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kept him acting off the wall. I used to beg Jimmy to stop talking idiotic shit and act right because I was scared the doctors would cart his ass off to the psych ward at Bellevue where our father was locked up at.
    “You had a lot of sick family come through here or something?” I asked Trey as we walked back inside the crowded waiting room. The intensive care unit was on jam, and people were steady coming and going.
    “Yeah,” he nodded as he held the door open and let me go in first. “Family and friends too. Actually,” he said offhandedly, “I got knocked from here. Matter fact, they slapped the cuffs on me right here in this room.”
    I sucked that scalding hot chocolate in my mouth so fast it burnt my tongue.
    “You got arrested up in here ?” I gave him a crazy look as we leaned against a back wall. “Oh, you’s a gangsta in disguise, huh, Mr. Messiah? What did you get busted in the hospital for? What in the world did you do?”
    “I killed a man, Juicy,” Trey said quietly, and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn’t bragging about that shit neither. “Matter fact,” he added, “I killed two.”
     
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    All I could do was sit there and listen as Trey put me up on what had happened the night his manz Mayhem died. I had heard so many rumors about it that it was impossible to know what was really real, but now I was getting the bullet straight out of the shooter’s mouth.
    I sat there mesmerized by Trey’s story. In a crazy way it was sorta like mine. Tragic. Both of us had been through a lot in life, and both of us were out here in the world practically by ourselves. Trey’s mother was dead just like mine was, and his sister Charlene and brother Cooter had lost their lives fuckin’ around with G, just like my brother Jimmy had. Trey felt like he shoulda done more to save his boy Mayhem, and Lord knows if I coulda just left G alone, then my girl Dicey woulda never got her tongue cut out her mouth and my brother Jimmy woulda never blown his own brains out of his own head. 
    “By the time I went looking for Mayhem that night,” Trey continued, “my dude had already made his decision, and them two niggahs had made them one too. They were gonna do him.”
    “So what happened then?” I whispered. “What did you do?”
    Trey pushed off the wall and stood up straight and frowned. He looked down at me and stared dead into my eyes and said quietly, “I killed them mothafuckas, Juicy. I blasted them niggahs with they own gats. I emptied the clips and made sure they was both dead.”
    A cold look entered his eyes and I felt so sad inside. Shyly, I reached over and touched the back of his hand. Spreading my fingers, I slid them down between his, and then I curled my hand into a tight fist.
    “Chiney told me how close you be playing Maleek,” I said softly as we squeezed each other’s hands. “Is that why you try to look out for him so hard? Because he’s Mayhem’s little brother?”
    Trey nodded a little bit and shrugged, but he didn’t look at me when he spoke. “Yeah. Prolly. But Mayhem was way more than Leek’s brother. He was that boy’s daddy too. When their moms passed all they had was each other. And when Mayhem got killed, Maleek went bonkers. I mean that cat got straight-up reckless with his shit. Even the hardest nigs on the streets got enough sense to have a fear of dying, but not Maleek. When Mayhem got shot it was like that young boy caught a fear of living or something.”
    Trey shook his head. “I started wondering if he had some kinda death wish, nah’mean? Word, I started thinking the boy might jump off a roof or run out in front of a truck or some ill shit like that. So I stayed real close to him and kept him in pocket. I tried to look out for him the same way Mayhem woulda looked out for me and minez.”
    Trey’s hand had swallowed my fist and he was holding onto me real tight as he spoke. There were eight million stories in the naked city of New York,