Face it, this is what we're up against
you're waiting, and every minute is a minute away

It was coming on five days now that Joel Baker was absent from work. He was still in the hospital, with no improvement in his condition, no matter how many medicines Dr Mercer pumped into him, or how many experimental treatments they tried. He wasn't coming down off the high. He was missing work, missing paycheques, leaving Sophie to cover the bills – rent, utilities, food. Before she worked school hours – weekdays, while Alexa was in class – but now she was taking on weekends as well, bringing her daughter with her to play on the floor or do her homework for a few hours to try and make ends meet.

"You're pullin' serious overtime," Curly noted on the fifth day, over burgers at Dairy Queen that he'd offered to pay for.

"Someone needs to pay the bills," Sophie sighed, swirling a french fry in ketchup. "Alexa's getting antsy though. Every weekend inside."

After lunch, Tim pulled Sophie into his office. He was looking more harried than before, like he hadn't slept well the last few days. His hair was a little messy, a little too greasy to just be from hair oil, and his eyes were red-rimmed, clothes rumpled. Things weren't going well for Mr Timothy Shepard, not since his best man was pulled out of the field and stuck into the hospital.

"Well maybe if you hadn't been so stupid, telling him to move LSD in his pocket..."

Tim stopped pacing. "No one told him to move fuckin' drugs in his jeans." Then he started pacing again, worse off than even ten minutes before. Either Joel was a moron, or he was doing a side job for someone, and that just wouldn't do. Not for Tim. His boys were working for him, not for each other, not for anyone else. "Doctors tell you when he'll be back?"

Sophie shrugged slowly. She was wondering the same thing.

x x x

On Saturday, Curly had a proposition. He was in his brother's office, leaning back in the chair across the desk, fingers laced resting on his stomach. "Gimme Baker's position," he said. It wasn't a question, either. The field outfit was lost without their leader, and so far no one had stepped up to take his place. No one knew how long Joel would be gone, and they didn't want to get stuck in the position they knew they didn't qualify for. There was a big difference between following orders and calling the shots – the difference being that one wrong decision could bring the whole company to its knees.

"You want Baker's position," Tim repeated, before a harsh bark of laughter. "I ain't givin' you shit, Curly, and you know it."

He'd been expecting this, but it didn't hurt to try. Tim was still treating him like a dumb hood. Like he hadn't learned a thing in prison. But he wasn't some fifteen year old fool anymore, he just couldn't prove it when Tim wouldn't give him the chance.

"Then gimme the day off. Gonna take Sophie's kid to the park or some shit."

Tim didn't laugh at this one. At this one, he launched up out of his chair and came around the desk to grab Curly so tight by the shirt collar that the younger man barely had room to breathe. He didn't yell. He didn't scream. But he leaned in close to Curly's face, and spoke in a low growl so quiet that Curly had to pay attention.

"You don't go near my kid anymore. You dig?"

"It ain't your kid," Curly said, pushing Tim's hands off him and standing up. They still weren't the same height – they never would be – but for once Curly didn't feel like he was looking up to Tim. He had the leverage this time. "She don't know shit and Sophie ain't itchin' to tell her. That kid's mind's an open book."

"Get the fuck outta here," Tim said, and this time he was yelling. "You're fired, Curly, get the hell outta here."

Curly saluted his big brother. "Guess I'll be able to take Alexa to the park after all."

He shut the office door behind him, leaving Tim standing alone in the middle of the room with his blood boiling. From a drawer in his desk he produced a bottle of whiskey, and didn't bother mixing it with anything for the rest of the afternoon.

x x x

Curly did end up taking Alexa to the elementary school playground for the afternoon, leaving Sophie free to finish up her work undisturbed, and join them a little after six when the sun was beginning its slow descent. There were a lot of kids just ending their play when she got there. Curly was sitting on one of the benches, looking entirely comfortable with his arms crossed, watching Alexa in a game of tag with ten or eleven other kids from her class.

Sophie sat down beside him. He didn't even look over at her at first, not until she asked, "how was it?"

For a moment he didn't answer. He just turned to study her face – there was little left in it that he'd seen as a youth. She was an adult now. Things were different. "It was great."

"Would you like to come for dinner?" she invited, but she knew the answer before he even said it – no. He had places to be, people to see. And had she heard Tim fire him? It was time to look for alternate employment as well.

"Well if you're sure," Sophie said, heart in stomach. He hadn't been in her house since the day he offered to take Alexa after school. It wasn't as if she had Mark or Ruby over every night, and Joel was still in the hospital. It wouldn't have hurt to have the company, but he seemed determined not to let that happen again. Maybe the kiss had been a mistake. Maybe he was just spending time with Alexa because he liked kids now for some reason. It was stupid. She had no idea what was going on inside his head, and he wasn't giving her any hints.

x x x

Mark didn't go over to Sophie Baker's that night to practice math with Alexa. He didn't eat the baked chicken Ruby prepared for dinner. And he didn't touch his own homework, either, leaving kids' tests to be marked – they wouldn't mind. Nobody was ever itching to get a bad paper back. And they were all really bad papers.

At ten to midnight he shrugged into an old leather jacket, and pulled a jar of hair oil from the very back of the bathroom cabinet that he hadn't touched since he'd been wild and young. When he left the house he walked, sneakers pounding the pavement, heading for the alleyways, where he knew the Shepard outfit used to hang out. He'd met the younger Shepard on many occasions in those alleys, drunk off his ass, sleeping underneath a coat because he'd been kicked out of ten different places since sun-up.

It was almost as if they'd planned to meet there, underneath the street light, surrounded by nothing but brick walls and department store windows with bars on them. Curly had a cigarette in his mouth, and Mark's eyes were blazing. They didn't speak – they didn't have to. Both of them knew why they were there. Sophie. Alexa. And rage and hatred that had never really ended, a personal war that had never been won even when everyone else had given up and gone home.

Mark threw the first punch, hitting Curly square in the jaw and knocking his cigarette to the pavement. Curly went down right after it, but was leaping up, agile like a cat, the next second. Fists flew and then weapons flashed, and there was only five minutes of struggle before blood splattered in thick, heavy drops on the grey concrete and a body followed soon afterward.

"Stay away from them," Mark said, loud and clear, holding his switchblade against Curly's neck. There was a dark wet spot growing bigger on the side of Curly's shirt, and Mark had cuts all up his hands and arms, but he was the one walking away. He was the victor this time, and Curly was the one left to bleed out in the halo of the streetlamp.