Houston by Sam Moussavi

Author:Sam Moussavi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABDO
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Darren woke up in a hospital bed. There was a swath of soreness somewhere on his face. As he put a hand to his chin, there was the bandage between thumb and skin. As he surveyed the room with caution, he noticed that Marquis was there, sitting in a chair by his bed. He looked like he had been crying, but that couldn’t have been right.

“What’s going on?” Darren asked. His throat was dry and his shoulder was sore all over again, sensitive to the slightest movements.

Marquis cleared his throat. “You’re back up in the hospital.” His eyes didn’t move when he spoke, instead, focusing on the rail of the hospital bed. They were sad and tired.

“What time is it?”

“Just past midnight.”

“My head,” Darren said. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Life is like that,” Marquis said, blinking lazily. “You get into something and you don’t even realize that you’re in it.”

Sadie walked into the room, carrying a cup of water and small paper cup with two pills in it. Though a staunch proponent of professionalism, she could not resist a glance into Darren’s eyes when she got close.

“What are these?” Darren demanded, hoping a change of subject would ease the spotlight over top of him.

“Vitamins,” she said. “You were dehydrated. You haven’t been eating.”

Darren looked behind him and saw the IV dripping.

“It’s just a sugar drip to give you energy,” she said. “You’ll get no more drugs in here.”

Sadie walked out of the room.

Marquis moved his chair closer to Darren.

“I should’ve taken those pills away from you the first night you got out of the hospital for your shoulder.”

A passing thought of Mike and his trouble with lean struck Marquis, and he became transfixed on the railing again.

“You okay, ’Quis?”

Marquis looked into his brother’s eyes and at first it seemed like the two had never met. “Huh? Yeah. I’m good.”

Darren dry gulped because he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“I should’ve snatched ’em off that goddamn coffee table,” Marquis said before a pregnant pause, “but I didn’t.”

Marquis’s eyes went distant yet again. He had always separated his job from his family. They never crossed paths because he always kept them apart. But now, things were tangled. The problem wasn’t only that Darren was hooked. There were other things to consider. The streets don’t reward the weak. Marquis would have to retaliate against those who beat and robbed his little brother. If he wanted to keep his spot at the top of the Third Ward, he’d have to have those boys killed.

His eyes finally moved to Darren and the image of his little brother with two of his bottom teeth knocked clean out, made Marquis think that maybe he didn’t want the top spot any longer. That maybe the crown didn’t mean what it used to mean to him—just one day before. The potential for change, the violent swiftness of it, the thought of even beginning to change, shook him.

“But you ain’t never gonna have another pill on my watch,” Marquis mustered jaggedly, while looking at the floor.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.