Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 43: Nate

Prompt: "A song that you'd listen to while in the boxing ring, no emotions evident on your face whatsoever"

Selected by Nate

"It Falls Apart"

Greg Dulli

Random Desire, 2020

1) So eventually they get to his apartment and she leaves a note for him in the medicine cabinet. She gets taken back to the dry cleaners, where she has a conversation with her employer and finds out that he's working with her old enemy and has been sold out. She gets close enough to kill several people with a knife before she's killed. She hears her old enemy's voice in her ears, then dies without seeing him, her thoughts cut out mid-stream. Her enemy came to America in the '70s as a teenager on employ from drug families, doing so after being sold into service. He has been working quietly in small neighborhoods, distributing drugs, all the while afraid and angry at his employers. He begins taking petty revenge as they begin sending relatives and other employers up to him, running them through the same torture and psychological tactics that were used on him to turn their workers into his. He gives everyone he turns the same name, "Cuchillo," which means knife. He turns the children of the towns he lives in into his workers, sometimes willingly, sometimes unknowingly to them. By doing so, he is able to pass the fear on from his own life onto others, finding his own peace by transference. He gets away in the end. The cycle starts anew.

2) I used to spar with a guy who wasn't an especially talented fighter—which I can say because I was also not a talented fighter—but who was exhausting to fight against because he always kept coming no matter how many times you hit him. He couldn't be knocked down or stopped. I never saw him take a count, never saw him stumble, never saw his eyes widen, never heard him lose his breath. He'd talk afterwards about how so-and-so kicked his ass, and he'd get black eyes or puffy lips, or he'd piss blood or throw up after the fact, but in the ring he absorbed everything without any signs that he felt it. I think he works for a grocery chain now.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 80: Nate

Prompt: "A song about a man"

Selected by Nate

"Fuck KD (Kevin Durant Diss)"

Lil B

Hoop Life, 2014

I'm sure, I thought. "Thank goodness you got in there when you did," I said. "So, how did it go? One of your guys sees the black hats, calls you, the cavalry comes just in time?"

No longer smirking. "Something like that, yes. We have a vested interest in your protection, is perhaps how I would frame it."

"Mhm," I said. "Well, like I said, I think you're right that Reed was sending people after me. I don't know who else would have been breaking into the apartment with guns and masks. What I don't know is how the word would have gotten back to him about... us, I guess." Same team, I reminded myself. 

"We have been watching, but we have not been listening to every conversation you've had," he said. "I do not mean this to be accusatory, but have you been discussing business with anyone?"

"No offense taken," I said, holding up my hand. I shifted to stand up from the bed. Cuchillo reached out, offering me a hand to pull myself up. His hands were soft, delicate, moisturized. It felt like grabbing a glove, but when he pulled I felt the coil of his muscle in the force of my rise. Strong. 

"Thanks," I said, starting to pace the room, hoping I wasn't performing the act of thinking too much. "I only talked on the phones that Peaquad gave me, can I assume those are clean?"

He nodded, still seated, watching me walk. "You can," he said. "I would."

"Okay," I said. "I told Eddie that I needed him for a pickup this week, but nothing more than that. And I trust Eddie, he lives and dies on my every word. Even if I had told him the whole plan—which I never would—he wouldn't say anything to anyone. Hell, he doesn't have anyone to tell it to."

He nodded again, grunting. "Agreed."

"So that leaves customers, and you know you never tell them shit," I said. "You've been watching me, I assume that means you've also been watching the people I deal to regularly?"

He nodded again. "Most of our time has been spent on the socialite and the professor, though we've had eyes on the lobbyist and mayor's aid."

"And have any of them been doing anything out of the ordinary," I said. "Anything that would suggest I've tipped our hand, anything that would lead to suspicion? I assume if you've been watching, Reed is probably watching, too."

Cuchillo paused. "I am concerned that you think Reed had reason to watch."

I stopped pacing. "Well, I came up with Peaquad," I said. "I just assumed everyone at his level did work that way."

He muttered. "Mmmm. Well, yes, we have been watching, and no, none of your clients have behaved in a manner outside of pattern. Which is why I wanted to have this conversation with you." He stopped there, looking at me.

"Come on," I said. "You think I'd tell him about this? Why? To what end? How fucking stupid would that be."

He nodded. "I agree, it would be stupid. But I wanted to be sure."

"And are you?"

He looked at me and for the first time I felt the danger of the situation in a tangible way, like it was a creature in the room with us. I felt the distance between us, wondered how long it would take him to cross it, wondering if I could get a finger into his eye socket quickly enough.

"I believe that I am, yes."

I turned to face him, squaring up. "Alright then, so we agree that Reed is onto us, and that how he came to realize it is, at the very least, up in the air," I said. "And we agree that it didn't come from me. And you are certain no one noticed you or your men?"

"I had considered that, and though I cannot rule it out, I find it unlikely," he said. "But yes, I agree. That's the state of play."

"That's the state of play then" I said. "What happens now?"

"Now," he said, standing up from the chair, "Now we go to Peaquad."

My mouth fell open. I closed it quickly, but not quick enough that Cuchillo didn't notice. Peaquad and I haven't seen each other in years, certainly not since I broke off from him and started working for Reed, since I left Ohio with Eddie and made my way east. I felt off-balance, unsure of what to say next.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 79: Nate

Prompt: "A song about a woman"

Selected by Nate

"Sixers"

The Hold Steady

The Price of Progress, 2023

He paused for a minute, looking to me to respond. I held his gaze, gave him a nod. He frowned. "Perhaps we are not on the same team as of yet," he said, crossing his legs. We stared at each other in silence for a moment. If I stood and tried to walk out the door, would he stop me? Were his goons waiting on the other side, ready to throw the wet bedding over my head and take me somewhere?

I smiled. Relax, I told myself. They already have you and haven't killed you. Whatever is going on here, you are going to survive it. Work them. 

"Sorry, you just have to give me a minute here," I said. "From my perspective, I was being attacked in my room, then I wake up soaking wet in some basement, talking to someone I've never met about some pretty sensitive shit."

He looked somewhere between pleased to see me talking and exasperated that the first thing out of my mouth was a stall. I expected more, his face said. Good, I thought.

"I understand, of course," he said. "This is obviously a challenging thing to have to work through. You are in a challenging business, however, and I have made great effort to protect you, to make you comfortable. Your cooperation would be much appreciated."

"Of course, of course," I said. "But, that's the thing, I guess. How were you able to make me so comfortable? How did I end up here from there?"

He leaned back in the chair, exhaling. "This is what you are concerned about," he said. "Why did you not just come out and say so?"

"Respectfully, you try waking up to a water pail being thrown on you and see how coherent you are." Going for a joke, but landing askew. Cuchillo paused, looking far away for a moment, then coming back to the basement.

"Very true," he said. "Will you let me fully explain before you ask any further questions?"

"Oh, Cuchillo," I said, leaning back, my palms flat on the air mattress, sinking a bit into the ground, diffusing what I had hope would land as playful, teasing. "It sounds like we're about to get into something interesting."

"I suppose that depends on your reaction," he said. "The short answer is that I and my men were watching you, have been watching you ever since you reached out to Peaquad a few weeks ago." He raised his hand, expecting me to respond, but when I didn't move he lowered his hand and went on. "It has been some time since you have worked with Peaquad, no? Some things about him are different now, I would imagine, than when you two worked more closely in your youth, in his relative youth. One thing that has not changed is his penchant for observation, his requirement that those in his employ practice the same. When you reached out to him, I was put on you. He asked me to watch you, learn your habits, report back what I saw. My team and I," he nodded to the door behind him, "have been following your movements as you went along your deals, met with your buyers, made your drops."

My lack of a reaction was unnerving him, I could tell. I was happy to see him on the back foot. The truth of the matter was, as creepy as it was to hear this, the reality is that I suspected it. I knew what kind of surveillance Peaquad was capable of, thinking back to how much he already knew about me when we first me, how much more he knew about Nicky, about Eddie, about Shaker Heights and Easton and Lowell, about Deion and Erica. When I had made the decision to turn back to him, to use him as a springboard into my own self-direction, I had assumed something like this would happen. So it was satisfying to know I was right, satisfying to see Cuchillo look taken aback by my lack of reaction, most satisfying to know I was, in that one regard, a step ahead of Peaquad. 

