“And we do test drives!”
“That’s right. We could take you down the hall, down the street, and test out your all-new ass-bag.”
“For ninety-nine ninety-five! Your all-new ass-bag.”
A little kid whose shoes could only touch the asphalt by their tips revved his throttle. “Don’t forget the diaper chinstrap that’ll hold your chin while you fallin’.” He collapsed in a fit of laughter.
“One size don’t fit all! We gotta measure your chin and your ass.”
They took several more seconds to get the most crippling of their howls out before their leader revved his throttle and prepared to go. The others followed suit. Before he peeled off, he looked over his shoulder at David and Jonathan and winked. They rushed by like a flock of birds, the last one, the little one, looking over his shoulder, slowing as he passed, and shouting, “Don’t be afraid of us!” before the horizon swallowed his mirth.
Jayceon took a pull from his Olde English. Everyone in the semicircle around him had either a Swisher Sweet clenched between their teeth, a box of chicken in their lap, or nothing but a lollipop in their gloved fingers, leaning, as they were, against their bike frames. Some still sat astride the plastic reptiles, but the breeze was cool around them, wet with spring, and there was no storm in sight, thus, no impetus to protect their bikes. Plaster from the day’s work still clung to most of them.
“I got my eyeballs raped with that one time,” Jayceon said after a gulp. “Big homie was like ‘You wanna see what that bitch did?’ Pulled out a picture, nigga had his legs up like he was getting missionary’d.”
“Nah, come on, dawg,” Bugs said, tiny body, overcompensating voice. “Chill.”
Jayceon had already started laughing, nearly choked on a throat-ful of beer. “Bitch was down there lickin’ his ass.” His laugh did that thing where it turned into straight percussion, a series of scrapes, his head buried in his chest, his shoulders shaking, voice tight from lack of air. “I said, ‘Don’t you ever show me that shit again!’”
Kendrick tried to look disgusted. “Nah,” he said between stifled chuckles, “he ain’t show you no shit like that.”
“I swear to God, the nigga name is—” A single gunshot rang in the distance, cut off the rest of the sentence.
Sydney spoke, husky and virile, around a mouthful of dry biscuit. “My little sister took me to a gun range for Father’s Day once.” Sydney caught Linc’s glance, knew this was the first time she’d ever mentioned her family, knew that whenever she would, it would be in the past tense. “They gave me the twelve-gauge.” She swallowed, loudly sipped her orange soda through a straw. Her legs were crossed over the sidewalk curb. “They throwin’ the clay ones up. ‘Pull!’ BOW! I’m shootin’ everything. POW! POW! She like, ‘Syd, you really know how to shoot,’ I’m like, ‘yeah, I do.’” She smirked, looking up from her lap, all matter-of-fact false modesty. Her greasy fingers rummaged in her box for her second biscuit. She looked to her right, addressed an invisible little sister, “That homeboy can try to run for the car, get in his Datsun, his Hyundai, whatever the fuck he drive, I’ma peel that dude.” Belly laughs thundered up and down the block. “Looked at lil’ sis like, I’ma knock your boyfriend’s waves right off his fuckin’ head.”
Bugs’s story, told in a smaller voice at the circle’s periphery, had grown louder to fill the silence. “Nigga, I’m tellin’ you I had robbed a pawn shop. We stole a pickup truck—”
“How your feet touch the pedals, though?” Kendrick shouted from next to Sydney.
“We ran the truck into the front window, nigga, just PSSSHHH.”
Linc smirked, and Jayceon leaned over. “Nigga’s sound effects.”
“And then after we did that shit, we was just goin’ in. Anything in that motherfucker, gimme them necklaces, gimme that—”
Voices had grown louder around him, other stories, other jokes, little islands of frolic apart from his own.
Bugs arched himself toward Linc who sat directly across from him, like Linc was his only audience. “Nigga!” He guzzled some Olde English. “I was like Mr. T when I was walking through the ’hood, nigga. I had so many cotdamn chains on me from that fuckin’ pawn shop robbery I was Mr. T on them niggas.” He had enlisted his hands, his arms, the whole rest of his body in the telling of the story. “Yo, my shit was draped.” Some of the others quieted, others laughed with him. “I was like DOW.” He mimed drawing a sash from shoulder to opposite waist. “Pa-da-da-dow.”
Kendrick: “Ha-da-da-dow.”
Bugs collapsed against his bike. Their convulsions echoed over the block.
