“Tracy, give me another cigarette.”

  “That’s the speed talkin, baby boy. You just had one.”

  “Give me a cigarette, Tracy.”

  “Bitch, do you see a fuckin Arab selling swishers and forties somewhere, cause if you do, please include a bitch.”

  My head didn’t itch, but I rubbed fingers along my scalp back and forth until it hurt. “They’re so big. So fucking big,” I said, lips tightening into a thin line as I thought of Abby in the foster home. I touched the cold black marble of the building with a fist.

  I smelled the smoke before I saw Tracy’s hand hovering below my head with the Newport. “Thanks,” I said.

  “That’s alright,” she said, “but just remember got fifteen left after that one.”

  The smoke felt good in my speed-tightened lungs. I wanted paper and pen so I could work out my thoughts about the four buildings.

  “Which one?” I said, blowing out smoke, watching tendrils of it twist around a fleshie that looked a bit like a toad.

  Tracy sat down on the emerald ground.

  “You ok?” I said.

  “Just fuckin lightheaded,” she said, crossing her red chucks over each other. She brought her shirt up to her nose which was dripping blood again. “Shit hurts.”

  “Even with all that dope?” I said.

  She cocked her head like Are you fuckin kidding me?

  “Honey, I’m a shooter. Shit’s like Aspirin for me.”

  I snorted. “Yeah ok.”

  “You think I’m shittin you?”

  “I know you are. Your pupils are pin dots.” I made a closing manacle with my thumb and forefinger.

  Tracy clicked her tongue. “If the other options are moles or bats, I’m going with the hawk,” she said. “Elephant’s out.”

  “Elephant’s out.” I nodded, facing the hawk building, then turning the Polaroid over to read it again. “Says this is all one tower, the Tower of Black Angels, but looks like four.”

  “I don’t trust those fuckin pictures,” Tracy said.

  “The pictures are how we found your medicine,” I pointed out.

  Tracy inched to the side of the emerald path and peered over.

  “Nothing. Black. No bottom,” I said.

  “Which one you want?” Tracy said.

  “Which building?”

  “Mhm.”

  “I wanna know what they mean,” I said.

  “Well, no shit,” Tracy said.

  I considered her a moment. “Tracy, does a trumpet mean anything to you?”

  The cock-sure set off her shoulders fell forward, and she looked at first lost then pissed, like, very pissed.

  “The fuck you just say?”

  “Trumpet,” I said, “it was on one of the Polaroids in your room.”

  “Don’t mean shit,” she said, turning away. “Let’s flip for it.”

  I threw my hands up. “Flip what?”

  “For heads or tails, bitch.”

  “Right. You have a fucking coin then?”

  She pulled the Newport pack free of its snug home in her pocket. She shook them, and it made too much sound for my comfort. They were dwindling. “Heads or tails,” she said, pointing to the front and back of the pack.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “This is fucking ridiculous.”

  She met my eyes. There was something in those emerald irises buried in black mascara, eyes the same color as the path, that told me she meant this flip, meant it true, and that it would be true, that somehow our decision to flip was like a contract and we would get a 50/50 shot.

  I held up three fingers.

  “The side,” she said.

  “You know how unlikely it is for it to land on the side,” I said.

  “I do,” she said. There was a chilling quiet to her voice. She still wouldn’t let up with her eyes. She beat me with them.

  “Ok,” I said. “Jesus, this is crazy.”

  “It is,” she agreed, tapping the front of the pack. “Hawk.” She tapped the back. “Bat.” The side. “Star nosed mole.”

  “Don’t fuck up and drop them,” I said, “why don’t you come a little closer.”

  She didn’t, throwing the pack up, holding my eyes as it spun in the air. The four black buildings seemed to lean in like invested participants, the fleshies floating with the Polaroids like spectators to the gamble.

  The pack landed on the path with a cardboard click and snare roll of the cigs inside, on its bottom side, one of the sides we hadn’t accounted for.

  “Oh, for fuck’s—”

  Tracy cut the air with a hand, shutting me up, then standing very still with both hands in front of her. The pack stood like that too long, then fell forward, flat on its face. The back faced up.

  “That’s the bat then,” I said.

