Charlie Huston - No Dominion

– Pitt. Joe muthafuckin’ Pitt. You Terry Bird’s bitch. You his pet Rogue bitch, ain’t you? This shit gettin’ curiouser an’ curiouser. What Bird send you up here for? His hippie ass know better than to send no Rogue agent up here without no transit agreement.

– He didn’t send me.

– Uh-huh. You jus wand’rin’ up here all by yo lonesome. Sight-seein’ like.

– Heard the fried chicken and waffles can’t be beat.

The barber stops cutting.

Digga puckers his lips.

– What that you just say?

– Heard about the fried chicken and waffles.

– That’s thin ice, bitch. That fried chicken talk is some thin ass ice for a muthafucka to be treadin’ on.

– Sorry.

– That right you sorry.

– Not like I said I was here for the watermelon season.

His eyes open wide.

– Uh-uh. You did not. You did not.

He points at the barber.

– You done with that shit?

The barber looks at my head.

– Doan look no worse none than when I started.

Digga flaps his hand at him.

– Leave it, leave it. Lather muthafucka up and give him a scrape.

The barber sets his scissors aside, stirs a brush around in an old coffee cup and starts lathering my cheeks and neck.

Digga turns his back to me and faces the mirror again. He flicks his pinkie over the tips of his moustache.

– Watermelon season. That some classic shit. That some good, old-skool, stereotypin’, racist humor that is. You a racist, Pitt?

The barber puts his index finger on the point of my chin and tilts my head back.

– Not really. I just don’t like assholes.

– Muthafucka!

He grabs the razor from the barber, pushes him aside and tucks the blade up under my jaw.

– Asshole this, muthafucka. You tell me what you doin’ up here. Now, muthafucka. Want to know what you doin’ comin’ up here trailin’ a fuckin’ enforcer behind you. You on Predo’s tip or whorin’ for Bird, I doan care, you just talk, muthafucka, talk. And doan move yo mouth too much or you slit yo own damn throat ’fore I can.

– Not here for Predo.

– Oh, you know that name now, do ya?

– Not here for Bird.

– Who for?

– I’m here on my own, on my own business.

He adds an ounce of pressure to the blade and the skin splits and I feel the blood start to run.

– On your own bizniz. A Rogue out traipsin’ ’cross Coalition turf, takin’ a spin up ta the Hood on his own bizniz. Bullshit.

– It’s my own thing.

– You got someone gonna vouch that shit? You got someone gonna throw down for you on that? You got a brotha gonna back you?

I don’t say anything. Got nothing to say.

– That your answer, son? Got no names for me?

The blade slices deeper, the edge raking the cartilage sheath around my esophagus.

I throw the only name I have.

– Chubby Freeze.

He eases slightly on the razor.

– Chubby Freeze. That downtown niggah. He vouch you?

– He might.

– Hunh.

He lets go of my head and snaps at Timberlands.

– Chubby Freeze. You got that niggah’s digits?

– Ya-huh.

– Blow ’im up. Get that niggah on the phone.

Digga turns to the mirror and adjusts his collar and tie.

– Lucky I di’nt get no blood on this tie.

Timberlands waves his arm.

– Got ’im.

– What he say?

The guy talks quietly into the phone, nods a couple times and then flips it closed.

Digga snaps his fingers.

– Well, niggah?

– Chubby say he cool.

– He vouch?

– Chubby Freeze say he vouch for the man. Say the man righteous to a fault. Say they do bizniz and it always come out right.

– Hunh. Well. Well, well.

He looks me over.

– A vouch from Chubby Freeze. Ah’ite, that somethin’. So, Mr. Pitt, what you doin’ up here all by yo’self? What’s this bizniz?

– No big deal.

– Uh-huh?

– Just looking for the son of a bitch who’s sending bags of Vyrus downtown for the new fish to shoot.

– Huh. No shit.

He holds out his hand and one of the rhinos passes him his Armani jacket. He pulls it on and does the buttons.

– Lookin’ for the son of a bitch.

He picks up the razor.

– That is some in-ter-es-tin’ shit.

He hands the razor to the barber.

– Finish the man up.

He starts for the door, talking to Timberlands as he goes.

– When he done with his shave, toss him in the Hummer and haul his ass up to the Jack. We gonna show muthafucka some shit.

He walks out the door with the two rhinos on his heels. The barber looks at my throat.

– Look there, that all closed up already. Nothin’ no how but a scratch that.

He freshens the lather on my face and gives me a shave.

The Jackie Robinson Recreation Center looks like a Civil War fortress: red brick with round turrets at the corners and huge steel doors. The Jack.

Timberlands parks the Hummer on an empty basketball court just inside a chain-link gate. Behind the Jack, a cliff of whatever rock Manhattan is made out of rises several stories above us, Edgecomb Avenue running along its top. It’s cold outside the Hummer.

I look at Timberlands.

– How ’bout you give me my jacket back.

He runs his hand down the sleeve, feeling the leather.

– This jacket?

– Uh-huh.

– This my jacket. Why’m I gonna give you my jacket?

– Brotherly love?

He gives me a good push, letting my face open the door for us. He tilts his head at the guy sitting at the check-in desk and muscles me down a corridor of white-painted cinderblock.

At the end of the hall a guy in a cheap black suit and wraparound black shades leans against a door. We stop in front of him. He keeps staring at whatever he’s staring at, not bothering to turn his head in our direction.

Timberlands snaps his fingers.

– Open up.

Slowly, Shades rotates his face to us.

– Private party.

– We on the guest list.

Shades unbends a finger and points it at me.

– He ain’t.

– He with Digga.

Shades leans his head back, relaxing a little more.

– Already got a main attraction. Don’t need an opening act.

Timberlands steps up.

– Say he from Digga.

Shades unrelaxes.

– Digga don’t have no free white boy passes.

– This the Hood. This Digga’s turf.

– So they say.

The scent is up on them, rank Vyrus pheromones spraying the air. Blood will be spilled. I start looking for a window I can dive through.

– What all this?

Digga and his rhinos come up the hall behind us.

– What all this hostility I see? Where the love?

He stops, looks at the standoff in front of the door, a big smile across his face.

– What the problem, we ain’t got the juice to get beyond this velvet rope? Doorman don’t like our kicks? We ain’t up to the clientele inside?

Shades points at me again.

– He’s white.

Digga looks at me.

– Damn! How’d I miss that? Well, shit, you right ’bout that. Still doan see the problem.

– He’s white.

– Uh-huh. Well, as to that, know what Luther X used to say? He say, We all the same color inside. By that, he mean we all red. Now, I can prove it on you.

He loses the smile.

– Or you can open the damn door.

– Papa won’t like it.

– Somebody elect Papa president of the Hood? Somebody give him my job, forgot to tell me ’bout it? Open up.

Shades takes a step to the side.

– I di’nt say move, muthafucka, I said, open up.

Shades opens the door.

Digga sweeps his arm in front of me.

– After you.