Morgan was a real writer. Just a poet, sure, but a published writer. Not like the pussy posers in her fiction-writing classes. Morgan knew publishers, editors. He could help her launch a real career, guide her past pitfalls, introduce her into the right literary circles.

She parked in front of his house, ran through the downpour to his front porch. Her knock was almost lost amid the thunder and sheets of cold rain that pelted Morgan's tin roof. He opened the door, ushered her in, and shut it again quickly against the wind.

"I didn't expect you," Morgan said.

"Is it okay?" She shivered, stood dripping in his living room, shrugged out of her coat, the thin fabric of her blouse clinging to hard, thimble-sized nipples.

"You're soaked." Morgan found towels, brought them to her. She dried her hair.

"Your clothes."

"I need to take them off," she said.

"Okay."

She peeled off the blouse in front of him, slithered out of the wet jeans.

Morgan put his arms around her, and she stood on tiptoe, forced her open mouth over his. She was eager and hungry and they tripped and tumbled into the bedroom, fell in a grabbing, rolling pile. She pulled off his pants, took him in her mouth briefly before climbing on top.

She rode him during the lightning, the flashes making her pale skin blue. His hands sank into her round softness. She was warm and deep and she covered him with herself, back arched, mouth open.

Thunder crashed. Rain fell. The storm swallowed their moans.

Morgan didn't know what to think of her.

"I came back to tell you it will be okay," she said.

She sprawled across the bed, trying, Morgan supposed, to spread herself over every possible square inch. A leg and an arm draped over him too.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"That I won't say anything. I thought you might be worried. I know you and that girl-"

"I wasn't worried." Yes he had been. Someone would miss Annie Walsh sooner or later, come asking hard questions. And what about Ginny? Strange, soft, bouncy, eager Ginny. Was this some kind of kick for her, bury a body and bed a professor? Yeah, he knew women like that. You could find them at writers' conferences, chasing after the latest young, hot novelist. Flavor of the month.

She nuzzled closer, ran fingers through his chest hair.

His skin got hot and sweaty where her heavy arm and leg pressed against him. He tried to squirm out from under her.

She looked up. "What is it?"

"Nothing." He sank back into the pillow.

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No."

"Yes you do." She curled into a ball, sighed, rolled off the bed, and went into the living room.

"Your clothes are still wet," he called after her.

She plucked them from the floor, squeezed. "Just a little damp." She shrugged into her bra. "I'd better get going."

Morgan watched her dress through the bedroom door and was certain he was supposed to stop her. She was expecting some word from him, the big callback where he asked where she was off to. He'd pull her back into bed, drag her beneath the silky, intimate prison of the sheets. It's what she expected.

But he could not quite summon the energy. Appropriate words refused to form. He watched her button the blouse, zip jeans, slip her bare feet into squeaky leather hiking boots. And even when he heard his front door open and close, he couldn't quite make himself tell her to stop, couldn't think of a single thing that didn't sound trite and placating.

He heard her engine start over the patter of rain, heard the car fade down the lane.

Thank God.

He'd been unable to resist her fleshy immediacy. This sort of thing had always been his problem.

But in the sticky, hot, awkward after-tangle of limbs and linen, he could only believe he was repeating the same sort of behavior which had landed him in this shit-pie of a situation in the first place. He did not know Ginny Conrad very well. Sure, he knew her taste and her feel and the breathless, urgent whine that squeezed out of her just before orgasm. But he didn't know what she'd do. What was her temperament? For all Morgan knew, Ginny was a walking mouth ready to gossip away any hope he ever had of steady employment.

He swung his feet over the bed, stood with a low groan. A twinge in his lower back. Ginny had ridden him long and hard, almost shaking apart the bed frame. He was getting too old for this. And too fat. He reminded himself about joining a gym.

He grabbed his pants off the floor, and something tumbled out of the pocket, landed hard and sharp on the top of his bare foot. Cold and metal.

"Goddammit!" He hopped, gritted his teeth, rubbed the foot. "Son of a bitch." He looked at his foot, red and swelling fast. He had the kind of skin that bruised easily purple and ugly green.

He scanned the floor to see what had bashed him.

The gun.

It lay on the hardwood floor daring him to pick it up.

He didn't want to bend over the way his back felt, so he nudged it with a toe, metal heavy and cold. Shoved it slowly under the bed. It made a scraping noise on the wood, like a murdered tin man being dragged into the gutter. Good, leave it there. Morgan could climb under the bed for it some other time.

He stepped into his pants, foot still throbbing, back complaining. His head hurt too. Stress.

He stepped into his slippers and grabbed a green flannel shirt off the doorknob on his way to the kitchen. He found a bottle of aspirin. Empty.

"Goddammit." He shook his head at his own stupidity, putting the aspirin bottle back empty. He always did that sort of thing, milk jugs and pie pans. It made girlfriends crazy, probably why he hadn't lived with anyone in five years.

The phone rang.

Morgan glared at it, willed it to shut up. It rang again.

He picked it up. "Hello?"

