Page 89 - Vol. VI #3
P. 89

It’s just an ambulance. Chill.
I’d roll outta here is how I’d roll. Capiche? Who called the ambulance? Everything okay?
 Maybe some old geezer had a stroke.
‘Old geezer’ is a pleonasm, Piju.
Mary Ann just broke her hip tap dancin’ in the ruckus room. Ain’t nothin. We see plenty of bro- ken hips. Who asks the questions around here, anyway? Y’all got visitors’ badges?
Damn. College really changin’ you, Viper-Loc.
That security guy in the tollbooth keeps lookin’ at us funny.
Who gives guns to punk-ass security guards at nursing homes?
There goes that Arabian kid! He been inside awhile now.
Is that bitch-ass Ricky Starr in the backseat?
A whole suitcase! Roll on him?
Too many fogeys and their families.
You think those peeps in the black Mercedes are
Piss in his yellow Kool-Aid, Ricky.
“Idon’t do guns, she says, passing the
weapon back. Overkill.”
Yo what about a diversion? To create confusion? Yo I say we smoke this joint before it gets too hot.
Yo who is that?
Joel? What up, son? I know your cousins. Bito. And Tito.
No one can battle me, he says. I’s the most talent- ed there is. Black gold.
Yo that Piju? Wazz’appenin’, my dude? You here to see O.G.?
The dancing got a little fresh, I think.
Naw, just rollin’ one. Stopped from the corner store up the road.
80
Better skeet, boys.
How we ever gonna raise the money to get Young Dirty out of prison now?
~
 with him? They got crazy beards. I seen one of ‘em smokin’ a cigar.
Night descends over the Orange Grove Retirement Home with a cool breeze. Angie is replaced by Brunhildë, the night nurse, and at the gate Joel is replaced by Tony. The guests who came for the talent show leave amidst a flurry of hugs and kiss- es. In the parking lot, the children let their bal- loons go and gape upward united in their wonder with their grandparents who stand beside them watching the dots of red and blue dance away on the wind.
Some old lady cryin’. Her leg look funny.
Yo one of us should follow that fool!
Dude just popped out his booth. Chill, ‘mano. Roll down that window—
Inside, Ole Carl—the Orange Grove Talent Show champion three years in a row—wears the crown Nannie Mae made from gold cardboard, silver glit- ter, and too much glue. He leans on his cane and chews his lips still sore from so much soulful har- monica blowing. Three widows flutter around him and throw their hands up and laugh flirtatiously.
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