anticipation of the ever briefly sated hunger. The match's flame caught the bottom of the bottle cap. Slowly he loaded his syringe, the puff of pink in the bottom of his spike confirmed entry. He shut his eyes and slammed it all home, indifferent to the possibility of an overdose. So what if he did? It'd be a rush all the way. A high to end all highs.
He leaned against the rotted drywall and let the first wave of the blast crash into his skull. A slight moan escaped his cracked lips. He pulled one side of his old Army jacket over his dirty tank top to try and keep in some heat. Except for the grime and the worn cuffs, it was in pretty good shape. With his red sweatpants he considered himself the height of fashion. Yeah, he was set for tonight. Tomorrow he'd have to come up with a new hustle to set them up, but he wasn't worried. He still had a good head on him — he couldn't survive the game long if he didn't — but he also suffered from a good heart. Anywhere except here and that was probably a good thing. He simply wasn't wired to do what it took to survive, to prey on his own. Hell, he could barely lie to people he knew, so no stick-ups and no moves that might hurt someone. And it meant that he often suffered bad luck, like yesterday, the C-Devils weren't shit.
'You feelin' it?' Miss Jane asked, ever skeptical.
'Mm-hmm,' Loose Tooth mumbled.
'I ain't feelin' shit. What about you?'
'I'm feelin' somethin', but it ain't like it was yesterday.'
'Product been stepped on so many times, tryin' to make it last till that new package comes through,' Miss Jane said.
'Heard they was gonna re-up in the mornin'. Damn, look at Tae. He's gone f'real.'
'I swear that nigga could shoot water into his veins an' get high.'
Tavon heard them, but didn't care. He didn't want to even open his eyes, but he knew he'd have to eventually, or else Miss Jane might run off with the rest of the stash, convinced that he somehow had kept the good stuff for himself. Both Loose Tooth and Miss Jane had been in deep from when Tavon was a kid. Theirs was a makeshift DMZ. Their spot was on the corner, a bright lime-colored house from the Arts and Crafts era with brown doors and trim; clay-tiled roof, and a wrap-around porch made of stones. Probably a show home in its day, now a board-covered shadow of itself.
One street over, things were downright civilized. A KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut ('Kentacohut' they called it) recently opened. Twenty-fourth and North Penn, on the edge of what some called Li'l Nam, that part of Indianapolis that no one liked to talk about. Almost two hundred properties owned by the same slumlord. Funny, Tavon thought, how one man had the power to run down a whole neighborhood. Rumor had it that the slumlord was negotiating with the city to sell off a few streets' worth of homes and move to Florida. Especially the homes along the main city thoroughfares, like Meridian, Pennsylvania, and Delaware Streets so that rush-hour commuters wouldn't have to automatically check to see if their doors were locked every time they drove past the houses.
Tavon slipped his stash and works into his Crown Royal bag and stuffed it into a hole behind him, past the slats that kicked up a cloud of dust (hopefully not asbestos, he heard that shit was cancerous) every time he bumped against it. He could feel the toll of the hunger. Everything grew more difficult. Ideas. Words. Slower, fewer, simpler. A dope-fiend lucidity. He fell into a nod, not caring about the drool oozing out the side of his mouth.
Tavon's eyes fluttered open, squinting in the sunlight, taking in the familiar surroundings. The dirty mattress cushioned the floor of his room. He kicked his soiled sheets from him in disgust. Not at his condition, but at the fact that since he had help getting to bed, his stash that he'd saved to get started this morning had probably already launched Miss Jane. Only half-awake, he rested his head between his knees, hunched over in the dance of the dry heaves. He hated the nausea, even more than the pounding of his head.
The hunger called.
A bottle of lotion wouldn't have helped the dryness of the cratered alligator skin of his needle-scarred hands. Even his scabs had scabs. He soldiered on, another gaunt, dark-skinned fiend in service to the hunger. The hunger that squirmed its way through his intestines pulled at him in a relentless assault. He shuffled with his hunger down to the front porch, sitting on the steps and tamping out a Kool cigarette. Blankets nailed over closets; kung fu posed Power Rangers stood guard over their clothes. The landlord's fix-it guy had patched drywall by nailing a door to the ceiling. Opaque Plexiglas windows partly blocked the wind and might've done a better job if they hadn't been only stapled over the open frame. People actually lived here only a few months ago, but even Section 8 housing said enough was enough as even government housing could only sink so low.
