– Well, let me tell ya. These soirées here like this one? This ain’t everyday shit. More a special occasion kind of thing. ’Specially some shit like that enforcer. Man on our turf, clearly in violation of the treaty? Man like that, we can use how we please. Don’t always have that on the menu. But I tell you what, maybe we have another party tomorrow. Yeah, another get-together. Maybe have some barbeque this time. Yeah, that’s the shit. After all, muthafucka, tonight we had him to sport with.

He points at the enforcer’s mangled corpse.

– An that was a’ight.

He throws his tie around his neck and lets Timberlands drape his jacket over his shoulders.

– So maybe tomorrow night we go it again. And then we can see how you do ’gainst a champeen dog.

He points at me.

– Stick this muthafucka in a box.

Two rhinos grab me.

– See you on the morrow, Pitt. Give you a chance to go double or nothin’ on that G you owe Papa.

They don’t really stick me in a box; which is kind of a nice surprise. Instead, they stick me in an old shower room. I take a walk around, but there’s not much to see. No windows at all. I find a vent under one of the sinks and fish the switchblade out of my boot, the fine art of the pat-down seeming to have been lost, and pry it loose. If I lost about a hundred pounds I might be able to worm in there and get trapped at the first bend. I flip through the lockers but don’t find anything useful. There is a tiny panel of glass in the door they pushed me through; I take a peek and see my two rhinos in the hall smoking and trading rhymes back and forth to the beats that echo down the hall from the party in the baths. I tap on the glass and one of them looks at me. I point at the cigarette in his hand and then at myself. But he just flips me off instead of opening the door so I can stick the knife in his neck. I go to one of the sinks and twist the taps and a little cold water dribbles out.

My cigarettes are in the jacket Timberlands took off me. Sure like to get that jacket back. I bend my face to the sink and wash up, rinsing away some blood on my upper lip from when the rhinos bounced me around. I think about the enforcer. I think about being eaten alive by dogs. I think about the way he freaked when that blood hit his vein. The way he was jumping, I wonder if the dogs were a mercy. I dry my face and hands on the tail of my shirt. I look at the lockers. I could go through them again, see if someone maybe forgot their assault rifle down here sometime, but I take a pass.

I sit on the floor with my back to the wall and watch the door. I pass the time waiting, waiting for someone to come through the door and do something just the least bit stupid so I can kill them and give myself something resembling a fighting chance. I’m not holding my breath.

Figure coming up here was a mistake. Figure it was a big one. I try to figure how long I should wait before I tell Digga I’m doing a job for Terry. Figure I wait too long and I’ll have a skin full of that junk and be down in the pool with the dogs. Give it up now and he’ll have plenty of time to check it out. But Terry might not like that. Figure I know for a fact Terry won’t like that. Easiest course of action for him? Pitt? That asshole? I don’t know why he’s up there. I mean, I never want to endorse execution, but that’s your prerogative, Digga. You’ll have to do whatever, you know, gives you peace of mind.

Yeah, I’m fucked.

I just wish I had my cigarettes. And that jacket. I do love that jacket.

The music finally stops. I look out the window again; the rhinos are still there. Someone has brought them coffee and more cigarettes. I go back to my spot against the wall.

I close my eyes. But I don’t sleep. I do that for a long time.

The door opens. I keep my eyes closed. Someone walks across the room toward me. My thumb is over the silver button on the side of the switchblade. Whoever it is stops at my feet. I smell baby powder and Bay Rum.

– We kin fix that right up.

I open my eyes.

– No trouble a’tall. Fix it right up.

The one-armed barber is standing over me.

– Fix what up?

– That nasty-ass haircut I wuz givin’ ya. Make ya look proper.

I touch my hair.

– It’s fine.

– No, no it ain’t. Looks like shee-it. Fix it up right.

Across the shower room, the door to the hall is open. No sign of rhinos. The switchblade is cupped in my palm, unopened.

I watch the barber’s eyes.

– Digga want you to clean me up for my big match?

– What? No. Shit no. He don’t care none what yo ass look like. I care. Got me some pro-fessional pride.

– Gonna do it now?

– What? You stupid in the head? Got no time ta do it now. Got ta get yo ass out of here.

– What?

– What? What? Man, Digga right, you one stupid-ass white boy. Get up, we got ta get gone.

I get up. He walks over to the open door.

– Come on.

The rhinos are on the floor in the hall. I look at the barber.

– You do that?

– No one else here, is they?

There isn’t.

– They dead?

He scratches his head.

– Well, that the million-dollar question, ain’t it?

– Sure is.

He points at one of the rhinos.

– They just out. Now get that coat off him. An’ that sweatshirt underneath.

I tug off the rhino’s jacket and the hooded sweatshirt beneath, seeing the huge knot on the back of his head.

– Put that shit on. An walk while you doin’ it.

I walk, following the barber away from the shower room, wrapping myself in the rhino’s clothes and noticing the massive build of the barber’s left arm and shoulder. I think about putting the knife in his ear. I should wait ’til he leads me out.

We climb some stairs; different from the ones that had been guarded by Papa’s man. These are narrower; the back way in. The barber looks me over.

– Put up the hood. Yeah, that right. An keep yo head down. An yo hands in yo pockets. Yeah. OK. An keep yo mouth shut.

He opens a door and we walk onto the blacktop playground behind the Jack. I keep my head down, my hands in my pockets and my mouth shut. We walk past the basketball courts. I can hear the jingle of chain nets in the breeze. The barber tugs my sleeve.

– This way. Keep yo head down. Just follow me. Doan look up none. Things quiet, but still they got a watch on. Gonna climb some steps now.

We climb some steps. A lot of steps. We’re climbing the concrete stairs that cut up the side of that cliff I saw earlier. The barber pauses at the top.

– OK. I think we cool. You kin look up, but keep that damn hood on.

I look up. We go down Edgecombe for a couple blocks. At the corner of 150th, he stops. There’s a house with a spiked iron fence around it. He unlocks a gate and lets us in. The house is huge. It’s red brick with black shingles and shutters, looks like a haunted house straight out of an old Universal horror flick.

The barber walks around a cracked stone path that takes us to the rear. We go down a couple steps to a basement door.

He looks at me.

– Place got atmosphere, doan it?

– Yes, it does.

He unlocks the door, steps in and switches on a light. I follow him in, expecting Digga and his crew to jump out and yell surprise and beat the hell out of me. It doesn’t happen that way. Instead, the barber takes me through a small parlor, neat but dusty, and into a kitchen where most of the living is clearly done. I take my hands out of my pockets, without the switchblade.

He points at a chair. I sit. He takes off his coat and hangs it on a hook on the back of the kitchen door. He looks at me. I look at him.

He rolls his eyes.

– Well?

– Well, what?

– Ain’t you got no questions?