Every block some skulker in robes, or fez or both—and one slick looking rich waxer in a suit—would come out looking for him with obvious adult hesitation and then try and talk him into stopping, to which he gave a hearty, “Fuck you, perve!” always bolting into a zigzagging sprint when they were near, stalling oncoming traffic or traffic on his side.
Crossing Freddie Grey Avenue, two cab drivers tried to block his path and he ran right over the hood of the near car and over the roof of the other, down the trunk and sprinted up the way into the Hopkins Campus.
He was now deep in migration territory with private cops everywhere so he ran off into the parklands on the side and made his way north, ever north, on Hadith Road, which went to what Rico called Vizieristan, where all the rich creepers had their mansions where they fucked whiteboys and black boys, but according to Rico, didn’t mess with Latino boys for fear of reprisals.
He hit the side streets on the east side and pounded up the center line there. At 33rd Street some old woman tried to heave a pot from a third story window with the scream of “Infidel” and it crashed near enough to make him think she meant him harm.
At the Alameda a cabbie in a turban cut him off and got out, demanding he get in, and Dillon ran close enough to spit in his face and the old graybeard gave chase. As Dillon was running him around, two black kids hopped in the cab and drove off with it, hooting and hollering like old time cowboys.
Finally, his mouth parched, Dillon hit Joppa Road and ran east, towards what had once been his home, what would now be his mother’s whore pen, only in hopes of finding out what happened to Rico, his only friend, the only person who had never given him shit for being born white in a colored world.