"So you know about Richard," I said. "About Mimi."

Cuchillo nodded. "We've been attentive."

Perfect, I thought to myself. 

"So, the night that Reed's men came to my apartment—and, yes, I did think it was Reed's guys coming into my apartment," I said, offering an olive branch. "Were you watching then?"

"One of my men was, yes,"

"How long did you wait before you all came in to bail me out?"

Cuchillo smirked at the question. "We came as soon as we were able."

Summer Song Challenge, Day 78: Nate

Prompt: "A song that has a prominent sample"

Selected by Nate

"GOD LOVES YOU"

JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown

SCARING THE HOES, 2023

I wished, for the first time since I had met him, that I was like Eddie, that whatever was broken in his head could work to my advantage now. In a way, it already has been. I shook off the thought, looked at Cuchillo, playing expectant.

"Two nights ago, and this much I imagine is clear to you, three men tried to break into your apartment." He said. "Broke into your apartment, I suppose. These men work—worked—for your current employer. My men intervened on your behalf on instructions from Peaquad. When they came in, they found you passed out face down on your bedroom floor, one of the men attempting to tie your hands and feet. We killed this man. We also killed the two men you slashed. Quite nasty, that work. I imagine they felt great pain before they died. Truth be told I cannot tell you to a certainty if it was our guns or your knife that ended their lives. I know that with as much blood was splattered across the apartment, you must have sliced at least one artery. I did not know you had this in you."

He looked at like I was an exotic animal at the zoo. I couldn't tell what he wanted, so I played it how I felt. "Good. The fuckers." I crossed my arms for emphasis, and he nodded his head, seeming satisfied.

"I am pleased to hear you say this," he said. "To be in your line of work requires a great many skills, and ruthlessness is one that is required by all and practiced by few. Yours was ruthless work."

"Only as ruthless as defending yourself," I said. What the fuck was all this about ruthlessness. "I mean, it was them or me. I didn't take any pleasure in it," I said, knowing that it was only a quarter-truth if it wasn't an outright lie. "I wasn't going to lie down and die for those animals."

Cuchillo nodded again. "Nor should you have," he said. "But I know many people who, when they are confronted with a violent end, will accept it instead of fighting against it. Please take my word that not many have the strength of will to survive as you have." I thought his face betrayed something then, a flash akin to pride. Save that, I thought to myself, use it, and be clear-eyed about who you are using it against. "Where are the men now," I asked.

"They are gone and will not be coming back," he said.

"They're dead?"

"Yes."

"And you're certain they work for Reed?"

Cuchillo shifted as his men walked behind him, carrying the bedding out from my room and through the metal basement door. "These men behind me are not a laundry service alone," he said. "We took one of the men alive, the one who clubbed you. These men spent a great deal of time with him and extracted from him much knowledge and information." He paused for a moment, thoughtful. "Do you know what it is they say about a man being tortured?”

I shook my head.

"That man will say anything, make any promise, to make the torture stop," he said. "This man, courtesy of my men, was pushed past that notion. He was made to see that the only available way out of his situation was to give us easy, quantifiable information. We do not need to get unto the details. Unless you'd care to hear them?" I looked at him, showing boredom, rolling my fingers. The truth was, I wanted to hear every detail. I wanted to tell Cuchillo to pick a man off of the street now and to show me how they did it, teach me so I could do it myself. But that was desire, and desire had to be earned, not given, and certainly not given to this man I was only beginning to trust, only beginning to believe wouldn't kill me. So I shook my head.

"Pity," Cuchillo said. "Regardless, you must please take me at my word and trust me that I have been truthful when I say that these were Reed's men, on there at Reed's behest, for his purposes only. I believe they were instructed to bring you in alive, evidenced by the hands and feet, but what Reed wanted to know from you is only speculation at this point. The nature of his need for you is beyond our understanding, but perhaps you can guess it, no?"

"I think you can probably guess it too," I said.

"Yes," he said. "I would still like to hear you say it, if that is alright."

"You have a power fetish, Cuchillo?"

He leaned back, hands resting on his thighs. "I have learned to assume nothing," he said. "So I do not assume that what I speculate and what you speculate are the same thing." He paused. "But then, we are all on the same team, are we not? So, I will tell you what I believe. I believe someone within your circle of influence got wind of your defective plans. I believe whoever this was found way to get word back to Reed. I believe Reed wanted to hear this from you directly but did not feel he could ask outright, either because you would not be forthright, or you would lie. I believe he had these men sent to procure you alive, though the night wear and the guns the carried suggests to me that they had some leeway to determine if and when lethal force was needed in your capture."

Summer Song Challenge, Day 62: Nate

Prompt: "A song whose lyrics discuss the writing of that song"

Selected by Nate

"We Major"

Kanye West ft. Nas and Really Doe

Late Registration, 2005

(Note: Yes, yes, I know. Nas's verse is the one to focus on then you can turn the song off.)

I walked over to the little flop section I had apparently been sleeping in for, god, what day even was it? In the laundry basket there were some clothes from my apartment: jeans, socks, a sweater, a tank-top, some sneakers that I didn't recognize. They were ugly, chunky, dad shoes. The kind of thing I'd see on the feet of bespectacled fathers as they pushed strollers through the park. Good to walk on, I guess. I toweled off the water still clinging to me, discarded my soaked clothing, changed into the dry stuff. Wet hair clung to me, chilling me through my new cloths, so I threw my hair into a towel and continued to investigate my room. I looked in the drawer of the night stand, nothing there. I went back to the laundry basket, empty now that I had put the clothes on. No phone, no keys. Nothing I could use to get in touch with Ed or Reed, nothing I could use to get away. I checked the pockets of my jeans, just in case, but they came up empty, too. 

I sat on the folding chair, trying to make sense of everything, the dull ache in my head still lapping at my skull like waves against a dock. I took my hair out of the towel, tried to touch the back of my head, winced as I felt a softball-sized lump in the skin. I was lucky I wasn't dead. When Ed thumped that jumpy guy in the windbreaker a few summers back, he had to dump him at the hospital because he thought he'd killed him. The back of the head was how the lights went out. The guy lived but last I checked he still couldn't walk the same. I felt itchy, caged. I wanted to pace the room, to hop up on the chair and bust through the window into the street, to smash my hands against the door until the bones showed, but I was too tired and knew none of that would do any good. I did some box breathing, tried to calm myself down. I knew this was exhaustion and adrenaline talking. You want to be in control, you have to be in control.

Once I settled myself some, I got up from the chain, walked over to the door. The panic bar across the middle wouldn't budge. Locked in. I knocked on the door, resisting the rising panic to pound on it, then walked back to the chair and waited. I used the few seconds before Cuchillo came in to figure out what I wanted to know, how I wanted to play it. The lock popped and he came in, two other guys behind him, younger. He walked over to me, flanked in pursuit by his two goons, and looking at me for a reaction. I decided not to give him what he wanted, and as he dragged his folding chair over to where I was, he spoke. 

"Do not be alarmed," he said. "Just someone to clean up the mess." He rested the chair in front of me, four feet across, his back upright and his hands on his knees. I leaned forward, forearms on my thighs, and looked at him.

"I don't look alarmed, do I?"

"No," he said. "You actually look a little more refreshed, though I am sure your head must be feeling unwell. That was quite the thump you took." 

The way to play this, until I knew what was going on and who I could trust, was to be Cool Hand Fucking Luke, just another one of the boys. So I knew better than to rise to the bait of how he knew what had happened in my apartment, knew better than to act on the urge to touch the back of my head again. I looked up at the men behind him.

"Boys, I left my wet stuff there on the bed," I said, gesturing with a nod. "You can go ahead and throw that stuff out, I've got more back home." Addressing Cuchillo now "Do you want me to wait until they leave, or should we talk now."