'The hawk is out.' Loose Tooth sauntered over toward him in an Izod T-shirt with holes in it.
'You know that's right. Winter'll soon be here.'
'Why ain't you in school?' Loose Tooth asked, strictly to give him static.
'Half-day. Teacher conference,' Tavon joked without missing a beat. So black he was practically blue, with his long arms and bowed legs, he looked like an awkward praying mantis. He attended — well, attended was a strong word, but he made a pretense of going to — Crispus Attucks High School as a heldback senior. He couldn't even get a social promotion. The system simply waited for him to drop out. School meant nothing to him, his future even less. Playing at being 'gangsta' until he started fiending his own product, he fell to the lure, the allure, of the streets. Now he was half a tout, a one-man walking billboard for new product.
'Ain't this the third conference this week?' Loose Tooth joked. 'You got another one o' those?'
'Nah, it's my last one,' Tavon said, guiltily tucking the rest of his pack deeper into his pocket. Give away one, might as well give away the whole pack. If Tavon had been holding some candy, he wouldn't have bothered with the lame lie. Loose Tooth — born Earl Anderson, one-time prince of the streets who called himself CashMoney — would've sniffed it out. Though he probably knew that Tavon had some more squares, he didn't press the matter. He was a one man 411, old for the streets — well, over forty anyway — and quick to remind anyone 'look here youngblood, I'm the last of these cats out here.'
'Got a quarter?' Loose Tooth asked, obviously hoping to score a single cigarette down at the Korean's store.
'Please. I'm out here hustlin' just like you.' Tavon put his cigarette out in the crumbling cement.
No one flinched at the reports of a few gunshots: too far away to be concerned about. Not as bad as New Year's Eve when that shit sounded like the 4th of July. The shots, however, drove a lightskinned and freckled young man down the street toward them. With a slight limp, his half-strut and Harlem Globetrotters gear was recognizable even without that pinched reserve the bow-tie-wearing set had.
'Ah, hell,' Loose Tooth whispered when he saw him.
(120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah. 'Brothas.'
'What's up, Knowledge?' Tavon asked.
'That's right, today's mathematics is knowledge. Let me break it down for you: know the ledge.' Knowledge Allah was a fixture in the neighborhood even if no one knew much about him. When he first started coming around, all Loose Tooth offered was his theory that 'Black folks always thinkin' they superheroes or somethin', needin' a secret identity.'
'Here we go. Why you even got to say 'boo' to him?' Loose Tooth asked.
The problem with Knowledge Allah was that you had to know the code of his language before he made any sense. And it was too difficult to decipher codes while high, or looking to get high.
'You don't know who you are,' Knowledge Allah said. 'Take on your true name. Arm. Leg. Leg. Arm. Head. You are the original man. You are gods. Yet you sit here, blind, deaf, and dumb to your potential.'
'I sit here wanting to get high,' Loose Tooth growled.
'They set snares that have been prepared for you. Snares meant to lead you from your path of righteousness. You've let them cave you.'
'They who?' Tavon asked.
'Don't ask him questions,' Loose Tooth chided. 'If you ignore him, he'll bounce sooner.'
'Your so-called grafted government's behind it,' Knowledge Allah continued undeterred. 'The next phase is to destroy us. You think it stopped with Tuskegee? No, they just got slicker. We don't have poppy fields. We don't have planes. We don't have labs. They put chemicals in everything, destroying you cell by cell. Turning you.'
'Sounds like we don't have shit,' Loose Tooth said, nudging Tavon. But Tavon listened intently, a little too polite for his own good. He enjoyed the way Knowledge Allah spoke. He loved the idea of big ideas, even ones that he didn't agree with or didn't get. There was something about the way Knowledge Allah appeared. Maybe it was a by-product of his high, but if he caught Knowledge Allah out the corner of his eye, he looked different.
