"Get in the car dawg," he said.

Gerry had picked up his clean clothes and clapped them against his chest with one arm and he held the doo doo jeans out to the side with the other. He paused, looked at the smush of blonde dog crap and threw the jeans back to the ground, walking over to the van with the angry athletic steps. He couldn't yet see the humor in the situation. His son was upstairs. He paid the rent.

"The fuckin bitch is crazy," he said.

He stuffed the clothes through the back window of Stacy's beat up Lumina. It was not insured and Stacy had a warrant out for outstanding parking tickets, the price he paid for working a messenger service job. It was Saturday afternoon in summer in Somerville, Massachusetts.

"She's fuckin crazy," Gerry said.

He got in the front seat and slammed the door. Stacy laughed again, put the car in gear. Gerry had a bad temper. Stacy turned the music up and wound them down the hill towards Central Square in Cambridge.

"This music fuckin bites," Gerry said. "Why do you listen to this shit?"

"It's Caribbean music man. Something your cracker ass na understand."

So there it stood. The humor that was lost on Gerry in his situation took a man of Stacy's philosophical temperament to appreciate. Gerry had worked all day for seven bucks an hour serving coffee to Harvard and MIT students. He'd come home and his girlfriend had accused him of sleeping with a co-worker. They had fought, broken stuff, made his son cry, and then the police had been called. Gerry had run away and come back to find all of his stuff thrown out the window. Gerry was for all intents and purposes, as black as Stacy, and that was pretty funny.

They drove through the east end of Cambridge down Massachusetts Ave. The co-eds were out in force, sporting tank tops and short skirts, every patch of bare skin a door of possibility. Clean sheets, fancy underwear, dad's bank account. They drove on, past the gray scientific buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On the other side of the Charles River the Boston skyline stood in relief. Both men were silent, contemplating the beauty of the scene as they crossed the bridge.

Then the city swallowed them. They passed the old brownstones of the Back Bay where the blue-bloods lived and walked their pure-bread dogs down Commonwealth Avenue. They passed Berkley College, where the musical hippies roamed in packs with their instruments, waiting to be called geniuses. They passed the high skyline of Copley Place where the Prudential Building stood as a stern monument to money well-invested. This city is padlocked against the poor, Stacy thought.

In Boston, if you're in a hurry, you can get everywhere faster on the side roads. They are old and pre-logical, twisted cowpaths that make narrow corridors between the old brick and wood structures. Gerry and Stacy were not in a hurry, though, and so they chose the slow direct route down the avenue.

In the South End, a neighborhood full of classic old brownstones now also full of a new-urban potpurri of Blacks, gays, Ricans, and Yuppies, Stacy turned right towards Roxbury. The white people fell away like mist and it wasn't long before they were cruising down Warren St. in a black world past the sellers of incense, bean pies, and drugs.

Stacy's baby lived in Four Corners, just on top of the hill from Field's Corner in a building full of Jamaicans and Trinis. Dorchester is full of West Indians: Barbadians, Trinis, Jamaicans, Bahamians, and all the lickle isles too, like St. Kitts and all that.

Stacy could tell by how the vein in Gerry's forehead had shrunk that he was ready to talk. Gerry was not like Stacy. His emotions were immediate. Gerry lived with the immediacy of a zen practitioner and without any of the stillness. Life for him was exactly the sum total of the moment.

"What happened?" Stacy said.

"She thinks I'm fucking the new bitch."

"Are you?"

"She wants it. She's all up in my shit."

"You didn't do nothing though?"

"I'm thinkin about it. Did you see her fuckin ass? I love the fuckin yoga girls."

Stacy laughed again. They pulled up out front of Stacy's son's mother's house. It was his son's birthday, and at least for now he was welcome, required, in fact, to attend. They parked in front of a hydrant. The hood was alive. Family bbq's and crews on the sidewalks in front of the buildings.