"I assume you have questions," he said, looking slightly annoyed. He pointed to the bed, said something in Spanish, and the two hoppers started cleaning up the room. 

"I guess I do have some, but why don't you explain what happened last night first. You had wanted to start but I needed a minute to collect my thoughts." Let him think it was my weakness, let him think my position was one of contrition. Whatever he says, don't react, I told myself. Whatever he says, don't believe it until you can see it.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 61: Nate

Prompt: "A song whose lyrics describe someone eating something"

Selected by Nate

"Vomitspit"

MF DOOM

MM..FOOD, 2004

"And who the fuck is us, Cuchillo?" I had my suspicions, but I wanted him to confirm them. The water, warm at first blush, was cooling in the air quickly, and laying on this wet sheet was starting to give me goosebumps, making my knees chatter a bit. I reached for the towel, started drying my hair.

"I work for Peaquad," he said. "What do you remember before this conversation we are having now?"

I had been trying to piece that together myself. "How do I know you work for Peaquad?"

He paused. "The night you first met Peaqaud, you were with a young boxer named Nicky. He wore red trunks the night we fought. I wore white with red and blue stars because I thought you all would think it was an homage to America. Now, I ask you, who else but someone who works for Peaquad would know that?"

Some trick he was pulling, making me split my memory in two different directions. I had no idea what color trunks he had worn were, but he was right about Nicky's. I could remember the feel of the plastic couch, the barrenness of the desk, the way Peaquad had leaned forward in his chair. These details came rushing back, amplified by the spartan basement setting.

"Fine," I said. "You work for Peaquad. What am I doing here?"

"Again, what do you remember before this?"

I stood, slowly, aching across my body, my head especially feeling like it was about to burst from the inside out. "I was home, it was night," I said. "I heard a noise outside my apartment. I went to check, some guys broke in. I slashed one, maybe two. Then nothing, and then you." I stopped, looked down at my clothing. A wet black crewneck sweatshirt, wet black sweatpants, thick gray socks. "I didn't sleep in this. What the fuck did you all do to me?"

Cuchillo held his hands out in front of him, trying to calm me. He walked away from the bed to a darker corner of the basement, came back with two folding chairs, set them up, one by the bed, one back by the door where he had been standing. He sat, gestured to the chair, inviting me to sit. I stood by the clothes. "Please sit," he said. "And I can explain."

"First," I said, "First you need to get the fuck out of here while I get changed. I'm soaking wet and I'm not going to talk about anything until I can get out of this shit. So, why don't you walk yourself back through that door, now that you know I'm alive, and I'll knock on it when I'm ready for you, okay?"

He raised his hands again, palms out, and shrugged. "Again, I really am sorry about the water. I will be right outside the door." He backed out of the basement facing me, turning only to open the door. He stepped through the frame, let the door's weight swing it shut, looking at me with, his hands up the whole time, like I was trying to stick him up. The door latched with a loud metallic click and I was alone.

At least, I thought I was. I started to walk the perimeter of the basement, trying to understand where I was, what was available to me, anything I might use or might be useful to me. Until I knew otherwise, I didn't know who was responsible for those goons in my apartment. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or in a sanctuary. If this person was who he said and he really did work for Peaquad, I was probably safe enough. Still, coming off what had happened, Eddie's spy novel shit was sitting largely in my mind. Something felt off, strange about all this, even within the context of masked men breaking into my apartment at night. I didn't know who I could trust besides myself.

The basement was as sparse as it looked. A pushbroom leaned against the back wall. Another door smelled of soap and I could hear a dull hum coming from beyond it, probably laundry for whatever room I was in. There were a couple of folding tables against a wall, and few more of the folding chairs that Cuchillo had brought over for us. Other than the makeshift bedroom by the room's main entrance, there wasn't much to it. I went over to one of the low laying windows and thought about screaming up to the passersby, but that presented its own risks. What if I got a hold of someone? How were they going to help me without getting the cops involved? Besides, who helped a screaming stranger in New York anyway?

Summer Song Challenge, Day 60: Nate

Prompt: "A song involving an animal somewhere in the lyrics"

Selected by Nate

"The Wolf Is Loose"

Mastodon

Blood Mountain, 2006

Images began to return. Me in the car with Ed, me offering him money that he wouldn't take. Peaquad, sitting behind his desk as I told him I was leaving for New York, his face expressionless. Nicky's casket, his parents crying to the left of it. My own father, slapping backs at the pool with ham-fisted businessmen, my mother drinking out of a reusable water bottle filled with vodka. Ed and I dropping a duffle bag of money off at Reed's laundromat. A grown man's hand slipping down the front of my pants in the dark. Ed and I on Fordham's campus eating pizza. Missy and I kissing in a bar on the lower east side. The college professor's face as red as wine when I told him to fuck one of his students after the three of us did a line. The sun coming up hot on my body in bed, sweat pouring from every exposed surface, leaking the poison out. The cold water of the swimming pool. My father's voice, distant, calling my name. Then Ed's voice. Then Peaquad's. 

"Colleen, wake up," he said. Louder now, even though I was under the water of the swimming pool, a grown woman but still wearing the child's two piece I had worn all those years ago, with a flamingo on the top and palm-tree bottoms. I tried to come up for air, but cocaine filled my mouth.

"Colleen, wake," he said again, except now I'm choking, water all around me, but I taste blood in my mouth, and suddenly Ed is under the water with me, except his eyes are open and his face is waterlogged and bloated, his eyes enormous and open, threatening to fall out his face, his skin a sick lifeless gray, like the side of a navy vessel, and suddenly the pool is an ocean and a wave, an underwater wave, breaks on me and I feel the wetness and hear the voice like a thunderstorm.

"Colleen!" it yells.

I open my eyes and I'm shivering, soaking wet. "Good," the voice says. A towel lands down at my side. "Dry yourself off. I am sorry about the water, but it took quite some effort to wake you."

Shapes come into focus. The room is long, sparse, smells damp, like flooding had happened but not recently. The lights overheard are fluorescent, humming in long tubes. Pillars connecting a tile floor to a drop ceiling, about eight of them stretching back past where I can see. There are windows higher up on the walls, shadows of legs walking by in marking, undulating pillars of dark. A basement, somewhere with foot traffic. Apartment complex, maybe. My apartment complex? 

I sit up. I've been laying on an air mattress, its sheet now soaked with water, small tendrils of steam lifting up from the makeshift bed. Next to me is a nightstand with a bottle of water, some bananas, a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. Next to it is a laundry basket with some clothing. Quite the next, I think to myself. I look up at the voice, which belongs to a face I don't recognize, but is looking at me now with a gentle smile and earnest eyes. I want to get up and rush him, but my head starts to pound at the thought of moving. I bring my hands to my head and tilt back onto the wet air mattress. The stranger speaks again.

"I really am sorry about the water," he said. "You've been asleep for so long, and I wanted to make sure that we could bring you back, that something worse hadn't happened. I'm not a doctor, you know?"

He has a slight accent in his voice, but his English is good. He's been here a while, if he came from anywhere. Could just be a child of the Bronx. Speaking of. 

"Where are we right now," I ask. "Where are we right now, and who the hell are you, and why the fuck did you throw fucking water on me." 

He stands up taller, face still kind. "In reverse," he says "I threw water on you because, like I said, I wanted to make sure you were okay. You'd been hit in the head and I wasn't sure if you were going to wake up and it seemed like a good first step to take." He paused for a breath. "My name is Cuchillo. You're in a safe place. We own the building, but we put you down here so as not to arouse any suspicion. You're away from eyes down here, away from people who might hear you, and you needed somewhere to recover that wasn't on anyone's radar. No one knows this place except us."

Summer Song Challenge, Day 56: Nate

Prompt: "A song whose title is officially all uppercase"

Selected by Nate

"BOOM!"

