Lady Blue lay in the bed, her mouth open, her tongue dry, drawing slow, raspy breaths, surrounded by the patter of rainfall, the calls of birds, and the awful shrieks of howler monkeys. She lay on her deathbed, though her death was six days away, she lay there, waiting in sleep, dreaming of a life gone by and a city on the river where the impossible was rendered stupid and futile and the possible was just a gleam in the next man’s eye. Lady Blue lay and slept and dreamt, immersed in the sounds of a rainforest, a rainforest thousands of miles away.

Kimberlee, the caregiver, sat in a metal folding chair a few feet away, knitting a cap for her newborn niece. She was a large woman born in Orange Mound, raised to believe in the goodwill of radio station WDIA AM 1070 and God, in that order, and now she made her living taking care of the old and the infirm, sitting in the homes of strangers, tending to their almost-dead when they did not have the time or inclination to do so themselves. Caregiver, she thought. It was like she was paid to genuinely care, in a way, like she was a surrogate relative in whom trust could be placed and whose shoulders would support an awesome duty. A duty to the dying.

The “sounds of the rainforest” compact disc that was playing reached the end and started over, the little boom box set on infinite repeat. Kimberlee smiled to herself, a smile nonetheless so generous and expansive that any in its presence would have been warmed by its manifestation, a glad tiding on a dark summer night; it would be an hour before those damn howler monkeys came on the CD again. You’d think folk would have better sense than to slap a bunch of noise like that on some peace & quiet record, but there you go. Folk got no sense.

Lady Blue lay not dead but dreaming. Her slender, aged body, laid low by cancer and chemotherapy, was curled slightly, drawn into itself, as if compressed so as to fit through the door of the infinite when the bearers came to carry her off—a re-birth canal, perhaps. She could not sit up, could not get up, could not dance, or make love, or even stretch properly. But in her mind, in her dreaming mind loosed from the bonds of flesh, Lady Blue roamed.

She roamed the room, watching Kimberlee knitting and smiling. Lady Blue was pleased. She could see the radiance of Kimberlee’s soul, her big-hearted self bubbling over with good feelings. Kimberlee nodded and closed her eyes, laughing silently to some inner remembered joke, then she looked back at the still figure in the bed to see if all was well.

Lady Blue drifted on, floating out of the room, up through the den above, past the roof, into the Sunday night sky. She was in midtown, near McLean Baptist Church and the COGIC facility that used to be a synagogue, near Carl’s Bakery and Wild Bill’s Restaurant, near Buckman Laboratories and Vollentine Elementary. The neighborhoods here were full of single-family homes, mostly built between 1900 and 1940, with lots of bricks and concrete front porches and flagstone columns and attic ventilation windows and lots of hope, too, hope for a solid middle-class future, hope for a safe place to raise your children, hope for a community and a nation and a God. Between the cracks in the masonry and up the chimney flues, some of that hope still slipped out, tendrils of white phosphor on the spirit plane, visible to Lady Blue and any other souls of the dead or dying that happened to be passing through. Lady Blue glided through the night sky, catching updrafts on the phosphor trails of hope, thinking to herself, This town is not dead yet.

But there was a lot of town left for her to see.

It was 82° and humid, the kind of summer-night wet that got into your clothes and your food and God, it got into your car, sucking all the joy out of the prospect of driving home because it was so damned hot inside your ride that you were just miserable, and you had to keep your windows rolled down, which was good in that you could wave at people, but bad because the heat and the humidity, that awful humidity, encouraged people to take out their annoyance with the weather on their fellow drivers. This was the season when baseball bats were taken out of back seats, tire irons removed from trunks, fingers balled into fists, and all applied generously and vigorously to the bodies of offending vehicles or to their drivers—cut me off in traffic, you sumbitch, and I’ll take this Ozark tire whacker to your Cadillac, and whatcha gonna do ’bout it, you sumbitch, you stupid sumbitch, you got-damn asshole, hey shithead, I’m talking to you, I’m gonna kick your ass.

