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— Mr. Little, how does a man rob drug dealers for eight or nine years and live to tell about it?
— Day at a time, I suppose.
Life, Omar tells Brandon as they stroll down Broadway, ain’t much more than a shell game, just like that one across the street. (He is feeling philosophical this morning.) If you want to find the pea, don’t bother trying to track the shells as they get hustled around. No, you fix your eyes on the operator’s hands and the face, you learn to speak the language of his body. Because every man’s body tell tales, whether he means to or not.
Omar lights a cigarette and studies the operator working the game. Hands corral the shells over the cardboard box: sometimes swiping them, sometimes patting them into place. Eyes dart from onlooker to onlooker – Omar guesses that at least three of them are in on the con, serving as lookouts and egging on the mark; lips get licked from time to time. Yeah. Confidence men, all of them.
He nudges Brandon gently with his elbow and gives him a Look out of the corner of his eye. Brandon nods, ever so slightly, and moves his hand to his belt buckle.
Life ain’t much more than a shell game, Omar says, sidling up to the game; no indeed. If you want to find the pea, you watch the hands and the face. And then you take out your gun – Omar demonstrates this by sticking a shotgun at the operator, while Brandon trains a handgun on the others – and you robs the damn game, because you ain’t playing fair if no one be.
The operator hands over a ball of crumpled bills. Omar clucks his tongue disdainfully and makes a big show of ordering the bills by denomination. Brandon keeps his gun pointed at the men, but Omar senses him glancing over out of the corner of his eye – what now? In general, Omar don’t rip and run without planning a long time first; impromptu shit not really being his style and all. They don’t have a getaway car, and Omar isn’t interested in running up and down Broadway.
Omar folds the bills in half. At that very second, a taxi (and who knows what a taxi’s doing in this part of Broadway?) coasts by. Almost without thinking, Omar raises the folded bills in the air and flags the cab. He gets in the cab and Brandon follows suit, still pointing the gun. Omar says loudly, I be late for the Gamblers Anonymous meeting at the church on Franklin. Brandon slams the car door and the taxi pulls out.
So who are we in the game? he asks Omar. We the shells? The operators? Or are we always stick-up boys?
Omar touches a finger to his cheekbone. That depend, I suppose.
Brandon leans his head against Omar’s shoulder. Omar puts an arm around him, sneaks a hand under his jacket. He’s not looking for a gun, though; he wants to feel Brandon’s heart beat. The pulse is firm and strong, like the rest of him, but it’s going too fast. Brandon still gets scared.
Easy, easy, Omar murmurs. Personally, he is extremely pleased with what just went down. The arrival of the taxi at just the right moment – that was perfect, that was tight. He just wants Brandon to settle already; Brandon ain’t no hustler, got no taste for the theatrical.
Now him. Brandon is something else. You could stick up any stash house in the world – the Towers, the back rooms of the White House, or wherever – and you wouldn’t find any drug cut so pure, no gold so beautiful. When Brandon looks at Omar with his pretty eyes it’s like nothing else in the West Side and maybe the whole world. Brandon ain’t the pea in the shell; he’s a pearl in an oyster.
And if anyone was to ever – ever – fuck with something so pure, well, they gonna get got for sure. For the first time, Omar knows what it’s like to be a stash boy.
They go for breakfast. Omar treats. Not a bad way to start the day.
The afternoon is real work, though. Omar been reconnoitering the Pit. He pays off eyes and ears to get in close to the action, see how often they change up the stash house. Learning to speak all the bodies of a crew is just like learning to speak one man’s body; just takes a little longer to learn all the tones. A few more days of surveillance, that’s all, then it be time to move.
Sometimes, he, whoever he’s with that is, will get bored. Start stomping on vials just to hear them crack, just to relieve the tedium. Brandon is different. He sits at Omar’s side, close enough to share heat, and hums. He’s patient. Omar only learned how to be patient when he was getting stitched back together after his face got slashed open. Brandon’s like Buddha or something: just knows from birth.
The light dies earlier and earlier these days. Once upon a time, back at Edmondson, Omar had to take an orienteering class. He forgets the particulars of why; the only time anyone from Edmondson would be out in the woods would be to bury bodies. Maybe it was some kind of outreach thing. The only thing he remembers from the class is how to measure the time you got left before the sun sets: you stick your hand out at arms’ length, and count how many knuckles you can fit between the sun and the ground. Each knuckle is fifteen minutes. Omar shows Brandon how to count the sun on his fingers. Brandon asks if it matters that they can’t see the horizon; just fences and buildings. Omar says, No, it don’t matter. Just some trick I learned.
As they walk back to the vacant they’re currently occupying, Brandon reminds him that tomorrow is Sunday – church day with Grandma. It’s good Omar has someone to keep track of that. Omar can count minutes, can go from day to day, but he needs someone else to remind him that some things are good, that some things are special. Brandon’s good at that.
Sunday is still a few hours away. They split a can of Spaghetti-O’s and make love.
Omar sings to Brandon: the toe and the foot bone join together and the foot and the anklebone join together and the ankle and the leg bone join together … he runs his hands up the legs, doesn’t stop until there’s no part left to sing; he doesn’t stop until both their hearts beat thunderously, tremendously.
The thunder tapers away, and curls up to sleep. Omar wraps around Brandon, whose breath is already light and even. Omar's on his way there too; the last thing he thinks before he drops off is that he never seen a pearl with such long eyelashes before.