"Highway 95" | A contemporary fiction short story

When your hometown is a prison, breakout takes tremendous risk. A harrowing journey for all involved.

Part 1

The gym mirror reflected a fat kid of slim ambition and thinning hair. No matter the angle of his face, at 22, everything receded or grew seriously large. "Fuck me." Against concerted mental effort, he'd become his parents, an overbearing father and a mother nowhere to be found.

Omari reached unenthusiastically for his face down phone. A blue bubble blurted at him.

"Bro wtf? U fall in?"

He texted back: "comin out." Finger-smudge sludge mucked the screen with fog. Omari wiped at it, only to spread the slickness deeper into the tempered glass like a perma-stained old car window.  While he wiped, he caught a peek of his bare unshaded round stomach. Melancholy mask tightened around his temples at the sight of it. The locker room door swung open. A jacked Asian dude plunked a swollen gym bag down close enough that his (probably) Armani cologne hit Omari like a nailed flick to the nose. The guy began to change. Soon his shirt, then shoes, then dress slacks were neatly folded on the thin brown bench.

Omari fast-walked out. Through clanking weights, grunting raises, well-bootied bitches, and backs curved over phones with a full weighted rack behind, he found his brother X-Ray at one of only three bench press benches on the floor. 

"You take a shit or what?"

"Naw, bro, I was jus'..."

"Off in yo own world again, huh?"

Omari looked out the window. A saggy-skinned old man with a desperate face shuffled the curve of the rubberized track.

"Come on and gimme a spot." X-Ray slid under the bar as if it were a car he'd fixed again and again. There must have been at least 150 lbs. on there.

"Ready?" His eyes rolled up to find Omari.

"How many you gonna do?"

"As many as I can."

"Okay." His brother lifted off, then began. The way X-Ray's chest mounded like rising pancakes with every push made him lose count. 

"You goin' to see Dad today?"

Neck veins plumped a ramose pattern as X-Ray puffed out the number three.

"Like. Always, gr. Whyy?"

"Was gonna see about that job again."

"AH! How many is that?"

"Seven." X-Ray shoved the steel up, while the weights rattled on both ends. A very tall woman, of near tissue-white skin, loaded a bar on the next bench. "Again!? How many...OOH!...times you gonna apply O?"

The time was 3:13PM. Omari glanced at his encumbered pocket where his phone was, but continued his spot.

"Well you know how fuckin' borin' this place is. I heard Reggie got on with a Amazon gig. He said they hirin'. So why not?"

"AH!" X-Ray clanked the bar with control back on the hooks. "As many as he could" turned out to be near 10 reps. His brother sat up, stood, then immediately began removing the clips and weights. He wasn't sweating at all.

"You mean that struggle bald nigga?"

"Hey, he said on Instagram, that he savin' up money to get a ass hair transplant."

X-Ray sniffed loud, then snickered. "Oh hair replacement? They take it from yo ass and put on yo head?"

"Bro, I don't know. That's just what he say." Omari's breath came out in a partial laugh, like a pressed-on near deflated balloon.

"They should take it from your pubes. Not even an open fire could take that hair out."

Omari felt the crown of his head. He'd always kept it shaved low, a fact he attributed to the frown as his finger found emerging skin growing where "good" hair once grew. X-Ray slapped his hand away.

"Quit that. Imma go get water. You betta be ready fo yo set when I get back." He went toward the fountains.

Omari's phone shook in his shorts. 3:27PM the digital clock said. "Close enough."

Reading the message made the single muscle he'd been holding in his buttocks lose all tension. But his forearms corded somewhere beneath the skin.

3:27 PM: [Heeey O, it's Janique. I gotta in on the Amazon job down in LV. But imma need a ride. U still Uberin?]

Omari looked over his shoulder. X was stooped over the water fountain. He glanced again, wiped his thumbs on the en-lightened bar, then rapid-fire texted:

[Yeah I am.]

He thought a second, then ten more. Another look back. X strode with purpose back toward the bench. "Shit."

[Vegas is far. You got me for gas??]

"C'mon."

X had stopped behind him to chat with someone Omari only knew by voice.

Janique's message popped up:

3:29 PM: [For sure. Plus I got more than that. If you interested in hearin and seein...]