"The BM's gonna be a lil bit steamed with me," Stacy said. "I got a card but no present. Plus I been dippin and she knows it."

He used BM in place of Baby Momma, the best way to describe his son's mother. They had been lovers and almost married but that had been a long time back. They had been enemies in court and on the streets in times since. Now they were partners in child rearing, but the jealousy and the attraction between them came back like malaria.

The party had already started. The children were in the backyard chasing each other. The women were in the kitchen. The men were around the grill or in front of the TV. Stacy's wife's people were Trinis but they were not abstainers. They had a family recipe for an evil rum punch and one of the uncles handed Gerry a tall glass of it as they got inside which he poured off in one long thirsty quaff.

"I'm a go out and see the lil man," Stacy said.

"This shit is good," Gerry said, licking the remaining liquid off of his beard.

Stacy made his way through the apartment giving polite greetings and hugs to the necessary parties and when he got to the backyard his little cinnamon skinned son ran into his arms. Gerry watched the whole scene with a blank expression, looked into his empty glass and walked to the kitchen.

The afternoon passed genially into evening. Stacy hung out in the kitchen with the women, smelling the curry and the peas and rice as they cooked. The women teased him about looking like a serial killer, about living with a crazy white girl, about losing weight. For all that they liked him and nipped at his skin with pinches and caresses and smiles. The rum punch flowed. Gerry got drunk. Gerry was not a thinker. Thoughts came to him as flashed pictures in his mind, interference to the cool blue dreams he wove for himself. The dreams were simple pictures. Him on stage with a touring band. Him in a nice apartment watching TV. Him riding his bike. The interference flashed red in front of these. His Dad's face. His BM holding a knife and screaming at him. The cops.

Stacy and his BM, a small light-skinned tempest of a Trini woman, did their choreographed dance of responsible behavior for their son and the grandparents. They took pictures together, and told each other they looked good, and hugged their little boy in turns and together. Stacy liked the boy. He was suspicious and quick moving and he smiled unexpectedly with a wicked brightness when he was pleased. He did not have his mother's temper.

After the food Gerry and Stacy went with a small group of the younger men into the backyard to smoke blunts. The talk was of women, business ventures, major purchases. Gerry and Stacy stood apart.

"This ain't half bad," Gerry said, looking at the scene with a rummy sense of well-being.

"Nah," Stacy said. "It ain't the Partridge family, though."

The weed made him funny and he laughed and laughed at the thought of the Partridge Family, an orderly row of white people in hokey country clothes. He only knew his own dad as a stranger because he was famous around the neighborhood in a way. They called him Dr. C, for Chris or cocaine or crazy. He was a musician and a junky with a reputation for being unpredictable and his face, at age forty was a grey death mask. When Gerry saw him it was like talking to a stranger. Gerry didn't want to be like him but he could see how it could happen.

"Stacy," his BM's voice pierced the night air. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"Aw shit," Stacy whispered. "Here it come."

Gerry watched as Stacy followed his little wife to the corner of the yard, his broad shoulders sunk in resignation to what would happen. They spoke in low voices at first and in English. The volume rose, and their hands began to move in proportion as the language shifted to patois. Gerry could not understand the words but he knew what was being said. You think you can come in here with that white boy and get drunk and stoned and belly full with no present and no money and not say nothing real to me, then your black ashy ass is good and wrong. Something to that effect. She'd been drinking and her emotions were running high. The other men, mostly her first and second cousins, had turned to listen. Gerry searched the yard for ways to get out. There was a gate. And the fence could be jumped. Otherwise it was back through the apartment.

"Gerry," Stacy called. "Let's go."

Gerry moved toward Stacy. Stacy turned from his BM, who was trembling with anger. She screamed and grabbed two fistfuls of Stacy's braids from behind. He sunk and twisted and grabbed her by her wrists until she released him. He gave her a little push at the end and she fell neatly on her ass on the grass.