"It's Jones." The old man's voice rattled on the other end like a bad stereo speaker.

Hell and damnation. He must've wanted his gun back. Or maybe there'd been trouble with Annie, the body discovered, police on their way to slap him in cuffs. Morgan went chill and damp under the armpits, felt dread swell in his belly. Oh, God, that's it, isn't it? It was all blowing up in his face.

"You look at them poems yet?" Jones asked.

"Uh..." What?

"I don't have formal education like you, but I want to make them good. You told me you was going to read them."

"Yes. But I've only just started." Lies. "I need more time to really go over them carefully- Mr. Jones, is everything, I mean, it's all okay, right? You're only calling about the poems?"

"I helped you with your little problem," Jones said. "Should be fine. Now, I think maybe I should come over there."

"Why?"

"We can talk about the poems."

"No."

"No? What do you fucking mean no?"

"I have to..." Think, Jay. "I have a function on campus. I was honestly just walking out the door."

"Oh, bullshit. I'm coming over there right now."

"Uh..."

"I'll see you in a few minutes." He hung up.

Morgan flew for the door, grabbed keys, jerked his coat off the back of a chair.

Outside, the rain still fell but only gently. Halfway to his car Morgan noticed he was still wearing slippers, water soaking through cold. He thought about going back for shoes. Screw it.

He jumped in his car, cranked it.

Fled.

Ginny drove home.

She felt confident she could make Morgan want her, could manipulate him with the right combination of tears and sex. Men were insecure, horny, ego-driven apes. Control the dick and you control the man. The tears pressed the guilt buttons.

Of course, too many tears at the wrong time could send a guy running. Owning a man was a delicate business.

She thumbed a Nine Inch Nails tape into her cassette player, pounded the steering wheel in time with the driving rhythm. She squirmed in the seat, wet clothes uncomfortable.

Maybe Morgan had hit a dry spell. His writing output had evidently slowed to nothing. Maybe the professor was all out of inspiration. But Ginny could fix that too. Like that woman who inspired Pollock in the Ed Harris movie.

Ginny rubbed lightly between her legs. Sore. Morgan had pounded her good. A slight tingle.

She hurried home, wanted to flip on her computer. She felt like writing.

nine

Harold Jenks discovered the graduate dorms were full and were going to stay that way. They wouldn't kick anybody out just so he could move in. Jenks had thrown a shit fit.

The deputy director of student housing showed up to hush him, and Jenks called the man a racist. When the director of student housing and the vice president of student affairs showed up, he'd called them racists too.

They finally agreed to find him housing off campus and to foot the bill. At first, they'd assigned Jenks an unfurnished apartment five miles from campus. Jenks had loudly pointed out he had no furniture and no car, so they located a furnished studio four blocks from campus. The vice president had even called security to come drive Jenks to his new digs.

Looking around his new place, Jenks nodded and smiled big. These dumb rednecks were fucking pushovers. He threw his duffel on the bed. He shoved Red Zach's gym bag underneath. He went to the room's only window, leaned on the sill, and looked at the wet street below. The studio was warm and comfortable, over a garage in a quiet residential neighborhood.

Stealing Sherman Ellis's life was going even more smoothly than Jenks had planned.

Jenks had a rap sheet of minor crimes as long as his arm. That sort of reputation dogged a man, pulled his life down into the mud. Jenks had tried to right himself once, get out of the ghetto life of poverty and petty crime. But he found all doors closed to him. No one believed a thug would reform. Nobody wanted an employee you couldn't turn your back on.

So Harold Jenks decided he would simply cease to be Harold Jenks. Sherman Ellis had no family and no record. Jenks would drape himself in Ellis's innocence, wrap himself in Ellis's accomplishments, a cloak of safety and legitimacy.

There'd be problems, of course. He'd need to stay clean. If he got picked up even for jaywalking the whole scam would be shot to shit. He couldn't let himself be fingerprinted. He'd already vowed never to return to East St. Louis. Too many people knew him there.

But what worried him most were the classes, the teachers. Worried? Hell, he was terrified. Jenks knew he was smart. You had to be to survive on the streets. But he was smart enough to know the difference between intelligence and education. Jenks had barely made it out of high school.

But poetry? Shit, how hard could that be?

He pulled an N.W.A. CD out of his duffel and a Walkman. He thumbed the PLAY button and slipped on the headphones, bobbing his head with the rap music and slapping his thigh to the beat. But this time he really listened, took note how the rapper bit off the words. Jenks mouthed the syllables, moved his mouth over the vowel sounds. Yeah, this was his kind of poetry. He could do this, no problem.

And they'd give him a college degree for it? White people were crazy.

He shut off the Walkman, dropped it on the bed. He'd study more later. Right now he had more immediate problems.

He took his rapidly shrinking roll of cash from his jeans pocket, counted the wrinkled bills. Jenks had exactly sixty-one dollars to his name, and that wasn't going to do it. The minifridge was empty, and he strongly suspected he was going to need books and other supplies. Pencils and shit, notebooks.

He counted it again. Still sixty-one bucks. He checked his other pockets. Nothing.

