Drama City

'Bout the same age we were when we started out.'

'They look to be.'

'Smells like they're sampling the product. The way you used to do.'

'I did love it,' said Lorenzo.

'And I was all about business. Even before I started grindin', when I had my paper route and I'd bring you out with me before sunup.'

'You were focused on getting the newspaper on the doorstep just right. So you could get those Christmas tips.'

'And all you wanted to do was bust out streetlights.'

'I had the arm to do it too,' said Lorenzo. 'I could wing some rocks. Someone should have put me up on the mound.'

'That's what you should've been doin' with your youth. Pitchin' for some baseball team. Running track like you wanted to. 'Stead of gettin' high and following me.'

'Past is past,' said Lorenzo, echoing what he'd heard so many times at the meetings.

'Look, Lorenzo—'

'Don't apologize, Nigel. I made my choices.'

'Right. At least you doin' good now.'

'I get headaches.'

'Damn near everyone go to work each day gets headaches. I'm sayin', I see you in that uniform, doin' something good out here, it makes me feel proud of you, man. Makes me think maybe I didn't fuck you over all the way.'

'That uniform don't change who I am.'

'Who you are is who you are today. Not what you were before you did your bid.'

'Bullshit. You come on back to my apartment, you gonna see how much I changed.'

'One thing ain't changed,' said Nigel with a sad chuckle. 'You still thickheaded.'

A young woman pushing a baby carriage turned the corner off Warder, walked down Otis, and passed under a street lamp. Lorenzo and Nigel studied her with interest.

'What you think her thing is?' said Lorenzo.

'I don't know. Fine at fifteen, a mother at sixteen. Fucked and forgotten by some boy she ain't never gonna hear from again. She done made her own mother a grandmother at thirty-two. Now she livin' at home, a high school dropout with no skills, wonderin' what she gonna do with her life. Sitting on the couch, watchin' Judge Brown and the soaps, eatin' sweets and smokin' cigarettes. Fifteen years from now? She gonna be a grandmother herself, and that fine young girl gonna look like every other dusty-ass woman you see on the bus.'

'You ain't been on a Metrobus for twenty years.'

'You know what I mean.'

'How about this?' said Lorenzo. 'She made a mistake and she knows it. The boy who got her that way is working hard to rent an apartment so they can live together as a family. Her mother watches the baby during the day so the girl can stay in school, get her degree. And maybe her mother will raise the baby for a few years while the girl goes on to college. And that kid gonna watch an educated mother and a hardworking father, and by example, all those good things gonna rub off.'

'Another way of looking at it, I guess.'

'You ought to see all the people I meet on my job every day, Nigel. All the stories I hear.'

'I can imagine,' said Nigel. 'The game, it's just a tiny part of what's goin' on out here. Remember back when they was callin' this town Dodge City?'

'That was reporters and shit, made that name up. The ones who were too scared to come into the neighborhoods they were writin' about.'

'The everyday people who lived in this city hated that name.'

'As they should have,' said Lorenzo. 'Drama City be more like it.'

'Like them two faces they got hangin' over the stage in those theaters. The smiling face and the sad.'

'City got more than two sides.'

'Whatever it got,' said Nigel, 'you on the right side now. The side where people get up and go to work. Wash their cars out in the street, tend to their gardens. Watch their kids grow.'

'Maybe. But I'm still gonna avenge my friend. Rico Miller? Shit, motherfuckers like him, they're in their element behind those walls. I ain't gonna let him have that gift. Boy needs to be put down like an animal.'

'I'm not sayin' he doesn't deserve to die. I'm telling you you can't be a part of it.'

'You don't need to worry, Nigel. I'm not goin' back over to where I been. I'm gonna be at work tomorrow and the day after that. But I'm still gonna do this thing tonight.'

'It don't work that way.'

'We'll see.'