Wrong Chance (7 page)

“What?” Yancee pressed down on the bite.

“The bite. That's how it starts,” Chance said. “Reason I choose a Blue-ringed octopus is because their poison works immediately and it won't be found in your system once you're dead.”

Yancee rubbed his mouth.

“First you feel a tingling sensation in your lips, like you are now.” Chance shrugged a
sorry buddy.
“Next you'll go into a state of paralysis. Lose control of every muscle, dude.” Then: “Hope you don't shit and piss yourself. You're too old for that.”

Yancee's eyes darted around. He started to fall until Chance guided his limp body into the trunk. It took some doing, but Chance managed to twist and turn Yancee's sculpted body until he was on his back. Chance wanted to see Yancee's dark eyes.

“Chance…what are…” Yancee's eyes darted back and forth. “What—”

“Difficulty speaking is a side effect,” Chance said, looking down on his frightened friend. “Save your energy because you have a lot of explaining to do. You need to think long and hard about how bad of a friend you've been.” He slammed the trunk closed.

T
he silent treatment really got beneath Jazz's skin in the worst way. She hated when someone igged her and put her on ignore status, especially someone who was highly animated like she was and could run their mouth and talk plenty shit like she could.

Jazz plopped down on the sofa beside Jaden, going out of her way to disturb him. “Really, are you gonna sit here all day spinning that ball on your finger?”

He kept the ball's momentum going with strict concentration.

“Dammit, Jaden, talk to me.”

Silence.

She said, “Tell me what I can do to make this better.”

He gave her an
I wish you were dead
look.

“Jaden.”

More ball spinning. More ignore status.

“I know you're angry with me.”

“No shit.”

She smiled, satisfied she made a breakthrough. “Before the—” She glanced at Jaden, thinking twice about proceeding. “Before the accident I was working on a novel where the protagonist has anger issues. In one sense, he's his own antagonist.”

“I'm not listening.”

“But you're responding so you hear me.”

“Smart ass,” he mumbled.

“Would you rather I be a dumb ass?” Then: “Terrance—that's the protagonist's name—reminds me of you. He's older than you by two years.”

“You act like you can't see I'm ignoring you,” Jaden said. “I'm exerting all my energy trying to be nice, but you're starting to push my buttons.” He went to the other side of the living room.

Buank. Buank. Buank. Buank.

“Through Terrance I discovered that the problem with poisoning by anger is it eats away your insides. Everything Terrance does and says is poisoned.” She thought about their situation and sighed. “After a while a person who poisons themselves with anger feels nothing. I don't want that to happen to you, Jaden.”

“You have a lot of nerve preaching the choir to me about an unfinished, undeveloped character. You couldn't possibly know how Terrance's personal conflict is gonna unfold because you're too weak to discover an ending, to close the story. He can't go any further than he's been like I can't.” He stomped across the room and stood over her. “I have every right to be angry. You—nobody else—ruined everything and took me away from my dad in the process. I'll never forgive you. And I promise to remind you of that fact every day.”

Buank. Buank. Buank. Buank.

H
e stared into Stygian darkness. It was getting harder to breathe. And being stuffed in the trunk of an Infiniti didn't have a damn thing to do with it. Yancee didn't know what was happening to him or why. He did Number One and Number Two on himself, and the stench was turning his stomach. He couldn't move a lick. His motor skills had taken a permanent lunch break. But oddly he could feel every agonizing inch of pain each time his head slammed against the rim of the spare tire. He didn't know what had gotten into Chance. This was way beyond the perimeter of their normal fighting and bickering. But he realized that Chance had dedicated himself to playing bumper cars with every pothole in the city.

After listening to the thrum of tires cruise against different textures of road for an undetermined amount of time, the tires crunched over a long strip of gravel, then the car stopped.

The engine was shut off; he could hear it tick.

Apprehension set in; his heart sounded like a bass drum in his ears.

The car door was slammed shut.

What had Chance so pissed?
Yancee tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but the stubborn thing wouldn't go down.