Gouts of gaseous red anger surged up, ballooning out of cars on Union Avenue like inflating air bags, erupting from the gaping, shouting mouths of angry drivers. The red rage dispersed rapidly, but having dispersed, it nonetheless lingered, forming a fine mist that hung, a shroud, over the streets and the people. Wherever a twisting strand of hope emerged from a home, it was diffracted and discolored by the violet miasma that settled over the neighborhoods.

Lady Blue flew. Past the traffic and the drivers and the liquor stores and the profanity and the red, red anger and the rare wisps of hope, she flew. She caught a ride on a radio wave and soon she glided downtown, slid past a trolley, and on through the walls of WEVL FM 90, a community-run radio station, about a quarter past midnight—

“—the witchin’ hour, lords and ladies, here we go, this is Morrison Norrison Esquire Himself, and I’m manning the late-night talk line, Morrison Norrison Talk balk falk nalk walk . . . there I go again, here we go again, whatcha gotta say to the man?”

“Morrison?”

“Norrison! Yeah!”

“Hey man, you gotta bring me sumadat corn liquor, get me sumadat corn liquor next time you go home, you gots to bring me sumadat corn liquor when you go home.”

“Oh, now, yeah, there’s a boy that knows me and mine, upshot the rimshot, corn liquor, man, that stuff, you got a tattoo? Hey, you gotta tattoo?”

“Yeah, man, I got tats all over.”

“Well shoot fire, my man, you’re in luck, this stuff, this corn liquor I brought from home, last trip, this stuff takes off tattoos, you just pour it on and tattoo be gone!”

“Aw, man, that stuff’s for drinkin’.”

“Tell me what? Yeah, tell me what! I know what—I know that stuff’s for drinkin’, what the hell you think my daddy makes it for? That corn liquor, you can pop it, you can butter it, but in the end you just gotta drink it, my man, lay it on me next caller.”

“Morrison?”

“Norrison! Yeah!”

“Morrison, my car, my daughter, my daughter stole my car, she took off with some no-account punk and I don’t got no car. I gots to go to work in the morning, what’s up? Where’s my car?”

“You call the cops, oh lady in distress?”

“Hell yeah I did, and they told me it’s not stealin’, it’s just somethin’ else, on account of it’s my daughter and she ain’t been gone two hour. It’s a red Cadillac, all beat up, some damn-fool girl driving it.”

“Okay caller, you heard her people, her daughter done run off with the car and there’s hell to pay. Daughter dear, see here see here, your momma needs that car back, if you wanna run off and do your thing okay, but you don’t get your momma’s car with the bargain, you hear me? Take that car back! Next caller.”

“Morrison, this is Lady Blue.”

“Lady Blue, good to hear your dulcet tones again, what’s the good word?”

“I’m dying, Morrison, I just want to say goodbye.”

“Folks, Morrison here, Lady Blue on the line, and, and, Holy Jesus, wait a second, and, and, and do you know what? Lords and ladies, do you know what? It’s the hoodoo hour here on Morrison Norrison Talk and can you guess what? Do you know what? Can you guess what? I know what—I still got Miss Got Her Car Stole on the line, Miss, can you hear me?”

“Yes sir, Morrison, I’m still looking for my got-damn car.”

“Language, ma’am, language, but you see, callers, do you see? I still got her on the line but listen up, Lady Blue, you there?”

“I’m here, Morrison, I just want to say goodbye.”

“Yeah, I gotcha, Lady Blue, and you shore gone do that, but look, people, listen close, we hearin’ Lady Blue here, but Lady Blue ain’t on the telephone, you dig? Miss Got Her Car Stole, you still there?”

“I’m still here, Morrison.”

“There you go, okay, Morrison Norrison is one freaked-out mofo here, people, because I screwed up. I screwed up. I left Miss Got Her Car Stole on the line, on the air, you know, and then started talking to Lady Blue, but I didn’t hit another line. Lady Blue just talking. She just here, you dig? Lady Blue, you okay?”

“I’m dyin’, Morrison, I just want to say goodbye.”

“Well hell, Lady Blue, you cain’t be dyin’, we’s hearin’ you right here and in the now!”

