Read Drown for Free Online Page B

last time.
    I can’t remember no last time. I just remember you.
    She looks at me like maybe she’s going to shove my smooth-ass line back down my throat. Then her face becomes smooth. Do you want to jig?
    Yeah, I say. I push her back on that mattress and grab at her clothes. Go easy, she says.
    I can’t help myself with her and being blunted makes it worse. She has her hands on my shoulder blades and the way she pulls on them I think maybe she’s trying to open me.
    Go easy, she says.
    We all do shit like this, stuff that’s no good for you. You do it and then there’s no feeling positive about it afterwards. When Cut puts his salsa on the next morning, I wake up, alone, the blood doing jumping jacks in my head. I see that she’s searched my pockets, left them hanging out of my pants like tongues. She didn’t even bother to push the fuckers back in.
     
    A WORKING DAY
     
    Raining this morning. We hit the crowd at the bus stop, pass by the trailer park across Route 9, near the Audio Shack. Dropping rocks all over. Ten here, ten there, an ounce of weed for the big guy with the warts, some H for his coked-up girl, the one with the bloody left eye. Everybody’s buying for the holiday weekend. Each time I put a bag in a hand I say, Pow, right there, my man.
    Cut says he heard us last night, rides me the whole time about it. I’m surprised the AIDS ain’t bit your dick off yet, he says.
    I’m immune, I tell him. He looks at me and tells me to keep talking. Just keep talking, he says.
    Four calls come in and we take the Pathfinder out to South Amboy and Freehold. Then it’s back to the Terrace for more foot action. That’s the way we run things, the less driving, the better.
    None of our customers are anybody special. We don’t have priests or abuelas or police officers on our lists. Just a lot of kids and some older folks who haven’t had a job or a haircut since the last census. I have friends in Perth Amboy and New Brunswick who tell me they deal to whole families, from the grandparents down to the fourth-graders. Things around here aren’t like that yet, but more kids are dealing and bigger crews are coming in from out of town, relatives of folks who live here. We’re still making mad paper but it’s harder now and Cut’s already been sliced once and me, I’m thinking it’s time to grow, to incorporate but Cut says, Fuck no. The smaller the better.
    We’re reliable and easygoing and that keeps us good with the older people, who don’t want shit from anybody. Me, I’m tight with the kids, that’s my side of the business. We work all hours of the day and when Cut goes to see his girl I keep at it, prowling up and down Westminister, saying wassup to everybody. I’m good for solo work. I’m edgy and don’t like to be inside too much. You should have seen me in school. Olvídate.
     
    ONE OF OUR NIGHTS
     
    We hurt each other too well to let it drop. She breaks everything I own, yells at me like it might change something, tries to slam doors on my fingers. When she wants me to promise her a love that’s never been seen anywhere I think about the other girls. The last one was on Kean’s women’s basketball team, with skin that made mine look dark. A college girl with her own car, who came over right after her games, in her uniform, mad at some other school for a bad layup or an elbow in the chin.
    Tonight me and Aurora sit in front of the TV and split a case of Budweiser. This is going to hurt, she says, holding her can up. There’s H too, a little for her, a little for me. Upstairs my neighbors have their own long night going and they’re laying out all their cards about one another. Big cruel loud cards.
    Listen to that romance, she says.
    It’s all sweet talk, I say. They’re yelling because they’re in love.
    She picks off my glasses and kisses the parts of my face that almost never get touched, the skin under the glass and frame.
    You got those long eyelashes that make me want to cry, she