No one follows us out of the club, for which I am grateful. I pay a taxi to take Yvonne home. Maybe it's a testament to her quiet intelligence that it doesn't occur to me, until she's already airborne, how perfectly ridiculous it was for me to pay for her to get a taxi.
I hail a taxi for myself and tell him to take me to 105th. Again. Maybe I'll have better luck this time. I pay special attention to the driver, and I silently pray that picking me up won't turn out to be the biggest mistake of his life. In fact, I'm paying such special attention to the sky around me-scanning for any sign of a familiar vehicle, possibly with tightly grouped bullet holes riddled across its splintered windshield-that I don't notice the trouble below.
As the cab lowers down to 105th, I realize a moment too la
