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and sap him from behind.~
    O n a Cincinnati side street, a downtown diner. Outside, a few salt-ravaged cars reeling though the slush, but no one on the sidewalks. The riots have been over for days, but people are sticking to the main roads. Derrick’s hand shakes as he brings a cigarette to his lips. He inhales the smoke, chases it with burnt diner coffee. His eyes creaking in their sockets like they’ve been soaked in brine, his heart pounding its alien hammer-rhythm against his ribs. He can’t take winter. He needs the heat created by people rubbing together on the streets. If he ain’t hustling, he’s got the stifled feeling he’s dying. It’s the mechanical cadence of his pacemaker. He’s either on the go or he’s passed out, lost in one of the short cold patches of sleep that sneak up and sap him from behind.
    A taxi skids in the snow, turning sideways. The cabbie whips the wheel, straightens the car, drives on. In the booth across from Derrick a ground down redhead in a skirt eats dinner with a boy. He’s a retard, a mini male version of herself that looks to have warped in the sun.
    The waitress refills Derrick’s coffee. She’s a skinny black woman with ashy elbows. Derrick drinks, the coffee burns his mouth, he doesn’t notice. He watches the retard. He has a walk-man on. Derrick can hear the song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Working on the Highway,” even over the dishes clanking and the griddle sizzling. The tune rolls around to the chorus and the retard’s head weaves back and forth, his fingers tapping out the tune, his feet struggling not to pound into motion. His mother smokes a Winston, looking tired, looking like the varicose veins are the only thing keeping her upright.
    Then the chorus hits, and the retard goes nuts. He belts out the words, his feet slap out the rhythm on the floor. Then he catches agust of smoke in the face from his mother that means shut the fuck up. He trails off, his head shrinking into his shoulders. He doesn’t seem sure what he’s been caught for, but he knows he’s been caught. But after a minute he forgets again. His fingers started dancing again, he’s waiting on the chorus again.
    Derrick watches the cycle through. Watches it again. The kid in anticipation, the kid bubbling over, the kid cowed and confused, the kid hurt. Derrick thinks about shooting them both in the top of the head. The song ends. When the retard thinks his mother isn’t looking, he rewinds the tape. She looks like she’s going to start crying from frustration. She pummels out her cigarette, lights a new one. The retard starts his cycle again like some kind of automaton.
    Derrick’s head pounds to the rhythm of his pacemaker. He quits looking at the kid, stares down at the green-flecked table top. Being suspended is worse than Derrick’s superiors could have imagined. It’s left his days brutal and thin. He can barely eat. His brain misfires like a rusty engine.
    “You look like shit,” Dick Fleischer says, gripping the table and pulling his gut into the booth.
    Derrick blinks, brings him into focus. “I look like I always look.”
    “True. But you used to get paid to look like a shitbag, now you’re doing it on your own time. Go home and take a fucking shower.”
    “You wanted me here. Say what you got to say before I shoot you in the neck.”
    Dick laughs out loud, his jowls jiggling. “Man, you ought to feel like you’re coming up aces. The niggers have died down in the streets and as soon as we can get you cleared you’ll be back out there running hookers and smack.” He raises a hand to the waitress. “Pie and coffee,” he calls to her. “Key lime.”
    “It was a clean kill.”
    “Sure it was. They’re all clean kills.” He puckers his fat face in thought. “Got busted sucking a neighbor boy’s dick?”
    “Raped his sister.”
    Dick takes a pie plate from the waitress, still chuckling. “I dig that you’ve got a moral streak, man, no matter how thin. But you’re a