And he hadn't set up the deal yet to move Red Zach's coke. Once he did that he'd be set for a while, but that wasn't helping him now. Jenks needed operating capital. Going straight would need to be put on hold just a little longer.

Okay. He knew what to do.

He stripped out of his clothes. His body was lean, hard, three knife scars about an inch long across his belly. He pulled a pair of plain black sweatpants out of his duffel and stepped into them. He put on the matching sweatshirt. Then the black knit ski mask. He rolled the mask up above his eyes until it just looked like a watch cap.

The Glock would be a problem. A nice bit of heat, 9mm. He checked the clip. It was full, so he smacked it into the pistol. Jenks liked the metallic click when the clip snapped into place.

But it wouldn't stay in the elastic band of the sweats. He took a half-used roll of duct tape from the duffel, ripped off a piece. He used it to tape the Glock across the small of his back. He danced around a little, hopped twice, shook his ass, but the Glock stayed put. Good.

Jenks looked at his watch. Shit. It was too early. He pulled the gun off his back and dropped it on the bed next to the Walkman.

The little twenty-four-hour convenience store he'd spotted three blocks away might still be busy, students filling up on RC Colas and MoonPies. He'd wait.

The convenience store was not the perfect target. It was too close to where he lived, but he didn't have a ride and you can't take a taxi to a holdup.

Also, it might not be much of a score. Last time he'd done a Quickie-Mart, he made off with only twenty-three dollars and a fistful of SlimJims.

But Jenks had to have some cash.

No matter how much Jenks had screamed and ranted and called everyone within earshot a racist, the lady at the financial aid office insisted that stipend checks were only-ONLY-disbursed on the last day of the month.

About two in the morning, Jenks figured it was time.

He taped the gun to his back again, and made sure nobody was watching when he left the garage apartment. Once, on his way to the convenience store, a set of headlights scared him into a row of low hedges.

At the convenience store, he watched through the window for ten minutes, nerving himself up and making sure the old guy behind the register was alone.

Then he pulled the Glock and went in fast.

The old man turned big eyes on Jenks in slow motion, mouth dropping open, blood draining from his face.

I can't kill this guy, Jenks thought. Black man kill a white dude in this dumbshit, redneck town and they'll level the place looking for him. Too many of these convenience stores had hidden cameras, and there was always the chance of some bystander seeing him no matter how careful Jenks was. But he'd need to put the fear of Jenks's 9mm into this guy. Let him know not to twitch. Bluff him.

"Don't move, motherfucker!" Jenks held the Glock sideways at arm's length. "Get in that register, old man. Get out that green stuff."

"What the hell, boy? You on the crack?"

"Don't give me no shit. Just the money."

"Get the hell out of here, boy. I work for a living."

Jenks waved the gun, shoved it in the man's face. Didn't this old fool know what was happening? "You want to die, motherfucker?" he screamed, deep-throated, saliva flying with each word. "I'm going to put a goddamn bullet in your brain, you dumb redneck." Back in East St. Louis, he'd be pulling this job with Spoon, and Spoon would have shot this dumb fuck by now.

Spoon had no patience for dumb white fucks.

"I mean it," Jenks yelled. "Gimmee that money." But he was losing his nerve, had already lost the edge of surprise he'd had when he'd exploded through the front door.

The old man's hands dipped under the counter, came back holding a pump shotgun, barrel sawed off short. He pumped a shell in slow and firm like he was shucking corn. Swung the barrel around to Jenks, who was already diving behind a display of two-liter Dr Pepper.

The shotgun blast shook the little store, riddled the Dr Pepper with double-ought pellets. Soda fizzed, foamed, sprayed sticky across the dirty tile floor and Jenks's back.

Jenks's cry was a strangled, animal bleat. He belly-crawled down the first aisle, a high-pitched shriek caught in the back of his throat. He heard the old man pump the shotgun again and crossed his arms over his head. Oh, Lord, this fucker's crazy.

The second blast shredded the candy racks. Butterfingers rained. The odor of chocolate and cordite swirled thick in the air.

"Show your ass, you son of a bitch." The old man fired twice more.

But Jenks was already running around the end of the aisle toward the rear of the store. He fired wildly back over his shoulder, the 9mm popping away at cigarettes and beef jerky.

Jenks looked up and could see the old man still behind the counter in the store's big, fish-eye mirror. The old dude was thumbing fresh shells into the shotgun.

Jenks ran for the door.

The old man pumped in a shell, swung the barrel in line with Jenks's chest. Jenks hit a muddy-slick patch of Dr Pepper just as the old man squeezed the trigger. Jenks's heels slid out from under him. He landed hard on his ass, bruised his tailbone.

The shotgun blast destroyed the newspaper display.

Jenks fast-crawled through the front doors, knocking them open with the top of his head. The doors swung closed behind him, and the old man's next shot obliterated the glass. Jenks ducked beneath the diamond glitter shower.

He stood and ran.

The old man was shouting something after him, but Jenks didn't try to hear. He pumped his arms and legs, ran a long way for a long time.