LEONID “Mo’ Pills” Mogilney awaited the arrival of his favorite customers, sitting upright. He would rather have reclined, but his guilty conscience precluded even the appearance of comfort. Adding to his unease were the three agents sent by Mayor Heyward: Peterson, Patterson and Wilkerson; seated on the couch, wearing sunglasses.
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In the dream, her mother’s hair was blonde and thick as a clown’s wig.

Rebecca blinked into the dark, and wondered if it had really been her mother or an impostor trying to lure her in to kidnap her.

Her mother let in a crack of hallway light, and leaned forward to let her feel her long black curls. Rebecca’s fingers tangled through the coarse spirals, and she yanked out some dry strands. Her mother tilted her head and smiled. She said she was just down the hall if Rebecca needed to feel her hair again. Only ten steps away. Rebecca wiggled her fingers through her mother’s dark hair one more time, then onto her round shoulder, and down her arm to the cold silver bangles she never took off.

Michael Baker brushed his hair, placing the comb to the roots where they parted, running it from side to side. It was important to be presentable, to clean up before day’s end. It was something every man should do before climbing into bed. Woman or no woman, it was a proper task.

He leaned in towards the mirror and looked up his nose. With his finger he brushed away what had gathered around the edges of his nostrils, the stuff that his body had made to complicate matters.

He was not a new man. He knew this staring at the reflection of his face. I am the same stillness at the bottom of the lake, he thought, the same Michael Baker. He coughed and spat what came up into the sink. He left the washroom.

He found it hard not to be a snob, knowing as much as he did, having read so much.

He found it hard not to condescend to people, having had little to no encouragement or resources growing up, in the South, among the Uneducateds and the Pious.

And having grown up this way, he still managed somehow—impossibly—incredibly—to know so much—so much more than other people.