Getting Real
Art Montague

Toxic swill covers the still ponds during the summer heat. The oxygen eaters can't make it. They drive for the surface but inevitably they sink. They are soft long enough for the bottom feeders to feed and grow.

The heat of summer above the scummed, still surface of the pond works the same way on people. It drives them into the cool night, but a fevered and dark night. Some sense the tensions and flit, quick as moths, to a neon light; others seek the safe darkness beyond light, sweat slick as the shadows they feel they are or want to become.

Once in a while one of the shadow people is a little slow, a stray cut out of the night's black herd; not a good thing when the low riders are cruising, hunting.

Ricky would be hunting with the low riders this night, his special night; first shot, first kill, long time coming, even overdue.

Fourteen already, he had to start making moves. Not enough he'd been a lookout at ten, a mule by the time he turned eleven, quick hands with a knife before he was twelve; and a money-making corner dealer for nearly two years. Anyone in the 'hood could do that. Many did. Ricky's rep needed tonight's instant high power, and he was ready.

Hunting would be good tonight. Ricky knew it as surely as he breathed.
The summer heat had been hammering the city for four days solid. Even the roaches were moving in slow motion and that was still faster than the people. The dripping humidity and cloying stench of their own sweat had driven everyone in the 'hoods onto their rooftops and stoops. If not there, they milled aimlessly on the streets like fish in a barrel of stagnating
water.

"They got purpose," Ricky smirked to himself. "They're waiting for the low riders, mine in particular."

Even Ricky was out on his stoop. The acrid smell of ozone was better than the fried onions his mother had cooked for supper and definitely better than the smell of whatever dead animals were being boiled down the hall. He was waiting for his pick-up.

In Ricky's 'hood sunset never happened, not that he remembered. The project high-rises were too high, too close together. The ground and the air would fade to gray, the street lights would come on, and outside their whiteness would come the darkness, shadowscapes full of sound--boom boxes, sometimes a scream, sometimes a groan gravelly as a death rattle, lots of times curses, and, every night, the guns.

Sunsets were photographs in books at school. He'd seen one of the Grand Canyon. After the shock of so much space with no people in it, he decided it was damn cool. More than that, he decided he might like to go there someday. Still, he self-consciously slapped the book shut. His bros would think he was a nutcase looking at stuff like that. Ricky sometimes had dreams of his own. He knew better than to share.

The crew was running late. Darkness was already sifting into the streets like ash from a volcano. He changed position on the stoop; the chipped concrete was digging into his ass. His discomfort didn't matter though; tonight he'd make his rep. He'd put the last link into a bridge, then he'd cross that bridge and on the other side, with open arms, would be Connie. Ricky could taste her already. Together, they'd never look back.

Connie was the one woman nobody in the 'hood could get into. Even Lupo, Ricky's boss, Grade A Numero Uno crack king, with a Lincoln so long he needed two lanes to turn, couldn't get further than a leer. Sure, this didn't make Lupo happy. But he didn't get pissed about it and set her up for the crew to teach her a lesson. Hell, he had the pick of every other female in the 'hood from thirteen to thirty. Plus, Connie had more sense than to make the turn-downs a public dissing. Connie just did what she did, and she never did it if she personally, absolutely, for sure didn't want to do it for herself.

A tough lady she was, because she knew what she wanted. What she wanted was Ricky, and Ricky could sure go along with that. "Indeedy, yes!" he grinned, very up for the night ahead. She had spelled out a condition, sure; it couldn't be otherwise. Ricky had to be blooded. Then she'd know she had a Man among men. She needed to know he wasn't just a comer; she needed to know he'd arrived.

Connie filled Ricky's head, an image so real he could feel her against him, like the night before on the rooftop. Yes, he'd wanted to tear off her clothes, jump her bones on the spot, but she'd pushed him off, breathing heavily herself.

"Not yet, Ricky," she'd gasped, "we'll have time. Lots. Our own time."

Ricky knew she'd been talking about their plan. The plan involved a beach in Jamaica, sand and gentle lapping waves coming in from as far as you could see. They'd seen the beach on the box. A vacation, they'd decided, because Ricky had some coin saved. Unlike a couple of the bros, he didn't blow it on product.

What did Connie see in him? Ricky didn't know and didn't care. He knew only that tonight, plus Connie, and his rep was made.

He wiped his forehead. He was sweating like a pig from the damn humidity. Wearing a jacket to hide the Glock in his tear-away shoulder holster didn't help. This heat, he knew, would kill a lot of people tonight. Rancorous, wine-sodden wives and husbands would go at each other. Girls would let the wrong guys grab their boobs and their boyfriends would go berserk. Somebody at a bar would decide the guy on the next stool would look better with a Miller's High Life bottle upside his head ... and so it goes.

Antsy, musing, horny, Ricky didn't notice the low rider turn onto his block. The opposition also knew about the deep-shadowed darkness of thick summer nights. By the time Ricky noticed the car, an Uzi was pumping rounds his way. And they hurt, though only briefly. The low rider moved on, dual exhausts thrumming exultantly, hanging for a time as heavily in the air as the summer heat; cruising, hunting.

Art Montague <mailto:montague_art@hotmail.com> writes dark, though sometimes humorous, stories which can be found at Peridot Books <http://www.peridotbooks.com/>, The Harrow <http://theharrow.com/2000/toc00.html>, and the Plots With Guns archives. A member of the Canadian Literary Network, he writes a column "Travels with K.C." for Themestream <http://www.themestream.com/gspd_browse/browse/view_column.gsp?column_id=4742>, which chronicles his not-so-dark adventures with his three year old granddaughter.