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cowboy movie and we could just move on. Then Skeeter called me, real late, and told me that the cops had picked up Rico. He asked me if I knew what Rico had done. I said no.”
    â€œSo what you did you want to change?” Kelly asked.
    â€œI want to change going with Rico in the first place,” I said.
    â€œJust get you out this mess and you be straight?”
    â€œNot really,” I said. “But I won’t be facing no cop-shooting charge. They got Rico, and I know he’s going to rat me out. Then I got twenty-five years to life if the cop lives. If he don’t live I’m going to be facing…you know….”
    â€œThe rest of your life in jail?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œSo you want to be back looking at the line at Home Depot and thinking how you so lucky you ain’t in jail?” Kelly asked. “What you call it—broke sick? That’s where you want to be?”
    â€œI’m not saying that’s what I want altogether,” I said. “But what I’m saying is, if I could get out this mess, maybe I could do something good with my life.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œI don’t know like what !”
    â€œOkay, like how?”
    â€œLook, Kelly, you might be okay, or you might be some kind of nut,” I said. “I don’t know. I know I’m tired of talking to your ass. I know I’m tired of thinking about what I should have done yesterday. I know I’m just tired. If I knew what to do with my life, how to fix it up, I would have done it a long time ago. You can’t dig that? You think I want to live like I’m somebody’s throwaway? I want the same thing as you want—no, not like you want, because I don’twant to live in no abandoned building watching television and being spooky. You know what I would like to be doing?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI’d like to be living in a regular house doing something with Lauryn. She’s my son’s mama.”
    â€œYou got a son?”

4
    KELLY LIFTED THE REMOTE and my eyes automatically went to the television. The screen was full of bright, jagged lines that slanted one way and then the other. Then the picture cleared and I saw some guys in loose white outfits. They were doing karate or jujitsu or something like that. There was a figure up front—I could only see the side of his head. The camera seemed to turn to him, and at first I didn’t know who it was. Then I saw it was my boy Maurice. Just like before, I was seeing the scene and thinking about it in my head at the same time.
    â€œWhy you holding your breath?” Kelly asked.I didn’t answer him. I was thinking that every time I told Kelly a lie, he could turn and see the truth on his television. I didn’t want to lie to him, but sometimes I couldn’t help myself. I watched as the camera zoomed in on Maurice. When he spoke, I knew exactly what he was going to say.
    â€œWhy she gotta sound like that?” Maurice asked me. We were at St. John’s in Brooklyn watching some tae kwon do guys work out.
    â€œYo, man, Lauryn’s mother is just one of those chicks who come off dead wrong and don’t give a damn,” I said. “She know she got me in a bind, and she’s working it.”
    â€œYeah, but saying you can’t even go see your own baby…” Maurice shook his head. “Everybody’s talking about how guys walk away from their baby mama, and you’re stepping up to the plate and she’s still talking that ugly talk.”
    â€œYou don’t know the half of it,” I said. “Hey, Mo, check out this brother with the dreads.”
    Me and Maurice had both taken some lessons in tae kwon do. Maurice had lived in Jersey Cityfor a while and took lessons with some Korean guy named Park. I had taken some lessons at Milbank, but I wasn’t sweet with it like Maurice.
    â€œThey call him Rasta Jesus,” Maurice said.