays.

'I'm fine,' Bubba said as rods were glued, cut, plucked into the transfer drum, carried to another knife and flipper, then to another drum. Plugs from the plug hopper were cut and married to the rods.

'I'm absolutely amazed,' she yelled above the roar and strike of machines. 'You and Smudge are almost neck and neck.'

Brazil stepped on the gas in pursuit of the kid half-falling and zigzagging on the side of the road. It was commonly accepted in policing that if a subject was running, usually there was a reason. Brazil rolled down his window.

'What's going on?' he called out as he drove and the kid continued to dash about.

'Nothing,' the kid gasped, the whites of his eyes showing all the way around as fear propelled his Nikes.