She let out a blood-curdling scream and the pack of cousins closed in around Stacy and Gerry. They were now on the top step of the back stairs that led up into the apartment. It was an ugly looking moment. The women in the kitchen were ready to grab knives. An Uncle stepped forward.

"Stacy," he said. "Give de girl de paper and den go from ere."

Stacy took out a roll of money from his pocket wrapped in a rubber band. It was everything he had. He'd explained the situation to her so many times. It didn't matter. He tossed the money to the uncle and they left. On the way out, Gerry looked at the women in the kitchen who'd been kind to him. They looked back with wooden masks for faces, carved into ancient expressions of indifference.

When they got to Stacy's Lumina, there was a ticket under the windshield wiper. Stacy grabbed it off and dropped it in the street. Two of the younger cousins had followed them out and were walking towards the car.

"Bloodclot," Stacy said, watching them in the rearview.

"Lets get the fuck outta here," Gerry said.

Stacy's face was dark. He made a slow three point turn keeping his eyes on the cousins and he drove back towards them slowly. They stood in the center of the street. Stacy rolled towards them slowly and steadily. Gerry watched his face. The young men moved aside and uttered threats through the windows as they rolled by. Gerry waited for something to hit the car.

"Drive me by work and I'll pick up some money," Gerry said.

Stacy shook his head.

"I can't believe that shit. It's the same every time."

"Don't worry about it. It ain't you."

They re-traced their path back up Warren St. and then towards the South End. Now the whole skyline of Boston stood in relief with the last glow of the summer sun turning the sky a silvery blue behind it.

"You know what man," Gerry said. "We should just party tonight. Be young, you know, while we still can."

"Don't even bring that be young shit, dawg."

"I'm serious."

They drove back across the bridge into Cambridge to the coffee shop in Central Sq. where Gerry worked. Stacy parked in the loading zone. Gerry was a minor celebrity because he worked nearly everyday and because he was "real" to the gaggle of trustafarians, grad students, and freelancers who composed the clientele. Stacy took a seat at the end of the counter and watched Gerry work his way to the kitchen.

"Marie around?" Gerry said.

"Downstairs," the new girl Kristy, was an indy girl who had moved from Omaha, Nebraska. She had dyed red-hair, a nose ring, and a big angel tattooed across her shoulders. She was a yoga girl and showed off her tummy with baby tees.

"Gerry, are you comin to Harry's later?" she asked.

"Yeah," Gerry said and slid the handrail downstairs to the cellar.

Marie was a Somerville girl, the lesbian daughter of an Italian mob boss. She liked Gerry and tried to reform him.

"Hey Babe," she said.

She was counting money in the dark little office.

"Marie, I need cash."

"No."

"Come on. My girl kicked me out. You know she's crazy."

"You'll blow it on weed."

"I won't. No way. My check's in the apartment."

"Then save it."

"She called the fucking cops on me."

"How come you never call ‘em?"

"Look at me."

He held out his pale forearms, covered in blue skulls and popping eyeballs.

"How much?"

"A hundred."

"Gerry, no."

"Fifty."

Marie grimaced.

"You can't live like this Gerry. You gotta get out of there."

"She's got my son."

Marie counted out fifty, made a mark in her ledger and slid Gerry the cash. He kissed her on the cheek and did not stay long enough to see her blush.

"You're the fuckin woman," he hollered as he bounded up the steps.

Things were looking up. Kristy was making a latte and Gerry pinched her sides.

"Fuck you," she yelled.

Gerry giggled and vaulted over the counter. He hustled down to the end where Stacy sat quietly sipping a peppermint tea and taking in the scene.

"We're good," he said. "There's a party tonight."

Stacy raised his eyebrows and Gerry disappeared again towards the back of the coffee shop. The Cambridge elite, down-dressed and disguised. Computer engineers, architects, student sons and daughters of the world's best all decked out in ratty dungarees, hoodies, and hippie hats. You can't hide from me, Stacy thought.

