No Dominion

He sits back, but he doesn’t relax.

– You wanted proof. You got it. In abundance. You want to take jerkoff here and cut him to ribbons, be my guest. You’re pla

He looks out the window, shakes his head.

– Call off the dogs. Get me my passage. You take a look outside? You see the time of day? Call off the dogs? Muthafucka, they ain’t my dogs. Peeps out there spottin’ for you, sittin’ behind shaded glass with an eye on the street, they all Papa’s. A passage? Where to? Go

He pulls out his phone, flips it open and scrolls to the incoming calls screen.

– Look at this shit.

I look.

PREDO

PREDO

PREDO

– The fat is in the fire. The man knows you crossed his yard. Says you went ru

He leans back, runs a finger over his moustache.

– You come with me. Kick it up at Percy’s place. Nobody go

He puts out his hand.

I don’t take it.

– Yeah. Trouble is. I got a date tonight.

He raises his eyebrows.

– Got a date.

I shrug.

He keeps his hand out.

– Know, Pitt, that shit ain’t fu

I look at his hand. I think about the sun and all the hours of daylight between right now and sunset. I think about those couple pints I drank before I came up here and the one left at home and the punishment I’ve been taking. I run my tongue around the inside of my mouth, feel the last traces of the cuts Vandewater’s boys put in there when they tried to make me eat that poker chip. I look at the man who sent me up that hill, the hand he’s holding out to me. I think about pulling the trigger on the machine pistol in my hand and watching the bullets disintegrate his face.

He sees my eyes.

Not a stupid man, he sees I don’t like him. He takes his hand back.

– Have it yo own damn way, Pitt.

I put the gun down.

– That’s kind of the point.

I pull Shades’ ski mask over my face. I slip on his gloves and his shades.

– That the A stop across the street?

Digga watches me.

– Yeah. Got the train fare?

– Got that grand you bet for me on your weak-ass dog?

He fishes his hand in his pocket and comes out with a roll.

– Here’s the G.

I take the money.

He thinks about something, licks his thumb and peels off another thin sheaf of bills.

– Here’s another G. For yo trouble.

I take it.

He puts his roll away.

– Kind of throwin’ good money after bad on my part. Seein’ as how you ain’t go

I open the door.

– Got no choice. My girl, she hates to be stood up.

I get out of the car and walk into the daylight.

It’s the direct UVs that get you. Uncovered skin gets hit by the direct rays of the sun, you cook like that boy got cooked in Vandewater’s apartment. Keep covered, stay in the shade, get lucky, and you can get by. You’ll burn alright; you’ll burn, and the more you burn the more you’ll push the limits of the Vyrus. But stay covered and you can get by. I am far too well protected by my covering for the sun to do any permanent damage here. I would have to walk in the direct rays, unshaded, for blocks before the UVs could do serious damage through all these layers.

And yet.

One step out of the garage, walking in the sun-protected lee of the mall, I feel it. Its pressure and heat. Like a Russian bath, a Russian bath that causes cancer. I feel the heat straight through the mask and gloves and every other stitch of clothing on my body. Sweat erupts across my scalp and rolls down my sides. My mouth goes dry and I feel a hot flash that ripples out from my gut, rolling through my organs and my blood. The Vyrus writhes inside me, confused, threatened, ready to kill me, kill itself, rather than endure the sun.

Crossing the street, trotting between the cars so I don’t have to stand on the corner and wait for the light to change, I remember something. I remember being a sixteen-year-old runaway, how I spent that summer, every day in Tompkins Square. I remember sprawling drunk and shirtless on the brown grass and waking, my skin so deeply burned it radiated heat. The girl I was with that night, holding her hand an inch from my stomach, warming her fingers. I poured ice-cold beer over my chest. For days the skin flaked and peeled. I picked at it, teasing off leafs of it and burning holes in them with the tip of my cigarette to gross out my friends with the smell. When the burned skin was dead and gone, I was browner than the grass in the park. That winter I was infected.

I look at the subway entrance just ahead. All things being equal, I’m going to die down there, somewhere between here and home. I stop at the top of the stairs.

I look up at the blue sky.

And pay for it with boiling tears and blurred vision.

Half blind, I stumble down the stairs into the hole in the ground, cursing myself.

The platform is crowded. My vision is still clouded, but I run my eyes around, looking for any of Papa’s ton tons macoute. Nothing.

I pull up the ski mask. Doesn’t matter who sees my face. The ones I’m most concerned about will smell me anyway.

I stand on the platform, shifting from foot to foot and rubbing the tears from my eyes, blinking away the blur. The platform grows more crowded. I put my back against one of the green girders that lines the platform. I breathe deep, smell the rats on the track along with all the other stinks of the station. I watch the faces, not caring if I catch anyone’s eye. Never certain if I have because of my fogged vision.