Geezer hangs up the phone.

Fucking people. What are they thinking some times? Guy asking him, How am I gonna make money if I don’t get my ten percent? If there was ever someone else’s problem, that’s it. Go around expecting other people to take care of your business for you, you get what you deserve.

He should know. Look at this shit with the Arroyos. What he gets for trusting a litter of spic puppies to take care of shit in a responsible manner.

Now it’s all about doing a job yourself if you want it done right.

Gotta get the spics out on bond. Gotta get them over here and tell them some bullshit story about how it’s all gonna be OK. How he’s gonna set them up with a real deal lawyer who’s gonna get them off. Yeah, right. Get a bunch of spic thugs off manufacturing and possession with intent to distribute and all that other shit. Fuckers are lucky the judge set any kind of bail. So, gotta tell them that fairy tale. Then gotta have them deal with these punk kids and get the rest of the stash back and…fuck. You ever get a break? And after the kids, gotta deal with that bitch Amy Whelan sticking her tits in his area of commerce. His markets. Knew she was gonna be trouble when she started in with the pills. Thought she got the message about not expanding her product line, turns out she’s just plain stupid. Runs in that family. Seeing the experience he’s had with Whelans, should have taken that stupidity into consideration with her in the first place. Well, that shit’s gonna get sorted out with everything else. Gonna make a clean sweep of everything.

Including the spics.

Gonna have to take care of that before they get it through their thick spic skulls that they’re fucked for life.

And do it all without pissing up Oakland’s tree any more than it’s been pissed up already. Fuckers don’t care to hear about legal troubles or what shit your employees drop you in, just want to see the envelopes with the dollars inside. Fuck they care a lab gets busted? Rent on the town is due, pay up. The half key the brothers say was missing from their fridge will cover it. Give some space to think, get the new lab going.

Running your own business, is there anything worse?

He leans as far forward as his gut will allow, puts one hand on the coffee table and the other on the edge of the couch and pushes himself to his feet, taking the grabber with him because he won’t be able to bend for it once he’s standing.

Making a short mental list, a list that starts with gun and ends with garbage bags.

Hector comes back to the Whelans’ with his mohawk reestablished. He hears Elton John playing but doesn’t say anything, just turns it off, tunes the radio to KSAN, and “Baby’s on Fire” comes on. He goes into Andy’s room, watches him drawing one of his dungeons, and sits on the floor and looks through a pile of old comic books until he finds one with the Guardians of the Galaxy in it.

Andy barely notices him, rolling dice, sketching twisting lines, exploring probabilities, deep inside a world of small things.

George and Paul get back from the record store.

George turns off KSAN and puts the copy of British Steel he bought at the record store on the turntable. He drops the needle on “Breaking the Law” and turns it up.

Paul goes in the kitchen and finds a pair of scissors and sits at the table and cuts the sleeves from his new shirt so his arms will show when he’s wearing it. He tosses the dismembered sleeves in the garbage and puts on the shirt and goes into the bathroom and looks in the mirror. It looks badass, the Diary of a Madman cover on the front and the picture of Ozzy lifting Randy Rhodes in the air on the back.

He remembers how he locked himself in his room when he heard the news that Randy had died. The best guitar player to come around since Jimi, dead at twenty-five. Just wanting to sit in his room and listen to Blizzard and Madman all day long, but his dad kept knocking on the door and asking if he was OK, ruining everything. Again.

It feels suddenly hotter in the bathroom. The spike digs between his eyes and knocks the air out of his lungs. He chokes and bends over the sink and presses his forehead against the cool countertop. The spike goes a little deeper. He fumbles with the cold water tap and sticks his head under the faucet and tries to breathe slowly as water runs over the back of his scalp and his neck. The spike pulls out, slowly.

He stays bent at the sink for a few minutes, turns off the water, and looks at himself in the mirror, pale, red eyed, hair dripping.

He makes sure the door is locked and drops to the floor and does a quick set of pushups and looks at himself in the mirror again with his chest and arms pumped.

Badass.

They hang around the house until it’s too hot to stand it and then they ride to the bowling alley and blow a joint out back and go inside and eat lunch at the counter and play some video games. Andy mostly watching because he’s so bad at the games it just makes him feel like he’s throwing his quarters away.

Suchadildo.

They’re late getting back to the Whelans’ for dinner because George hits a new level on Missile Command and goes for the high score and gets it.

Mr. Whelan gives them a ration of shit and tells Paul and Hector that the kitchen isn’t a restaurant where you eat whenever you want to and if they want their dining privileges to continue they can damn well be there when the family sits down. George and Andy he just gives a look and asks them if this is going to happen again any time soon and they tell him no. He tells them to empty the ashes from the Weber and get some coals going and scrape the grill, and goes inside to make the burger patties while his wife cuts tomatoes and chops iceberg lettuce and peels slices of American cheese from a yellow stack.

They eat in the backyard, sitting around an old picnic table Mr. Whelan salvaged from a building site. Right after the meal he’s walking around the yard with his fourth beer in his hand, kicking stones from the ground he’s going to rototill the following day, giving his sons and their friends a bad time, asking them if they have their back braces ready for the Sunday rock haul. Telling them to start drinking water now, gonna be hotter than hell. Warning that he’ll be getting them up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to try and beat the heat. Laughing at the looks on their faces as they think about how much it’s going to suck.

Paul helps Mrs. Whelan clear the plates. Something he always does.

– I thought Sunday was the Lord’s day, sir.

Bob Whelan yanks one of the weeds he let grow over the last couple weeks.

– Young Mr. Cheney, if Jesus can get up on Easter Sunday to move a rock, you can do it this Sunday.

They have popsicles for dessert and the boys say they’re going back to the bowling alley and they get their bikes and take off.

Bob Whelan comes up behind his wife at the kitchen sink and reaches around her and puts his hands on her tits.

– Looking good, baby.

– Stop it.

– Mmm, feeling good, too.

– You’re drunk.

– Drunk? On five, six beers? Baby, the day I can’t knock over a sixer and keep my wits is the day I give up beer.

– Uh huh.

– It’s Friday.

– I know what day it is.

– Date night.

– I know what it is.

– Empty house.

– Not for long.

– That’s my point.

– Let me wash these dishes.

– Let me help.

He presses against her back, slides a hand, cold from his beer can, down the front of her cutoffs.