The Roots

The Tipping Point, 2004

The file slipped back between the door and the frame, the door pushed against the chain. I took a breath, felt my chest rise and fall, and tried to keep myself as silent as I could. A moment went by. Another. Nothing happened. I started to wonder if whoever it was had decided to give up, considered moving across the door to peek through the gap, see if anyone was out there. I was aware of my legs, which were starting to cramp from my coiled crouch. My hands, dry before, were beginning to get moist. The adrenaline was wearing off, something closer to anxiety starting to trickle in. I thought of my phone again. The door remained pressed against the chain, holding the metal tight but not straining it. I decided to chance a look between the door and its frame when the chain exploded off the frame, its mounting ripped from the wall in an explosion of splinters that sounded like a gunshot. The door to my apartment swung open violently, hitting me in the nose. Stars exploded in my eyes as pain radiated from the dull center of my face. I brought my hands up, felt sticky wetness there. My vision settled enough to see a shadow sprinting into my bedroom, another coming into the apartment behind it more slowly walking upright. 

There were about eight feet separating me and the second person. They were in jeans, black boots, black sweatshirt with the hood up over their head. I pushed the door off and sprinted at the second man, screaming as I raked my knife across their shoulder blades. I saw the sweatshirt split along the length of my blade, felt the skin benefit split like a pants seam as I dragged the knife through and out, leaving a deep red slash 18 inches across their back. Their hands came up, trying to grab feebly at their back. They cried out in pain, fell to their knees. As they went down I screamed and kicked my bare foot into the back of their head, driving them faster down, their head hitting the carpeted floor with a thick, sickening thud, bouncing there on the ground with the unguarded impact of an unexpected blow. I looked at them laying on their stomach, whimpering and groaning, hands still contorted behind their shoulders to try and reach the slash between their shoulders. I lost all control, began to scream. "Motherfuckers!" I yelled, beside myself, outside myself, stomping toward the bedroom to meet the first intruder, who had by now wheeled on his path and came back out toward me. I met him at the door, saw his eyes wide with surprise underneath his ski mask. Somewhere in the back of my mind, in a cage where logical thought had been shackled, I recognized the comedy of the moment, this intruder who, had they made it in, would have terrified me in my bed, now beholding my small heaving body, crazed and bloody, was the one who was afraid. They started to raise their hands, reaching something out toward me, something I couldn't make out in my singular mania. "Mother! Fucker!" I screamed again, only partial clocking that I was screaming at all, and slashed my knife across their raised hands. Something clattered to the floor hard, and the intruder looked up and screamed. I smelled blood in the apartment. I kept approaching, slashing my knife horizontally across the intruder's face, their face turning away from me, a spray of blood shooting into my room, splashing on the bedspread. He was screaming now, his back to me, trying to get away, whimpering in pain. "Who the fuck do you think you are?" I screamed at him, continuing to pursue as he moved toward the bathroom. I was thinking only of killing him, then turning around and killing his friend. "Who the fuck do you—"

I felt pressure on the back of my head. Stars exploded into my eyes again. I felt the world shift, then everything went black.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 54: Nate

Prompt: "A song that starts and ends with the same letter in its title"

Selected by Nate

"Every Minute Is a Movie"

Pilot to Gunner

Games at High Speeds, 2001

I lingered there for a moment, thinking about that empty apartment, Reed sitting in a mid-century dining room chair, looking up at me. Me standing across the apartment, in my underwear but still not clothed, Ed prowling the door outside, his heavy feet giving a seedy, arithmetic thump. Why did I leave Peaquad then, I wondered now. I still wasn't sure I knew. There was then what I felt now, an antsy feeling of unease, an itch to change things, blow them up, reshuffle the deck to my liking. Sure, eight years was a long time to do anything, but what about me made what was going to happen to Reed tomorrow so necessary? I didn't fully know, even now, except that I could not stomach bending the knee long-term. That whatever I did had to be on my terms, with my say-so, in my control, and that anyone who asked more than that would only last as long as I needed them to. I answer to one person, now and forever.

I heard a thud from the other room, then nothing.

My eyes shot open. I didn't move. The dark of my bedroom was motionless, the hum from the street unbroken. I listened, still. A thud again, then what sounded like a clicking. Someone trying to break into the apartment? I considered throwing the lights on, running to the door, trying to shock whomever was there into a misstep or an inaction. I thought about calling Ed. The click again, the sound of fabric on wood and wood on metal, like someone was leaning on the front door, seeing if it would give. I pulled back the covers slowly, opened the bedside drawer, took out a small, folded, claw-shaped knife. I clicked it into place and quietly as I could and walked on the balls of my feet across the carpet of the bedroom, into the living room, where the knob of my apartment was slowly rotating from side to side. Someone was trying to break in.

I crept closer to the door, going around the couch, approaching the door from its hinges. If whoever was trying to get in pulled it off, I would be hidden behind the door as it swung open into the apartment. I pressed my ear up near the frame, trying to listen for anything coming from the hallway. The slight turn of the knob, the click of what I assumed was lockpick materials, the hushed rub of fabric against the door, was all I heard. I tried to control my breathing. I considered going back to my room and getting my phone, calling Ed or Peaquad, or even to cops, decided against it. Ditto throwing on jeans and going out the fire escape. The chain was on the door, would be easily broken if whomever tried to come in made it through the lock, but would the try to force it? They were being quiet, but the time it was taking to pop the lock made me wonder if these were professionals. I wondered who they were, at all.

The shadows of my living room were long and flickering from the not-quite-dark of the city outside them. I decided that I would let them come, slam the door on one of them as they came through the apartment, slash the knife into whomever made it inside, hope there weren't more than two or three of them. Make as much noise as I could, count on someone on the floor to call the cops. Fight long enough to live. The arches of my feet ached. I felt sweat on the back of my knees despite the gym shorts and tank top. The knife was warm, light in my hands. No sweat on my palms. I licked my lips.

There was a louder, more authoritative click. The lock was popped. I watched the knob slowly turn toward me, the door slide slowly, creeping open. I saw a black-gloved hand slide up the frame, feel the chain pulling against the lock. The hand disappeared, but the door stayed open for a moment before slowly closing. I felt like a snake, coiled in on myself, ready to explode from behind the door, determined to take as much blood as I could, dead-set with an ever present cold certainty that I would hurt anyone I saw as badly as I could.

No more sounds from the hallway. I waited. The door opened slightly, slowly, silently again, the same black glove feeling the chain lock. The door pushed until the chain was taught, pushing until the wood creaked and the chain pulled in its links. Testing the lock, seeing if it could be disabled without noise, I assumed. The door slid closed, a file slipping in between the door and the frame, pressing up against the limp chain. They were trying to slip it. "Not serious people," I thought to myself, more ready than before to let the knife come down, let the door smash into them. More certain that it was them, not me, who would need the police tonight.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 53: Nate

Prompt: "A song with a clinical diagnosis in the title or about a clinical diagnosis"

Selected by Nate

"Institutionalized"

Suicidal Tendencies

Suicidal Tendencies, 1983

Laying in my bed in my apartment Monday night, I couldn't sleep. 

