Tupper’s right hand grasped his heart, twisted the white-collared shirt like a dial in search of the valve that opened and closed with each pump. Whatever it was, that skipped beat, that palpitated breath, that tightened cord in his throat, had passed.
He adjusted his earbuds and pulled his iPod from his breast pocket. He scrolled through his playlists—Old Skool Hip-Hop, ’90s RnB, Lo-Fi Hip-Hop—before he decided to let the iPod choose. He selected Library and set the iPod on Shuffle. Clipped beats and truncated rhythms pulsated in his ears.
Between a short stack of papers to his left and two mandarin rinds on his right was a thin line of cocaine. Remnants of two eight-balls. The leftovers.
Two days ago he left the office, for the first time in six days, to buy whitening toothpaste from the twenty-four-hour convenience store on Water Street. It was an ungodly hour. But also an otherwise ordinary January morning of bitter cold, with the crust of a dawning sun inching over Brooklyn. Yesterday, in the same predawn hour, on the same corner, he bought two eight-balls from his guy, Tattoo, and ignored the sun inching overhead.
