“But he do have a point,” said Lemon.
“Yeah, you do be a bit ostentatious,” said Minty.
“Me?” said Lemon, pointing to himself, touching his diamond tie tack in the process as if pushing an irony button. “Me? You ever look at yourself, niggah? Nine-feet-tall motherfucker weigh thirty-two pounds—shit, you be ostentatious standing in the weeds wearin’ camouflage.”
“Style can’t be denied, Lemon. That’s the difference between you and me: you a slave to fashion and I’m a sultan of style.”
Lemon laughed, started to talk, then laughed some more, pointing at Minty to hold the moment until he got his breath. When he did, he shrugged grandly, raised his arms as if appealing to the holy spirit, and said, “Since when was this fashionable?”
“ ’Bout the time that piece of trash Buick was new,” said Minty, grinning.
“Know what? Fuck that niggah, he don’t know us when we didn’t have but a single pair of raggedy-ass trousers each, am I right?”
“You know you are?” Minty in the groove now of how they talked to each other.
“How your mama?”
“Still dead.”
“So sad, that woman a saint, what she put up with. I learned some shit over the years. Counseling. Your daddy was emotionally unavailable, you know that?”
“That’s right.”
“And my daddy treated women like they was throwaway things—you know that fucked up my shit.”
“You a broke-dick dog, Lemon Fresh.”
“You know I ain’t at all what I used to be.”
“I was picking up on that. New hat, right?”
Lemon laughed again, wheezing a little bit. “You funny. Hey, you still got that book I sent you?”
“No, I passed it on, like you do.”
“You did all right, though.”
Minty looked
around the shop, at his handmade Italian shoes, back at Lemon. “I coulda used some coaching.”
“You know how it is, we was young and stupid.”
“We?”
“But we ain’t now.”
“No, we ain’t.”
“In fact, I’m not even who I am no more, you know, ’cept for my good looks and charm and whatnot.”
“That right?”
“My shit is informed by a thousand-year-old super-enlightened being from the Underworld up in here.” Lemon thumped his lapel with an open hand.
“Super-enlightened, huh?” Minty looking baffled.
“What you sayin’?”