WE HAD ABOUT THREE HOURS TO KILL until the party was supposed to be going on out at the Shit Pit on the Reservation. It was Friday night and it was my night off at Rupert's where I bussed tables. My roommate also worked at Rupert's but he didn't get the night off. He was a pantry cook and on weekends when Rupert's was packed I wouldn't expect him off work until after midnight.

So it was about twenty minutes after I'd hung up the phone with Stephano that my apartment door flew open. In walked Josh and Stephano. They never failed me. Those fuckers never knocked. That's about the same time the phone rang again.

I picked it up. It was for my roommate.

"No, Joe's working," I said and hung up. I was expecting a call any minute and I couldn't chance the line being busy.

"What time's the party?" Josh asked, his back turned to me from where he looked out the front window of my second story apartment overlooking State Avenue, the main strip through town.

"Sometime after nine," I said. "Michelle's coming by later with some friends and then we're gone."

Stephano changed the music on my stereo and then turned up the volume. That was just like him. No matter what was playing he'd just walk over and change it.

I said, "Anything but rap right now. Leave in Zombie. We need to get pumped. We got a long night yet."

"You've probably been listening to that shit all afternoon," Stephano said.

Fuck it, I thought. If I made Stephano change it now then he'd be sure to control the music when we were in his Bronco later. We'd probably pull up next to a convertible full of women and Stephano would start bumping some cornball group he'd seen on late night MTV. But that was something Stephano just didn't understand—you don't pull up on women bumping your stereo.

Something like that could end any action right there. If you're playing rap they might think that you think you're a thug. If you're playing alternative they might think you're a butt-rocker. So you turn down your stereo because they'll be sure to have theirs playing which is a tip off as to what kind of girls these are. Alternative rock. Rap. R&B. Country. Blonde, young, yuppie girls that listened to either R&B or country were the prime choice. These were Daddy's little girls that came with a wild side. And the country girls were usually pretty naïve and that was a good thing. But for those kind of ladies we usually had to drive out to the Eastside around Bellevue and Kirkland.

I wasn't a big Tupac fan, but he once said something in an interview worth repeating: "You rap for the bitches, not the niggas. It's the bitches that buy your records, and the niggas want what the bitches want."

This was something that Stephano needed to hear.

The phone rang. I picked it up and it was Michelle. She said she'd be over later before nine. I said great. Then I told her it was four bucks for a keg cup at the Shit Pit. She said great. We hung up. I smiled. It only took her three cups. One cup if it was an ice beer in the keg.