"It's simple mathematics, you gotta love us, Cause Joey Crack plus gats equals a lot of dead mothafuckas." Fat Joe, "John Blaze".

*********************************

"I lost my job the other day," Roland said.

Frank Grimes looked at his friend Roland Tempo, whose eyes were wide and somewhat desperate. The sunlight fell on both of their heads as they sat in the sun-drenched city park. They sat on two benches that had been occupied by some bums earlier in the morning, but they had been smart and had fled from the encroaching sunlight as the day progressed. Now, the two friends in their late-twenties were sitting on the weather-chipped bench, talking with one another as the people of the city walked by, chatting, walking, living.

"That's a hell of a thing," Grimes said in response, his voice lacking sympathy. He noticed that his friend's eyes had been bugging out of his head rather grotesquely for a little while now. Roland kept sneaking glances back at the people as they thronged by, and he was making Grimes nervous. "What the hell is the matter with you? Are you on fucking crack or something?"

"Huh?" Roland asked, somewhat offended. He whipped his head back at a family walking by, startling a small child in the process. He turned back quickly. "I thought we were talking about my fucking job."

"No, we were talking about your lack of one."

"Funny," Roland said. His cheek twitched. Grimes saw it. He didn't know what was wrong with his friend. In the past few months, his friend's demeanor had been changing. He had been real jittery, like a damn mouse that had caught the scent of a cat. It had only been recently that this had been happening, too.

"What did you get fired for?"

"You assume I was fired," Roland said, and correctly at that. Grimes made a mock toast at Roland with his water bottle.

"Touché."

"I'm hot," Roland said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, let's fucking go."

"You still didn't tell me what happened with the job."

Roland suddenly turned on him. "What the hell are you so interested in it for, huh?"

Grimes held up his hands in defense of himself. "Hey, listen: you brought it up."

"The hell I did."

Grimes wasn't going to argue the matter with him. He definitely wasn't right in the head right now, and Grimes wanted to know why. However, he wasn't going to press the issue. "You want to go somewhere and get an ice cream, if you're hot?"

Roland suddenly was fine, and the scowl had disappeared from his face. "Yeah, that sounds good. Let's go."

___________

Grimes climbed out of the yellow taxi, and stared upwards at Roland Tempo's dismal apartment. It had always been a shitty pile of wood and brick and cheap vinyl siding, but today it seemed even more treacherous and ugly. The sun was out, but it was dead out here on these embattled city streets, far away from the Cosmopolitan downtown and the immaculate villas of Rockwell. The taxi sped away, the driver perhaps understanding it wasn't smart to stick around here even in daylight. Grimes faced the apartment, and almost wanted to run after the taxi and just abandon what he had set out to do. However, he decided to go in and do what he needed to do, and call a cab using Roland's phone afterwards.

He hadn't seen Roland in weeks. He had not come around and visited Grimes at the job like he had before. Granted, he didn't work there anymore, but he sort of figured that his unemployed friend would still come around and visit. Grimes had out off going to his ratty apartment to see what was wrong, but days had become weeks, and he finally decided to stop procrastinating and go see him. He opened the door to the bleak triple- decker home. Roland's apartment was on the first floor. Grimes found his heart beating faster than usual, and he stood there in the rank smelling "foyer" of the triple-decker trying to calm himself down. "What are you so scared of?" he asked himself. He forced himself to smile at how ridiculous it was for him to be acting this way, and he moved in and knocked on Roland's door.

Naturally, after a few moments of waiting, no one answered on the other side.

Grimes did not come all the way out to this hellhole for nothing, so he tried the handle. It was open, surprisingly, considering the questionable reputation of the neighborhood. He slowly opened the door.

A foul smell flowed into his nostrils, and Grimes uttered a noise of disgust. The apartment was dark and dank smelling, but on top of that was a sick rot smell. Grimes instantly assumed that the worst had happened, and he strode quickly into the battered interior of Roland's apartment. He stepped on a loose floorboard, and it made a loud crack noise. He looked down at the floor, and then was surprised to feel two incredibly powerful fists thud into his chest. He flew backwards, crashing onto the floor of the apartment, his mouth open in shock. Then, he felt the strange sensation of warm liquid bubbling up from somewhere within him, and then up his throat, and it flowed upwards into his mouth and through his lips. The liquid, called blood, oozed down his cheek, leaving a warm trail of his life coming out through not only his mouth, but also from the two bullet wounds that had shattered some of his organs and had punched two holes through his body. Grimes began to feel very light, and he seemed not so much terrified as he did tired. As he lay there dying, he came to realize with a very distant horror that it was Roland who had shot him. The horror was so far away from him however that the expression on his face hardly changed. It would not change anymore, as a matter of fact.

Roland Tempo dropped the sidearm he had used to gun down his friend, his eyes wide and crazed, sweat running down his face. The arm that had held the murder weapon was trembling, and not with fear or shame or even because he was cold. It shook because of the crack that was wreaking havoc with Roland's body. He had smoked the last of it about four hours ago, and he needed more. He stood up very quickly, so fast that sweat flew from his brow and spattered into the rancid air of his filthy tenement. "If you don't have any fucking crack for me, you don't need to goddamn be here!" Roland screamed at the corpse of his friend. He then discovered that he hadn't established if Grimes had any crack. Petrified, he scrambled over to the fallen man and began ripping into his pockets, tugging, pulling, and searching with utmost desperation for crack or the money to get more. "Shit, you bastard! Talk to me! Where's the shit you have for me?" he yelled, his voice cracking, his heart thudding so fast it almost broke free from its connections and had begun to thud its way to his stomach and to ultimate digestion.

Grimes, of course, wouldn't answer.