"I don't have to explain myself to you." Lee slouched in his seat, a vacant stare etching the glass of the window. The defensiveness of his voice bit at his ears, though it was too late to do anything about it.
"I guess it's OK to date hookers then."
"She's no hooker." Again his voice betrayed him, raised in too vehement a protest. Part of him wondered about her practiced ease of seduction, not wanting to confront the notion of what a beautiful woman like her might see in someone like him.
"So she says."
"So her sheet says. I don't pay for poon, pardon my fuckin' French."
"She's not a pro, but you ran her anyway. Nice." Octavia shifted in her seat turning as much of her back to him as possible. Some days, she didn't want to even look at him. "Play semantics all you want, just cause demanding a freebie ain't technically paying for it."
"Even if she was a pro, and she ain't, getting a little on the side – as long as no money changes hands – ain't a crime."
"It is if you let her walk rather than bring her in." Octavia fixed her eyes on the road, not deigning to chance even a glance in his direction. Once folks started getting on her nerves, she found it easier to block them out as if they weren't there.
"It's not like that."
"What's it like then?"
"It's like… none of your business." Lee, with his trailer-park features and sensibilities, wasn't going to admit that women who looked like Omarosa rarely took a second glance at guys who looked like him. Especially black women. And he was tired of the black women he encountered taking one whiff of him and deciding not only that they knew him, but that they were better than him.
His silence told Octavia everything she needed to know.
A call came across the radio about a fight occurring by the Breton Court bridge. Lee sighed. Civvies rarely understood the dangers of a fight, though, in light of the recent shooting, maybe they might comprehend them a little better. When folks closed in on you, it wasn't as if you could just draw your gun and back them down. In the heat of a melee, with hands and fists everywhere, folks kicking and punching with no skill or thought, your gun was only yours as long as you held it. Then the call came in about shots fired as they screeched to a halt at the intersection just prior to the bridge. The intervening silence brought its own ghosts.
For years, Octavia had been haunted by a recurring dream. She would be chasing a perp, his face always a blur, never quite coming into focus. Suddenly, he'd turn to face her and draw his weapon. She fired her gun first but the bullets never hit him. They'd be on target, center mass, but the bullets would stop a foot short and clatter against the ground.
Lee's ghosts were memories that brought to mind the old hates. He remembered his first day out with his field training officer, Maeda Graham, a bear of a man, even then. Everything was so new to Lee, hearing the sounds of the street and the language he'd never heard, from the cops' insider jargon to the hard language of the streets (even the streets he grew up on took on a new, harsh aspect). All of it was confusing as hell, like seeing life for the first time.
It was also how he learned to hate the animals over at the Phoenix. He and Maeda caught a call of shots fired over there. They arrived in the middle of a shootout, so they decided to wait for back-up. Fresh out of the Academy, all Lee could think about was protecting the civilians. As he and Maeda crouched behind their vehicle, garbage started raining down on them. On them. They who were trying to quell the violence perpetrated against the citizens, their community, their children. The guardians got garbage dumped on them. Amidst the chaos, the warring gangs declared a temporary armistice, and turned their guns jointly a-blazing at Maeda and him. Maeda, determined to go after anyone who dared fire on "true po-lice", yelled where to meet him – the intersection of two streets Lee had never heard of – then took off. Being a rookie, he had no idea where to go or if to go, since that meant abandoning his partner. So he squatted low, kept his head down and prayed, holding his gun with both hands praying his shaking alone squeezed off a few rounds. He'd never been so scared in his life.
Until he saw the figure covered in blood lumbering toward him and Octavia, a bloodied rock in one hand and a severed head in the other.
• • •
The three of them stood there underneath the bridge, all hard and eye-fucking each other like a gunfight scene from an old spaghetti western. Except that this wasn't every man for himself. Nor was this like any other bridge. The creek that the bridge spanned was a natural ley line, augmenting the bridge as a place of power for the trolls. Also for Green. The Durham Brothers were essentially one person. His protestations aside, Marshall was a follower; no shame on it since that was the way he was wired. In his size 17 combat boots and Army camo pants, topped by a black T-shirt with a heavy metal band no one had heard of (but the picture was cool, he thought), he needed someone's lead to connect with. His hands balled and relaxed, balled and relaxed, flexing into meaty clubs waiting for the go moment. He turned to Michaela.
"What you going to do?" Michaela asked.
"Probably get my ass kicked," Green said, "but I'll go down like a man. And there ain't no shame in a man being taken down by another man. That shit happens. There's always someone stronger."
Michaela's brown gypsy skirt flared in the slight breeze. It had a way of making her figure more squat than it should. Standing next to Marshall, she seemed like a man in poor drag with her bunchedup nose and porcine eyes. An old myth ran through her head: the Incarnation of Spring, must be slain in winter.
Michaela and Green's eyes met. His laconic glare was nothing but white death, snow-blind eyes staring into a blizzard. Michaela's eyes betrayed fear. Only a hint, not enough for her brother to see. Spit flew from her mouth.
It was go time.
Michaela charged Green, throwing a wide punch. He sidestepped the punch but hooked her underneath her shoulder and dropped her to the ground by back-sweeping her legs. He turned when his mind registered the approaching shadow only to have the full weight of Marshall's punch slam into his jaw, bowling him over.
Marshall dipped his head down and rammed Green in a tackle that pinned him against the concrete wall of the bridge. Marshall held Green up with one arm and punched with the other. Green clawed at the arm.
"Marshall!" Michaela yelled.
From her vantage point she could see what Marshall couldn't: with every slam into the embankment, Green's skin splintered through his clothes, leaves and branches jutting then retreating like an overstuffed garbage bag full of raked fall leaves – his skin knitting itself back under the illusion of flesh. Green turned to her, his eyes aglow with emerald fire, aiming one free hand at Marshall. In an instant, the length of his arm shot through Marshall's mouth out the back of his head. A wayward stalk, a jutting branch which pulled back into the shape of Green's hand as it withdrew from Marshall's skull, still gore-covered, bits of gray matter stuck between his fingers.
Marshall stood there, a fist-sized hole in the back of his head, still holding Green to the wall as if what remained of his brain couldn't process why he was holding the man when, in fact, he should be dead. Green fell from his grasp as the body finally decided to collapse. Limping aside, a mixture of blood and sap poured from Green's wounds.
"No!" Michaela charged him, wild-eyed and unthinking. Green hinged forward, doubled over by the force of her fist in his gut. His eyes bulged out and breath left him. She stepped in and kicked him for all she was worth, stomping on his side like he was a fire in need of extinguishing. He caught her foot, pulled her off balance, and toppled her. He scrambled on top of her and drove his fist into her face. The crack sounded like a tree branch toppling. She elbowed him in his side, the force of which knocked him from her, and staggered to her feet.