– Joe.

I stop kicking the can I’ve been chasing down the dark Central Park footpath. I look at the woman blocking my way.

She’s black and she’s beautiful and she’s built like a brick shit house.

– Sela.

She toes the can with the point of her glossy black knee-high boots, the slit in her skirt falling open over a bare, muscle-rippled thigh.

– Got a minute you can spare?

I look at my watch.

– Not really.

A long red nail scratches the back of her neck just below the line of cropped, tight black curls.

– Too bad.

I make to go around her.

– Yeah, too bad. See ya around.

She nudges the can in front of me and steps into my path.

– Not what I meant.

I look down at the can, back up at her.

– How did you mean?

Her big shoulders roll under the designer leather of her tailored jacket.

– I meant too bad in the sense that it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a minute to spare or not. I need it anyway.

I take her in: the new uptown threads, the salon cut, the makeup so flawlessly applied that you only know it’s there because you can’t see it. I think about the last time I laid eyes on her: in an Alphabet City tenement, the ripped jeans she’d had on, the Patti Smith T, the mohawk she’d sported then. I don’t have to inhale to smell the money all over her, or the hand it came from. I got no interest in seeing that hand again.

Christ, why didn’t I bring a gun?

– Sela, long time no see, you were a champ that time I needed a hand, but I could give a fuck what you want my minutes for. They’re mine. Top of that, I’m up here on business. Got a transit from Predo. You want to fuck with me, that’s who you’ll have to deal with.

Her tongue wets her lips.

– Look at you. Look at you. Joe Pitt, hiding behind Dexter Predo’s skirt. How’s a thing like that happen? How’s a man like you get that low? Lose himself that deep? Got to be a story there.

I flip my Zippo open and closed a few times.

– Last time I checked, I’m not the one disavowed the Society. I’m not the one came up here and pledged Coalition.

– I didn’t come up here for politics.

I kick the can from between our feet and go around her.

– Like I give a shit.

She doesn’t move.

– I came up for the girl.

I keep walking, kicking the can.

She stays where she is.

– She wants to see you, Joe.

I kick the can, follow it down the path.

– I don’t want to see her.

– She knows, Joe. She knows it all.

I freeze, my leg cocked.

– How’s she know?

Sela pulls the ends of the belt on her coat, drawing it tighter over her waist.

– I told her.

I kick the can and watch it sail into the darkness away from the path.

– Why the fuck did you do a thing like that?

She walks past me toward a limo that has pulled to the curb where the path is cut by the 65th Street Transverse.

– Because she asked.

I watch her back.

– You could have lied.

She stops at the limo, turns to me.

– You don’t lie to people you love, Joe. It doesn’t work.

She opens the door.

– Now get in the fucking car so I don’t have to drag you in.

I get in the car.

– You shouldn’t be mad at Sela.

– Who says I’m mad at Sela?

– No one.

– Right. Know why? Because I’m not mad at Sela, that’s why.

The girl flicks her fingertips at the jagged line of bangs on her forehead, keeping them mussed just so.

– You are soooo mad at Sela. Know how I know you’re mad at Sela?

– No. I don’t.

– I know you’re mad at Sela because you didn’t check out her ass when she went out of the room. And everyone checks out Sela’s ass.

– Except me, I guess.

– No, you too. Because your eyes kind of flicked over to check out her ass, and then you remembered how mad you are at her so you didn’t look. Like that was showing her or something. Which is really funny because all you did was cheat yourself out of a good look at an amazing ass. I should know. I look at it all the time.

She cranes her neck around and looks down her back at her own bottom.

– I do all the same exercises as her. I mean, not the same weights, she’s way stronger than me. Obviously. But I do all the calf raises and presses and leg curls and everything that’s supposed to make your ass pop, and mine just stays where it is. Flatflatflat. I want an ass like Sela’s. Everyone wants an ass like Sela’s. One way or another.

She looks at me, the bangs back in her eyes.

– But yeah, you maybe don’t want her ass. I hear you have a girlfriend or something. I mean, I don’t really believe you wouldn’t want Sela’s ass, but maybe you don’t.

– She’s got a dick.

She frowns.

– Huh?

– Last I heard, Sela was pre-op. She’s got a dick.

She shakes her head. -So? What’s that got to do with her ass?

I put a cigarette in my mouth.

– Christ if I know.

She watches while I light up and take a drag and blow smoke. She watches while I do that, while I stand there and itch all over from the need to get the hell out and do something for Evie and try not to look like I’ve got a care. She watches until there’s a long ash hanging from the end of the cigarette and I’m looking for a tray.

She smiles and points at a low table next to an Eames chair and ottoman.

– Over there.

I walk over, my hand cupped below the ash, and knock it into the silver tray on the table and stand there and smoke some more.

She points.

– Can I have one of those?

I dig the pack from my pocket and shake a smoke out and toss it to her. She catches it and places it in her mouth and walks down the room until she’s right in front of me.

– Light?

I snap the Zippo in front of her.

She places the tips of her fingers on the back of my hand, guiding the flame closer to her, the unbuttoned cuff of her long-sleeve blouse sliding up her forearm and revealing the lone silver bracelet torn from a pair of handcuffs locked around her right wrist.

Her eyes flick from the bracelet and the few links of dangling chain to my eyes and she catches me looking at the cuff, remembering how it got there.

She gives a little smile, like she’s just scored a point, and she draws on the filterless Lucky, and immediately starts hacking.

She doubles, choking and heaving, holding the smoke out at arm’s length.

I pluck it from her fingers and put it in my face as I cross to the bar and pour a glass of ice water from a crystal pitcher and bring it back to her.

I hold it out and she shakes her head, tears steaming down her cheeks, huge phlegmmy hacks shuddering her little body. I push the glass against her lips and tilt it up and she’s forced to open her mouth and swallow, half of it running down her chin. The coughs subside into little hiccups and she knocks my hand aside. I take the glass to the bar and set it there and watch while she wipes her running mascara with the tails of her top.

I drop the cigarette in my hand into the water at the bottom of the glass and pluck the one she started on from between my lips and tally her score.

– You almost had it down, you know.

She looks up at me, the makeup smeared from her face, the teenager beneath it revealed.

– Had what down?

– Your mom’s act.

She stops wiping her face, walks around me behind the bar, drops a couple ice cubes in a glass, pours some kind of triple-distilled boutique vodka from Romania or someplace over it, and tosses the drink down her throat and pours another.

I smoke the cigarette I took from her mouth.

– See, that’s not bad. You got the drinking down pretty good. Except your mom probably wouldn’t have bothered with the ice. But you’re what, seventeen? So you got time to develop. Another twenty years and you’ll be a perfect Upper East Side white trash burnout with a real grown-up booze jones, a trophy husband, a stable of gigolos, and a perfect ass.