Urgent footsteps fell on gravel.

A key slid into the trunk's lock.

Yancee couldn't move. So the urge to attack he had was no good.

The trunk opened and without preamble, Chance said, “You stink.” Then: “Dude, you're gonna die of respiratory failure if I don't inject you with this.” He showed Yancee a syringe. “But not before I make you feel all the pain I'm feeling.”

Yancee's eyes moved right, left, up, and down. Wherever he was there was a tree-leaf canopy covering them. He looked through the leaves and saw the sky had darkened. Africa was going to kill him for being late. She was going to swear up and down he was out fooling around on her again, he thought, totally blowing off the seriousness of his immediate predicament. He smelled hints of rain mixed with a pine-needle breeze and his bowels.

Then his eyes pinned Chance and reality sucker-punched him, putting things in proper perspective. “Why are you doing this?”

“Hunch,” Chance said, grabbing two fistfuls of Yancee's UPS work shirt. “But my sixth sense tells me you know exactly why.” Chance tugged Yancee from the trunk and let his body hit the gravel with a thud. “Time to get your comeuppance.”

“Aahg!” Yancee howled in pain, hoping someone would hear him.

“It's only us, dude. Scream like a pregnant bitch if you wanna.” Then: “Now you understand why I chose to zap you with the venom of a Blue-ringed oct.” Chance started dragging Yancee across the gravel. “You're completely paralyzed and fully conscious. You're gonna love this part, dude: the beauty about this contradiction is you can feel all the hell I'm about to put you through. Well…up until the point your breathing stops.”

Now, in typical Chance fashion, Yancee realized that Chance wore thread-bare jeans, scuffed Vans sneakers, and a bleach-splattered Nirvana T-shirt. After Yancee endured the punishment of a flight of concrete stairs, the dragging was over. He wasn't sure of how far Chance dragged him—ten, fifteen feet maybe—but judging
from the burning sensation of his chest and face, it was farther than a hop and a skip.

Yancee lay face down—skin on fire—against a cold floor, another contradiction. He was still clueless as to where he was, and he couldn't get the sight of Chance's bald head out his mind. All he knew about his whereabouts was he was indoors and the place smelled like it had been bottled up for years.

Chance kicked him onto his back and showed him a large surgical scalpel. “Dude, I'm not horsing around.” His voice echoed throughout the building.

That meant the place was definitely big and probably empty, Yancee assumed. “Chance, man, what the fuck?” His eyes darted back and forth, taking in as much of his surroundings as his limited field of vision would allow. From the architecture and stained-glass windows, he thought he was in a church. Only he couldn't locate a reference or likeness of Jesus Christ. Somewhere in the distance he could hear a choir of crickets, the rustling of trees bringing up the background, and traffic, of all things. Then he felt a faint draft push across his face.

Chance didn't waste any more time. He jabbed the scalpel into Yancee's thigh and twisted the blade to get a good flow going.

Yancee screamed.

“Nice comeback.” Then: “Been thinking about it for the last six months. Dude, you knew about Cashmaire all along.”

Click.

Now everything fell into place. Chance must've known about what they had done or he was fishing for answers. Yancee's guilt catapulted him back to 1999 when Leon had shown him an article written in a medical journal. Yancee could still see the evil smirk Leon had on his face as Yancee had read the article.

Yancee was jerked back to the here-and-now when he saw the shiny blade lunging toward him again. First everything went from 88 rpm down to 3 rpm, and then his surroundings went mute. In slow motion he studied the deliberateness of the asymmetrical-shaped blade, the audacity of its precision point. He anticipated the inevitable pain it would cause but couldn't flinch or brace himself to soften the impact. Primal fear instructed him to survive, instructed his body to take flight or fight, instructed his hands to reach up and stop the dangerous blade from hitting its mark.

Nothing happened, though.

His brain transmitted, but his body didn't receive the messages. During the slow motion, he examined Chance's face: anger and vengeance had replaced easygoing and laid-back. Chance had to know, but how? Who had broken their pact of silence?

