Puck. "You have no idea how boring it gets, living forever."
"So if this furniture and this pool table didn't appear until I showed up, how were you entertaining yourself before I got here?"
"I was planning my shots," said Puck.
"You never tell the truth about anything."
"I never lie," said Puck.
"That was a lie," said Mack.
"Believe what you want," said Puck. "Mortals always do."
"What are you doing here?" demanded Mack. "Why are you hanging around in my neighborhood? Why don't you go and have your fun at somebody else's expense?"
Puck shook his head. "You think I picked this place?"
"Who did, then?"
"He did," said Puck.
"Doesn't mean you have to stay."
Puck stood upright and threw the pool cue at Mack. It hovered in the air, the tip right against Mack's chest, as if it were a spear aimed at his heart. "I'm his slave, you fool, not his buddy. And now not even that. Not even his slave. His prisoner."
"This is a jail?"
Puck shook his head. "Go away. I'm tired of pool, anyway. Like you said, it's no challenge."
"No wonder Professor Williams wanted to kill you."
"Oh, do you want to, too? Get in line," said Puck. "You got to give Will Shakespeare credit for this: He didn't hate me. He understood."
"Yeah, right, you got no choice."
It was clear the conversation was over. Mack left.
Chapter 15
YO YO
Ceese Tucker heard about it from his mother, who got it from Ura Lee Smitcher, who was about out of her mind she was so angry and worried about that motorcycle mama giving rides to her boy Mack. "Corrupting a minor is still a crime in this state," said Ceese's mama as he ate his supper.
"That's what I told Ura Lee and that's what I'm telling you. Now you go arrest that woman."
"Mama," said Ceese, "I'm eating."
"Oh, so you intend to be one of those fat cops with your belly hanging down over your belt.
One of those cops that watches criminals do whatever they want but he too fat and lazy to do anything."
"Mama, giving a ride to a seventeen-year-old boy who's late for school is not going to get that woman convicted of anything in any court, and if I arrested her it would make me look like an idiot and I'm still on probation, so all that would happen is I might get dropped from the LAPD and your motorcycle mama would still be at large."
"Ain't that just like the law. Never does a thing to help black people."
"Just think about it for a minute, Mama."
"You saying I don't think less you tell me to?"
"Mama, if a white cop came and arrested a black woman for giving a ride to a high school boy, you'd be first in line to call that racial profiling or harassment or some such thing."
"You ain't a white cop," said Mama.
"The law's the law," said Ceese. "And my job is one I want to keep."
"I remember my daddy telling me," said Mama, "that back in the South, somebody got out of line, he come home and find his house on fire or burned right down to the ground. That generally worked to give him the idea his neighbors wanted him to move out."
"Now that is a crime, Mama, and a serious one. Burning somebody's house down. I hope I never hear you or anybody else in this neighborhood talking like that. Because now if something did happen to her house, I'd be obstructing justice not to tell them what you said."
"It didn't turn me white, it turned me into a cop. I'm a good cop, Mama, and that means I don't just go arresting somebody because their neighbors don't like her. And it also means that when a real crime is committed, I will see to it that the perpetrators are arrested and tried."
"So having you here makes that hoochie mama safe to prey on the young boys of our neighborhood and makes it unsafe for us to do a single thing about it."
"That's right, Mama. Now you got somebody to blame - me. Feel better?"
"I'm just sorry I fixed you supper. Breakfast tomorrow I ought to make you eat cold cornflakes.
Ought to make you sit on the back porch to eat them."
"Mama, I love you, but you worry me sometimes."
Ceese was worried about more than Mama threatening not to fix him a good breakfast. No shortage of fast-food places with good egg-and-biscuit breakfasts before he had to eat cornflakes.
And come to think of it, cornflakes weren't bad, either.
What worried him