People had been laughing at Mario Durham all his life. Wasn’t anything special about this bus ride right here.

Soon those people went on about their business. He found that this was usually so, that folks would leave him alone after they got over the first thing they saw about him that made them crack on him and laugh: that he was skinny, or funny lookin’, or that he was tearing a letter off his shoe. And that was worse than being laughed at sometimes – just being ignored. Feeling that he wasn’t even important enough to notice, that’s what really cut him deep.

Dewayne said that when someone stepped to you, then you had to step back. But what was he gonna do, even strapped like he was right now? Kill a Metrobus full of people for smilin’ at him? But it did make him mad. You came into this life trusting people to be good, and it seemed like they always did you dirt in the end.

Like Olivia. She said she loved him and to prove it she was giving him that good thing, too. So when she asked him, could he ask his brother to front a pound of hydro so that they could sell it, make a little money together, and have some stash to smoke for their own selves, he had to say yes. She was the first woman who had shown some interest in him in a long while.

Dewayne gave him the LB after a lecture about being responsible and shit, and this being his chance to show his kid brother that he could do right. And then Olivia had disappeared with the chronic, just took her son and booked right out of Southeast, and shamed him to his brother. Mario Durham had stood for just about everything, but he couldn’t stand for that. Now she was going to have to give the hydro back to him, or the money she’d made from it if she’d gone and sold it already. Because Dewayne had only been half right saying it was his “chance.” Really, it was his last chance, and he couldn’t let it slip by. He needed to show Dewayne that he could stand tall, that Dewayne could trust him, not just as a brother but also as a man. Maybe Dewayne would even put him on. Finding Olivia, getting back the pound she’d took, that’s how he could redeem himself in his brother’s eyes. For what she’d done, one way or another, the bitch was gonna pay.

Mario Durham reached up and pulled the signal cord, as his stop was coming up ahead. He needed to transfer over to the Benning Road line and take that bus east. He wasn’t far now from where Olivia was at.

Durham walked the aisle toward the door, hitching up his Tommys as he passed the two girls. He heard one of them laugh, and he heard the dude nearby say something about Secret Squirrel, then, “You lookin’ good, Deion” from one of the girls, then more laughs. He bit down on his lip and took the steps down off the bus, passing through the accordion doors that opened to the street.

OLIVIA Elliot fired up a joint and sat back on the sofa. She took a good hit off it and held the smoke in, letting it lie in her lungs while she squinted at the TV set, had a rerun going of Martin. She thought she’d seen this one before, but she figured on watchin’ it anyway. Truth was, wasn’t one of these shows all that different from the others. Martin Lawrence was funny, too; he had come up over in Landover or something, which made his show more interesting to watch, ’cause she knew this girl who knew this other girl who claimed she knew his family. It was like Olivia felt she knew him herself.

The sound was low on the set. She had the stereo going, Missy Elliot gettin’ her freak on, the remix joint that the Super Funk Regulator played on PGC.

Olivia had another hit of the hydro and then she had to put it down. She’d learned not to take too much of this, to back up off it quick, because it was potent. Must have come from Dewayne Durham’s private stash. She had the feeling when she’d met his funny-lookin’ older brother, Mario, that he’d be good for something. This shit right here was what it was.

It was like God had sent Mario down to her, and then the pound of herb with him. She hadn’t intended to take it straight off, not exactly, but it came to her, big surprise, when she was high up on it one night, not long after Mario had brought the pound over to her apartment. She had been way up and got to thinking, Why do I need Mario to make some money off this? Why don’t I keep it my own self, go somewheres away from here and sell it off? Mario, he wasn’t gonna be no problem. And, okay, Dewayne, he was a drug dealer for real, and he had a gang and a rep and all the bad shit that went along with it. But everyone knew those boys didn’t leave too far from their neighborhoods, not even to settle a beef, and especially not over some girl and her kid.

So she decided to take the chronic and go away. Not too far, ’cause you didn’t have to go that far, but at least into Northeast. And then she’d seen that notice in the newspaper talking about a short-term sublease, fully furnished, and she was gone. Gathered up her clothes, and Mark’s clothes, and his bike, and not much else. The furniture she had, she was paying for it on time, and she had stopped making payments on it anyhow. The car she’d bought, a used Toyota Tercel, she was doing that the same way. She moved herself and Mark out of that place in Woodland Mews in a couple of hours, and she’d been living here since.

For the first time since she’d left high school, in the tenth grade, she had some money in her dresser drawer. She’d sold off half of the chronic in one-hundred-dollar bags, just to friends and to people she’d met in the apartments around hers and to people they knew. And now she was flush. She didn’t have a job or nothin’ like that, but she intended to start looking for one soon. The important thing was, no one had found her or come looking for her, far as she knew, up till now. Mark had mentioned that some white dude had been by that day, and he was all embarrassed and stuff for telling the white dude where they lived, but she told Mark not to worry over it too much. The white dude was probably some bill collector, like from the furniture company or somethin’ like that.

It touched her, the way Mark was always trying to please her and protect her. The flip side of that was, the only thing she worried about in her own life was Mark. She did love her boy and she wanted him safe. But he seemed to be adjusting to this new neighborhood. He looked happy most of the time and he made friends easy. She’d never lived in Northeast, but this was east-of-the-river Northeast, not too different from the Southeast side where she’d come up, and it seemed cool.

Mark was smiling when she’d kissed him good-bye. She’d just seen him off a few minutes ago. Her brother, William, had picked him up, was gonna take him over to his place to watch the playoffs, the Lakers against the Sixers, and spend the night. William was going to keep Mark for a couple of days, the way he always did.

Olivia missed him when he was gone, even for a night, but it was good for Mark to be around a man, and William was a strong role model and as straight as they came. He’d always disapproved of her lifestyle, telling her constantly to get herself together, but mostly she’d let it roll off her like everything else, ’specially since she knew deep down that her brother was right. And these nights that William took Mark, it allowed her to kick back, burn some smoke without having to hide it, listen to music by herself, and laugh at whatever was playin’ on the TV.

Maybe she could fix this place up some, get an extension on the lease, settle here. Put curtains up or somethin’, ’cause the way they had this place painted, it was dark and kinda gray. Get an exterminator out here for the roaches that showed up all over the kitchen when you turned the lights on back there. Some new sheets for Mark’s bed. She had the money. It was hid good, too, right in between her mattress and box spring. Along with the rest of the herb.