I found my mind wandering to what was to come ahead, to how I had gotten here, years compressed into moments dancing through my head as I looked at the shadows around me, hearing but not registering the ambient noise of the city below leaking in through my windows, still legible 20 floors up; working with Nicky but tweaking our relationship slightly so he was coming to me for details, asking me when we'd be getting more product from Peaquad. Paying Peaquad out in his gym office, the damp smell of old sweat a constant in his cinder block-walled kingdom. The coming and going of people, usually all young men, so frequently and so briefly that it was hard for me, observant as I was, to know who was there to box and who was there in his employ. I assumed that anyone he spoke to in Spanish in front of me was someone who worked for him, that the language barrier was a way to keep me at arm's length, to continue to hold me at a distance. Coming to see Peaquad after Nicky died in the car crash, Peaquad asking if I needed an escort still after all this time being the boss, me raising my eyebrow at him, telling him not to be an idiot, him smiling at his own joke, at the rise it got out of me. Him remembering Ed, telling me he was "the only person Nicholas ever feared," that conversation reminding me of the one we'd had in the car all those months ago. The early days with Eddie, having to break him in, get him past his wide-eyed naivety about the work we did, the worlds in which we did that work. Explaining to him why it had to be us, how the profile would keep noise away, loosen locks, grease doors. Having to hold his hand for the softer stuff, shocked at how little he was actually needed, at how much his dead face and cartoonish size put the shakes into anyone thinking they'd like a piece of me or my action. Shocked at how much easier it all was without Nicky. Realizing how much easier it might still be if I didn't have to bend the knee to Peaquad. The networking, the gladhanding, the endless fucking parties and mind-numbing nights with junkies and users and lousy fucking hangs, worse fucking lays, trying to find a line on better distribution, more off-hand management. Hearing about Reed from some lacrosse playing co-ed from John Carroll University, the shame of having to blow him for the information, the certainty that I would find a way to kill that motherfucker and make it look like an accident. How that same dipshit actually came through, how Ed and I took my parents' Range Rover and drove to New York City, how Reed made us strip before he would let us into this empty apartment, how Ed blushed as he got naked, how he turned his head and wouldn't meet my eye when I took off my clothes without hesitation. How Reed never broke eye contact, a consummate professional. How he asked Ed to wait outside, how he told me who he worked for, how the cartel liked to operate. How we was looking for someone who could do what I did on a larger scale. How there was no shortage of coke at the parties of this city, so his product had to not only be the best, but be delivered with the best hospitality. How he stressed that word, over and over. How he told me he did not want to have to check on me, or really talk to me at all outside of dropoffs and payouts. How he would solve problems if I had them. How quickly Peaquad's name came to my lips then, how he told me he was aware of him, that he would be dealt with quietly, how my transition—he called it that, like I was moving to a different department in a corporate office—would be handled with the utmost professionalism and sensitivity. How I could never contact Peaquad again after that. How I would never move higher in the organization, how he was "the ceiling, the last stop."

Summer Song Challenge, Day 52: Nate

Prompt: "A song with 'cheese' or a type of cheese in the title"

Selected by Nate

"Cheddar"

E the Profit

single, 2021

The rest of the week went slowly, normally, as I counted down the days to Tuesday night when I had to see Reed again, when the money was due, when I'd get through the last hurdle until I could start my new life. I woke up Sunday fully recovered from Mimi's party in the Hamptons, spent the day taking care of some smaller clerical requirements of my work; I took a black car to my storage unit in Hell's Kitchen, dropped off some money, drove to another storage locker in the financial district, dropped off some more. I wanted to make sure I was well-seeded and ready to roll once things hit the fan on Tuesday night. 

I fielded some text messages from a few clients, made plans to drop off larger quantities with the professor and with Mimi, promised the celebrity chef I would meet him on the High Line for an exchange later that night. I went to barre class, sold a few eights to the instructor after class, showered and dressed for lunch by the park with an ex-thing who had a line into Madison Square Garden. I spent the meal leaning forward and ignoring his hand on my knee while we arranged to drop off an eighth of a pack at his apartment Monday night. He said it was for a band coming into town, but he was the kind of scuzz who would pay several thousand dollars to get me back into his apartment again. I thought about calling Eddie in for that job, ultimately deciding against it. 

Whatever people imagined drug dealing to be like, there is far more clerical work involved in it than they think. Doing it well requires not just planning and discretion, but organization. And if it wasn't that, its was empty pageantry. Being socialite adjacent was exciting when I first arrived, but I felt too old and too hard to play the part now. I knew I still looked good in the dresses, but the smiles and the work nights and the politicking was taking its toll. It was a full time administrative career being a criminal, and I was looking forward to putting that part of my life behind me, enjoying something akin to retirement from the front-line product movement. But the truth that I knew deep in my heart where I didn't let other people go, was that I could feel my mask slipping. I was only effective if I could sell the dream, sell myself as the dream, to the upper-middle of the city's social class, and that required hiding my contempt and hatred for every miserable addict I sold this shit too. 

That was the game as I had played it for years, and I was nearing my retirement age. Time to find something else to be good at, something that allowed me more control, a larger team, fewer bill collectors knocking on my door, fewer ex-boyfriends trying to fuck me over microgreens, fewer thin-lipped college professors too afraid to do anything but look at my chest and talk to me about semiotics like I'd be moved or impressed. The real truth was I hated these people, dreamed about slicing their faces with razors, dreamed about mailing their body parts to their loved ones. Those dreams were getting harder to ignore.

But after Tuesday, I wouldn't have to ignore them anymore. After Tuesday, I'd be free. Until then, I just had to keep up appearances. After lunch I met Mimi at the MoMa, she was introducing me to some more hedge fund guys. They were afraid to talk about anything real and they had shit taste; they blew past the Marina Adams prints, spending all their time looking at the Warhols and the other post-modern drips. I saw in them the same doughy simplicity that I recognized in my upbringing, and adjusted my pitch accordingly. Gave them a little more starch, a little less cold smoke, and they warmed up to me proper. Mimi seemed pleased that her lead bore fruit, small as it was, and by Sunday evening I had made another couple of thousand dollars, more than enough to pay back Reed what I owed, one day closer to the bloodbath from which I would be reborn.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 51: Nate

Prompt: "A song with a shape in the title"

Selected by Nate

"Circles 'Round the Moon"

Nana Grizol

Love It Love It, 2008

A quiet part in my head whispered. "Use this," it said. I knew I was coming off as an emotional child. I felt like I was in the front of a roller coaster, traveling down unable to control anything, just having to ride it out. Somewhere in this, I heard a voice, softer, even, speaking to me. 

"...and I know. I know because I have been watching you and Nicholas for some time now. Do not ask me how I have been watching, but understand that I tell you the truth when I tell you this. I assume you believe me, yes?"

It was Peaquad, snapping into focus, appearing in front of me, an image of clear sharp clarity in the rapidly blurring background of the fluorescent block office. I realized he had been talking and I had not heard. I nodded my head up and down, blowing my nose, trying to rub the tears from my eyes, trying to come back to center as the ride started to dip sideways, twisting me upside down. 

"Believe me on this as well, I will never tell you any details of my operation that you do not need to know," he said. "Do not wonder who else is in my employ, assume everyone is. Do not wonder where what I give you comes from, assume it is risen from the ground like a zombie from the earth. Do not wonder how you fit, assume I have you where you need to be. Do you understand me so far?"

I nodded, looking at the edges of him, missing his eyes. I didn't understand what was happening to me, how I could have been so confident, so in control only a moment ago, made so loose now. I had to steel myself, reorient. I could not appear as apart as I was. The voice in my head whispering "use it" was being drowned out by Peaquad's voice, its low, even tone working to calm me, calm the ride.

He reached back into his desk, tossed a small black notebook across it. He gestured at it with his hand, pointing at it with all four fingers.

"Inside that notebook is a phone number and a date. You will call that number on that date and receive instructions to go somewhere. When you get there, I will be waiting, in one form or another, with instructions and more. You should be prepared to work then, prepared to work in the time frame instructed. Now, we have little time, as I believe Nicholas will be rejoining us shortly. We can discuss how to move forward with him. For now, let us agree that I will communicate with you directly, and that he will act as your arm in all matters. You are responsible for him now, his actions are yours. You will pay him as you see fit, and I will pay you what I deem you to be worth. And as you go on in the world, I will go with you. As you are anyone to anyone, so too will I be with you. And you will go as far as I tell you to go, no further. In return, I will make you an enterprise unto yourself, and you will be able to exact your revenge on whomever, whatever it is you seek to destroy. The resources of your vengeance will be available to you through me. If it violence you require, I will help you facilitate it, in whatever form is required, as long as it takes until you are satisfied. You will rule whomever and whatever you desire, as long as I sanction it to be so. This is what you wanted, yes? This is why you came to see me?"

I nodded, but the truth was I couldn't remember anymore why I had wanted to see him, what I had hoped to accomplish, whether or not I had gotten it. I took the notebook and tucked it into my jeans as footsteps crashed outside the office, as fists pounded the metal of the door. Peaquad held his hand up to the door.

