You Suck: A Love Story

She leapt onto the pallet of flour, lifted a tile to see that the ceiling was suspended a full four feet below the structural ceiling. Bless old buildings. She grabbed a water pipe, pulled herself through the ceiling, jackknifed her legs up and around the pipe, then used her free hand to pull the ceiling tile back in place, all in less than two seconds.
    She listened as the man moved around below her, then scooped up one of the big bags of flour and left the room. That was a good call.
    She checked her watch. Less than a minute before she’d go out. She spotted four pipes running together parallel to the floor. They were slightly warm, which was why she could see them at all in the darkness, but each was two inches around and braced to the ceiling every few feet. They’d hold her.
    She scrambled over to the pipes, squirmed out of her leather jacket, and put it across the pipes, then lay facedown on top of it. This way, even if one of her legs slipped off, it wouldn’t pull her off the pipes. She was trying to wedge the toes of her boots into the gap between the pipes when she went out.
    The problem was that the pipes weren’t used that early in the morning. As the building awoke, hot water began coursing through them, and Jody had been subjected to the heat all day. Her jacket had protected her face and torso, but her thighs had been slow-cooked inside her jeans.
    She gritted her teeth and bolted through the dish room door into the back room of the bakery. So now it’s deserted. Of course, bakers work in the middle of the night and the early morning. At sundown the dishwasher would be the only guy still in the building.
    She found her way to the stockroom, then out into the alley. She could see the entries to both of their lofts from the end of the alley, and fortunately, no one appeared to be watching from the street. There were lights on in the new loft and she made her way to the door, her legs burning with every step.
    She listened at the door-did what she thought of as “reaching out.” If she focused she could almost hear shapes, depending on the ambient noise. There was someone in the loft-she could hear the heartbeat, industrial music playing in headphones, the shuffling of a body-a light body dancing. It was the kid, Abby Normal. Where in the hell was Tommy? He couldn’t be far from the loft-the sun had gone down only five minutes ago.
    Jody pounded on the door, but the shuffling sounds upstairs didn’t change rhythm, and she pounded again, this time leaving a dent in the metal door. Fuck, the kid has the headphones cranked and can’t hear a thing.
    Jody shivered, although not because of the cold, but because the hunger was rising in her. Her body telling her she needed to feed so she could heal.
    She’d only done it once before, and wasn’t sure she could pull it off again, but she needed to get into the loft and leave a lockable door intact. She concentrated as the old vampire had taught her, and gradually, she felt herself fading-going to mist.
    M onet was no longer dressed as the statue guy, no longer in character-not that character, anyway.
    Now he was the masta-blasta, gansta-rappa, full-ninja-badass and a bag of mothafuckin’ chips, bi-yatch-bent on revenge and whatnot. He’d given up mid afternoon on making any money and had gone home to remove his makeup and lick his wounds. He’d taken a vicious ass-whuppin’ today, even if it was only to his ego. But now he was rolling with his homies, P.J. and Fly, they would put that bronze muthafucka down-if he was still around. If he didn’t run away like a little bitch.
    “You strapped?” Fly said, adjusting his do-rag as he drove his ten-year-old Honda Civic with rims worth more than the rest of the car.
    “Huh?” Monet inquired.
    “Do you have a weapon?” Fly said, enunciating all Royal Shakespeare Company precise.
    “Oh, yeah.” Monet pulled the Glock out of his waist-band and showed it to Fly.
    “Nigga, put that shit down,” said P.J., who was in the backseat, wearing a Phat Pharm tracksuit that was four sizes too big for him.
    “Sorry,” Monet said, tucking the gun back into the waistband of his jeans. He’d borrowed the Glock-rented it, really-from a real gangsta in Hunter’s Point, who needed it back in two hours or he’d charge another twenty-five bucks. Before he gave Monet the gun, he made him swear that no one would be wearing gang colors, so nothing Monet did could come back on him. Monet had made the assurance,