We live in a crazy world, and if you want to get through it with your body and soul even a little bit intact, you might as well be crazy yourself. (Kinky Friedman)

Penny pursed her lips and raised a curious eyebrow.

“Vincent carries two guns, I mean all the time. He sleeps with two guns under his pillow, he locks the bathroom door when he showers and keeps two guns on the counter, right now: wherever he is there are two guns on him.”

“Why two?”

“The second one saves him.”

“I don’t want to know anymore.”

Rider stopped talking but a moment later, Penny pressed, “He’s never killed anyone.”

“I thought you didn’t want to know anymore.”

“I don’t,” she reminded herself. “But he hasn’t.”

Rider didn’t respond.

“What about the others? Have you?” She gasped, “Has Tommy?”

“I haven’t. I’m a coward. I would never have guts to kill someone – at least I don’t think I would.” He paused longer than he needed to, before adding, “Tommy hasn’t either.” Rider didn’t like Penny’s sigh of relief. “He has beaten men blind, crippled men, done a lot of terrible shit, but he hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

“Tony?”

“Not really.”

“Vincent?”

Rider turned his back on the city and leaned against the rail looking to the balcony tile.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Did Ricky?”

Rider pursed his lips.

Penny shivered.

“Senior hasn’t?” she begged.

Rider lifted both eyebrows.

Penny ran both her hands through her hair. Her arms quivered and her eyes watered.

“You had no idea?”

“That I live with murderers? That I married into a family of them? That I’m about to give birth to a baby who will grow up in a house where people carry guns? No, I didn’t know about any of that.”

“But the drugs, heroin isn’t for the faint of heart…”

“Drugs seem okay, I don’t know, I never grew up in this. I let a sheltered life and I had no clue this family was so bad. I guess I just assumed this was what people do when they don’t go to church. They do drugs and its okay, it’s like drinking.”

“No babe, other families aren’t like ours.”

She started to sob. Rider was uncomfortable. He had disillusioned his sister-in-law who stood a foot away from him, full of child, sobbing and sniffing and shaking.

He offered an apprehensive hand to her arm and she collapsed into him in an upset embrace. He held her. It felt nice to hold a woman like this. It felt nice to comfort someone in need.

A life flashed before him: a wife, a baby, another, a home, a real life.

This life he could have lead flashed before him as he dangled from the balcony of his high-rise apartment with his brother’s iron grip around his throat. The soundtrack to his missed life was Penny’s shrill scream. She pulled a gun from Tommy’s belt and held him at gunpoint.

“Let him up,” she squealed. “I’ll shoot.”

He knew she wouldn’t. She knew she wouldn’t. Rider knew she wouldn’t. Tommy pulled Rider back onto the balcony and dusted his brother off.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m…”

Penny dropped to the floor of the balcony and sobbed. Tommy rescued the gun from her hand and held her until the sun set. Rider got high.