"Please, open it," he said. I got up from the couch, looked at him one more time. He was smiling, all teeth shining. "I look forward to us working together," he said.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 48: Nate

Prompt: "Your karaoke song"

Selected by Nate

"Stay (I Missed You)"

Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories

Reality Bites Soundtrack, 1994

I smiled at that. "That's true," he said. "So I'm guessing your seeing me has more to do with what I can do for you than with what I want from you. I'm guessing you're out on Nicky and, bare minimum, you're looking for someone to take his place, at least as the main point of contact."

I paused and he looked at me. "Is that all," he asked. 

"No," I said, deciding just to go for it. "I am smart," I said. "I can be discrete, and I can go places and work with people in a way Nicky never could. I am going places in the world, after high school, after college, and I can bring you and your product with me to those places. I will not be stuck selling drugs to rich high school kids for long, and I will expose you to circles and clientele that you would never reach with Nicky."

He cocked his head and made a raspberry with his lips. Now or never, I said to myself.

"Shaker Heights is small potatoes, and if your only operation is here then you're small potatoes, too," I said. "I am going places and I can take you with me. The money will never come into question, my parents and my lifestyle are the ultimate laundromat. I can be anything to anyone, and the best part is, everyone already wants me, wants what I have. I use that, and I can use that for you. I am not coming here to slake my curiosity about how the sausage gets made. I want a job in the factory."

I was the one leaning forward now. My voice had steadily been raising, getting faster. I realized I had lost control as I had gotten close to the truth of the matter. "I want to work for you," I said. "I want to answer to only you. I want to work for myself. To set my own networks, to make my own deals."

"Then you need to tell me why," Peaquad said, now also leaning forward. "What does a rich white girl from Ohio want with this life, with this game? What do you have to gain from it? What do I have to gain from one so far from the needs its fulfills, from what it supplies? Your boredom, your daddy issues, your whatever, is not enough. Do you understand yourself enough to explain to me why I should trust you, why this matters?"

I felt like a hole was opening in my chest. I found that I did not know what to say next, what this man across from me really wanted. Here, at the center of it all, was the question I had no clear answer to. "Because I am bored, I guess," I said. "You asked me for honesty, here is my honesty. I hate..." What was it I hated, exactly? I gathered my thoughts. "Since I was old enough to recognize need, I have seen what people want from me" I said. "I am to be controlled, or praised, or protected. Everyone I interact with, parents, peers, other adults, strangers, see me and want me, want to control me. That desire, that need, is as naked and apparent to me as sunlight, and I hate it." It was flowing out of me now, fully out of control, my own naked desire the third body in the tiny cinderblock room. "I hate the eyes of others on my skin, hate the obvious thoughts barely formed and plastered across their faces. I do it because fuck them. I do it because it gives them exactly what they want and it gives me the control they crave. They think they have me, but I had them, and fuck them. Fuck them, is why I do it."

Peaquad opened his desk drawer, removed some tissues, and handed them toward me. "You're shaking," he said. Only then did I realize I had been crying, that I was barely breathing. I dried my eyes, tried to breath normally. I felt out of control and hot with an anger that had always been present but only now, given word and form, fully metastasized. I wanted to scream, to bloody Peaquad with a hammer, to cover myself in his blood and rip into the gym like a werewolf, cover myself in gore, howl and rip at whomever remained up there.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 47: Nate

Prompt: "A song to blast on speakers on the subway, rudely, while everyone else on the train is just trying to commute home in peace"

Selected by Nate

"I Can't Wait"

Ol' Dirty Bastard

N☆☆★A PLeASe, 1999

The stairs and walls were the same white cinderblock, making walking down into the subterranean locker room like walking into a world without sharp sound, only round, bouncing muffled echoes that vaguely carried the traces of their origin. The locker room was cool, damp with sweat and shower steam. It felt like being an an untreated basement, which is what it seemed like to me, lockers and fluorescent lights be damned. Through the locker room there was a small hallway that lead to a bathroom and showers on one side, and a small office with a metal door on the other. I followed closely behind Peaquad, moved past him as he held the door open for me, sat on the the small maroon plastic couch across from his desk and his wooden office chair. The desk was metal and sparse, with nothing on top of it. It appeared to be only for show, only a barrier. He followed in behind me, the metal door banging shut, as he slid around to his chair, looking at me the whole time. I crossed my arms and legs, looking back, and for a few seconds there was nothing but silence and our mutual observation. I was determined to let him speak, to let him lay the trail to where I ultimately knew I would wind up. He cocked his head, reclined in his chair, his hands on his stomach. 

"How old are you, Colleen," he eventually asked me.

"Eighteen," I said. I didn't know exactly who I wanted to be in this conversation, how to play it, what shape his desire was taking. Once I understood what he wanted from me, I would know how to give it to him in such a way that it worked for me.

"That is a lie," he said.

I tried to react as little as possible to him spotting my lie. I answered as flatly as I could, not to challenge or to confirm, but to continue to understand what exactly was playing out here.

"How do you know," I asked.

"Please do not lie to me again," he said. "This conversation does not need to happen and it will not continue if you are not forthright with me. You have been selling drugs with Nicholas for two years, yes?"

I couldn't help my eyes from widening, from my heart beating faster, feeling its beat in my ears. He leaned forward, still looking sideways at me. His voice was soft.

"You are surprised to hear me say this?" he said. "What exactly do you find so surprising? That I would discuss my business so openly? That I am aware of you, and of how long you have been working with Nicholas? Perhaps, more specifically, how long he has been working for you? That does feel more like what has been happening, no? You directing the transactions, using Nicholas as muscle or transport or research, no? Tell me what you find so shocking, and then tell me this: why do you think I would conduct my business without knowing every detail of its operation down to the ounce and the event?"

He was leaning all the way forward now, his hands in front of him on the desk, leaning on his elbows. Smiling, arched my way, looking down at me from across the empty metal. "Answer me, please, or we will have to begin having a different conversation."

No games, then. I uncrossed my arms, blew out air. "I'm sixteen,” I said, and he leaned back off the desk.

"You are young," he said. "How do you think I knew you were lying?"

"I don't know for sure," I said. "I don't think Nicky told you, number one because I'm not sure he knows or has ever asked, and number two I'm guessing you see Nicky the same way I do, as a tool, not a collaborator."

He smiled, nodded at me, waved a hand my way. "Go on, please. What else do you think?"

"I think that you didn't see if I was wearing a wire because you already knew I wasn't," I said. "And you knew I wasn't because you've been watching me long enough to know that I'm on the level, or at least that I'm not working against you."

"And because police departments do not use little girls for surveillance and information gathering in this country," he said. "But yes, please go on."

I took a breath. "I'm guessing Nicky has been asking if I could be introduced to you for months and you've used that time to look into me," I said. "I'm guessing you either told Nicky explicitly or made it otherwise obvious that he was an idiot for asking. I'm guessing that very request made you second guess using him as a dealer. I'm guessing you have a network of dealers but wouldn't want to upset the connections and market that Nicky has staked out among his peers."

Peaquad nodded, lost in thought, his eyes looking up at the ceiling as I spoke, his hands back on his stomach. He didn't even look like he was listening until he said, eyes still up, "as if it takes a shrewd salesman or detailed network to sell drugs to teenagers."

Summer Song Challenge, Day 46: Nate

Prompt: "If you were a professional athlete, a song that you'd like the guy in charge of the stadium soundtrack to play as you emerge from the locker room, in order to hype the audience up"

Selected by Nate

"I Get Wet"

Andrew W.K.

I Get Wet, 2001

Editor's Note: I actually did get to walk out to this song once, back when I was a high school athlete during the second Bush administration. My school was one of the few in the Northeast with a boxing program, and in my only ever recorded fight, I walked to the ring while this song was playing. My fighter name was "Nasty" Nate A****. I held my own but lost the fight in a majority decision. 0-1 record lifetime. Song did its job though, I was fucking gassed up when those first goofy keyboard horn notes came on over the speakers.

