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By Root 786 0

older woman with big breasts she didn’t mind showing off in a low-cut sweater, two Santa earrings swinging at each ear. Manny ordered another V.O. and ginger and was fishing in his pocket for some cash when a man behind him jumped up from a table and ran outside. From where he sat, Manny could see the whole scene out the oval window of the front door, as if it had been framed like that just for him. And he knew the man who’d rushed out to the street. It was Little Junior, a punk in the neighborhood who was into everything but his own business. He was small and always packing heat, and now he was pointing his finger an inch from a big man’s face, a black man Manny had seen around for years. Manny turned to the barmaid who’d just finished mixing his drink, setting it on the bar in front of him, when four shots thumped through the air outside and Manny turned to see through the oval frame Little Junior falling away, the black man out of sight.

“We all went out there. You know, we stood around Little Junior just looking at him ’cause he was gone, brother. You didn’t have to take his pulse or nothing.”

Little Junior lay flat on his back, his arms and legs spread like he was going to make a snow angel. Only there was no snow, just the frozen air, and all four shots had ripped through his chest and now Manny was getting to the end of his story, the point that made him tell us in the first place.

“There was steam rising out of them holes, man. You could see it coming out of him.” Manny looked from Curtis to me. He shook his head. “I know that was the heat of his body, but it was Christmas Day, brother, so I seen that as his soul, Little Junior’s dirty little soul, rising up over us all.”

THERE WAS Brendan D., a recovering coke addict who’d done five years for possession and for stealing thousands and thousands of dollars to buy that white powder he could no longer go a day without. He was born the same year I was and had grown up the son of a banker. He was raised in a shiny world of shiny things, he said, and it was at his private high school on acres of protected green that he discovered the rush of snorting white lines up his nose that put him in a soft white world where everything made sense and he was never at a loss for words.

“I just couldn’t not be high anymore.” Brendan told me this on a Wednesday or Thursday night after all the counseling sessions and recovery meetings were through. I was making my rounds, and he stood near his bunk folding clothes he’d just pulled from the center’s dryer down in the basement. He was in a white T-shirt and institutional green pajama bottoms, a pair he must’ve gotten in rehab somewhere. His roommate, Hernando, was taking a shower in the bathroom down the hall. These were the last two on my head-count sheet, so I leaned my shoulder against the doorjamb and waited for Hernando.

“These meetings keep reminding me of that, Andre. Sometimes you forget.”

I asked Brendan if he still had the craving for it. He nodded, placed folded jeans on his mattress, and reached for a shirt. “But not enough to do time again.”

Maybe there was something in my face that made him talk more. Maybe it was how close we were in age, I didn’t know, but he began telling me how scared he was his first months inside. How it took him a while to learn the rules, that you never take a favor or even a cigarette from anyone or you’ll owe a debt and if you don’t pay it, you’re fair game. That as a fish, a new prisoner, you’re fair game anyway. Especially when you’re eighteen years old, like he was, with a smooth face and lean body. That was the first thing he had to do, prove he wouldn’t be taken easily. His first week behind the walls, a big con in the commissary said in a loud voice that he was going to make Brendan his little punk. Brendan turned and told him just as loud to fuck off. There were C.O.’s there, so nothing happened, but the next morning just before stepping out into the corridor for formation to the mess hall, a con from next door pushed a rolled newspaper at him.

“I thought he was giving me something