But it didn’t end with running or dropping the goddamn knife that was clean. I went back to him. Maybe just to touch him, but he wasn’t there. Only a chalk outline of his body bent like a leaf. Round and scraggly. The police found me and brought me here to face the others. And when we was left alone, like there was a goddamn signal I didn’t read, they was all on me, doing an Irish jig on my head. Shit. Just ’cause I signed for myself and told what had happened. just ’cause my knife dropped clean to the ground, just ’cause I heard them leaves falling and they sounded like lips calling my name, saying, “Lonny, Lonny,” and saying, “I never touched you, man. Never.” And when I told the doctor about it, he said they’d stop talking like that. And them leaves did stop talking like that for the split second before Maxie’s fist found my jaw and Cuddles squeezed at my throat. Moms in night court was squeezing, too. And Moms in the visitors’ gallery was yelling all out of her head and mine in the same scratchy voice, “He ain’t never had a chance, Christ Jesus.” Which was a lie. I had my chance. Better than that, I took my chance, Moms, and I’m gonna tell everybody about it. You all hear me out there? “Shit. I took my chance. I’m self-employed.”

The one who ain’t had a chance wasn’t me at all. It was Metro. That’s something I knew about all along. Which probably explains how I got to jail in the first place and why I even went back where they stabbed him. I wanted to tell him he never had a chance. I did, and I took my chance. And if Cuddles didn’t have his knife on me, or if Maxie and Lou was really friends like I thought they was and not the crumbs they turned out to be, I’d have stopped them then and let Metro go. We was just gonna fuck him up a little bit, you know? But I didn’t stop them. I couldn’t. Don’t ask me no more how it happened. Don’t ask me no more about who he was to me, ’cause all I know is what he was and what I hate. Telling me his real name didn’t change nothing. Not like he wanted things to change. Get to know me maybe. Talk shit and get high. Chase cock, not pussy. So why was I even watching Cuddles fuck that whore up near Columbus or hiding my face in his denim jacket? I was really hiding in it, you see. Cuddles ain’t nothing to me. He proved that when he made his steel talk in my face. Not stainless this time ’cause it could have been my blood on the blade. Or my ass open like that for all the craziness Maxie and Lou had stored up inside them. It could have been me. Which is what I told myself when I was alone in the cell and nobody was looking and I could rub smooth the bruises Cuddles left on me. Not just the prick of steel. They didn’t allow that in there. But the hammer of his hands and backhand jabs hard to my stomach and head. And the guards? Shit. They just pretended I wasn’t even there. Your ass ain’t worth shit around there. ’Specially if people are holding crap against you. And when you find out the hard way that your friends ain’t your friends, you take your own chances ’cause you’re the only one you rely on from then on. You go solo.