He always assured me, but I remained skeptical up to the evening of the fight, when I sat in the stands with a few of my own flock and watched Nicky take apart some kid I had never seen before. From my spot in the bleachers I was able to look down on the ring, I was able to feel as if the movement and action of its bodies was not only for me, but directed by me. I never for a moment rooted for anyone, but I found power in the act of watching, in the imagining that what was happening did so at my direction, with my permission. Nicky bloodied the kid badly, I think he lost some teeth. The girls I was with didn't care for the blood. I didn't care for it, either, but I had enough respect for the violence not to look away from it. Because that is when it would turn on you, when it would catch you in its jaws, pull you under the water with its teeth, someplace dark where you cannot see. Better to see it coming, better to see what it does, than to let it think you are not watching. 

After the fight was over and Nicky's opponent was carried off, I walked down to the floor to wait for Nicky. We had agreed on how it would work: after the crowd cleared out and there only a few people left, Nicky would introduce me to the connect. We'd do it publicly and with people present, but not enough people to risk interruption or eavesdropping. We also wouldn't talk about business directly. Nicky would lead the conversation and I would speak when spoken to. I agreed to these terms, swallowing short-term disrespect with a smile in the name of a longer-term payoff. And so, when Nicky came out of the locker room, showered and swollen, glistening with water and arrogant pride from a one-side beating, I let him slip his arms around me, let him kiss my lips and slide his tongue into my mouth, let him pretend I liked it, let him have his moment before I got down to the matter at at.

"I'm a little nervous," I lied.

"Don't be," he said, visibility relishing the perceived power I had just granted him, the manufactured vulnerability he now got to treat. "We're public, we're just talking. Just a boxer and his girlfriend, talking to a coach. Normal stuff."

He lead me toward the rapidly deconstructing ring, where a tall, slim man with gold-rimmed glasses and thin, beak-like nose was shouting at two kids cleaning up to be careful with the canvas. The tall man felt our approach, turned with a grimace until he saw who it was, then slipped his mouth into a crooked half-smile.

"Nicholas," he said with an accent. He sounded like one of the men who did my parents lawn, who cleaned their pool. "Good fighting tonight."

"Thanks, coach," Nicky said, smiling so wide I thought his head would separate at his jawline. "How's your boy doing?"

"Oh, he will recover," the man said. "It was good experience for him, to be taken down a peg. Maybe he will learn to keep his feet underneath him, to keep his hands up. He is almost as cocky as you, Nicholas!" The man laughed, a sound that came out of his mouth but didn't make it all the way up to his eyes. Eyes that looked all around the room without darting, without seeming bothered, eyes that just observed, constantly. Nicky laughed along with him, not really getting the joke. I smiled and thought "this is an operator."

"Nichoals, tell me, who is this with you?" The eyes stopped, focused on me. His mouth formed into a smile, his eyes asking what he really meant. Who the fuck are you? What business am I to you?

"Coach, I wanted to introduce you to my girlfriend," Nicky said. "This is Colleen. Colleen, this is coach Peaquad."

Peaquad extended a hand to me. I took it.

"Colleen, such a beautiful name for such a beautiful girl," he said. "Tell me, Colleen, why is it that you waste your time with such a cabron like Nicholas?"

I smiled, genuinely smiled, at Peaquad. "He’s not all bad, Mr. Peaquad," I said, laying off the usual doe-eyed act, letting the real steel of my feelings rise up to my face, flow down into the grip of my fingers. "He's got his uses and talents." Girlfriend face now, as I looked at Nicky. 

Peaquad's sideways smile grew more centered, and he nodded his head. "Yes, he does, doesn't he? Tell me, Colleen, what has Nicky told you about me?"

"Just that you've been a real inspiration to him," I said. "He says you've motivated him."

"Ah, such is a coach's job," he said, eyes back to scanning the room. "Tell me, do you ever find yourself requiring motivation?"

"We all need a kick in ass sometimes, don't we Nicky," I said. Peaquad nodded, took the answer for what it was.

"Nice to meet you, Colleen. Nicholas, perhaps you'd like to help take down the ring, then meet Colleen and I in my office in the locker room. Colleen, if you don't mind following me?"

Nicky looked at me, eyebrows arched. Not part of the plan, not by a mile. I gave him a look that said it would be okay. "We'll meet you down there, Nicky." I gave him a kiss on the cheek and looked into his eyes, trying to communicate that he was not being fucked over here, that I could take care of myself, that he could not protect me, not really. However much of that he received I'll never know, but he nodded at me, shook Peaquad's hand, then left the two of us there.

"Follow me, miss," Peaquad said, walking past me toward the locker room. "Follow me down here."

Summer Song Challenge, Day 45: Nate

Prompt: "A song that is the final song on its album"

Selected by Nate

"I'm Not Part of Me"

Cloud Nothings

Here and Nowhere Else, 2014

All things have a cost, and this particular cost was watching Nicky fight in some charity event. I acted excited when we asked me, told me that's where I'd meet the supplier, but the truth was that I didn't give a shit about boxing, about watching him fight, about violence as sport. I was not afraid of it, but I respected it. I found its application as pastime a waste a resources. Violence was a tool, not a game. Nicky had enough worshipers among his flock that he didn't need me to be impressed with his stomach and his jabs, except apparently he did. In the run-up to the fight he would talk about boxing constantly, so much so that I began to suspect that this was a ploy and not an introduction. So much so that one night when we were driving to a party across the city in Lakewood and he didn't say anything in the car, it stood out to me. He wasn't the smartest conversational partner, but he wasn't one to let the silence linger, especially with the fight coming up on his mind. We went for a few miles before I broke the silence.

"You’re quiet over there tonight," I said. "We good?"

Silence, eyes on the road, a far-away look.

"Nicky."

Nothing. 

"Nicky!"

"Hm?" His eyes flickered in recognition now, still not look at me, but at least in the same care.

"What's fucking with you tonight," I said, playing the annoyed girlfriend except I was actually annoyed. Cleveland was a place where a male presence mattered, and I needed Nicky on his game if I was going to operate the way I needed to. Flirty and available was the game tonight, look and maybe touch a little, but don't grab. That could go south fast and I didn't need experience in crime to tell me that. "Are you on the ball or are we going home?"

"I'm good, I was just thinking about something that happened earlier this week," he said. 

"Well, get it out. What happened?"

He watched the road, pulled a can of dip out of his center console, slapped it against his hand, pinched himself a wad and stuck it in his lip. "Well," he said with a chewer's lisp, “You know I got this fight coming up. Couple nights ago I sparred against this giant fucking freak in the gym. And I go to work on him, right? I'm tattooing him," he says, gaining speed, starting to sound like his more cocksure self, except he starts deflating. "I mean, Col, I'm hitting this guy hard, you know? And he, like, doesn't do anything."

"What does that mean, he doesn't do anything. He just stands there and takes it?"

"No, I mean, he kept fighting, but he fucking sucks and he's a fat ass so he couldn't move or dodge anything," he said. "What I mean is, I kept hitting him, swinging hard at him, and connecting in places that I know hurt like shit, but he just keeps coming." He says, struggling to find the words, really thinking about it. "It was like the punches weren't making it up to his mind or his face or whatever, or like he was numb. Because usually? Usually I hit someone and they react."

"Yeah, I've seen that," I said. I thought about a house party near Akron three weeks ago when Nicky threw a kid through a sliding glass door, the screaming, the red and blue lights going the opposite way we did. 

"But this guy," Nicky said, "He didn't, like, flinch, or make a face, or show anything that suggested that he was hurt or anything. He just kept coming with this weird, expressionless blankness. It was like, I couldn't hurt him no matter how hard I tried, like the hurt wouldn't get to his face."

He stopped and I waited. After a few seconds I said "So what?"

Nicky looked at me agog "It's fucking freaky is what," he said. "You wail on a guy you expect him to wince, to make a face, to cry, to... I don't know, fucking do something. But this guy didn't stop, he didn't react, he was just there. I don't know, it was just weird is all." 

