“Ulee, come with me.”

“Huh?”

“To Port Tobacco!”

“Maybe I’ll meet you down there,” said Foreman. “I got business to attend to.”

The truth was, he was a city boy and wasn’t cut out for no farm. Also, her father, had one of those lantern-holdin’ negroes set on his lawn, made Jesse Helms look like Jesse Jackson. Pop wanted to bite right through his tongue every time Foreman came to visit. There was this other thing, too, bothered him some. Black men down there, deep in southern Maryland, some of them acted like they was back in 1963. Yessirin’ and all that, walkin’ down those country roads in the summertime, scratchin’ at the top of their heads.

Ashley put the gun back on the nightstand. She picked up the glass that was sitting there and had a sip of chardonnay.

“I’m thinkin’ of heading down there tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Baby, I need to stay home. I got some serious demand for low-end product right now, and I am light.”

“What about that boy goes to Howard? I thought he was coming up from Georgia.”

“He is. He’s bringing a load up Ninety-five in that trap car of his. But he’s not due up in here for a few more days.”

“What you gonna do, then?”

“I got that kid stays in Virginia, keeps a bunch of girls down there, over in Alexandria? I don’t know where he gets these girls, but he gets ’em. Anyway, the girls he finds, they got no priors.”

“They old enough?”

“Course they are; I wouldn’t waste my time they weren’t of age. He’s gonna come by tomorrow so I can give him the cash to make the buy.”

“I wish you could come with me.”

“So do I, baby, but work is work. Maybe I’ll have him see if they got one of those LadySmith nines in stock while he’s down there.”

“For real?”

“Why not?”

Foreman heard her place the glass of wine back on the nightstand. He heard the rustle of cloth and her gutter-girl giggle. When he looked over at her she had peeled her pajama top off her shoulders and was crawling toward him across the bed. The bedsprings were crying on account of her weight. Her titties hung low, and those silver-dollar nipples of hers were grazing the sheets.

Foreman didn’t have to watch the rest of the game. He’d seen it. And anyway, four minutes to go, Jordan on the court with that look in his eye, any fool would know how it was going to end.

Ashley lowered herself upon him, her greenish-blond hair tickling his face, and kissed him deep. Her nipples felt hot on his chest. Her tongue was hot, too. Lord, could she kiss. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at her. She wasn’t good-lookin’ or nothin’ close to it, but he did love her. And the woman could buck like a horse.

“Uh,” she said. “Uh-huh.”

The way she was on him now, making those sounds she liked to make? His dick was so hard a cat couldn’t scratch it. He’d had her earlier that day, but that was hours ago. She kept playin’ like this, he was just gonna have to go ahead and toss the shit out of her again.

“GIMME some of that,” said Jerome Long.

“You sure?” said Allante Jones. He had just put fire to a joint, double rolled in EZ Widers.

“Gimme it. I need that shit to calm my nerves.”

“Shaky, huh?”

“A little.”

“You’ll be all right, after. You’ll feel good then.”

They were in their car, purchased for them by Dewayne, a plush 2000 Maxima with seventeen-inch tires and custom alloys, with a V6 under the hood. Jones sat behind the wheel, and Long was beside him. The Taurus.38 was under Long’s seat.

The Maxima sat on the street, facing the lot of the apartments where the Coates cousins lived. This girl Long knew from the clubs, who mentioned once that she’d been with one of the cousins before, had told him where they stayed.

Their hooptie, the old 240SX with the spoiler, was parked in the lot. It was dark out now, and they’d been waiting on the street for an hour or so. But so far the cousins had not come out.

Long got the joint from Jones and hit it. He took the herb into his lungs, watching a man in a wheelchair roll down the sidewalk toward their car. The man was dressed in black and wore a black skully on his head. Not far behind him were two young girls, smiling, elbowing each other, having fun.

“Boy musta caught one in the spine,” said Jones.

Long closed his eyes. When he opened them the man in the wheelchair was gone. The young girls were alongside the car, laughing as they walked by. Long hit the chronic again, wondering what those girls had to laugh at, and passed it back over to his friend. Sometimes Long didn’t know how anyone could laugh, the way they lived.

“You know that Muslim dude,” said Long, “always be sellin’ Final Call newspapers and shit down by the Metro?”

“Young dude wears the dark suit?”

“They all young. This one’s light-skinned, got a real faint mustache.”

“I seen that dude, yeah.”

“He was talkin’ to me the other day, tryin’ to tell me about the life I was livin’. How I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ but playin’ into the white man’s plan of a black holocaust.”

“You mean like how they done to them Jews.”

“Except he was sayin’ that we’re doin’ this to ourselves. Killin’ each other like we do.”

“Whateva.”

Long took the joint but didn’t hit it. “Man said it was like we were in some kind of circus down here.”

“He did, huh?”

“And we in the ring, performing like the white man expects us to. One big ring of souls, killin’ each other while Mr. Charlie claps. You think it’s like that?”

“I don’t know if it is or if it isn’t. But take a look around you, boy. What else we gonna do? ’Cause there ain’t nothin’ else.” Jones shook his head. “Nothin’.”

Long was high. He stared through the windshield. He saw nothing and no way out. Though the night air was warm, he felt a chill run through him. The cold feeling went all the way down to his feet.

“Don’t you ever get scared?” said Long.

“Not really,” said Jones. He looked away from Long then. He did get scared sometimes. But he couldn’t tell his friend that he did.

The cousins emerged from a stairwell in the apartment complex, crossed the parking lot, and walked toward the Nissan.

Jones chucked up his chin. “There they go, Nut.”

“I see ’em.”

Jones turned the ignition. “Time to go to work.”

STRANGE and Quinn had some barbecue at a place Strange liked, around 18th and U, then went over to Stan’s, near McPhearson Square, for drinks. The crowd was unpretentious, mixed race and class. The house signature was a full glass of liquor with a mixer side. The music was always tight. This was Strange’s idea of a bar.

The tables in the main area were full, so Strange and Quinn found stools at the stick.

Strange drank Johnnie Walker Red with a soda back. Quinn had a Heineken. Here, My Dear was on the house stereo, and the bartender was letting it roll from front to back.

“Marvin’s masterpiece,” said Strange.

“He was local, right?”

Strange nodded. “He came back to sing at Cardozo once, after he got huge. But they say he wasn’t really into being back in D.C. All those memories with his old man, I guess. Course, he had all sorts of demons, not just family stuff. I remember back in the seventies, cats were walkin’ around sayin’, Is Marvin gay?”

“It bothered you, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m not gonna lie. And I’m not sayin’ he was or he wasn’t, ’cause I don’t know. But I couldn’t understand the concept then and I still can’t get all the way comfortable with it today. You get old enough, you’re gonna see young people doin’ shit you can’t get behind, either. Y’all’s generation is all right with a man being with a man. I’m not exactly against it, but don’t expect me to embrace it, either. In my time, it’s not the kind of thing we were taught to accept.”