“I’m here, Morrison, I just want to say goodbye.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, please understand, I didn’t never punch Lady Blue into this heah program, I got no idea how you’re hearing her dulcet tones here, we got us a visitation, that is, a supernatural wonderment. Lady Blue, how are you?”

“I’m dyin’, Morrison.”

“Well okay, Lady Blue is dying, come on now, Lady Blue, since you talking to us from the beyond already, what you wanna say?”

“I just want to say goodbye to everyone. It’s a time of trouble, Morrison, you know that.”

“Yes, I know that. Amen, Lady Blue. It’s a time of trouble.”

“It’s a time of trouble, and I just want to say goodbye. My family, my family is all messed up, but Bud’ll see it right. Bud’s good folk. You help him when he asks, you hear me?”

“Amen, amen, Lady Blue. I know Bud well. Bud’s good folk. If he asks, my help is his.”

“I’m dyin’ Morrison, I just want to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Lady Blue, goodbye, goodbye, caller, say goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Lady Blue.”

“Goodbye, Morrison. Miss, are you there, miss?”

“I’m here, Lady Blue, goodbye, goodbye.”

“Miss, you there, your car, your daughter, she’s got it at the Bumblebee Lounge on Lamar, you go thrash that girl and slap some sense into her. She’s there with some swaggerin’ slab of stupid.”

“Bless you, Lady Blue, bless you, I’ll go there directly.”

“Goodbye, Lady Blue, goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Morrison, goodbye.”

“Goodbye, people, I think Lady Blue done shuffled off this mortal coil. Here’s the Reverend Al Green, here’s some of that sweet soul music, people, to usher Lady Blue into the great beyond, take it Al—”

Lady Blue floated up from the studio. Morrison Norrison Esquire Himself—also known as Nathan M. Norrison—punched the green button on the cart machine and the tape inside the cart began to play. He leaned back in his chair and picked up his glass of ice tea, brought it to his lips, took a long gulp, sighed, looked around him, then addressed the room, formally, even though the microphone was off.

“Goodbye, Lady Blue, goodbye.”

Lady Blue smiled and drifted out of the building.

Morrison set the glass down. He’d heard Lady Blue was sick, but he hadn’t heard anything about her dying. Perhaps it would be in the morning Commercial Appeal. Damn shame. Hearing her voice issuing from the very air around him had rattled him, but only a little. It was Lady Blue herself, after all, who’d told him he’d be on the radio when he was just six years old; who’d pointed at the young girl across the playground and said he’d marry her someday; who’d told his wife, Josephine, that her pregnancy would miscarry but not to worry because that little soul would come right back and try again and that time it would make it; who’d told him his newborn daughter, Mary Anne, would grow up to be a writer; who’d told him all these things and a hundred more, all of which came true or looked to do so in the fullness of time. Lady Blue seemed to be leaving this world the same way she’d passed through it: on the wings of angels.

He sighed again, only half-listening to Al Green. Morrison was a little fellow, short and slim, with close-cropped hair and a goatee. He was in his fifties, but he didn’t look a day over thirty-five, a fact he was more than a little proud of. Morrison ran the midnight to two shift on WEVL Sunday night through Thursday night. It was hell on his marriage, but he couldn’t give up the microphone. His day job at WREC AM 60 had morphed into a full-time production shift, with no air work, and the station’s switch to news/talk a few years back had pretty much erased most of his air time, anyway. He stayed on for the security and the benefits, but his yearning for being on the air had led him to a volunteer post at WEVL. Josephine kept urging him to find another station for his day job, but each time he looked at his wife, slowly falling under the spell of multiple sclerosis, the thought of those paychecks and that insurance coverage kept him where he was. Besides, Mary Anne was the ambitious one in the family. She was a reporter for the Tri-State Defender, a regional newspaper for the black community, and she was hoping to move into television in the next year or two.

Al Green was wrapping up the number. Lady Blue was hovering outside, looking down at the little building in which Morrison sat, thinking kind thoughts of his family. A gust of wind came blowing from the river and she went with it, stretching her phantasmal arms into the darkness, hugging the night, rejoicing in the warmth of the summer shadows.

