The Martini Shot by George Pelecanos Page B

said somethin about my sneaks, somethin that made his boys laugh. He was crackin on me, is all, tryin to shake me up. I got a nice pair of Jordans, the Penny style, and I keep ’em clean with Fantastik and shit, but they’re from, like, last year. And James Wallace is always wearin whatever’s new, the Seventeens or whatever it is they got sittin up front at the Foot Locker, just came in. Plus Wallace didn’t like me all that much. He had money from his druggin, I mean to tell you that boy had everything, but he had dropped out of school back in the tenth grade, and I had stayed put. My moms always says that guys like Wallace resent guys like me who have hung in. Add that to the fact that he never did have my game. I think he was a little jealous of me, you want the truth.
    I do know he was frustrated that day. I knew it, and I guess I shouldn’t have done what I did. I should’ve passed off to one of my boys, but you know how it is. When you’re proud about somethin you got to show it, ’specially down here. And I was on. I took the check from him and drove to the bucket, just blew right past him as easy as I’d been doin all afternoon. That’s when Wallace called me a bitch right in front of everybody there.
    There’s a way to deal with this kinda shit. You learn it over time. I go six-two and I got some shoulders on me, so it wasn’t like I feared Wallace physically or nothin like that. I can go with my hands, too. But in this world we got out here, you don’t want to be getting in any kinda beefs, not if you can help it. At the same time, you can’t show no fear; you get a rep for weakness like that, it’s like bein a bird with a busted wing, sumshit like that. The other thing you can’t do, though, you can’t let that kind of comment pass. Someone tries to take you for bad like that, you got to respond. It’s complicated, I know, but there it is.
    â€œI ain’t heard what you said,” I said, all ice cool and shit, seein if he would go ahead and repeat it, lookin to measure just how far he wanted to push it. Also, I was tryin to buy a little time.
    â€œSaid you’s a bitch,” said Wallace, lickin his lips and smilin like he was a bitch his own self. He’d made a couple steps toward me and now he wasn’t all that far away from my face.
    I smiled back, halfway friendly. “You know I ain’t no faggot,” I said. “Shit, James, it hurts me to fart.”
    A couple of the fellas started laughin then and pretty soon all of ’em was laughin, I’d heard that line on one of my uncle’s old-time comedy albums once, that old Signifyin Monkey shit or maybe Pryor. But I guess these fellas hadn’t heard it, and they laughed like a motherfucker when I said it. Wallace laughed, too. Maybe it was the hydro they’d smoked. Whatever it was, I had broken that shit down, turned it right back on him, you see what I’m sayin? While they was still laughin, I said, “C’mon, check it up top, James, let’s play.”
    I didn’t play so proud after that. I passed off and only took a coupla shots myself the rest of the game. I think I even missed one on purpose toward the end. I ain’t stupid. We still won, but not by much; I saw to it that it wasn’t so one-sided, like it had been before.
    When it was over, Wallace wanted to play another game, but the sun was dropping and I said I had to get on home. I needed to pick up my sister at aftercare, and my moms likes both of us to be inside our apartment when she gets home from work. Course, I didn’t tell any of the fellas that. It wasn’t somethin they needed to know.
    Wallace was goin back my way, I knew, but he didn’t offer to give me a ride. He just looked at me dead-eyed and smiled a little before him and his boys walked back to the Maxima, parked along the curb. My stomach flipped some, I got to admit, seein that flatline