Drama City

gotdamn thing from me.'

A boy cackled and another one whooped. Lorenzo did not step back or cut his eyes away. He could feel his blood pulsing through his veins.

'You think I'm gonna let you just drive on out of here with my personal property?'

Lorenzo did not answer.

'What,' said Skiles, 'you fixin' to stare me to death?'

Lorenzo made a loose fist and moved the key so that its tip came out between his middle and index fingers.

'Play the bitch, you want to,' said Skiles. 'I'm about to drop your bitch ass too.'

'Do it,' said Lorenzo, hearing something in his voice he had not heard in a long while. Knowing the code, knowing, as he said it, that Skiles could not back down.

Skiles put his weight on his back foot.

Now you gonna throw your right.

Skiles swung his fist. Lorenzo sidestepped it and came with an uppercut, bringing his shoulder and chest full into it. The blow landed squarely under Skiles's jaw; the key stabbed him there.

Skiles staggered and tried to keep his feet. Lorenzo rushed forward, pushed Skiles up against the Tahoe, and pinned his left forearm to Skiles's neck. Lorenzo put the tip of the key to Skiles's right eye. The sun winked off the metal.

'Smart-mouth boy like you came at me in the cut,' said Lorenzo, keeping his voice low. 'I stuck him in the eye with a little old file. Wasn't no bigger than this key I got in my hand.'

'I ain't… I ain't want no more trouble,' said Skiles, gasping as he spoke.

'You gonna relax now, right?'

Skiles nodded slightly under the pressure of Lorenzo's arm. 'I'm straight.'

'Straight,' said Lorenzo, chuckling quietly. He released Skiles and stepped back.

Skiles, blood trickling down his neck from where he'd been cut, looked away. There were only mumbles from the crowd. The air had gone out of it. The wrong man had won.

Lorenzo got into the Tahoe and drove away, his hands tight on the wheel. His headache was gone. In the rearview, he saw that his eyes were alive. He felt like getting high.

He punched the gas. First thing he had to do was drop this dog at the kennel. Get her situated and get her some care. Then, if he could, get to someplace he should be.

Rachel Lopez woke up in her car at a little past noon. Her shirt was soaked with sweat. The Honda stank of perspiration, alcohol, and nicotine. She rolled the window down and breathed clean air. Rachel drove to the nearest gas station. There, in a filthy bathroom, she washed herself as best she could. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, then looked at her watch. She still had time to get to the meeting on East Capitol. She needed it today.

CHAPTER 18

'I left my baby a little present this morning,' said Shirley, the small young woman with the

almond eyes and smooth chocolate skin. 'Put it right there on the doorstep of my grandmother's place, where my little girl stay.'

'What'd you get her?' said a dark-skinned woman sitting in Shirley's row.

'What you call a playwear set. Got it up there at the Hecht's company, thirty percent off. With the coupons, it was next to nothin'.'

'Hecht's havin' a sale this weekend,' said a man.

'They always be havin' a sale,' said another.

'The shirt part of the outfit had a drawing of these four young white dudes on it,' said Shirley. 'I don't know who they are, but the lady at the Hecht's told me the kids are into 'em.'

'The Wiggles,' said the dark-skinned woman helpfully.

'That's who it was,' said Shirley. 'So I was walkin' away from the house and I heard the door open, and I turned around? And there my little girl was, standing with my grandmother. And my little girl took that outfit out of the bag, looked at it, and smiled. 'This for me?' she said to my grandmother. You could see she liked it, 'cause she was all happy. And my grandmother said to my little girl, 'That's a present for you from your mother.' My little girl looked at me, said, 'That my mother right there?' It sunk my heart that she forgot me, but she wasn't no more than a baby when I left. My grandmother says, 'Yes, sweetheart, that's your mother. Tell her thank you, child.''

Shirley cocked her head. 'She couldn't say it. She was scared, or too shy. But the look she gave me… That look is gonna keep me sober. I'm gonna carry that look with me for a long time.' Shirley wiped at her eyes. 'Thank you for letting me share.'

'Thank you for sharing.'

Rachel Lopez leaned back in her folding chair. Her nausea was gone, and color had returned to her skin.

The hard middle-aged man named Sarge, wearing a T-shirt and the same dirty Redskins hat he always wore, raised his hand and was acknowledged by the guest host.

'Sarge here…'

'Hey, Sarge'

'… and I'm a straight-up addict. Now, I had a little episode last night, over at my efficiency. I was goin' through this drawer in this old dresser I got, lookin' for a knife. This one drawer, I keep all this stuff inside it from when I was little. Got an old baseball I kept from when my team won the city championship, under the lights in Turkey