A new age woman with grey hair and purple jeans cackled loud and Stacy cut his eyes at her.

Gerry buzzed around hugging the cute regulars and slapping five with the guys. Stacy laughed thinking about Gerry at his desk in 9th grade, his leg hopping up and down, his eyes whizzing around, his teeth grinding. Gerry dropped out after one year of high school. He was in the office everyday. He couldn't sit still, not even for ten minutes. Stacy finished high school. Did a two year associates degree. Had money saved for real college and knocked his girl up. Gerry came back toward him and gave him a satisfied sigh of relief, like he'd just nailed a dive with a high degree of difficulty.

"Let's get the fuck outta here and buy a bag. I can't hang around this place unless I'm fuckin blazed."

"Aright," Stacy said.

"Ooh check it, check it," Gerry whispered.

Kristy had bent over to put a quart of half and half back into the fridge under the back counter and they had her ass in profile. Stacy wagged his braids in disbelief, at the ass and at Gerry.

"Man you just got done gettin kicked out and you tryin to get your thing wet already."

"Why the fuck not. I'm not with my girl. She knows that."

"Then why you live wit er?"

"For my son. She don't have shit, you know that."

"Yeah I know that."

Stacy was feeling more and more rude. Things could look ship-shape and full of sense one minute and then something could knock you off your block-like the crazy laugh from the new-age witchy woman in the corner-and then things start to lose their shape rapidly.

They headed back out. Gerry had more greetings outside.

"You like the mothafuckin mayor in that place," Stacy said.

"More like a fuckin mascot," Gerry said.

"Whatever man. Them people like you."

Gerry shrugged.

"Tim didn't have anything. Let's check out Cal and Dee. I know they got shit."

"The Coast niggas?"

"Yeah, dude," Gerry said. "They're cool now. They don't care about all that boundary shit."

Stacy shrugged. Maybe they didn't. He hadn't seen either one since they were huge angry 8th graders. They were cousins and lived between Cambridgeport and the Square-residents starting calling the area the Coast when Westside rap got big because of the hood's proximity to the Charles River. No one respected the name until Cal and Dee's crew rose up. They were plenty rough to have their own name. Coast Mob. But their neighborhood was only a year or two away from being swallowed by the business school housing. They were like the last hoodie tribe in the hood, but the anthropologists down the street were not so interested. The cops weren't even interested anymore.

"I don't remember them guys liking me much," Stacy said, guiding the Lumina down Western towards the river.

Gerry was counting the money Marie had handed him.

"They're cool dude, I'm telling you. Cal went to the pen and now he's all philosophical and shit."

"He's still sellin," Stacy said.

"Stop fucking freakin out dude. We're just buyin a fuckin bag of weed."

"I'm just sayin I don't see why you wanna buy from ballers when you know all them white cats with good shit.""

Cal and Dee were leaning against the chain link fence in front of the house where they lived. There was a little boy on a big wheel in front of them. Cal was a broad-shouldered light-skinned guy with wide cheekbones and a sharp nose that spoke of Indian blood. He wore a high afro natural. Dee was a messy mound of muscle with a flat African nose, dark black skin, and thick braids. Both of them wore black bomber jackets, baggy jeans, and workboots. Stacy pulled the Lumina up in front of them and Gerry rolled the window down. Dee pushed back off the fence and walked over to the car.

"What's up Dee?" Gerry said.

"Nuttin. Not a damn thing."

He looked past Gerry at Stacy.

"Whassup with ya'll?"

"Need a sack."

He nodded and pushed back from the car.

"Whyn't chall meet me back in the park. I got my nephew."

A few minutes later Gerry and Stcay were sitting at a plastic table bolted to the concrete patio in the park behind Cal and Dee's place. The sun had gone down and the sky was indigo. A half full moon hung low over the sagging triple-deckers of the Coast.

"You ever wonder how you ended up with the family you have? How anybody does?" Gerry said.

