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named Chip, whose skin was the color of a chocolate-chip cookie including the chips—some sort of skin condition—had asked him what way he was going. At first, Dean thought it was a come-on, an invitation to bend over and hug his pillow, but Chip had quickly made it clear that he was talking politics, not sex. “You got two ways to go here, a kid like you,” Chip had explained. “You hang with the brothers, or you hang with them Air-yan mothafuckas.”
    â€œI don’t hang with nobody,” Dean had told him.
    Chip had said, “Then you fucking bait.”
    â€œAnyways, I’m white.”
    Chip raised an eyebrow. “An’ I’m the fucking man on the moon.”
    â€œFuck you.”
    Chip had laughed. “Ain’t no two ways about it—your mama went and got herself some dark meat, boy.”
    Dean almost jumped the guy right then and there. He had held himself back only because Chip had been hitting the iron pile for years and looked like a polka-dot Mike Tyson and would probably have killed him. Also, it might have been true. Dean didn’t know his father, and his mother had never been very selective about her dates. This wasn’t the first time Dean had been called a nigger, but it was the first time he’d been called a nigger by a nigger.
    Chip turned out to be a nice guy. Eighteen years into a thirty-year bid, he’d learned to get along with just about everybody. He said he didn’t care what way Dean decided to go. “You seem like a good kid,” he’d said. “I’m just sayin’, is all. You got some choices to make, boy. You go with the powers, or you wind up in Punk City. Ain’t no two ways about it.”
    The two powers, according to Chip, were the Black Muslims and the Aryan Circle. There were other affiliations as well, but those were the only ones likely to accept him. “Punk City,” also known as Protective Custody, was where all the snitches and baby-fuckers and weaklings ended up. That wasn’t an option, so far as Dean was concerned. He decided to go with the Circle, since they scared him only half as bad as the Muslims.
    Chip recommended that Dean shave his head.
    â€œYou lose the hair, you can pass for white bread all day long, boy.”
    So Dean had shaved off his nappy, ginger-colored mat and done his best to fit into the Aryan Circle, most of whom, it turned out, were not bad guys, and just as scared as him.
    An advertisement for bathroom cleanser, a talking toilet brush, jerked him back to the present. He found the remote between the sofa cushions and turned off the television.
    Ten weeks out of Lincoln, and so far nothing had turned up for him. He supposed he could get back into dealing, buying and selling ounces and grams. It was easy money, but chancy, likely to land his ass back in jail. That was the thing about dealing. The mathematics was for shit. Ninety- nine times out of a hundred you did the deal and that was that. The problem was, to make a decent living at it, you had to make a lot of deals, which meant you had to have a lot of customers. Sooner or later, someone was bound to fuck you over. No, to make money in the dope business you had to move the big weight, three or four deals a year and no more. The problem with that was the same as in any other business—it required an initial investment, a reputation, and connections, none of which he had. He knew plenty of people in the business, sure, but all of them were small time and most of them were in jail. Lousy way to make a living anyway, hanging out with people who were all the time fucked up and broke. He’d learned his lesson. Aside from scoring for Carmen, he’d been more or less behaving himself—hanging out, killing time, keeping his eyes open, waiting for the right situation to present itself.
    The phone rang. Dean tensed up. Mickey would not sleep through a ringing phone. He watched her door. At twelve rings