I wanted to tell Nicky to shut the fuck up, that his fears were bizarre and foreign to me, that I didn't care a thing about what he felt or was afraid of, but I played compassion, talked him through it, stroked his hair with my words. Eventually he worked himself into his usual patter about boxing and I knew we were home, at least for the night. At least until the next time he talked about his match nonstop and I had to second guess whether there would be a supplier meet at all.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 44: Nate

Prompt: "A song that is the first song on its album"

Selected by Nate

"The First Song"

Band of Horses

Everything All the Time, 2006

This would be the shape of the next two years. Nicky behind the wheel, me at his side, traveling from party to party, from town to town, two or three nights a week, sometimes more. Working parties, working football games, working parking lots. Not always different faces, but not always the same, either. The same reaction whenever we arrived, though: excitement. The boys were always glad to see me, and the girlfriends who hung around long enough grew to love me. I batted my eyes and shook my ass and talked the right shit and bounced, or sulked, or strutted, or skulked, fitting the shape of the room and the feeling of the moment, chameleonizing myself to fit whatever I saw in the glittering, waiting eyes of the others. Nicky saw, I would realize, the perfect salesman for all seasons and all people, and someone who could be what he could not: malleable. For all his bluster and his pigheadedness and his small and large cruelties—for he was cruel, he looked down on everyone who wasn't him, and maybe who wasn't me, keeping no so much friends as it was a Greek chorus of his small-minded adolescent masculine hate—he was self-aware enough to know that I offered things he could not, at least offered their suggestion. Warmth. Humor. Mirth. Sensuality. And, sure, when the scenes got gross or the soft ball wasn't working, he'd get to sink his fist into something soft, he'd get to bruise skin and break bones and taste blood and sweat. He was a bull, mostly, an animal, but one shrewd enough to know his limitations. 

And I learned from him, too, in that time. About where the solar plexus was, and how little force was needed to strike it. How to hook a thumb into an eye. How to be vague on price and when to be up front. How to let those looking to score come to you, not go to them, lest you put yourself in a jackpot or, even worse, let your reputation be known as a drug dealer. As much as kids talked, word would get around if you were pushing, and if word got around enough it could get back to someone who would stand between you and the goal, be it a teacher or a police officer. The trick was to be someone who might "have drugs," and who might be at the party you were at, right then, at the moment when a snort or a joint might feel just fucking perfect. I don't know if Nicky understood this fundamental truth, but I learned it quickly. Simply be around, be available, but don't be boxed in.

I realized to make this work, to amplify its effect, it was better to have another reputation to play off of the one we worked on at night. So I stepped out of my timidness and began flashing the family wealth. Better clothes, obvious labels. I started driving my father's car into school while he traveled for work—a disgustingly ostentatious Lincoln Navigator—letting everyone around me see the money first. I took people out to the mall with my parent's credit card. I stuck up my nose and behaved the way everyone thought a spoiled, stuck-up trust fund kid would. It gave me armor, gave me a first thing to be seen as, to better let those who knew below the alsos. It explained the money, which was coming in hand over fist, hundred, sometimes thousands of dollars a night. And for a while that was enough for me. But after a while I got tired of Nicky's car. I got tired of the basements and the parking lots and the lacrosse teams and taking Nicky's hand off my thigh every couple of months. I didn't want to work for him anymore. I wanted to work for myself. I needed to know where he got his stuff from, how I might get that stuff for myself.

The next time he put his hand on my thigh I let it stay there, and when he slid it further up my leg I let him believe that I was Aphrodite, that he was Prometheus and he had discovered fire. I made him believe he was bigger than he was, that he was the first and would be the last, that nothing would ever be the same. And while he looked at himself in the mirror and trusted lifelessly into my numb body, I thought about being free of him, about how he would work for me or he would not work at all, thousands of miles away from whatever hotel or bedroom or backseat was required of my body. Always making sure to cater to him, his ego most of all. Always telling him that of course I came, too. I thought it would take months. God bless his little lovesick heart, he agreed five weeks in.

Summer Song Challenge, Day 43: Nate

Prompt: "A song that's so much better than 'Bohemian Rhapsody' that it honestly makes 'Bohemian Rhapsody' sound like the Mister Softee jingle"

Selected by Nate

"Catalina Fight Song"

Joyce Manor

Never Hungover Again, 2014

I asked my driver to get me a drink, and while he was gone convinced another guy that he was bothering me. When the driver came back, the second guy got in his face and they were outside fighting within five minutes. I slipped away back to the basement where the drugs were, politely declined to partake, but asked if I could sell them. A kid with blonde hair and sleepy blue eyes looked at me without comprehension, asking me with great incredulity if he had heard me right, if he wanted me to sell drugs for him. I recognized immediately that I had miscalculated, but I was overheard by someone else down there, someone who grabbed my arm and spun me back toward them. He was strong, and when we were face to face he had a shark's smile that gave me a moment's pause. He asked me what I wanted to be a drug dealer for. I smiled and told him I was a natural salesman, couldn't he tell. Serving him the kitten act, which for a moment I thought he might see through, but of course he melted around me, I saw it happen in real time, I realized his strength was not steel, it was the same desire that everyone else seemed to be consumed by. He still had my arm, and he pulled me into his body. I looked in his eyes, not showing fear, because what did I have to fear from anyone here, anyone whose greed was that transparent, anyone's whose flesh could be split by the knife? He looked down at me, slipped a hand into the pocket of my jeans, left something there. 

"That's five bags, three grams each," he said. "It's shitty stuff, ditch weed. Work this party and sell it. $50 a bag." He let me go, checked his gaudy silver watch, one that I was certain was either a fake or a facsimile of a wealth he wouldn't ever touch. "It's 10:30. I'm leaving at 1 a.m., so be in the kitchen by 12:45 with either my money or my nugs. Don't try to run off on me." 

"Don't keep me waiting," I said as I leaned closer into his face, breathing into his mouth, showing him who was really driving this conversation, whether he knew it or not. He smiled, his breath smelled like blood and metal. He let go of me, slipped in between some pressed high school bodies. I went up from the basement to start looking to sell, saw him talking to a group of guys who had all the symptoms of jocks: thick necks, loud mule laughter, a shaky, unearned confidence. Two of them were talking to him at the same time, one of them slapping his chest. He was smiling, watching me. I winked at him, started working in the rooms.

It's a truism that drugs sell themselves, that sex sells equally well. It took me 40 minutes to sell the weed, to do so without anyone really knowing who I was besides some young hot girl at a party she was welcome at but seemingly not invited to. Boys approached me once the word was out, and certain types of girls, ones who had been on the pill and taken plan B. I swirled, making fumbled handoffs and folding cash into my bra, a move I had seen in movies and thought made sense at the moment, but might be the only thing I regret after the fact. At some point I heard that a bunch of girls were tending to someone out by the lake, that he'd been beaten up outside and was bleeding from his ears now, and I went back into the house and tried to lay low. There were four bedrooms upstairs, I found one that wasn't being used for hooking up and laid low, counting the money in my pocket and spinning with the feeling of being a walking party, of being in demand and demanded, and wondered if this could be the thing, this could be a thing to do. I realized I'd need to make the money seem important, that people couldn't understand if it wasn't about the money. I started tweaking my persona, my approach, my pitch. I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew I could do it. It would take time. I was lost in thought so long I didn't look at the clock radio on the end table until it was 12:52 a.m. A new day I was late for.

I rushed down the stairs and into a kitchen, past a party that looked at its limit if not already on the decline. The music a little louder, the rooms a little darker, the ground a little grittier, the conversations a little louder, a little less observed. The guys with the shark face was waiting for me, alone. He was wearing a letterman jacket, an athlete after all. 

"Making me wait," he said, not completely playing. I handed him a fold of money. "That's $300, let's count it in your car." 

He looked at the money, raised an eyebrow, then smiled. He put his arm around my shoulder, turned me toward the front door, counted the money in front of me in his car, me in the passenger seat, him behind the wheel, blasting rap music. "How'd you end up getting the extra"" he asked me.

"They paid extra because it was coming from me," I said. 

He laughed. "You think you're such hot shit. What's your name?"

"Colleen."

"I'm Nicky. Let's go somewhere."

"Fine by me, Nicky."