A momentary eruption of light caught her attention after a few blocks. She glided down, passing through an intersection. An athletic man in his late twenties was standing on one corner, tending a camera mounted on a tripod. He wore cut-off shorts, sneakers, and a t-shirt with a stylized design that read, “ANDRE THE GIANT HAS A POSSE.” He was shooting a section of wall covered in graffiti, and as Lady Blue watched, Rockney Owen dragged the assembly down the sidewalk a few feet and then worked over the camera, selecting the next portion of wall to photograph. Better by daylight, he thought to himself, but the flash by night . . . just seems right somehow. He framed the next shot, adjusted the focus ring, pressed the shutter switch. Flash.

Rockney was trying to document the graffiti culture in Memphis. He wasn’t sure just where his work was leading—maybe a book, or a gallery showing, or a web site—but ever since he’d seen the elaborately rendered signature of Matty X on the wall of a liquor store a few weeks ago, he’d been obsessed with recording these cryptic, furtive works. Not just recording, though. He wanted to present them, to document them in a manner just as stylish and stylized as they were.

This was his third visit to this same wall. It was either a popular wall for graffiti or, as he suspected, a symbolic representative for an area of disputed territory. Matty X and Skore seemed to be trading blows here, with paint and angles, fighting for supremacy over this stretch of urban canvas. Each time Rockney returned, there would be a fresh installment in the battle, a new dispatch from the front lines. Matty X went with blue and white, in the funky big letters common to old-school graffiti, the upper-right bar of the Y extended and crossed through to double as the X, much as the “Rx” of pharmacies was often presented. Skore, however, had a sleek, almost deco look to his tag—it reminded Rockney oddly of the stylized logotype that Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed for his studio decades earlier—and the colors were a stark red and black. Rockney hoped that the two apparent adversaries would continue their match-up, as this series of photographs was gaining an almost narrative aspect, the forms on the wall growing and mutating as the weeks went by.

Lady Blue watched for a minute as Rockney took another photograph. A car horn honked up the street. Rockney’s wife, Louisa, sat in their new sport-utility vehicle, watching her husband with mild impatience. She didn’t mind accompanying him on these late-night photo excursions, but she didn’t want him to forget she was here, either. Louisa was a librarian at Memphis State University, a willowy woman who, as she liked to say, had both feet firmly planted on the ground. Rockney was something of a free spirit, and the two made quite a couple. Lady Blue had stood in for Louisa’s father in the ceremony, as he and her mother had passed away some years earlier, and formally gave away the bride. She had always been able to crack Louisa’s façade of gravitas with a candid comment, and considered Rockney to be a case of just what the doctor ordered for this sweet young thing.

Rockney waved briefly at his wife, snapped another picture, then packed up his equipment. Lady Blue took another loving look at the both of them, wished them the best, then drifted off into the night sky.

She came down again at the Bumblebee Lounge on Lamar, a run-down nightclub that held a big crowd on the weekends. The building was a squat cinder-block shoebox, official capacity a hundred and twenty people. Patrons often spilled out into the parking lot, partying to boom boxes or bass-thumping car stereos, to the considerable ire of the neighbors in the nearby Annesdale-Snowden Historic District.

Inside, Platinum was onstage, wrapping up their last song, “Superfreak.” Platinum was a cover band, doing a crowd-moving mix of old-school R&B/soul and the latest pop and hip-hop. They had seven people on stage, jamming away, while dozens of club-goers danced and yelled just below them. Out on the front of the stage, Erin Jones, Shaquante Brown, and Daniel Abadon, the three vocalists, waved their arms, leaned out to the crowd, and brought the song to a rousing climax, smiles on their sweat-drenched faces. The band ended with much applause and hustled, exhausted, backstage.

Lady Blue took it all in. She would not normally have been in a place like this, a place full of liquor and loose living. But the energy of the crowd here was like a magnet, all those good feelings and excited expectations and relaxed inhibitions spilling out and spinning into a wonderful, radiant maelstrom that engulfed the building, sending a glowing column of hope up into the night.

