I didn't bother answering the phone as Roger was just calling to tell me that he was outside. I avoided bringing Roger into the house as much as I could because say what you will about my parents being about the most vanilla people in Bluffington, they weren't stupid. They were aware that Roger was just about the most fucked up kid in town and any attempts at small talk with him always displayed this fact. They hated me hanging out with him and to be fair I could understand why, but they never forbade me from being in his company. They knew that I had drifted away from my old friends and were just glad that I was getting out of the house instead of sitting in my room all day. They definitely preferred my old friends to Roger and asked me how they were doing or would mention that they had seen them around. They sometimes said that my old friends had asked about me if they ran into them. I presumed this was out of politeness to my parent more than anything else.

I made brief small talk with my parents before leaving, I was conscious and paranoid of the fact that I was stoned and got outside and into Roger's piece of shit car as quickly as I could.

" Hey Funnie." He said relaxed pulling on his cigarette, it was a genuine greeting from him nowadays, not how he used to say it.

" What's up man?" I asked putting on my seatbelt.

" Not much! Not much! We gotta go make some money!" He said darting his head around the car looking in every direction as he pulled off the sidewalk and drove onwards. Just like everything else Roger had changed since Skeeter's death. He hadn't even been around when it happened, he had been staying with his white trash uncle in Florida for a few months because his mom was sick of him. That experience had altered him significantly, he was no longer the petty childish troublemaker he had been previously. He was now obsessed with money, calculated and an all round psychopath.

" Where to first?" I asked lighting up a cigarette for myself.

" Emmm, how about Liverdale?"

" Sounds good." I replied wiping ash of my green sweater vest, it had accumulated a few hot rocks this year. Liverdale was a small and really shitty neighborhood a few blocks away from where Roger lived. Roger's mom had managed to secure a house in a slightly better neighbourhood due to the income she made as a stripper/prostitute. We pulled up to a ratty looking gas station in beautiful Liverdale. There was an old dirty dog munching away on a discarded burrito and the proprietor of the establishment sat outside his business on a deck chair in his stained wife beater. Like clockwork a gang of runts ran over to the car and practically started throwing one-dollar bills at us. The idea was simple and brilliant, these kids were too young to buy cigarettes, so Roger just stole some of his mom's and sold them off individually smoke by smoke. The money we got from this would cover a pack each for us and a little bit left over. The stained wife beater deckchair guy who owned the gas station didn't have any problem selling us tobacco, he was also familiar with Roger's promiscuous mother.

We finished up our business in Liverdale and it was now 6:30pm. It was time to go to the Honker burger parking lot for our weekly Meeting. When we got there Roger pulled open the glove compartment and produced a small bag of coke.

" Where the fuck is this bitch?" He asked to no one in particular as he pulled a quarter from his pocket and began fishing around in the bag and scooping up a small amount of nose candy.

" She's been getting a bit Tardy Roger."

" Yeah, I mean you would think she would make it her business to be here on time, I mean we're on fucking time. This should be the other way around! She should be waiting around for us to show up! " he crouched down below the dash a snorted the white substance off the quarter.

" Yeah you're right. I mean, I never blackmailed someone before. I don't know. I think we should like, put pressure on her every so often. This should just be the arrangement, that she's here every week." Roger handed me the bag and the quarter, I obliged.

" Arrangement! Exactly that's exactly the word! This is an arrangement, it's a business transaction. When you have to pay a bill you fucking pay it. What happens when you don't pay a bill?"

I rubbed my nose as I felt my nostril going numb and I laughed and said:

" Why don't you ask your mom Roger!."

" Fuck off Funnie!' He said punching me in the arm with a slight smile on his face. " Seriously, when you don't pay a bill or you're late with a payment you get penalized, there's interest! We should be penalizing this bitch for showing up late! AND! We should be getting more Money from her!" Ranted Roger. I was far less greedy than him. I really hadn't registered the seediness of blackmail at the time. That hadn't really sunk in yet. I was more complaining about her lateness for the sake of it for something to say and Roger was now high and getting carried away. I didn't know what to say and I didn't want to appear weak so I simply just nodded and didn't say anything. Just then we saw her car pull around the corner of the drive thru.

Tippi Dink the former Mayor emerged from her car with her trademark emotionless face and walked towards us. In one hand she had a small brown envelope and in the other she had a bag from the drive thru. Roger was screwing up his face. He seemed graduate from anger to rage all of a sudden. She walked up to Roger's side and he began frantically rolling down his window ( as his car was shit and it had old school rollers).

" What fucking time do you call this!?" He rasped at her. She calmly handed him the envelope.

" Calm down you little shit, I got held up."

" WHAT!? Fuck you! Your supposed to be here on time! We're waiting here half an hour for you! We have better fucking things to be doing!' In reality it was more like 8 minutes. Tippi rolled her eyes and began remove her burger from her take out bag.

" Like what? Doing your fucking homework? Or selling smokes to infants?"

"She said taking a bite and staring back at Roger who was white-knuckling the steering wheel.

" You better fucking watch yourself bitch! Were you scissor fucking someone? Is that why you're late!?" Tippi just rolled her eyes and turned and started walking away.

" It's all there guys. Same time next week? Can't wait. " she remarked almost to herself. Roger was livid with her and punched the dash.

Tippi Dink had initially been a popular mayor but had lost the most recent election to her span style="mso-spacerun: yes;" /spanrival Bobby White. In many ways when she won her first election it had been a different time socially in America. People were open to new ideas and wanted change. Tippi had become the first female mayor and represented the antithesis of Bob White's conservative platform. She had been the right candidate at the right time. Now, things seemed to have changed again. People were uptight, angry with the government and suspicious of each other. There was a lot of division in America and Bluffington was no exception. The public had opted for a change of pace and went with Bobby White who promised to lower taxes, brutalize criminals and keep them safe from criminal immigrants. Election season was looming and Tippi fancied her chances at taking on White again however, there was a snag. Tippi had taken her eye off the ball during her last term in office and had ended up in a compromising position. She had developed a taste for cocaine and, as many people do, ended up soliciting the services of Roger's mother after a particularly heavy binge. There were photographs and under the instruction of his mother Roger implemented the blackmailing gig. Tippi's marriage to had always been a lavender marriage. He had just never been aware of it. She fobbed him off for sex by saying that she had a medical condition and he was content to spend his time tinkering in his shed ignoring his wife. It suited them both. She had just about got Bluffington to accept a female mayor the first time she took office. A lesbian mayor who snorted cocaine and occasionally fucked prostitutes wasn't going to fly. She didn't have a choice other than to pay Roger and his mom off. I had been cut in for a small percentage of the money after Roger's mom drunkenly spilled the beans on Tippi while were hanging out at her place one night. To be honest I wasn't all that surprised that the Dinks' marriage wasn't was it appeared to be. It made sense if you really thought about it.

Roger ranted and raved about Tippi as we drove to Mr. Studebaker's place.