Omari swiped the palm of his glistening hand over the bar's tiny metal ridges.

3:29 PM: [...it]

"Who's that?" X-Ray was behind him. Omari shoved his phone in his pocket then began to move toward the gym exit.

"Nobody."

"For real? Why nobody got you sweatin' out yo shirt?" X grabbed for his pocket. "Lemme see."

"Naw naw, it's all good. Oomph!" Omari tripped over a camouflaged dumbbell. "Later, later, I'll get you later."

"What about this set?"

Omari was already at the exit, on his way out into the oven air.

Part 2

Green shirt or black shirt? Boots or sneakers? Go or no? These are questions Omari had vacillated on for a good thirty minutes before climbing into his teal Toyota Corolla to pick up Janique: a risk, a chance at something he never thought available to him. He'd liked her before knowing what it meant to like someone. He could even love her, maybe.

But there was a nagging in the back of his throat no amount of saliva would wash down. It manifested as one of those pre-cold itches; one only honey tea and days of lying in bed could cure. He almost popped a citrus-flavored lozenge before dashing out of his manicured room at Aunt Kristie's; however, he didn't want his tongue to be dyed orange. Just in case. By 4:36 PM he was out the door without a blink at the mirror.

The tiny town of Tonopah was doing its desert thing. Flinging fine dust on the road, smelling like flaking wood, making his eyes flex with refracted light that stung even with sunglasses, teasing slants of shade on the west sides of groveless rocky earth, cold gusts swiping across high flatness - this plateau was a prison, a mountain he desired to descend and never return to.

When he saw Janique, Omari sat straighter in the driver's seat. He fumbled with the radio - off or on? Off it was. Janique had her hair in braids, jeans fit right round her waist. She wasn't tall, yet she strutted as if on a catwalk. Even a strong blast of wind did nothing to curve her path.

Omari's phone activated while she came over, breaking the temporary spell. Time: 3:45 PM. He shook his head once at that, then shook it again when he read the message from X:

3:45PM: [Dad not doin' well. Might have missed skipped his blood pressure meds again.] 

3:45PM: [Where the hell you goin'?] 

He slipped the phone in his jacket pocket, then took a deliberate large breath to stop his hand from trembling. Janique opened the car door.

"I thought you were gonna come out and walk me over?"

"Uh."

"It's cool. You ready?"

"Yeah yeah I'm chill."

She buckled her seat belt, then reached over and slap-patted his thigh. "You're too funny, O. Thanks for helpin' me out on such short notice. I didn't think you'd say yes."

"Naw it's no problem." He began to make his way south out of town. "So you know about the Amazon job, or uh, you got a inside conec? Really could use the money. Tryin’ to save up for my own place in Vegas."

She sat royally, hands in lap, chip up, her nod was officially curt. "I do. X told me you been lookin' for work, for a way out of this place, so I figured it'd be win-win for us both."

"Yeah he right." He put the car indrive and proceeded down the familiar routine through town.

"Why you tryin' ta leave?" Her head turned searchlight style on him. Omari's face shined with a smile under her radiant attention.

"I dunno, well uh, I do it's just well this place is so borin'! Town ain't got nothin' goin' for it. No jobs, barely no schools, everybody's broke or broken, it's just... well I see it as a really kinda sad excuse for a place. What? What's funny?"

Janique's laugh was a pitchy controlled event, like the sound an undisturbed mouse might make. "We got the Central Nevada Museum and the Clown Motel? Why you bitchin'?"

"See, now I know you didn't jus bring that creepy ass place up! Janique! Dat place is so fuckin' corny. I don't see why anyone right in the head would come up here for that trash."

She smoothed her jeans while her beamed mirth kept him in the spotlight. "Okay okay, I was kiddin'. But O, real talk, I'm here, your brother, Dad, and Mom--"

"What about her? Besides the fact no one's heard from her since senior year?" Omari's hands gripped the wheel hard. Before they both knew it, a braked trailer full of hanging hay out the backe (horseless) appeared at a red light. He barely jammed the brakes in time to prevent a collision.

Janique's head rotated forward. Her light dimmed. "I'm just sayin', they're, we're all here too. You ever think about that?"

