"I don't have a quarter, blood, all I got's five cents." With his thumb he jammed the nickel into the kid's mouth. Pinching the back of the kid's neck, shoving it GAG ACK down his throat. Two hands slapped down on Chubby's shoulders, yanking him away. Chubby wheeled around, ducked, came up swinging from the ground. A 300-pound fist smacked into open crotch. Chubby backed off, lowered his head and charged, ramming the crippled cop into a woman into a newsstand in a splash of girlie magazines and newspapers. Laughing, the crowd danced around Chubby as if he were a Pamplona bull. Chubby turned to the kid doubled over and gagging between parked cars. Chubby drop-kicked him into a double somersault. Screeching tires. Screams. The neon bubbled furiously around the marquees. Chubby looked up at the stars. The woman buried under hundreds of Daily Newses screamed for blood. Chubby saw the word "SURCHARGE" in all the headlines. The cop was unconscious. The news dealer stood there in thick glasses and a white apron. Chubby sniffed, buttoned his shirt and pushed through the crowd down into the subway station. Sirens. Some of the crowd followed him from a safe distance, but he got on the train alone.

Chubby sat on the rocketing train, swaying back and forth like a moron. He saw everything as if he were wearing tinted glasses. White skin had the pastiness of death, black skin looked sickly green. He had his fat man's wheeze again, sitting hunched over, hands dangling below his knees. There was blood on his shirt. He sniffed it. The nigger kid's.

"He begged me, heh, heh." Chubby grinned and his eyes lit up as he talked to the white poles in front of him. "'Please, mister, please, mister,'" Chubby whined. "I said, I said, heh, heh," he cackled. "'Please, mister,' he said to me, whining, 'Unh!'" Chubby leaped out of his seat, lunging with an invisible sword at the groaning doors as they opened at 72nd Street. "Heh, heh." Collapsing back into the gray molded seat.

A middle-aged dumpy black lady in a brown coat and horn-rimmed glasses made a face as if she smelled shit, and moved away from Chubby. Chubby laughed and thrust his sword at her. She walked faster, banging into a pole.

"He said, 'Please, mister, I'm sorry.'" Chubby rolled his eyes and licked his lips. "Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah." Resting his head on the subway map, shutting his eyes, rubbing his palms over his face. His belly peeked out under his lime green shirt.

"Sooo-ky!" he moaned loudly. From the back of his throat came that eerie whine like a demented croon.

The sharp rap of a nightstick on the metal seat made him jump. "Hey, whatchoo doin', man?"

Chubby looked up into the bland face of a big black T.A. cop. He smiled like a little boy with his hand caught in a cookie jar and shrugged. "You be cool now. hear?"

Chubby winked and got off at the next stop.