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class, start your own business, and have a house-no-mortgage by the time you’re forty.”
    “And what would be your end in all that?”
    “The fun of seeing the good guy win one.”
    “The good guy, huh?” I can’t figure out what he sees in me. He knows I been locked up. Being around him, I almost feel like what he’s saying is true. That maybe I could be somebody. “Tony, man, I’m sorry for taking up your night like this, jawing your ear off.”
    “Stop saying sorry. I’m gonna run down to the bodega and grab us some sodas.”
    “I have Sprites in that little cube fridge behind you there.”
    Tony cracks us a pair.
    “Yo Tone, I’d appreciate you not telling anybody about, like, what happened tonight.”
    “What, that you almost got yourself killed running into a dogfight to save a chewed-up pit bull?”
    “I just don’t like people knowing stuff about me, you know?”
    He stares at me, and after a bit he nods. “All right, kid. I won’t say anything.” He’s looking out the window and laughing quiet.
    “What’s funny?”
    He shrugs, and we’re quiet for a while, and my mind drifts back to that doctor. The knife in my hand. Mercedes gunning out of there. So close, though. Rewind the night back a little more, to Céce. No. She’s too good to be in my dreams. Her, her mother, Tony: all too good. I can’t imagine Tony overseas. I won’t. They put a knife in his hand? He’s not made to use it. He’s made to lay knives down.
    My Boo girl rests her big boxy head in my lap. She’s looking up at me, and I know what she’s saying. The language of dogs is quiet. Tell you what, if there weren’t any dogs on this planet, I would check out right now.
    I follow Tony’s eyes out the hutch window. The sky is a mist with the stars trying to poke through, like a razor rash on God’s gray face.

THE THIRD DAY . . .
     
    (Sunday, June 14, an hour before dawn)
     
    CÉCE:
     
    The nightmare wakes me up. Gunfight in the desert. Anthony gets hit. I was cruising YouTube with Ma for soldier’s-eye clips before I went to bed.
    Why is he doing this? I know, somebody has to do it, but let it be somebody else. If anybody should go over there it’s me, except I would be the suckiest soldier ever. Violence flips me out. When I see it, I freeze.
    I trip myself to the bathroom and splash water on my face. Down the block a dog yips. Two dogs, barking now. Fighting. My hands are shaking.
    When I was nine, we were at this block party, crazy hot out, too many people, music way too loud. I had to get out of there. It was either walk all the way around the block on a hundred-plus-degree day or cut through the neighbor’s alley. I side-saddled the fence, right over the No Trespassing sign, picture of a guard dog, teeth barred. The homeowner wasn’t lying: He had this giant German shepherd mixed with a pit bull—I’m sure it was a pit bull—but it was a horrible guard dog. It had been around for as long as I could remember, and I never heard it bark. Besides, it was always tied to the fence behind the garbage pails on a short chain. As I walked by, it whimpered. It was filthy, matted, a choke collar embedded in its neck. It was panting. Its water bowl was empty. I cranked the spigot and filled it up. The dog drank the bowl dry and looked up at me. I went to kiss the top of its head. It jumped up and bit my face and didn’t let go.
    I opened my mouth to scream, and the dog got in there. It knocked me to the cement and shook me. Its jaw locked—that’s how I know it was part pit bull.
    How I survived that ... How I got away . . . I can’t . . . I can’t remember.
    Twenty stitches. I still have the scars. Those pit bulls are the worst. Their eyes? Creepy. Like they want to eat you.
    I go downstairs and make a sandwich in the dark. Not seeing it makes it easier to scarf down. I’m two bites in when I see a shadow bent over the kitchen table.
    Carmella Vaccuccia slurps a beer. “Hey.”
    “Ma, it’s four