Omari adjusted the seatbelt around his belly. When they drove, the car made it jiggle.

A red roof floated by his peripheral eye beyond the window's glass. That was the Texaco - the town's last landmark before opening to 3 hrs and 7 minutes of awkward desolation.

7:01 PM. 

The sunset sky highlighted violet-orange strips over deserted mountains. Both vehicle occupants’ vision were trained ahead on the darkening road and the conveyor of occasional headlight pairs approaching from the opposing lane.

They hadn't spoken since Texaco.

Another buzz of the phone caused Omari's thigh to spasm. Three times and despite trying to anticipate it, he was surprised every time. He didn't look. There was no need to.

"You not gonna read it?" 

"It's just X."

"Seems like he really wants to get at you."

"I'll hit him later."

In the coming dark, her lighthouse look found him. 

"You know I used to work wit yo Momma right?"

Omari stretched his neck, then inclined his ear in her direction.

"Yeah I knew. What about her?"

"O, you need to chill. You're so, so stiff. You're like a statue. Keep it up and birds’ll come by stand and squirt shit on your head."

Omari chanced a laugh. "I guess I'm just super cautious."

"Why?"

"You seen how the world treats black guys? We're either completely invisible or visible for all the wrong reasons. There's no happy medium."

"Hey! How do you think I feel as a black woman!?" Rays of the day's last light shown under passing low clouds, they appeared like the bottom of a heated pot on the oven.

"Um excuse me, if I'm not mistaken, the last ten or fifteen years have been about liftin' ya'll up. Ya'll get programs, fellowships, women's groups and workshops, grants, accelerators, in all." 

Janique kept him in her sight, but crossed her arms. "And what we got? Black guys? Saggin' morale, just as disgust-provoking as ever, from everyone - including other black men. That's why I go frozen sometimes, that and and..."

"And what?"

Omari shook his head. "And nothin'. My bad Janique. It's jus I, I been lookin' forward to hangin' out wit' you."

Her mouse-y laughter hit his ears just right. "What do you mean? I just saw you last week at that barbeque."

"Yeah I know, but that was with X and a whole buncha other randos. I meant, what I meant was, hangin' out as in, jus' us."

"Oh."

Far over them stars blinked awake. Their joint light, while faint, cast a pale glow on the treated asphalt of Nevada Highway 95. Omari didn't want to look at her, because the skin on the right side of his face warmed at her unflinching focus. It was the temperature of a lightbulb recently extinguished, pleasantly warm, safe enough to touch.

"O, later I'll tell you somethin' about me you might not know."

He noticed the hooked moonlight filtering off her perfect face. "What is it, Janique?"

"I said later, cuz first I need another favor."

Part 3

Vegas sparkles in the night; heating cool Spring air in a dome of the depression's light. Declining into the valley pushes Omari's sleep drifting lids up to great aperture. Janique sits equally rapt, unaware her uniquely plumped raspberry glossed lips are parted, he noticed. Omari removed his foot from the accelerator to let the rumbling Toyota and the bowl's slope decide his pace. Past the new builds of North Las Vegas made of clone townhouses accented with sad architectural differences that only serve to highlight their earth-toned sameness, along the Suburban sprawl of true west valley Vegas where the semi-rich stay in Summerlin, then further lower to downtown where the well-smoked grind of homeless and roaming tourist's spilled beer baked into the sidewalks rises even in mild night air, Omari assumed the position of a wannabe-local, ass on the front half of his seat as he made sometimes well-calculated lane changes among rental cars (because they drove too slow), 18-wheeler pilots stomping the gas, their trailers closing in like mobile walls, twin street-tricked cars with lowlights and loud engines with custom state plates: one) C4TCHME, two) UR2SL0W racing ribbons through evening traffic, Omari pulled, pushed, braked, braked again while his jaw flexed, next to him Janique's head achieved 360-degree ability as prominent neon motion flashed filmic progressions in her eyes.

"O, there's your exit."

"Uh right, just got a little sidetracked."

"You did good. Driving down here is always rough." She patted his elbow. He pulled his gut in in response.

