“Fuck,” he says, breathing out of his nose as he chews. Eyes closed.

“Good, right?”

“Good doesn’t begin to scratch the paint.”

She blushes. “Anyway. How’s tricks, Mook?”

“Shitty.” Here, then, the vibe of the confessional. She doesn’t know what he does. Not exactly. She doesn’t know what goes on beneath the streets of the city – and, sadly, often upon those streets. She’s one of the Blind – the scales of ignorance blissfully closing over her eyes. And good for her. Mookie wouldn’t wish the truth on someone like Karyn. Just the same, she lets him talk. He keeps it vague. She probably knows something’s up with him – thinks, correctly so, that he’s a made man in some way. The depths, however, remain hidden. “I got problems.”

She pulls up a stool. Elbows down on the table, chin in a cradle of knuckles. “Talk while you eat.”

“Work and family. Those two things…” He punches his two fists together. Sounds like two steaks slapping. “They’re crashing. Into one another.”

“Your daughter?”

“Getting ornery.”

“Again?”

“Again.”

“You still in touch with her mother?”

“Eh.” Translation: nope. “Been awhile. A long while. She doesn’t want nothin’ to do with me.”

“Can’t she help get the girl under control?”

“I dunno. Maybe.”

“Worth a shot.”

He thinks but does not say: it’s gone too far for that.

But still – maybe Karyn’s onto something. Maybe Jess knows something about where Nora is. Or isn’t. Call her, you big dummy.

“You’re a smart kid,” he says.

“My father’s a clinical psychologist. My mother, a copyright lawyer. Two smarts don’t make a dumb.”

“I’m a thug and my ex-wife used to be a night nurse at a drug clinic. What’s that tell you?”

“Tells me you got trouble on your hands.” Karyn winks, nudges the cutting board closer. “Eat, you big bastard.”

Eat. Yes. More heat. Cocoa nib and cayenne salumi. The round edges of unsweet chocolate. The fire from the pepper. The unctuous slightly-off taste of the meat.

He makes a sound in the back of his throat. Kind of an nnnnggguuuuhhh.

It’s time. He doesn’t want it to be, but it has to be.

An attempt at a clumsy diversion: “You still dating, uhh, what’s her name?”

“Lulu?”

“Yeah. Lulu.”

“Yeah. Louisa’s good, she’s good. Better than all the previous girls added up.”

“The last one was a little crazy.”

“The last five were a lot crazy. And Lulu’s crazy, too, but… hey, so am I. My crazy and her crazy play well together. Run with scissors down the hall.” She smiles. “She’s learning the trade. She might work here soon.”

“That mean she’s giving up the… roller derby thing?”

“She loves that too much. The Girls are her family.”

The Girls. “Her gang.”

Karyn’s face falls. “I know.” Now it’s her turn to change the subject. “You need to get yourself a girl, Mook.”

“I’m too old for a girl. I need a woman.” He frees his palate with the culatello and melon. Soft mild fruit with what for many is the king of charcuterie – meat from the best part of the leg preserved in the pig’s emptied bladder and hung in a dark cool place for upwards of a whole year. Real-deal culatello hangs in musty old caves. Karyn hangs it in the basement of her Brooklyn joint, which is itself dark, dank, cavernous. The idea once struck Mookie that the Great Below would be a helluva place to hang meat – it wasn’t. The air has something wrong with it. The meat came out bulging with fungal pods like tumors. Smelled like sour, sun-warmed death.