  Tracy turned to look at the looming building directly across the way. “Sure the fuck is,” she said. “Don’t like rabbits. Sure as fuck don’t like bats.”

  “You think that’s what it means?” I said.

  “You got a better guess?”

  I thought of tusks. Then shook my head.

  “Come on, white boy,” she said, but she was smiling. She picked up the Newports, shoved them back in her pocket.

  The path was almost a mile to the middle by my guess. There at the crossing of the emerald X was the loneliest, surrounded on all sides. I wondered what was in the indigo mist we breathed in. Tracy jumped and plucked one of the Polaroids floating in the air—one of the Polaroids far from any fleshies—studied it, then tossed it over her shoulder, hitting me in the stomach.

  It was a picture of a woman with strawberry-blonde curls, the same kind of tumbling embers that my wife Shelly had passed on to Abby, but the woman was neither of them. Not quite. She looked like somewhere between them in age, and in features.

  I stopped, and it took a few moments before Tracy realized I wasn’t following.

  “What you stop for?” Tracy said.

  I turned the Polaroid over. There was no writing.

  “Just some bitch,” Tracy said, walking back to me, then she put a hand to her mouth. “Oh shit. You know her?”

  “Uh, no,” I said, tucking the picture into my pocket with the hawk. “Sorry. Let’s go.”

  Tracy raised her brows, shrugged, then turned around. I kind of wished I’d kept that trumpet Polaroid so I could like, throw it at her right then. She was cheery for some reason, almost skipping. And was that …? Yes, that was humming.

  “What the hell do you have to be so happy about?” I said. We were approaching the bat building now.

  She looked over her shoulder, briefly glancing down at my hands. “You throw that picture out?”

  “What’s the picture got to do with anything?” I said.

  “Fuck all,” she said. “I hum. It’s a habit. Y’know, like how you smoke too much and bite the skin on your fingertips.”

  “You smoke,” I said.

  “Sure do,” she said, looking up. “But not like you. Here the fuck we are. You ready?”

  I scowled at her as I passed and plucked the bat Polaroid from the pink W to the right of the entrance. It had the same message as the hawk Polaroid, only differing in its reference to the positioning of the buildings.

  “Should we have lit cigarettes when we go on?” I said. “For extra light?”

  “Fuckin fiend,” Tracy said, but she pulled two out and lit them, handing me one. She tapped her pinkie and thumb together on her cigarette hand, playing with a cornrow’s twisted end with the other. “If it gets you again—”

  “Nothing’s gonna fucking get me, alright?”

  “If it gets you again,” Tracy went on, “fuckin stab it with the cherry. But stay right next to me. I’ll hold the lighter in the middle.”

  My mouth suddenly became very dry with one mentholated drag like knives in my throat. How long since I’d had a drink of water?

  I nodded. We went up.

  When we made it to a landing, shadow swallowed even flame, and an ever-present buzzing rose to near-deafening heights to compete with the putrid of the elephant building. My throat tightened and it took some tongue-waggling and swallowing to summon a coating of spit for lubrication.

  Moist and dripping, soft and supple, something brushed my right cheek.

  “Tracy,” I said. I reached a hand out to my left and found what I thought—what I hoped—was an arm.

  I jerked my face away from the wet thing.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Are you … are you touching my cheek?” I whispered.

  “It’s on me too,” Tracy said. I could hear her flicking the Zippo with no sign of a spark.

  “Let’s go back,” I said. My breath was hot, quick, and my spit wouldn’t come. The wet thing hit my cheek again and I moved away, shivering.

  “Come on, you cunt,” Tracy said, flicking the Zippo with a tch.

  “Tracy, run!” I shouted.

  “The light, Andy—”

  “Fuck that. The steps were this way, back this way, we’ll go to a different building, we’ll—ah!”

  The brush of tusk like tickles of a soft mother’s hand down my back. And the nipple on my cheek—in the periphery of my awareness I knew it to be true, though I could not see. My stabbing throat grew unbearable as the buzzing dried us out, and we lay down holding hands, like twins at Mother’s breasts. We forgot our names we so thirsted.

  And we lay so long weak in darkness, with images of brushing tusks, and the sandpaper swallows scraping so dry, we eventually drank of the shadow.