The place they stopped seemed a world away from the actioned aura of the Strip. Omari took in his surroundings, like a cat sniffing a discarded M&Ms wrapper. A gaggle of shelterless afflicted street denizens swapped shopping cart contents under arcs of street drenched in dark. If not for the vertical bars of blue light jutting off the structure and an angled cone of heaven-sent white light, the parking lot would have been completely black.

"Janique, what you gotta do here?"

She placed her hand on the door handle with softness. "There's somethin' I gotta take care of. Shouldn't take more than ten minutes or so." Her words were reminded him of the way Mom used to say things to Dad, a one-way delivery of information. No returns required.

"You goin' in alone?" Omari's shoulders fell. "Cuz this place looks a little, uh 'unbecoming', y'know? Look, it's all dark. Shady as shit. Y'never know what these druggies'll do. I think I should go--"

"I'll be fine. I come here all the time. Just gonna settle somethin' real quick is all. Wait for me?"

She gave that expecting genuinely female expression of pre-clingy vulnerability; it was the Need for understanding’s implicit acceptance, the kind that demanded answers or action, nothing was not an option.

Omari's posture concaved in. "Yeah, I'll be here. BUT! Text me if things get weird. I gotta bad feelin'."

Janique's next movement made him lean away for the rightness of it. Fruit-scented lips, softly placed, landed on his cheek just above his single jowled jaw. His breath came so fast he wished the last thing he'd eaten wasn't a bag of Cheetos. The moment was over in a Vegas minute, one where fortunes are won and lost in the span of a statement.

"You're sweet, O. I'll be back." Then she was gone. Only a cloud of sweet perfume drifted in the passenger seat.

9:41 PM.

An extended party in his pants came to a swift end when he pulled out his phone. 

10 missed messages from X-Ray. 

He swiped up and up to get to the most recent. Reading it made his grip tighten on the phone.

8:10 PM: [Dad stroked out. Ambulance arrived.]

8:47 PM: [They can't treat him here. Flyin' him down to Vegas.]

8:47 PM: [Will text you the address.]

8:48 PM: [You good?]

He shook like a spooked dog. For the first time in forever, Omari lost time. Typing and re-typing messages, not one of which seemed correct, proper, appropriate, or prudent, took the tick-tick of many minutes. The headrest creaked with his head-weight heavy against it. A single sound that joined the severely subbed dance music coming from the club's interior. 

Omari's finger hovered over the stoplight green 'Call' button. Another missed minute dropped like change from a shallow pocket. He put his thumb down. Phone at his ear, he listened to the digital pulse dial-sound. Times like these it reminded him of a load screen in those OG PlayStation games. Omari leaned forward in antsy waiting.

After 5-ten pulses, he pulled the phone away examining the screen. 

10:02 PM. Right time, wrong number of people exiting the club at the same time way too fast. The door had flung open and a group of girls (ladies?), in various vestments of dis-dress seemingly randomly conceived, moved under the parking light. They slung sharp words. Language of questionable origin, Omari could only make out a few in English. 

"Que coño! Ése pinche maricón! Fucking loser!" They swayed, lit crumpled cigarettes, and got on their phones for multiple unknown uses.

10:09 PM. 

He hadn't heard from Janique.

Part 4

"Man, this is what happens when I get too deep."

Bass beat Omari's back in the cramped entryway. He'd entered something that gave him the feeling of driving the Desert Inn tunnel, except here a permanent haze hung low like a lazy phantom. Wacky weed with it's faintly candied aroma, Tito's vodka mixed some other shit, and some failing deodorizer caught in a losing bout with cooch and ball sweat crowded up his nose like an oozing tissue. Omari briefly held his jacket up across his face, but put it down to avoid looking like a punk.

"Well? ID." 

The voice came from a face like wood overexposed to sun. She regarded Omari with uncaring impatience. He fumbled to produce his state driver's license. The ladies from before re-entered, temporarily allowing illumination from the parking lot in like latecomers to a theater. The lady behind the counter inspected his face on the mini-document and before her in hawkish fashion, in a real off-duty cop way. Omari glanced at his phone: 10:12 PM.

"Kid, here." Teeth (two missing) the hue of dried highlighter returned a smile. Vocal chords, forever phlegm-coated as in someone who'd sucked and thrown 1000s of smokes, scraped the words out.

"Excuse me ma'am, but I'm lookin' for my friend." Music ballooned behind her as sheened air shifted from fuchsia to some type of faded mustard color. 

