Page 59 of Antihero

B-Roll shrugged at her. He was five years older, which was a lot older, and he was built, had that bad-boy lined-jaw beard the chicks dug. So, yeah, she was little. That was one of his moves, give ’em a smackdown and wait for them to crawl back.

“Look at you, just smokin’ a joint in the full light of day,” she said.

“You smoke, li’l girl?”

A lips-pooched smirk, tilt of the head. “Sometimes maybe I been known to.”

They walked side by side up the crowded sidewalk.

Taz held back but he could smell her perfume, something sugary, and her top eyelids and throat sparkled with that glittery lotion stuff. But then his brain tweaked like before and he was back as a kid playing with Other Blanca. She was so sweet and he—he was pretty sweet back then, too. He remembered when he split his pinkie toe on the doorjamb and cried a little, how she put a Band-Aid on for him and didn’t even make fun, and—

“Hold up,” B-Roll said to Blanca up ahead. “Check this.” He crimped his tongue around the still-lit joint, popped it into his mouth, closed his lips, then Jack-in-the-Boxed that fucker back out. Long draw, dragon-smoke through his nose, no hands all the way.

B-Roll being B-Roll.

Blanca laughed. “Impressive.”

“Really?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Not impressive at all.”

“Hey,” B-Roll said. “Ain’t I seen you?”

“Can’t you do better than that?”

“No, no, I mean it. Wait!” He snapped his fingers, the epiphany hitting. “I saw you in Beauty and the Beast. Forest Hills, yeah?”

Even from a few steps behind, Taz could see her get all glowy. Tipping her head, that perky little chin jutting out at him, touching her hair, all that shit. “Really? You saw that?” Dismissive hand wave. “That was stoopid.”

She seemed so nice. Funny, too.

Taz’s stomach felt all knotted and the weirdest fantasy swept through him—that he should dart forward and grab her hand and run her away from B-Roll and it would just be the two of them and they could just laugh and joke and she’d talk with Taz and he could tell her stuff, thoughts and feelings and shit, and she could do the same and they’d actually, like, connect with each other and it could feel like it once felt when he was a little kid with Other Blanca. WTF was even going on with him?

A big guy stepped out of a souvenir shop and Taz made to pivot with the joystick, thumb twitching on the D-pad, L2 shoulder button for full-auto fire, but then he remembered he wasn’t playing Kings of Karnage but was outside in the real world and he thought, Dayum. Life was surreal.

“You were good for real,” B-Roll was telling her. “My kid sister wanted to go. I take care of her.”

“Aw, you do? How old?”

“She’s ten. Mom’s second marriage, you know how that goes.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do for sure. I got a little sister, too. Six. They can be a pain.”

“She’s a cutie, though. Luce. Know what she’s big-time into? Polly Pockets.”

“I remember those!”

“Right?” B-Roll said. “I just got her the koala purse playset.”

“No way! I had that.”

“I bet you had that. You look like a koala purse playset girl.”

“Do I, now? A koala purse playset little girl?”

“Well,” B-Roll said, and had her hanging on his every word. “Maybe not a little little girl.”

He held the joint out at his side, not looking over.