Then there they were, just as she’d somehow known: sixteen-year-old Darmeka Lawley and seventeen-year-old Tobias Watson, leaving the front door of the club and walking across the parking lot towards Darmeka’s mother’s beat-up old red Caddy. Darmeka was a round little woman with fine cornrows in her midnight hair, wearing a clingy red dress that brought out most of her curves. Tobias was long and lanky, and walked easily in his blue jogging suit and white Nike sneakers. The young couple piled inside the car and Darmeka promptly crossed her arms and glared at Tobias, sitting next to her in the driver’s seat.

“Told you they wouldn’t let us in,” Darmeka said, pouting.

Tobias scowled and made a dismissive gesture with his right hand. “Aw shit, girl, if my cousin woulda been there—”

“He woulda what? Give us five hunnert dollars so’s we could run off? That another lie, Tobias Watson?”

“I ain’t lied to you, girl! We gone be outta here, I just got to take care some business, get us some runnin’ money.”

Darmeka turned her head away and looked out the window at the lounge, the muffled sound of hip-hop’s powerful beats rumbling across the asphalt. “Uh huh,” she said, unbelieving, wondering if this whole evening was just a big mistake.

The Caddy started up. Angry, Tobias floored the pedal, trying to peel out of the parking lot and salvage some of his wounded pride with a display of automobile machismo. He hadn’t driven Darmeka’s momma’s Caddy until tonight, and he wasn’t a very experienced driver, anyway. The car shot forward, down the lot, across the sidewalk, and before Tobias could get a handle on the V8 he’d unleashed, the Caddy slammed into the passenger side of a full-size black pickup truck that had just turned the corner.

The Caddy was too old for airbags.

Tobias and Darmeka flopped in the front seat, their seat belts unfastened. Darmeka’s face smashed into the dashboard, breaking her nose, blood poured down her lips, she was in shock. Tobias’s forehead bounced cleanly off the steering wheel, he passed out, the car stopped.

Reginald Jaegar stepped out of the shiny new pickup, idling in the liquid air. He wore blue jeans, shit-kicker boots, and a black Harley-Davidson t-shirt that read, “IF YOU CAN READ THIS THE BITCH FELL OFF.” He’d just bought the truck six weeks ago; it was the first brand-new vehicle he’d ever owned. Jaegar surveyed the scene angrily.

The side door on his Ford was crumpled in and scraped up, as was the body to either side. It was a mess. The caddy was at an angle, having rebounded from the collision. Reginald could see a couple people in the front seat.

Niggers, he thought. He leaned into the open cab of his truck, reached behind the seat, and pulled out a tire iron.

“Fuckin’ niggers!” he yelled, circling around the truck. “Fuck up my truck! I’ll fuckin’ show you, you fuckin’ niggers!”

Lady Blue in close, whispering in Darmeka’s ear: “Wake up, girl, wake up, wake up.”

Darmeka opened her eyes. She wasn’t sure where she was or what was going on. She was in momma’s car, what was she doing in momma’s car, was she in trouble? She thought maybe she was in trouble. She thought maybe she had done something bad. What was going on?

Then a familiar creak as the driver’s door opened. Darmeka looked to her left, groggily saw Tobias there, slumped in the seat. Was he hurt? Then some big guy standing by the open door reached in, grabbed Tobias by the collar, pulled him out of momma’s Caddy. Darmeka blinked, confused. Her face hurt really bad, and it felt like her nose was running, snot or something trailing over her lips.

Tobias hit the concrete. Reginald stood over him, bellowed, his voice clotted with the beers he’d downed over the last couple hours at the Big Hit on Crump. He hefted the tire iron.

“Fuckin’ nigger!” He swung.

He swung again.

He swung again.

“Sumbitch! Teach your fuckin’ nigger ass to fuck up my truck!”

Tobias’s brains and bits of his skull splattered across the pavement. Blood was everywhere. Reginald kept swinging and yelling, drunk as hell and twice as mad.