"What?" 

"Hey! Hurry the fuck up!" One of the staggering women behind him wobbled in shaky heels.

Omari dared to touch the counter to lean in. Immediately, non-descript stickiness made his fists close in regret. The ex-cop raised an amused eyebrow.

"MY FRIEND! She's about this tall. Black girl, maybe my age, jeans, brown jacket with white stripes, uh..." Omari said using a clubbed yell.

"Yeah I seen her. In the back corner, VIP. Tell the guy, Elaine sent ya."

"Okay, Elaine, Elaine, got it."

Omari stepped to enter, then heard her sick voice behind him. "Careful, kid."

Inside, the club was a hollow whale. Spacious, surprisingly well-ventilated, surprisingly empty. Kendrick Lamar’s conversational rhythmic bop peekaboo stomped out the speakers with artfully synced lighting. Omari scanned the area. A short Mexican-ish man in a white suit, strutted in concentrated step with an equally short and fleet-footed big boobed older woman in a leopard print one-piece, a group of 4 in street clothes (likely regulars) shout-talked over a table of empty Coors bottles, then right where she'd said, there was a guy, all black’suited, standing before the customary nightclub velvet rope. He spied a familiar coat hanging adjacent to the hall, it was brown with white stripes. 

“Janique.”

Omari rounded the dance floor at a brisk pace. At the rope was the one standing with military posture: hands folded across his crotch head swiveling in surveillance behind blacked-out shades. He was a black guy with dreadlocks, a block of a head on a sticked frame that made him appear very Minecraftian. Behind him were the chipped plastic stanchions supporting the basic barrier between a common and premium experience. So claimed every hand-slapped flier tiling the Vegas Strip.

"Whoa not so fast my man." Blockhead outstretched his hand in a stop stance. Though not much taller - and certainly not larger - than Omari, the formation of his body made a perfect 90 degree angle. A simple thrust at max aura could have shoved Omari’s sternum into his heart MK1 style, likely. Omari stood on his toes to get another look down the hall, but it was too dark, so he stepped back.

"Uh, Elaine sent me!" He regretted yelling, half-expecting the open palm to fire some sort of geometrically empowered magic or some shit.

"Elaine who?"

"Oh c'mon dude! The lady from the front! Y'know Elaine?"

"Naw, I'm fuckin' wit you. Go on back." 

"Okay, okay." 

When the dreadlocked one grabbed his arm with a reasonably powerful, but not overly so, hand Omari flinched in reflex. "Watch out man, dude's kinda in a mood tonight."

"Uh, got it."

Omari passed the graffiti-tattooed doors of the bathrooms. Both men's and women's had that foul backed-up sewer stench seeping beyond the door frames, ghosting through the halls. The music faded to blank bumping as he moved deeper. At the end of the hall he found the electric blue tinted VIP room. A raised booth with a square table, too many drinks and what he’d come searching for.

"Janique!" 

Two, three, four faces (all younger men) shot a spinning collection of irritation at him. They fell reticle-eyed on his chest, then finally on his face. One sitting next to Janique, released her from what appeared to be intimate embrace, then stood. Glistening baldness made his age hard to guess, but his clothes hinted he had money or had bought a lot on payment plans.

He gave an empty-joyed laugh upon truly seeing him. 

"Yo, Janique, who dis nigga?"

She took a sip of clear liquid from a glass, found her posture and re-adjusted her jeans. "Ed, this is the guy I told you about, Omari. He's just my friend."

Now the guys were up and out of the booth, making a wedge formation crisp as a Dorito.

Ed joined his posse. Dude was built like Neil deGrasse Tyson in his wrestling prime, easily forcing his lower ranked crew members to make way for him. Looming over the visibly shorter and softer Omari was an intimidating picture.

"Watcha want 'friend'?"

Omari remained still. But he kept her in his sight.

"Ed, he's the one for the Amazon job. Remember?"

"Yeah I do. But I didn't think he'd come here straight like that. Dis nigga got nuts, right?"

Janique slowly rose.

