“I know, I know. The guy seemed legit, though.”

“No one on Craigslist is legit.”

“I don’t know. A few weeks ago, I picked up some books through Craigslist. They were pretty legit.”

“Yeah? What’d you pull?”

“It was a crazy haul. Some older lady out in Villa Rica—used to be a professor—was giving all her books away so she could move to California. Apparently, she hates both Amazon and her local library, and Goodwill, and Salvation Army—actually, I think they hate her, wasn’t clear. She refused to just leave the books on the street, so she was posting on the internet and hitting up the local McDonald’s and the QuikTrip and even the fucking car wash. She was determined.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Yeah, I picked up some music books and some Walter Mosley stuff and some comics, and Apollo picked up an original printing of the autobio of Malcolm X. Remember when Coach Greene made us read that?”

“Sure do. Best book I’ve ever read. I read it twice in juvie.”

“I don’t know about ‘best book,’ but that’s cool. You should talk to Apollo about it. He’s been reading it a lot lately.”

“What are his thoughts? As usual, I’m sure he has a bunch.”

Theo paused. “I don’t know, honestly. I feel like I understand that book pretty well, but Apollo is on some other shit.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s just been saying stuff about how Malcolm was brave to turn his back on the Nation of Islam and how we should all know when we have to advance the discourse. Weird shit like that.”

“He’s kind of right, but that’s only one part of the book. It’s really about how in life, Malcolm comes to realize that being part of a movement or an organization shouldn’t mean becoming, like, a puppet. Malcolm turned his back on the Nation not because he was some forward thinker, but because he realized the world was bigger and that Islam itself was bigger than the Nation allowed it to be. And he didn’t really even turn his back on them. He stepped away for the sake of his own beliefs and growth.”

“Oh shit, young scholar on deck,” Theo announced, tapping his fork on an empty wine glass.

“I know a thing or two,” Sol said.

Silence descended again, this time more resolute, comfortable. Sol wondered whether strong-arming the host counted as a violation of her probation. She probably didn’t want to know the answer, she realized, settling back into silence.

The food arrived unceremoniously, the waitstaff wordlessly sliding plates onto the table, metal and porcelain somehow mute despite dangerous proximity. Why was fine dining so damn quiet? Sol wondered, thinking of the unending noise of her own shift: that blaring jukebox, that rusty bathroom door, those squeaky, incessantly mopped floors.