Then the blade sliced into his flesh; a guttural scream leapt from his mouth at 100 rpm.

“If I'm right, you got some huge gonads screwing around with my life.” Chance twisted the scalpel. “Dude, you're leaking plenty good.”

Yancee lay there in pain, motionless. He knew he was bleeding to death. “Why are you…what you want from me?”

Chance put his face uncomfortably close to Yancee's. “The truth.”

“Don't let me die like this.” Yancee felt his fear crystallize.

Chance laughed. “Of course not. We're buddies, dude. You can count on it.”

Yancee heard the duet of crickets and trees again. His breathing was labored. He did his best to speak through his agony. “The truth about what?”

“Shithead, why didn't you stop me from hooking up with my wife?”

“Come on, Chance. It doesn't—”

Chance showed him the bloody scalpel. “I'm not in the mood.”

As the sound of traffic filtered in, Yancee relived that day in his dorm room and did his best to tell Chance all about it. “It started on a Wednesday back in February of ninety-nine.”

“In breaking news this afternoon,”
the newscaster said from the television set,
“The charred bodies of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso were found in a rental car. Sund's daughter's body was found thirty miles away from Yosemite National Park where the women were last seen alive. Police and the FBI—”

Yancee shut the television off and turned 93 FM on. Mad Cobra's voice came through the speakers:
“Girl, flex time to have sex…”
And Yancee went back to what he was doing.

“Boy, stop it.” The gold-digging tramp slapped his paws away from her crotch. “Do you always put your hands on things you ain't earned?”

“Bad habit I've had since I was a kid,” Yancee said, easing up on the bed while kissing her neck, positioning himself to dry-fuck her. “I like touching things, baby, to see how they feel. You feel—”

“I. Said. Stop!” She elbowed him in the gut. “Next time I'll go lower.”

“Girl, flex time to have sex.”

Yancee swung his feet around to the floor, frustrated and horny. “What are you tripping on?”

She climbed off the bed and straightened her designer clothing. “Just like you thought you was about to get some of these goodies, I thought you was paying for my hair and nails to get done.” She crossed the room, purposefully teasing him with the sway of her handlebar hips and lovely ass, and reached for the doorknob.

Yancee sprang to his feet, erection straining against his khaki Dockers. “Girl, what are you trying to do, leave a brother with blue balls?”

Mad Cobra said, “Girl, flex time to have sex.”

She dug a trial-size bottle of Jergens lotion from her purse and tossed it to him. “Hope that works for you. My new appointment is tomorrow at eleven.” Then: “I need a pedicure too since you played me and made me reschedule.”

The door burst open, nearly knocking the tramp on her lovely ass, and Leon charged in their room like Serious Trouble was chasing him with two loaded .9mm Glocks. Their dorm room measured up to a one-room efficiency apartment with a small kitchenette and an even tinier bathroom that sat on Euclid Avenue above the infamous Rascal House and catty-cornered to Cleveland State University.

“Excuse you,” she said, sucking her teeth and rolling her over-the-counter hazel eyes.

Leon looked at her with 100% disgust. He possessed a deep-rooted hatred for anyone who bled once a month for an average of five days straight. “Fuck you. Get out. Don't no drug dealers live on these premises.”

“One day I'mma have somebody put a foot in your ass, Leon. Wait 'til my brother comes home from prison.” She slammed the door so hard behind her it bounced back open.

“Africa,” Yancee yelled, “wait a minute. I was just playing. I got the money.”

Leon literally crossed the room in nine steps and blocked Yancee's exit. Leon's broad chest heaved beneath the CSU sweat shirt. While trying to catch his breath, he shoved a 1993 issue of
The New England Journal of Medicine
into Yancee's hand. “Page twenty-six. Man, you gotta read this article.”

“Not now. I'm trying to let Africa get my dick out the dirt before my next class.”

“Bros before hoes.” Leon stood his ground in Yancee's path. “I'm not letting you go after your little slut until you read it.”