Closing himself in, he dumped his duds on the bare floor and sat on his bed. Staring at his only piece of luggage, he figured he had better do that laundry soon, as there was a wet bathing suit in there.
The maids refused to touch his clothes—like the evil in him lingered in the fibers of his jeans and his T-shirts. The upside was, he was never welcome at formal events, so his wardrobe was just wash-’n’-wear, baby—
He discovered he was crying when he looked down at his Ed Hardys and realized that there were a couple of drops of water right in the middle of the laces.
Qhuinn was never getting a ring.
Ah, hell…this hurt.
He was scrubbing his face with his palms when his phone rang. Taking the thing out of his biker jacket, he had to blink a couple of times to focus.
He hit send to accept the call, but he didn’t answer.
“I just heard,” Blay said across the connection. “How are you doing?”
Qhuinn opened his mouth to reply, his brain coughing up all kinds of responses: “Peachy fucking jim-dandy.” “At least I’m not ‘fat’ like my sister.” “No, I don’t know if my brother got laid.”
Instead, he said, “They got me out of the house. They didn’t want me to curse the transition. Guess it worked, because the guy looks like he came through it okay.”
Blay swore softly.
“Oh, and he got his ring just now. My father gave him…his ring.”
The signet ring with the family crest on it, the symbol that all males of good bloodlines wore to attest to the value of their lineage.
“I watched Luchas put it on his finger,” Qhuinn said, feeling as if he were taking a sharp knife and drawing it up the insides of his arms. “Fit perfectly. Looked great. You know, though…like, how could it not—”
He began weeping at that point.
Just fucking lost it.
The awful truth was that under his counterculture fuck-you, he wanted his family to love him. As prissy as his sister was, as scholar-geek as his brother was, as reserved as his parents were, he saw the love among the four of them. He felt the love among them. It was the tie that bound those individuals together, the invisible string from one heart to the another, the commitment of caring about everything from the mundane shit to any true, mortal drama. And the only thing more powerful than that connection…was what it was like to get shut out from it.
Every fucking day of your life.
Blay’s voice cut in through the heaving. “I’m here for you. And I’m so damned sorry….I’m here for you….Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? Let me come over—”
Leave it to Blay to know that he was thinking about things that involved ropes and showerheads.
In fact, his free hand had already gone down to the makeshift belt he’d fashioned out of a nice, strong weave of nylon—because his parents didn’t give him much money for clothes, and the proper one he’d owned had broken years ago.
Pulling the length free, he glanced across to the closed door of his bath. All he needed to do was tie the thing to the fixture in his shower—God knew those water pipes had been run in the good old days, when things were strong enough to hold some weight. He even had a chair he could stand up on and then kick out from underneath him.
“I gotta go—”
“Qhuinn? Don’t you hang up on me—don’t you dare hang up on me—”
“Listen, man, I gotta go—”
“I’m coming over right now.” Lot of flapping in the background, like Blay was getting his clothes on. “Qhuinn! Do not hang up the phone—Qhuinn…!”
ONE
PRESENT DAY
“Now, that a muthafuckn’ whip rite chur.”
Jonsey looked over at the idiot who was hunkered down next to him in the bus stop. The pair of them had been parked in the Plexiglas gerbil cage for three hours. At least. Although comments like that had made it seem a matter of days.
And were going to make shit justifiable homicide.
“You a white boy, you know that?” Jonsey pointed out.
“Say whaaaaat?”
Okay, make that three years of waiting. “Caucasian, dude. As in you need fuckin’ sunblock in the summer. As in not like m’self—”
“Whatever, man, check out that ride—”
“As in why you gotta talk like you from the ’hood? You act a fool, yo.”
At this point, he just wanted to get the night over. It was cold, it was snowing, and he had to wonder who he’d pissed off to get stuck with Vanilla Ice over here.
Matter of fact, he was thinking about pulling out of this bullshit altogether. He was making good paper dealing in Caldwell; he was two months out of prison for those murders he’d done as a juvie; the last thing he was interested in was hanging with some white bitch determined to get street cred through vocabulary.
Oh, and then there was the Richie Rich neighborhood they were in. For all he knew, there was an ordinance out here that you weren’t allowed on the streets after ten p.m.
Why the hell had he agreed to this?
“Will. You. Please. Look. At. That. Fine. Automobile.”
Just to shut the guy up, Jonsey turned his head and leaned out of the shelter. As blowing snow got into his eyes, he cursed. Fucking upstate New York in the winter. Cold enough to ice-cube your balls— Well…hello, there.
Across a shallow parking lot, sitting right in front of a sparkling-clean, no-graffiti’d, twenty-four-hour CVS, there was, in fact, a sweet-ass fucking whip. The Hummer was totally blacked out, no chrome anywhere—not on the wheels, not around the windows, not even on the grille. And it was the big-body—and, going by all that trim, no doubt had the big engine in it.
The ride was the kind of thing you’d see on the streets where he was from, the vehicle of a major dealer. Except they were far from the inner city out here, so it was just some cracker trying to look like he had a dick.
Vanilla-man hiked up his backpack, one-strapping it. “I’ma check it out.”
“Bus is coming soon.” Jonsey checked his watch, and did some wishful thinking. “Five, maybe ten minutes.”
“Come on—”
“Bye, asshole.”
“You scared or some shit?” The SOB lifted his hands and started going Paranormal Activity. “Oh, scurrrrrry—”
Jonsey outted his gun and punched the muzzle right into that dumb-ass face. “I got no problem killin’ you right here. I done it before. I do it again. Now back the fuck off and do y’self a favor. Shut the fuck up.”
As Jonsey met the guy’s eyes, he didn’t particularly care what the outcome was. Shoot the bitch. Don’t shoot him. Whatever.
“Okay, okay, okay.” Mr. Chatty backed away and left the bus stop.
Thank. Fuck.
Jonesy put his gat away, crossed his arms, and stared in the direction the bus was going to come out of—like that might help.
Stupid fucking idiot.
He looked at his watch again. Man, enough with this shit. If a bus heading back into downtown got here first, he was just going to get on and fuck it all.
Shifting the backpack he’d been told to get, he felt the hard contour of the jar inside. The pack he understood. If he was going to transport product from the sticks into the ’hood, then yeah. But the jar? What the hell you need that for?
Unless it was loose powder?
The fact that he’d been chosen by C-Rider, the man himself, for this had been pretty fucking cool. Until he’d met White Boy—and then the idea he was special lost some juice. The boss man’s instructions had been clear: Hook up with the dude at the Fourth Street stop. Take the last bus out to the ’burbs and wait. Transfer to the rural line when service resumed near dawn. Get off at the Warren County stop. Hoof it one mile to a farm property.
C-Rider would meet them and a bunch of other dudes out there for the business. And after that? Jonsey would be part of a new crew set to dominate the scene in Caldie.
He liked that shit. And full respect to C-Rider—that motherfucker was tight: high up in the ’hood; strung.
But if the rest of them were like Vanilla—