THIRTEEN

Janice caught up to the victim. From the safety a the bushes, I could hear everything going on just twenty feet away. Janice asked him for a smoke, just like we'd planned. Everything seemed to be going well -- they were smiling and shit -- until the guy answered her request for a cigarette by saying he didn't smoke -- even though he had a goddamned cigarette smoldering and hanging from his parched lips.

Come on, baby, I said to myself. Don't quit now; don't let up. I knew my wife was smart enough to find some angle around his refusal to engage in the exchange that would break down his resistance and wariness. When it came to that sort a shit she beat me hands down. But what she came up with didn't really set to well with me:

She said she'd show him her titties if he gave her a smoke.

I started to get real heated, so heated I wanted to go out there and smack the shit out a her. She couldn't do nothing without making it an excuse to show her titties to a stranger. I just sat there behind them bushes watching her and I got so hot I finally couldn't take it no more and jumped out a the bushes, flexing my pecs in a real intimidating fashion. I was about to put my 18-0 record on the line and I was pretty sure I wasn't gonna lose.

I went right up behind the old man, as quiet as a fox on tiptoes, and stuck my finger into his back, just like I'd done when I was younger, right in his kidney. "Don't fucking move," I said in this real mean voice, "unless you want me to blow your guts out!"

He didn't move. I couldn't blame him. I can be a real intimidating motherfucker when I wanna be. And if I were him I wouldn't want my guts blown out.

After he put his hands in the air and froze like an ice cube, I rifled through his pockets while Janice watched me like I was some kind a animal. I thought I saw a sort a disapproval in her eyes; she was looking at me like I was some sort a animal or something like she didn't know me. Like she was having some sudden insight into my character. I was about to tell her to turn her whore eyes away if she didn't like what we were doing but I was too busy finding the thin money roll in the old dude's pocket. When I did find it, I tossed it in the air in victory, then stuck it in my pocket, sorta like the government does with part a my paycheck. Then I knocked the guy over and kicked him in the stomach. But I didn't fuck him in the ass. I leave that to Uncle Sam.

"Don't forget the smokes," Janice said.

I grabbed her arm, trying to drag her away. "We can buy our own. We gotta get outta here while the gettin's good," I told her.

But it wasn't Janice's style to be told what to do by a man, especially an alpha male like me; so she twisted free a my grip and started through the man's pockets herself, all the while he cursed her by saying: "Don't take my smokes. They all I got left in this life, bitch!"

It didn't matter at all to Janice. She didn't give a damn.