"Is that all? Just for the job, just like she said. Then why didn't you say so? That's an easy thing. Y'see bro, my Pop's a manager up at the big smile company. That one that delivers all your house stuff and whatever other useless impulse-bought garbage and what-nots you order. If it's just about the job, then that's easy. We can take care of that. I can call him this very second and get you on. How does $18 an hour sound?"

Omari hung his arms by his side as if talking to law enforcement. "The that would be good."

"Cool, cool. Say, Omari, was it?"

"Yeah."

"You got a resume?"

Omari's lips built into an uncomfortable smile. "Not on me."

"I'm just fuckin' with you!" Ed and crew laughed heartily, enjoying the fresh arrival’s discomfort. Janique wore a troubled expression. 

"As long as you got a license, you good." The faces grew quiet again.

"So, Omari, anything else? You sure there's no other reason you here?" Ed gently put a hand on his shoulder then kneaded three times at hypermassage force. Omari’s knees bent, but he worked to keep them straight, but not locked. Never letting his eyes off Ed.

Janique began to round the table. "Ed, leave him alone. I told you we're just friends. That's it."

"Just friends? Really? Because yo 'friend' here smellin’ real nice. It’s like, like lipstick. Yo lipstick. That's a pretty specific smell. I would know." He smacked his lips. Omari winced under the pawing grip.

"C'mon, tell me Lil' Omari, you like her don't you? You gotta be honest wit' yoself on these things. So you gonna confess it here and now. I promise I won't flip shit."

Omari eyed her directly. Her spotlight gaze flashed warnings in these rough waters: collision imminent.

"I do."

The boys moved, but so did Janique. Omari perceived hotness across his jaw. She jumped the table. Ed pulled out a glimmering edge. Omari shoved himself to his feet. No pain there. Janique grunted. Before he could think, Ed was against the table. Sharded, glasses in his back. Hands came out. Omari avoided them. He clasped Janique's forearm, then hoofed it out of the door. No looking back. Only the scented cloud trailing every hard breath told him he had her. First pops, then pings sounded around him. It was max aura and 1001 cigarettes on the final flight toward the exit.

Part 5

Sirens weren't a sound Omari was used to hearing, unless they were on a YouTube video or in a game. Currently, they seemed all around. Swarming, trapping, ready to seize another black face as representation for the degeneracy of the whole race, man and woman.

Omari drove like he was taking a driving test, occasional spurts of speed with a side of overbraking. He'd put his hand against his risen cheek to feel pained post-dental heat throbbing in fast jolts. Janique appeared sleepy.

"O, that was that was somethin' you did... back there."

"Ha uh yeah, I didn't expect--"

"O?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm bleeding."

"What!?"

Dual horns, repeatedly bursting beside and behind, caused him to swerve. He acted quickly to stay center-lane. A lit police car streaked in the southbound 95 opposite them.

"Janique! Oh shit! Lemme see lemme see."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw it: her hand covered an expanding misshapen circle of darkness that was beginning to coat her shirt and jeans and the Corolla's cloth seats. Without her jacket she shivered, legs curled toward the passenger door, yet a royal confidence still shown through.

"This is bad. We gotta stop somewhere. I I'll... okay there."

Crossing three highway lanes at 75 miles per hour without signalling was an easy way to fail a driving test. Omari only saw the shoulder while unsuspecting drivers crazily veered, brakes screeching mad at his highly dangerous maneuver. Only when the car was stopped did he bother to consider the knotted chaos he might have caused were he driving in another U.S. metro location where such driving wasn’t a nightly occurrence.

Omari got out, rounded the hood of the car, then ripped open the passenger door. A grisly scene greeted him. Janique nearly fell out, looking as pale as her skin and the open twilight allowed. 

"Janique, I don't, I don't know what to do. All I know is to hold it. Don't let the blood go out too fast."

She nodded. He readied his hands.

"Ready?"

Another confirmation.

Her groan and strained face, made the tears bubble up. To prevent them from falling He breathed hard like he was doing the unfinished workout with X.

"It's not over. It's not over. You gonna be good, be good. Janique you gotta keep your eyes open is what I heard! C'mon Janique!"

Her eyes fluttered. 

"Janique, just talk to me."

"Okay, O, I never... I never told you what I was gonna say before you dropped me off."

"Janique, maybe--"

"I said I would… It's about your Mom."

