BY THE TIME summer left the city, I thought the heat would leave me alone. But even months later, there was no place to go.
I was in a bar off Times Square. Sitting with the Prof, waiting for Michelle. I got up to get the Prof a brew. The place was packed, music screaming so loud the heavy metal clanged. The whole joint was about as much fun as chemotherapy. I bumped into a stud hustler on my way back to the table. He muttered something. I kept moving.
Michelle slipped her way through the crowd. Wearing a white beret, deep purple silk blouse, white pencil skirt, spike heels to match the blouse. An orchid in a sewer. She kissed me on the cheek, her big dark eyes wary.
"How you doing, honey?"
"The same."
The stud hustler I had bumped came over to our table, thumbs hooked in a bicycle chain he used for a belt. Pretty boy. Short spiky haircut. He leaned forward, eyes on me. His buddies behind him a few feet.
"You made me spill my beer."
His voice sounded tough. The way a worn-out car with a bad muffler sounds fast.
I threw a five-dollar bill on the table. "Buy another."
"How about an apology?"
I felt a tiny pulse in my temple. I crumpled the bill in my fist, tossed it onto the dirty floor.
Muscles flexed along the surface of his bare arms. "Get up!"
Michelle lit one of her long black cigarettes. Blew smoke at the ceiling. "Sweetie, go back to whatever you were doing, okay?"
He turned on her. "I don't need no fucking he-she telling me what to do."
Two dots of color on Michelle's cheeks.
The Prof turned his air conditioner on the heat. "There's no beef, Chief. Take the five and slide."
"You got nice friends," the hustler said. "A cross-dresser and a midget nigger."
The Prof smiled. "I'm a thief, boy. I may pull a little vic, but I don't suck dick."
The hustler's face went orange in the nightclub lights. "Let's go outside," he suggested to me, pounding a fist into an open palm.
"He don't have the time, sonny," the Prof answered for me.
"It won't take long."
One of his friends laughed.
The Prof wouldn't let it go. "Yeah it would. About ten to twenty years, punk. Even if they let it slide with manslaughter."
I pushed back my chair.
"Burke!" Michelle snapped.
The place went quiet.
"That's you?" the hustler asked. His voice was a strangulated hernia.
"You know the name, you know the game," the Prof answered for me.
"Hey, man… it was a joke. Okay?"
I sat there, waiting. He backed away. He didn't bump into his friends- they were gone.
It wasn't just the cops who knew I had a body. And whose body I had.