Darmeka sat transfixed, stunned by the scene and by the shock of the accident. Almost of its own volition, her hand crept down to the handle and opened the door, quiet. Then she slid slowly out of the car, unbalanced and stumbling, her eyes trained on the big man with the tire iron who had, she calmly thought, just killed Tobias. She felt like she was outside of herself, watching this on television. Was this really happening?

“Nigger sumbitch!”

People were slipping out of the Bumblebee. The accident had drawn the attention of the doorman, but the ensuing shouting and apparent beating were drawing patrons out, as well. Three men—the bouncer and two clubgoers—took a few hesitant steps out from the entrance and into the parking lot.

Darmeka backed slowly away from the Caddy, disoriented. She wiped her face and yelped when her fingers brushed her painfully crumpled nose. She still wasn’t sure what had happened.

Reginald looked up across the roof of the car. “You want this?” he yelled, hefting the gory tire iron. “You want this, you nigger cunt? You fuckin’ want this?”

Darmeka continued backing up into the parking lot. She was crying now, tears running through the blood on her face, taking heaving breaths, the beginnings of an anguished wail starting in her throat.

Reginald walked around the front of the car, smacking the tire iron into the palm of his left hand. Each time he did so, blood spattered onto the ground nearby. Reginald was six feet of bad news direct from Arkansas, where he’d grown up handling the money at his daddy’s cockfights and paid his way through community college as a wrestler. Now he oversaw package sorters at a big shipping company out by the airport, making the long green and trying to pick up chicks on the weekends. His workers were almost all black, and nothing short of a blow job gave him more pleasure than making them step lively and live in dread of his approach. Just like daddy. Daddy never took no shit, he thought. There were other things about daddy that he didn’t think about.

“Here we go!” he yelled drunkenly at the girl in the parking lot. “Come get it! You want it! Here comes the big dick!”

Darmeka screamed. She could barely see for the tears and the blood and it felt like her head was on fire. She was running for the club, she thought, she wasn’t sure, it hurt so much, and that man was yelling at her, that big guy, he killed Tobias, Oh God oh God he killed my man. She ran and screamed and then there were three men talking to her, grabbing her by the shoulders, saying everything was okay, and that man was yelling behind her, real close, and then BLAM BLAM BLAM there were explosions all around her, she spun around, the big guy with the tire iron was just ten feet away, he dropped the iron, grabbed himself, blood poured from wounds, he fell to his knees, “Nigger fucks!” he yelled, BLAM, his brains shot out the back of his head like patrons leaving a burning theater.

Darmeka collapsed into the arms of the three men, one of whom held an outstretched gun. Reginald Jaeger was dead moments later. Tobias Watson was already gone.

“Goddamn!” Skore whispered, lowering the pistol. “Crazy sumbitch.”

“Shit, man, you killed him!” the bouncer, Andre, yelled. “You gotta get outta here, man!”

Lady Blue leaned over the shuddering form of Darmeka Lawley as the three men shouted at each other and at the clubgoers around them, wondering when the police would arrive. A woman from the lounge pushed through the crowd and sat on the pavement, carefully rubbing down Darmeka’s bloody face with a bar rag. “Get back!” she yelled forcefully at the gawkers standing around her.

“It’s okay,” Lady Blue said to Darmeka only, who was lost in her stupor. “You gone be all right, girl. Your momma will be here soon. Just hang tight. You gone be all right.”

Darmeka took deep breaths, lost in darkness and pain and terror. Tobias, she thought. Where is my man? Where is he? Dear Lord, let my man be all right.

Tobias Watson drifted up from the scene of his death. Lady Blue looked at him for a moment, from where she was tending to Darmeka. She gave him a hard look.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said deferentially. “I’m just a young soul. Thanks for saving her. I loved that little gal.” Then he blurred out and was gone, across the portal to the infinite. Lady Blue shook her head, knowing she would follow soon enough in turn, and cursing the foolishness of young folks come to grief.