"Please don't start that shit now."

Gerry shrugged. He wasn't trying to start anything. He was wrestling with a question and the night sky was making him think deeply. Calvin and Dee rounded the corner at the park entrance and walked toward them. Stacy got a bad feeling in his stomach, like something terrible was going to happen or had happened. When Dee and Cal got to the table Gerry and Stacy stood up. The four of them exchanged hugs and pounds. Stacy tried to shake the feeling but he couldn't.

"What chall want?" Dee said.

"I got fifty," Gerry said.

Stacy glanced at him and Gerry shrugged. Dee reached in his coat and pulled our thick roll of weed in a sandwich bag.

"Fitty," he said. "An good too."

Gerry handed him the money and grabbed the weed. It felt good in his hand, like a weapon, something solid.

"Les smoke one," Dee said. "And then yall could be out."

He pulled a cigar from his inside pocket and a brown paper bag and set to rolling a blunt.

"You used to play football at Somerville," Cal said to Stacy.

It had been a long time. Stacy smiled.

"For a spell I did," he said.

"Yeah I remember you. You was real good. Hard hitter like me," Cal said. "I used to go up and watch Rindge play when I was a pup. Wanted to be a pro, like."

Cal got a far away look in his eyes.

"Hurry up Dee," he said.

And then to Stacy, "Ya'll feel funny tonight or is it me?"

"Man you always feel funny," Dee said, licking the blunt closed and holding it up in front of him like it was an origami swan.

He burned the seam shut and then lit it up, taking deep drags and checking the burning end to make sure it lit symmetrically. They passed the blunt around silently, like chieftans in an old ritual, their eyes scanning the horizon lines. The smoke rose into the night sky in a column and then blew east over the baseball field.

"You guys ever wonda how you end up with the family you end up with?" Gerry said.

Stacy shook his head.

Dee snorted a laugh and spit smoke out.

"Don't even bring that shit," he said.

"No, dawg. That's a real question," Cal said. "I've thought all about that one. How you even end up in the skin you're in, the body and shit."

The four were cut in pairs. Dee and Stacy under thick shells, unwilling to talk like children, their ears open to the answers. Gerry and Cal sorting back through countless internal monologues, interrupted fragments.

"Never came up with nothing figured out though... Other that than we all got our shot to make it right no matter how we land in this world."

"I don't think so," Gerry said. "I don't think I'd be as fucked in the head as I am if I'd had it normal. You know?"

They all sat for some time like that, appreciating the silence, the fragrant summer air, and taking turns glancing at the yellow jonquils planted along the path, or the canopy of the dogwood that spread over them and its paper-white blossoms.

Dee broke the stillness, raising up from his seat, and stiffening like a pit bull. He'd seen a group of four young men enter the opposite end of the park.

"Ya'll better be out," he said.

Gerry got up and turned around. Cal rose with the tired strength. Stacy hopped up.

"Ya'll take care," Dee said.

Stacy and Gerry headed at a fast walk to the park entrance where they'd come in. The walkway got narrow as it past through the row of houses close to the street. A lamp lit up the entryway. Stacy sped up.

"Slow down," Gerry said.

Just as he said it, three young hoodies appeared at the park entrance with violence written on their faces. Stacy turned around and Gerry turned with him.

"Fuck this shit," Stacy said.

As he said it, one of the guys yelled, his voice cracking.

"Get those stankass niggas."

Gerry and Stacy ran back up the walk towards Cal and Dee. Gerry was two steps ahead of Stacy. He did not like what he saw-another crew closing on the two men at the table from the other side-so he crashed through a hedge and hopped a high chain link fence. Stacy tried to follow but could not make the fence in one bound. He got stuck half-over.

The first guy in the chase pack was closing ground.

"Get me off this thing," Stacy shouted.

Gerry pulled Stacy over and his shirt ripped down the side. The kid who was chasing them stopped on the other side of his face. He was very young, sixteen at most, and his face betrayed no concern or fear. His skin was light and he had a tear tattooed at the corner of his left eye.