More than the chuckles, so powerful they hurt your stomach and ripped up your chest, more than the Swisher smoke, more than the forty-ounces, it was the weather that reminded Linc of Jake, of being a younger brother, of being little and ignorant and part of a kinder life, one that didn’t rasp against your throat or cancer your insides.
“Niggas don’t know how fucked up my life really is,” he said to no one and to everyone. “We used to live out in Long Beach when we was young, ’cause my mom and dad used to move around a lot.” He made a tornado with his hands, one rotating on top, the other on the bottom. “Everywhere. And when we lived out there, my brother, Jake, my older brother, he had a five-man crew.” Why did everyone wanna talk about families all of a sudden? “And they all worked at Carl’s Jr.’s.”
“Oh, they worked there?” someone Linc didn’t see.
“Yeah. So I used to wonder”—a sly smile split his face—“why niggas was spending twenty dollars … for a ninety-nine-cent sandwich. Them niggas was puttin’ the twenty-piece crack rock in the motherfuckin’ hamburger.” A bunch of them could no longer hold it in, struggled to stifle their chest-ripping chuckles. “Them niggas was sellin’ crack from Carl’s Jr., nigga.” The memory of the place had crystallized, the old neighborhood, the sprawl of it, the project towers, the drive-through fast-food joints, the identical one-story houses whose only distinguishing feature was how much care had been given to the front garden, the white tank tops, black jeans, and the bandanna, red, blue, purple, black, green, yellow, the uniform. “Yo, dawg, real talk. Real motherfuckin’ talk. I was so un-hip to the shit, ’cause I was young, I went inside the Carl’s Jr. one time and I went up to the counter where my brother was and was like ‘dat hamburger don’t cost no twenty dollars!’” He struggled through sobs that came out as laughter. “Big bro was at the register like ‘if you don’t shut your little ass up!’” He fell over and the others were too busy closing their eyes against the pain of their revelry to notice that Linc’s bottom lip trembled in between snickers, mouth fighting to grin and not to frown. He missed his mother.
He sighed the rest of it out just in time to hear the whoop-whoop of a cop car as it wound a corner several blocks down. Linc looked at the sky, squinted against the sun and saw a twinkle that signaled the Predator drone watching them from above. Kendrick sucked his teeth, and the others lumbered onto their bikes and pulled their bandannas and masks over their mouths and noses. The bikes did their little lion roars, and they circled, preparing to peel out. Bugs kicked down on his and it choked. He kicked again, each time with more fury, then with something approaching desperation.
“Nigga!” Jayceon shouted.
Bugs stomped and stomped.
Linc rolled his up. “Yo, Bugs, take mine.” Before he could finish, his bike shook beneath him. “Fuck!” He trembled atop the thing as it inched backward. “Go! Go! Go!” The others made it out, splitting up and vanishing around abandoned houses and street corners, and just as Linc leapt off his bike, his and Bugs’s flew out from under them, spinning upward toward the magnet attached to the drone’s undercarriage. From their view on the concrete, it looked as though the bikes simply vanished into the sky.
For the first time that afternoon, Bugs couldn’t control his breathing. “We didn’t even do anything to those white boys.” He looked to Linc, who stood firm as the cop car inched toward them. “We didn’t do nothin’. They don’t even live there.”
“That cop don’t need an excuse.” He tensed, saw that there was only one cop in the car, noted the toaster’s features, badge placement, the netting that separated the front of the car’s interior from the back seats. “Just walk. Let’s just walk away. He asks? None of that shit on the ground is ours.” A few steps. “We didn’t hear no shots, either.”
“Linc, we didn’t do anything.”
“We scared white people. Come on, let’s go.”
Mercedes had the cigarette to her mouth before she remembered Sydney. They both sat on rumpled blankets by the window that looked out onto the glowing blue barrier that marked the edge of the Ribicoff Cottages project. Sydney absently waved away her worry, everything about the gesture a lesson in dejection. Mercedes lit up, all the while watching the girl, waiting for her to reveal what it was that Mercedes was here to do.
“I’m…” Sydney rasped, put her hand to her chest and tried to clear her throat. “I’m burnt.” She pointed to her throat when she said it.
Mercedes knew from the first time that girl had shown up at a site and had Linc making eyes at her, the first time she’d opened her mouth, beckoned him because she didn’t dare speak above a whisper, that the girl was on her way out. It still hurt to hear. “You gonna tell him?”
She looked away from Mercedes, back out the window.
When Mercedes had shown up, Sydney still had on her wristband from the hospital. Syd moved around some cushions so that Cedes had something soft to sit on and smiled an apology for how messy Linc had left his room.
Mercedes stared at her.
