Stone's Throw

All that gangsta stuff? It was a front. The face tattoos, the gold teeth, the wifebeater tank-tops, thug life on his fists, he wore that mask to convince the world he wasn’t the sensitive kid who’d dazzled a studio audience on Boston’s Got Talent, peaking on public access TV at age 17.

“We can sit here all day and go through the whole fucking thing, but it won’t change what happened. Should those deputies’ve gone out and threatened him with a ticket? Not in my opinion. But they weren’t stepping over their bounds either.”

I got a smile out of that story. Believe it or not, I can be lighthearted about dark things. I’ve been medicated against depression for the last ten years. These days, I don’t really have strong feelings about anything.

They ran the same play again. Again, Wilson went down on his ass, a little harder than the first time. You had to be pretty damned obnoxious for your own defense to want to lay you out during practice.

Effendi Wilson was that obnoxious.

She eyed Colt as he flung the rest of the bills off his body and retreated to the bathroom. He kept the door open and she observed the stream hit the toilet between his legs. All she could do was shake her head. She loved that son of a bitch.

Stews, sides, mains, desserts—when it came to Virgin Islands cuisine, Auntie Paloma knew how to do it all, and Celine was a quick learner. Soon, Celine could whip up a fried yellowtail with cornmeal funji, a plate of whelks and rice, hearty stew chicken or a fluffy batch of johnnycakes as easily as she could microwave popcorn.

. . . this building had stood as a brick symbol of hope and promise, straight and steady like a bookmark holding a page in a favorite novel. It said, I’ll keep you safe, far away from your silly drunken mother and distant father and perverse brother. In the beginning she believed herself safe within this building. She believed herself safe with Phil.

A female rat can mate 500 times with various partners during the six-hour period of receptivity. This happens 15 times a year. A pair of rats can produce 2000 offspring in one year.

The three of them should have been holding hands as the bullets came, just as they did sometimes while marching half-drunk around the waterfront.

“I’m over at the old campus, next to that woodland. Do you remember her?”

“I remember mine. All she wanted out of life was to be an English teacher and eat fast food. God, what a waste of a life that would have been.”

It was strange how the snow didn’t stick on the frozen pond. Maybe the water still retained some of the warmth of the fall. That was a disturbing thought, the possibility of captive heat under the ice. With what was down there . . . Willie’s knuckles whitened on the cane.

“Get a grip,” he grumbled.

I’d never forget that feeling of weightlessness as I fell through the air after my feet left the granite point, as if time stood still. I’d never felt so in control and invincible, like how birds must feel as they ruled the sky.