"Ya'll are dead mothafuckas when we done here," he said.

He pulled his sagging jeans up over his ass and turned to follow the rest of his crew, who were closing in on Dee and Cal.

Gerry and Stacy ran into the night. They had not gone half a block before they heard two loud pistol shots. They ran the four blocks to the river as fast as their lungs allowed, adrenaline chills turning the sweat icy on their backs and under their arms.

On the jogging path by the Charles River, it was a new world. Yuppies walking their dogs in the twilight. Distinguished couples arm in arm. The river moving by silent as a snake. Gerry walked to one of the green benches that lined the sandy path and sat down. The run had opened up his lungs and sweat trickled down his cheek. His eyes were alive.

"What the fuck was that?" he said.

Stacy wheezed, holding his knees. He spit then straightened up and looked across the river at the brand new brick dormitories of the Harvard Business School.

"You believe in spirits?" he whispered.

"What do you mean?

"I mean I felt cold in my bones before those kids showed up and I don't think that's coincidence. You believe that?"

"Instinct," Gerry said. "I believe in instinct but not in all that hail Mary shit. My mom prays every fuckin night and either she's prayin for the wrong shit or it don't work."

"Nah, this is different."

"It's a bunch of Bob Marley shit."

"I think we should go home tonight, dawg."

"I don't got a fuckin home," Gerry shouted.

"Come to my crib."

"You can go home if you fuckin want to," Gerry said. "I'm goin to this party and I'm fuckin Kristy if my luck's alright."

"It's not a good idea."

"Why not?" Gerry yelled. "Because it's fuckin summertime and the fucking niggas are just as crazy up here as they are in fuckin Four Corners?"

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, each considering his own situation.

"You act like a little kid," Stacy said. "Fuck dis, fuck dat."

"Fuck you," Gerry said.

Stacy didn't answer. The sirens wailed. Blue and red visions passed behind Gerry's eyes. Blue silk underwear. Bloody knuckles.

Stacy looked tired. He sat down on the bench next to Gerry and stared out across the river at the clean lines of the dorm buildings, at their even rows of lights, at the way the grass beneath them seemed to pulse with the extra green of Harvard money.

"I can't go back to my car," he said. "Cops'll be everywhere."

Gerry pulled on the bottom of his beard, leaned forward on the bench, and spat.

"We'll go to the party, get a few drinks, and head home. It'll be fun."

"I need a shirt."

Fifteen minutes later they entered the front gate of a triple-decker in Cambridgeport. The walkway was scattered with young indy kids and discarded red plastic cups. Stacy and Gerry headed around the side to the back patio. Gerry talked to a few people and Stacy walked over to the keg. He got two beers and waited for Gerry. Gerry walked up to each clump of kids and slapped five with all of them. He exchanged a few platitudes and asked for Warren. Stacy drank both beers and got two more before Gerry came back over.

"I don't know where Warren is," Gerry said. "Kristy'll be with him."

He took one of the beers from Stacy and they headed into the ground floor of the house. It was dark and packed tight with people. A DJ was spinning loud electronic music and a white guy with no shirt on was doing some kind of slow motion break dancing, holding himself up with his hands, his stringy muscles sustaining all his weight, while the girls watched and the guys pretended not to. Gerry swallowed his beer, wiped his mouth and dropped his cup. Stacy was a head taller than anyone in the room, and he scanned it for someone he recognized. Nobody looked at him. The only other black guy was wearing a bone choker and a Che Guevara t-shirt and talking to one of the punk girls who worked the counter at the coffee shop. Stacy pushed through the crowd to catch up.

Upstairs the lights were on and clumps of guys and girls lounged around talking. A couple had passed out on a couch together. Gerry stopped a guy in the narrow hallway that ran past the kitchen.

"Hey bro, have you seen Warren?"

