“Anyway now, we exchanged numbers and he told me he wanted to come and see me because he was interested in looking at some of my work, and I told him plain and straight to fuck off, because him use to fuck Margaret too—Margaret is what you’da call a mattress, if y’know whatta mean—and for me personally, pussy and business don’t mix.

“Well, a few months after that I kinda find meself running shorta money due to the lifestyle I was programming.” He began to smile now. “Girls and all that. Man … this is something they should teach in school: ‘If you want to get pussy, stay in school. Cause nutten bring pussy like money.’ But anyway, all the pussy programming make me just doan waah do no work. It was just drugs and pussy, pussy and drugs, morning noon and night till the money start run out and I ask my dealer to lend me some dollars.

“This fucker now, Nasser, a vile fucking Sudanese—ex-fucking army staff sergeant—lend me two hundred grand at around forty percent interest and steady me again for like another six months … But then is still pussy and drugs so I start fucking up—fucking up bad-bad—and make the man come look for me.

“One day I’m at the dentist getting a root canal and boodoom! the door kick off and is Nasser and around three big-neck man. And before I coulda bawl out, man, them grab me rass and throw me in a car trunk and drive me outta one old dock out by Greenpoint and park the car inna the hot-hot sun for half a fucking day.

“Fire, it was some Joe Pesci shit. While me inside the car the Novocain wear off. So check it now—the fucking tooth wide open and me can hardly breathe, cause the only air is a from a little hole where them dig out the lock. So is like I waah bawl out but I don’t waah use up all the air. Listen man, there is nothing like when you waah cry and cyaah cry. Is some freaky fucking shit.

“Ever so often, just outta the blue, them woulda just beat pon the car trunk with some baseball bat and iron pipe. The sound me a-tell you is terrifying—like God coming for him world. And then them start with the piss. Remember the little hole in the trunk? The man-dem start piss through that now. So the piss coming in and frying in the heat, so is like now I don’t even waah breathe.

“Nightmare, man. It was a bloodclaat nightmare. When them let me out, them gimme two weeks fe catch up. As they say in Jamaica, ‘Humble calf suck the most milk,’ so I humble my fucking self and go to Lewis and we work out something. He would lend me four hundred thousand and I would pay him back over time in art. And this is where it get shady now, because this is not work that pass through Claire. She don’t even know this work exist. So she don’t get no commission. So that Claire won’t find out now, Lewis sell the stuff abroad, to like Latin America and the Far East—cause me name still high in them place deh.”