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“I lost my job, the city’s in danger again, and I have to hear your terrible jokes before we all die?” “Yes,” Aish says, sipping tea. “Why not? Would you rather die miserable, on an empty stomach?”
Political expediency has to fudge the truth sometimes, she knows. Politicians always lie, so why not elect one whose lies will get you what you want?
All cities have their showcases of beauty and their blocks of beastliness.
“Family looks out for family, no matter what.” “Well, yeah. But gotta remember family ain’t always the one you get born with. Real family’s the people who are there when you need ’em.”
Over the years we’ve learned to handle anybody who crosses us, ourselves, since that’s the only justice we can trust.
Every court is a horror movie setting at its core, where property matters more than human lives and justice gets measured in billable hours.
She’s just lost too many friends to places like this to view it with a neutral gaze—children sent back to abusive parents, addicts jailed when they needed treatment, innocent people imprisoned for years by lying prosecutors or cops.
She’s feeling the kind of fury over this that can break people—but she’s got to wear her poker face through all of it, lest someone catch a photo of her showing momentary frustration and blast it all over social media with an “angry Black woman” caption. She likes Allen’s white-woman speak-to-the-manager energy, but it’s hard not to resent her freedom to display her feelings.
What shocks her is that she’s actually starting to miss the walking spike-covered powder keg that was her father, in spite of everything. There’s probably some kind of psychological weirdness to that, Stockholm Syndrome or masochism or something else she’s heard about from Maury Povich reruns, but what it all really boils down to is that at least Matthew Houlihan loved her, in his terrible way. She’s not sure the new version is capable of that, either.
If Aislyn has chosen this path, then she feels like she should face the consequences head-on, with eyes open. She owes that to her island, and her family, and herself. It’s the Staten Island way.
“I’m sure it’s comforting to pull the covers over your head and hope the monster goes away, but whether you believe in it or not, it’ll eat you just the same.”
Personalities are full of contradictions! How beautiful, and also annoying.)
Life runs on chaos math. It’s supposed to be varied and hard to predict—and yes, dangerous. But if something attacks you, you deal with that, you don’t just smash everything!
