“Okay, okay,” she said finally. “Let’s get serious.” She pointed to the problematic scene in the hallway. “Get out there and clean that shit up, fore somebody come out they apartment.”
Unlike firing a gun for the first time, she didn’t need to break it down for Anhell how the devil got his due. He walked up the hall, she with him, and put the thirsty muzzle of the gun down into that sucking wet wound.
In no time the juicy corpse was all bled out, the borschty color of a freshly dead whiteman depinking into gray. Anhell lifted the gun from the dry pit of torn lavender flesh, shattered pale bone. “I don’t want no more,” he whined, screwing up his face. “The sweet part’s gone.”
“Shut the fuck up,” she said, in zero mood for his finicky complaints. “Finish it.”
Anhell pooched his bottom lip like a four-year-old with just the broccoli left on his plate, but he put the muzzle back down in.
Soon he was gagging, and not faking, either. “All right, all right,” she conceded. “Carry the rest back to the apartment.” There was no splatter on the floor or walls, no more mess, only a shrunken dry thing like the historical Christ, if those skinny bones were pulled from a tomb in Sinai today. She stomped the old body down into the chest and it burst and crumpled like papier mâché, till there was room for Anhell to roll the new one on top. Fingerprints, wipe shit down, tidy up? Nah, fuck that. The devil got you. He looks after his own.
They bounced, Anhell following her out to the elevator.
“So we just kinda slide into the fires sideways, not far, and from there nobody can really see…”
“I get it,” Anhell said. “You always think I’m so stupid, ’Nisha, but I got it all the same time you did!”
“Well, don’t fuck it up, nigga. Cause we carrying this machète and shotgun right through the streets, onto the MT fucking A.”
Just newly knighted to this darkest order, they hardly dared more than a step into hell, and so their half-assed little cantrip that first night wouldn’t have worked at all, except in a place like New York, where everybody was already trying so hard not to notice strangers.
Night had come to Brooklyn, but you could still see a half inch of daylight glowing behind Manhattan’s fallen constellations. They didn’t slink from the building like street dogs after grubbing through some alley trash, their heads down, eyes slewing nervously left and right—oh no! They loped like winter wolves, thin yet, but bellies hanging full of fresh kill, and future tooth and scenting nose toward all these little lambs gamboling on every side. Nay, sweeter than lambs! For creatures even so gentle can yet scent the beast that would eat them, while men and women and children walking home under soft rain don’t know to fear the slavering jaws, the click of claws on concrete.
Shadow and flame licking in the corners of their eyes, machète and gun in hand, they strutted through the evening rush. When they descended to the subway, nine-to-fivers were trudging up and teenagers, just out of basketball practice, leaping stairs two at a time. Down in the station, patrolmen to bust fare-jumpers and dudes selling swipes, and more patrolmen posted at the terrorist table, didn’t even blink when two murderers fresh off the deed, weapons naked in hand, rolled past. Busker on the sax, “You’ve Changed.” Nobody tried to bogart, nobody jostled them on the crowded way back uptown. Where you woulda swore there was none, space opened up on the packed train. Coupla seats came free.
You can pray all day, babygirl, but God won’t answer. He ain’t thinking bout you. Now that other guy, though? Will treat you like a fucking rockstar. VIP. Perks.
Anhell crawled across the bed, over her, flipped on the lights, crashed around the studio. He gathered up and threw out all the bottles, flushed the roaches and ashes, hid the tray, opened the windows and turned the fan on high. He came to the bed whispering. “You don’t wanna put on some clothes, mami?” Sleepy and cold from the fan, she just groaned and pulled the covers over her, his pillow over her head. His caseworker buzzed at 8:45, as always, as bimonthly, this middle-aged African bitch who hated her and thought she was the biggest slut on earth, but loved Anhell, no doubt to the point of hand-on-the-Bible swearing his shit smelled like patchouli and roses. Um, hello…? That nigga gave it to me.
Mrs. Okorie asked Anhell the same stupid social worker questions that had you like duh…! the answers to which not only hadn’t changed since last time but couldn’t. Spotting in the heaped up blankets on the bed signs pointing to the presence of a certain fast ass American black girl, Mrs. Okorie reminded Anhell that it was against the rules for “company to cohabitate.” There was, in fact, this scholarship program which Mrs. Okorie thought Anhell (who wasn’t no fucking college material, not unless y’all got a PhD in PS4) could apply to, even earn his associate’s degree, if not for the influence of a certain fast ass American black girl.
Special for people who controlled his benefits, Anhell had this soft sweet voice, this lightskin innocent voice. Saying things like “just visiting” and “a couple days,” he almost had Mrs. Okorie calmed down when she got up booty-nekkid from bed, crossed to the bathroom and, just half-closing the door, pissed loud for a mad ass long time, like some loose bitch who’d been up till four in the morning drinking with her man. Anhell had to work them gray eyes, that good hair, hard to get Mrs. Okorie calmed down again.
They napped and woke up at noon. They fucked but that wasn’t it. Neither was a puff or two off Anhell’s first blunt of the day, nor coffee light and sweet, bagel egg and cheese from the corner. And, no, TV wasn’t it, and not a nap, and not fooling around again later in bed. Nor staring out the window while Anhell played his videogames. He that giveth thee all shall too expect somewhat in return.
O gluttons of murder, wherefore do ye fast? Bring down the red rain, for in hell we are greatly thirsting…!
Below, crossing the courtyard, were a Spanish girl, her nigga, and their little baby in a stroller. Smiling church ladies, fat and overdressed, stood by the intersection passing out tracts. On the benches, every cell phone out, a girl clique was holding conference. Boys on bikes, on scooters, on skateboards. She didn’t want the blood of these people, her people, but somebody had to die and pretty fucking soon. A whole lot of somebodies, and day in and day out. How to be evil without doing bad? There’s a problem for you, huh?
Around seven they ate take-out tins of chicken, yellow rice and beans from the joint around the corner, sharing a Corona 24 oz. between them—plenty of food and drink, you would’ve thought, except this fare only made them hungrier, thirstier, for another repast richer by far than this shit. She kept having to move the machète from here to there. Whether propped against the wall, or laid on the floor, table, or bed, its metal seemed to pick up some vibration and whine slightly, a rattle and hum that was setting her teeth on edge. Anhell said he couldn’t hear it, but then she couldn’t hear the weird crackling noise he said the old wood of the shotgun kept making. He stuffed it in the back of the closet, under laundry, but said that didn’t really help. He was on his cell a lot, restless. In and out the bathroom, texting hoes. In and out that closet.