The side of the seat was ruined with hot oozing fluid.

"Janique, I don't know..."

"Shh, shh, just listen, I saw her at the store, not long before she disappeared. It was senior year. I told her... I told her that I was gonna see you."

Omari's phone rattled in his pocket. 

"She was looking strange, odd, like she'd seen something, somethin' that hangs with you no matter how many times you you close your eyes."

While maintaining pressure, he reached a free hand to retrieve his phone. She shifted in discomfort, but continued to stare at the steel-gray clothed car roof. Traffic began to slow around them.

"She says to me: Take care of my boy. O's special. He keeps to himself, but you gonna help bring him out. Ya hear me?"

Omari's features took on ugly distortion while his back heaved. Keeping it in was as hard watching her suffer.

"I feel like, like I got to keep my word, y'know? I got you out right?"

"Yes, yeah you did." His mouth was full of spit causing the words to come out balled up.

"J Janique, keep talkin'. Ya gotta keep talkin'!"

"O, I..."

"Hello? O!? Foo where you at? Been tryin' to get you!"

"X! Ah shit bro, help me! We need a ambulance now!"

"Where at!?"

"Side a northbound 95. Not far from downtown. Near the Rainbow exit. Janique's not so good."

"Okay, okay, just stay put!"

"Hold on. Hold on. There's light comin'! I'll call you back."

Omari dared to take his eyes off of Janique to focus on the rotating red and blues blinding through the stalled traffic.

It was the police.

---

5:08 AM

"O?"

With a nod, he called his brother over. X-Ray took a seat next to him in the near empty hospital lobby.

"I just checked with the doc. She said Janique's gonna be awright. Lost a ton of blood, but she's O+, so some local company, Vitalant, had a lot on hand."

Omari searched for patterns in the tiles at his feet. That activity had kept him engaged all night.

"C'mon O, she said if you hadn't held the wound, she would’ve, might’ve... it might've been different. You saved her life."

"It wouldnta been in danger in the first place if I'd just stayed my black ass in Tonopah where I belong."

X crossed his arms. "Yeah. But didn't you say the cops got those bangers in that club cuz a you? Sounds like another win to me."

Omari looked at his brother with a bitter frown. 

"I'm jus' tryin' ta be positive. Wasn't an easy night for me either. I nearly puked on the helicopter."

"For real? The mighty X, airsick? Can't believe I missed it."

"Oh you funny now? Ok go 'head laugh it up, guess you deserve it for gettin' you and her out of that den. Guess you didn't need that work out after all to deal wit' those thugs."

"But bro, look at me, I'm still fat."

"When you gonna learn lil' bro? It's not about how much you weigh, it's about the weight of your heart."

Omari raised his head. "Bro, that was probably the most corniest fuckin' thing I ever heard you say." Every snicker made his mouth ache.

"Well maybe. But you know it's true. Stop bein' so damn hard on yourself."

He offered a smile as lame as his older brother's last line.

"How's Dad?"

"Stable. This stroke didn't do him in. He's tough, and stubborn as all hell. Guess God wasn't done wit' em here yet."

5:16 PM 

The brothers sat in quiet for a bit. Low hospital calls came over the speakers above a TV playing a cooking show on mute.

"X?"

"What's up?"

"Can you tell me more about Mom?"

"What about her?"

"Like what was she like back in the day."

"Now you interested?"

"All this time, I didn't want to know cuz I thought... well it's stupid, but I thought it was cuz a me... cuz I was so sick and average comin' up, not like you."

"Of course you're not gonna be like me bro. Impossible task."

"I'm bein' serious. Why didn't you tell me more sooner?"

"Well one, you never asked. Two, you know how you like to keep things separate. You're like a fuckin' bank vault. Ain't nobody gettin' in. And guess I, I just didn't wanna hurt you."

"Bro I hear ya. But from today, you gotta talk to me more."

"I will, when yo ass ready to listen. Cool?"

"Cool."

"Gimme a hug." 

"I'm a little too sore to move man."

"Well I'm comin' in lil' bro. Make room."

Omari relaxed and wrapped his unsore arm around his brother's back. They patted each others’ backs as two men who respected each other's efforts, even if it often fell short of too lofty goals to escape stories too old.

END