When Mickey fixes the big Riverton-Haverhill basketball game by bribing Chuckker Washington to shave just a few points, Mickey clears enough coin to persuade Mickey’s Haverhill associate, a  leg-breaker named Danny Donnelly, to introduce Mickey to Aunt Sosha. Seeing possibilities for OxyContin in Riverton, Aunt Sosha sends Mickey home to start the business... but Aunt Sosha and her friend, Avram, an interrogator once dismissed from the Mossad for excessive zeal, hold Mickey’s buddy, Bughouse, hostage.

Maybe it would have all worked out if Mickey hadn’t been traveling with Madge. Madge is obsessed with the idea that she may be unreal, and the girl has a point. Her hymen grows back, no one in Riverton sickens or dies, no one has substantial memories. She feels the Eyes on her far too often, and her memory lapses disturb her. So when Bughouse is terrified of the comic book he finds, something called Archie, though Madge won’t let on, she is concerned. What could be worse than being a minor character in someone else’s dream?

But there is no time for philosophy. Before Mickey can slide into his usual booth at the Daddy Kane’s All-American Burger Shoppe and sell the first milligram of Oxy, Juice sees his old nemesis with his girl. Juice confuses Mickey’ head with a baseball, and since Juice is carrying a Louisville Slugger, he tries to hit a home-run... What else could Mickey do except reach for his Smith and Wesson .38?

from Part I

“I need you to repeat what I said. This is school, every word is a test, and I am Hell’s own headmaster.”

Mickey did not know what to say.

Danny snatched his black leather porkpie hat from his own head and slapped Mickey with it, hard. Danny nodded sorrowfully. “I can teach a monkey to pull a trigger. To handle a weapon, though, you have to be a man.” He tossed his revolver to Mickey. “Hold my gun while I fuck your girl.”

Danny spun Madge so her back was to his chest. Before she could make a sound, his hand clamped over her mouth. His other hand went into her black team jacket. The grommets unsnapped, sounding like so much popcorn. Danny’s big hand roamed roughly over her chest.

“Well are you going to stand there, boy?” he roared. “The first lesson about a weapon is to discover whether you have the balls to use it!”

Perry Glasser
220 Morgan Drive
Haverhill, MA 01832
978-373-2687

perry “at” perryglasser.com

I write out of certain convictions no longer universally accepted and, in some circles, under attack; that the purpose of the Arts is to illuminate and enrich the human experience; that however dark, unknown, changing and inchoate, a universal human experience exists; that human experience can and even must be communicated across the lines of our obvious physical differences; that the product of the Artist must be readily accessible to an audience; and that while the expression of the Artist embodies the essence of a time, the Artist speaks to and for an audience beyond that.

- How We Lost the Internet