The soul of Reginald Jaeger leapt to his feet, hovering above the ground. Lady Blue tried to watch calmly, but she knew the ugliness that lay ahead. Reginald whipped his head around, this way and that, and began howling like the animal that he was. From the ground a scrawny arm shot forth, insubstantial, and grabbed Reginald by the ankle. He yelped and tried to move away. From the ground poured the soul of his father, Duncan, laughing like he’d just heard the best joke of the cosmos. “I got you, boy!” he cried. “You comin’ with daddy!” He wrapped his arms around the legs of his son’s soul, catching him in an unbreakable grip as his son’s spirit screamed in remembered horror and helplessness. “Come get it,” Duncan’s damned soul cried, “you want it! Here comes the big dick!” Reginald had time to scream for perhaps a moment more and then his dead father’s spirit pulled him into the earth, the hungry earth, the rich soil and the hard stone that swallowed the energy of the doomed and the lost for all time. Lady Blue averted her eyes, and then both men were, mercifully, gone, gone to the place of eternal torment deep in the bowels of the earth.

Twenty-three-year-old Daniel Abadon, known to some as Skore, surveyed the scene. The pickup truck and the Cadillac were still idling, their engines running, their drivers dead. The Caddy driver lay dead in the street, mostly obscured from view. The girl riding in the Caddy lay on the pavement of the parking lot, breathing shallow, as a woman daubed at her face. The pickup driver lay sprawled not ten feet ahead, blood soaking into his clothes.

The pickup driver. The man Skore had just killed.

“I’m gone, man,” Skore said to the bouncer, getting nervous now as the adrenalin drove his body into panic mode. “I wasn’t never here.” He tucked the gun into his jacket pocket.

“My brother,” Andre replied, “I ain’t seen you in days. Get gone.”

Skore turned and ran down the alley alongside the bar. His car was parked a couple of blocks away, in front of his cousin Jenna’s apartment. Shit, he thought, why’d I have to go and shoot that guy. I’m in the shit now. But then he remembered that poor girl screaming and the look on that big man’s face and he was glad he’d pulled the trigger.

The police car arrived soon after. Officer Sennett stepped out of the car, his eyes wide and his gun drawn. His partner, Sharon Lewis, came out with her sidearm as well, but with a more-controlled presence. She’d called for an ambulance and backup as soon as they saw the scene. Clubgoers were pouring out of the Bumblebee. Some were fleeing, others just gawking. The bouncer stepped forward, hands in the air.

“Officers, I work here. I saw it all. These folks had a wreck and that man beat the shit outta that man over there.”

“Who shot him?” Sharon called sharply.

“I dunno, ma’am, he took off down that way.” Eric gestured down Lamar, away from the direction Skore had fled.

“This girl need help!” the woman from the lounge cried, sitting next to Darmeka. “He busted up her face! You gots to get an ambulance!”

“It’s on the way, ma’am,” Dale Sennett replied, as he took a nervous look down at the injured girl on the ground. “We’ll get this all sorted out.”

A rumbling Datsun pulled to a stop across the street, illuminated in the strobes of the police car’s roof lights and the sickly yellow radiance that poured down from the light poles. The passenger door opened and Ruth Lawley erupted, screaming and crying at the scene of chaos. “Darmeka! Darmeka! Where my baby? Darmeka!” She ran, stumbling over the curb, trying to look everywhere at once, until she caught sight of Darmeka, lying on the ground, a woman wiping her face with a bloody rag, a scrawny white cop leaning over them. Ruth fell to the pavement on her knees, screaming, came up running again in a crouch, staggering until she reached her daughter. Dale caught her and helped her kneel down, uncomfortable with the situation.

“She’s okay!” the woman blurted. “She’s just busted up a little! She’s okay!”

“My baby! My baby!” Ruth wailed, touching her daughter, wanting to cradle her in her arms but afraid of what injuries the girl might have. “Oh lord, not my baby, not my baby!”

“We’ve got an ambulance on the way, ma’am,” Dale said reassuringly. “We’ll take care of her.”

Ruth glanced up at him for a moment and then looked wildly at the sky around her. “Lady Blue!” she cried. “Lady Blue, thank you, thank you, Lady Blue, take care my baby! Lady Blue!”

Lady Blue glided directly through the woman, leaving a feeling of warmth and security in her passing, but then she moved on, down the street, up and into the summer night.