I tossed the phone back to the young Asian man holding the gun on me. He caught the phone. I said, “Your mom wants you home no later than nine. And pick up some rocky road ice cream on the way.”

“You’re not funny at all,” the young man said. His accent was Australian, not British. A rookie mistake some folks make. “You’re just a sad, old beat-to-shit punter. Jesus! Look at you!”

“And you look like this so-called Albino’s delivery boy,” I said. “So, fuck off.”

Slowly, he pressed the supressed barrel of his 9mm to my forehead for a second or two. Smiled. Said, “Trust me, mate; Bob’s not your uncle. Be seein’ ya.”

Then he left.

All I could do was lie physically diminished in my hospital bed and hope the real Dr. Enrique Manfredo was in a doctors’ lounge somewhere nursing a bump on the back of his head.

27

27

There was a shooting at the House of Peace and Gratitude Mosque in Oslo.

One Somali worshipper badly wounded.

A community in shock.

And a Scandinavian nation stunned, embarrassed and angered that it had, if only through the choice of its government-regulated compassion, joined a bloody worldwide fraternity of weaponized xenophobia.

Two days after my release from the hospital and return to Markham Street, Tatina flew home.

It didn’t help that countries that once looked to America for moral leadership saw only a quicksand empire piling its Black, brown, red, yellow, Muslim and Jewish citizens on the AR-15 pyre of “white nationalism” led by a depraved former game-show host.

“I think I know the answer,” I said to Tatina as we sat in my SUV outside of the Delta Air Lines gate at Detroit Metro Airport, “but are you okay?”

“I will be,” she said. “This is why you do what you do, August. You have what some might call ‘survivorship bias.’ Maybe the same is true of me. Violence for you is a fulcrum. Maybe it doesn’t solve problems, but it brings a measure of terrifying equilibrium.”

“Funny,” I said. “I just thought of myself as God’s back-alley thug. The guy who’ll break your legs then light a novena candle and pray for your speedy recovery. You’re not gonna do anything stupid when you get home, are you?”

She kissed me.

Smiled.

“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” she said before issuing a tepid laugh. “That’s your department. What I am going to do is get everyone back on schedule. I’m going to begin teaching at the university. I’m going to go shopping. I’m going to go to the farmer’s market and buy vegetables and flowers. I’m going to go to the movies. To restaurants. And I’m going—for the first time in a long time—to mosque.”

I knew what she was saying.

“Escúchame como se escucha la lluvia,” I said.