"He's probably upstairs," the guy said.

Gerry winked at Stacy and they went through the kitchen to a steep set of stairs.

"Warren's dad's got a mansion in Back Bay, but he's cool as hell."

"I should get back to my car, get a shirt at least." Stacy said.

He was feeling his exposed black skin.

"If the cops still aren't over there, those fuckin kids will be. We'll get it in the morning."

Stacy could not shake the bad feeling from the pit of his stomach, and being in the house of white bohemians did not help. Not one person had looked him in the face since he'd walked in. The events of the evening lined up to make him feel like he was betraying his race. He'd left his BM and his baby. He'd left Dee and Cal to fend for themselves. To get where? To get to a party in a world he couldn't really grasp, where young people who worked for $7.50 per hour in coffee shops lived in ratty old houses in hoods he'd grown up avoiding and not one of them had a single worry line in their face. He'd followed Gerry on nights before and it had been fun. Something was different. The answer was forming for him, like a knot starting to pull apart, when a dog barked out of the doorway of a black room. Stacy jumped. Gerry laughed.

"What the fuck is that shit?" Stacy said.

Gerry took a step over to the grey-muzzled Rottweiler and grabbed it by the scruff. The dog rolled onto its back and exposed its stomach.

"You mothafuckin crazy," Stacy said.

"People like this don't have mean dogs, bro," Gerry said. "Welcome to heaven."

He rapped on a closed door once and then opened it and walked through. Stacy took a deep breath, considering the slot of light created by the open door, hearing the music and the chatter inside. He paused to tuck his ripped t-shirt into his jeans and then he followed.

Warren was a white kid with long blonde dreadlocks who had played tailback at Amherst. He sat with his legs out in front of him on a futon mattress covered by a patch quilt flanked by Kristy and a cute hippy girl with freckles named Mary. The air was thick with weed smoke and a hand-blown glass bubbler was being passed from hand to hand. On a couch on the other side of the room two girls were kissing each other and next to them a guy with a floppy Mohawk was studying the inflamed skin around a new tattoo on his forearm. Gerry popped his shoes off, dove onto the mattress and tackled Kristy. Warren's face lit up when he came in.

"Welcome gentlemen, welcome," he said.

"Eeew, get off me," Kristy said.

Stacy closed the door behind him and stood in the center of the carpet looking for a seat.

"Sit wherever you want," Warren said. "Just take your shoes off."

Stacy looked down at his boots. His socks smelled. The knot in his stomach tightened again. Fuck this shit, he thought. But he didn't leave. He sat down in the middle of the carpet and rested his elbows on his knees. He had a sour look on his face but it softened when Hippie Mary crawled toward him with the glass bubbler.

"Here," she said. "You look stressed out."

Stacy shook his head, felt his braids brush across his neck and felt pride about his skin and his hair and his stinking socks. Just like Cal said, we all got our shot. He sucked on the bubbler until the smoke inside was so thick and white that you could see it through the glass and then he let his thumb off the carburetor and pulled it deep down into his lungs. He held it in and passed the bubbler along and then coughed it out of his nose and mouth. He felt his eyes fill with blood.

"Stace, pass the lighta."

Gerry's voice came into his ear from a far-off place. Stacy automatically passed the lighter into space. He wanted to tell him that those girls might fuck him but they would never take him home. A picture he'd seen earlier in the park interrupted. A white dogwood blossom with one petal missing, like the notched ear of an alley cat. He opened his eyes and the room came back into focus. His ears tuned into the music and he recognized, a voice from his baby days. He remembered his mom singing along in the kitchen.

Stacy pushed himself up and stood in the center of the room. They were all watching him now, like he had grown three stories high.

"I'ma go get my car. You wanna ride or you straight?"

Gerry sat with his back to the wall, Kristy next to him and his hand on her knee.

"You goin'?" Gerry said.

"Stay a while," Warren said.

"You got nice braids," Hippie Mary said.

