T Ray sayin’ Move nigga! ridin’ my ass with a pair a speakers. I gotta plasma TV fronta my face, a cord I can’t see snakin’ round my ankle.

We put the shit in the van, T Ray checkin’ his watch. I swear he timin’ us. Life for T Ray one big movie, fat boy name Raymond Thompson, T Ray the star. You hang with T Ray, you in the movie, too. Maybe that’s why I hang with him. This the first time he bring me long, maybe the last. There’s easier ways to score duckets, yo.

I ball out, kill the lights till we hit Trinity. We free. Somethin’ give, everythin’ bottled up come out. We yellin’, knockin’ Respect with our fists. T Ray say, We done it, dawg! We fuck that bitch up the ass! He come home – T Ray pullin’ his cheeks, make this big-eyed face like to crack me up – Oh shit! It all gone!

I’m wipin’ tears out my eyes, can’t hardly see the road we on. I say this the last time, I might be lyin’. I figure the score in the mirror: Two TVs, microwave, stereo, speakers, DVD player, CD player, computer, another computer – laptop. Stacka old comics – T Ray’s idea. The T Ray touch. Somethin’ personal they feel in their balls.

We cruisin’, keepin’ it at forty. Couple a angels. I tell him, I think I twist somethin’ in my back, dawg. Why we got to be so fast? This ain’t Mission Fuckin’ Impossible.

T Ray smart. He tell me what I ain’t ask.

He shut his eyes, it like his fat ass ain’t sittin’ there next to me. He shake his head. It ain’t about the money, dawg, it’s about power. Know what I’m sayin’? He tap his skull. When you rob someone, like THAT — he snap his fingers – you takin’ somethin’ mean the world to somebody. It make you God. God change a life forever.

Me and you, homes. We changin’ lives.

Forever.

I pump the brake for the turn up ahead. The ride heavy with all this weight.

This story appeared in flashquake‘s 2006 fall fiction issue.