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comfortable. But he was also realistic.
    “You hungry?” he asked deciding to change the subject.
    She realized then that she was. He didn’t wait for a reply and went into the living room to get the tray of sandwiches his mother made. He stood over the coffee table for a moment looking down at them. He noticed how his mother put them together carefully, slicing them in triangles and placing them on the tray in a perfect fan. He smiled thinking he really did have the best mama in the world.
    He heard the sounds of a song coming from his bedroom and abandoned all thoughts of his wonderful mother. He walked swiftly to his room and discovered Emma hunched over listening to his CD player. He had the sudden urge to ask her where she learned how to work a CD player—a device no doubt extinct in her world—but decided against it. She had found a Tupac CD, and he only just realized she was listening to “Hit ‘Em Up.” He hurried over to the stereo and turned it off. He was mortified. He wanted to look a certain way to her. He only wanted her to see certain things. What would she think of him after that?
    “Excuse me?” she asked irritably.
    “I don’t think you need to be listenin’ to that,” he said.
    He suddenly felt the urge to shield her from certain aspects of his world. He looked wildly about for other things that might be controversial, might betray his wicked nature, reveal him to be a person she could never like. The artists in his posters were giving him the finger. Why didn’t he think to take them down before she came?
    “I’m not a little kid,” she argued. “I was listening to that.”
    “Yeah, I know. But we ain’t gonna go there yet,” he said.
    “You asked me if I wanted to listen to some of his stuff!” she said exasperated.
    “Yeah, well, I wasn’t gonna play you that,” he said, laughing lightly.
    “Oh I see. You were going to show me one side of him. You were going to show me one side of you,” she replied. And then after a moment added cynically, “You probably never make your bed.”
    He laughed genuinely. “You right. I only make it when my mama yell at me.”
    She couldn’t help but smile.
    “Okay, fine. We listen to it. But lemme explain first,” he said.
    She grabbed a sandwich and started eating.
    “Okay, so Tupac had beef with this other rapper, Biggie Smalls.” Anton pointed to another poster hanging on his closet door. “That’s Biggie. So anyway, it started after he thought Biggie Smalls and his crew had something to do with him gettin’ shot. Well, shot the first time anyway. The second time he got shot, he died. But anyway, the first time he got shot five times and survived it. After that, a rivalry broke out between East and West.”
    Emma looked confused.
    “Rappers on the East Coast and rappers on the West Coast,” he clarified.
    She nodded in understanding.
    “Well, that’s the more popular version of it. The rivalry actually started before Pac and Biggie and didn’t have nothin’ to do with them. But I guess you can say it intensified when Tupac claimed that Biggie tried to kill him. You followin’ this?” Anton asked.
    Emma nodded thinking how tasty her sandwich was.
    “Anyway, it was a big deal in the 90’s,” Anton continued. “Basically everybody got shot. Lots of rappers died. But after Tupac and Biggie died, people started thinkin’ that maybe they shouldn’t be goin’ around and killin’ each other. So you don’t have all that goin’ on in the hip hop world no more.”
    Emma was intrigued.
    “So anyway, this song basically Tupac being all pissed and talkin’ shit to Biggie and his crew. It’s really explicit and I still don’t think you should listen to it.”
    “What are you? My dad?” Emma asked.
    Anton looked at her flatly. He pressed PLAY and continued the song. They sat in silence listening to Tupac explain how he was a “self-made millionaire” and a “Bad Boy killa” all the while eating sandwiches and drinking