"Nah, I'm out," he said. "Gotta take care of some things."

He looked at Gerry, who raised his eyebrows to say he'd be fucking crazy to leave. The night was going his way.

Stacy walked out of the room down one flight of steps past the Rottweiler, who watched him pass without growling. He turned the corner of the landing and looked down the steps. The crew from the park was gathered at the bottom of the steps. Left Eye was talking to his boys, one hand on the banister about to come up. Stacy stepped back into a shadow and watched as the conversation finished and the crew of four started up the stairway. He backed out slowly and stepped over the gate into the dark bedroom with the dog.

The crew passed him.

"This whole fucking world wants to get fucked. Watch," the Left Eye said.

Stacy let them pass and then stepped out of the dark, went to the bottom of the landing to listen. He heard the music surge as the door opened but he couldn't pick anything out after so he walked back up the steps and stood outside the closed door. He was standing there listening when he heard more people coming up the stairs. White kids. Five of them. The first two carried baseball bats. One had a hammer.

"You have to leave," the first one said to Stacy.

"I'm here with my boy."

"You all have to leave," the guy said.

"He's in there."

The leader gestured at Stacy to open the door. He did and as they all pushed in the room, he was caught up in the middle of the crew of hoodies. He recognized one of them, the younger cousin of a friend, a kid who used to live up at the Howard St. homes. Left Eye had sat himself between the Mohawk and the kissing sisters who looked very scared. Stacy looked at Gerry, who had stiffened up and sat cross-legged. As the white boys pushed into the room the black boys shuffled forward, confused and uncomfortable, until one of them realized what was going on.

The room was not more than a 100 sq ft, a full third of it covered in mattresses and now twelve mostly grown men were standing up in the remaining space. It was hard for anyone to see what was going on. Stacy got caught in the middle of the pushing match that ensued.

"Listen bro," Warren said to Left Eye. "This is a private party. We don't want any trouble. You guys can smoke with us and then be on your way."

Left Eye hopped up when he saw the baseball bats and he wore a wry little grin on his face.

"Private party. Like no niggas allowed?"

"That's not what I said," Warren said.

"I heard what you said, white boy."

Stacy stood sandwiched between the two crews. The guy who had told him to leave had a dark beard. He looked scared but determined. He pressed forward so that he was pushing Stacy into the guy behind him, who was holding him off with his forearm.

"Why don't you fucking faggots get the fuck outta here," Gerry said.

Left Eye reached into his waistband and took out a pistol. Gerry jumped up fast and sprung on him. The gun went off twice. Gerry was much stronger than the kid and it took him a short moment to wrest the gun away. All hell broke loose in the room as Left Eye scrambled to his feet and all the black kids pushed through the white kids and out the door, bombing down the steps. The white kids followed shouting. Warren sat still on the bed, his legs extended out front of him in the same position, a look of shock on his face. Gerry stood in the middle of the room with the gun in his hand. Stacy was in the corner. Kristy was crying.

There was a still moment and then the sirens could be heard, echoing off the buildings on Western Ave.

"You guys better split," Warren said. "Take the gun. I'll tell them what happened."

Gerry put the gun in his cargo pocket, and him and Stacy left the room, ran down the two flights of steps and out the back door, Stacy leading. The sirens were loud and close. The backyard was fenced high and so Stacy and Gerry ran to the front of the building out the gate and down the sidewalk towards River St. Two unmarked cars cut them off there. Gerry told Stacy to run, but he didn't. Gerry had his hand on the pistol in his pocket, the blue and red lights of rage flashing in his head, blinding him, as the patrol cars arrived.

In court two months later, Warren's hair was cut short and he wore spectacles. He stood next to his father, a severe-looking man with beady eyes. Warren said he had never seen Gerry or Stacy before the night they came to his house uninvited. A friend of his, the kid with the Mohawk, had said they sold weed. He did not look at Gerry or Stacy.