DJ CORNER STONED - a fictional work written by David Charles Kramer
DJ CORNER STONED
A Story by David Charles Karma
By 2049, truth had become a luxury product.
Not truth itself.
That remained everywhere—in scars, records, photographs, DNA, memory, conscience.
What had become expensive was proving it.
Governments licensed forensic memory analysts. Corporations retained neuro-linguistic auditors. Wealthy defendants hired consultants who could train the body to lie without sweating.
There were machines capable of determining whether a person believed what he was saying.
There were no machines capable of making another person care.
David Charles Karma had learned the difference the expensive way.
By forty-nine, he had accumulated enough accusations to populate a small town.
Fraud.
Liar.
Pretender.
Fake musician.
Fake scholar.
Fake Christian.
Fake Jew.
Fake Catholic.
Fake everything.
Some of the accusations contradicted each other so perfectly that David almost admired them.
One man told him he was too Jewish to be Christian.
Another said he wasn't Jewish enough.
A Protestant informed him he was obviously Catholic.
A Catholic informed him he couldn't possibly be Catholic.
An atheist told him none of it mattered because God did not exist.
David thanked him for simplifying the paperwork.
For years, David defended himself.
Degrees.
Photographs.
Certificates.
Correspondence.
Government documents.
People examined the evidence, nodded solemnly, and moved the goalposts.
Eventually he understood that some trials had no acquittal because acquittal had never been the purpose.
Still, he kept the documents.
And eventually, he built something else.
The nightclub occupied the lower nave and crypt of a deconsecrated cathedral in Old Sacramento.
The building had survived floods, earthquakes, three denominations, a fire, and an investor from Los Angeles who wanted to turn the sanctuary into luxury micro-lofts.
It survived him too.
David owned the place with Giuseppe Mancuso.
Joey Two Baptisms.
Sixty-three years old. Five-foot-six. Built like a fire hydrant in an Italian suit.
He had been baptized as an infant and again at thirty-seven after what he described only as a divorce, a stolen Cadillac, and “an administrative misunderstanding with the Diocese of Reno.”
When asked which baptism counted, Joey shrugged.
“I figured Heaven got the paperwork.”
The club's legal name was The Cornerstone.
The neon company made an error.
On opening night, the sign lit up:
THE CORNER STONED
David stood on the sidewalk staring at it.
Joey stood beside him.
“You calling them?” David asked.
“Nah.”
“They forgot a word.”
“They improved it.”
David looked at him.
Joey shrugged.
The sign stayed.
Within months, the name migrated to David himself.
DJ Corner Stoned.
He hated it for two days.
Then somebody printed it on a shirt.
By summer, he was headlining under it.
On Saturday nights, deep house rolled beneath stone arches where choirs had once sung. Lasers crossed cracked mosaics. Bass shook dust from saints who looked as though they had endured worse.
People thought the name was ironic.
David knew better.
The cornerstone had been rejected before.
Thursday nights belonged to Joey.
The club closed to the public, the lights softened, and the cathedral became an unofficial supper club.
Lawyers sat beside musicians.
Priests drank espresso with retired cops.
Gangsters argued theology with professors.
Politicians attended only after Joey promised not to call them politicians.
He called it Confession Night.
No confessions were heard.
Officially.
At 10:17 on a wet November evening, three men entered without reservations.
David recognized the first immediately.
Vincent Puglia.
Vincent chaired something called the International Council for Authentic Christian Identity.
Nobody knew who had appointed him.
Nobody had ever seen minutes from a meeting.
Nobody could identify another officer.
Nevertheless, Vincent had letterhead.
Letterhead, David had learned, could take a man remarkably far.
Behind him came Michael DiPaolo, thin and watchful, and Salvatore Benvenuto.
Salvatore's nickname was Actually.
Every sentence he spoke began with it.
He had once corrected a cardiologist during his own heart attack.
David sat beneath a stone Saint Peter, eating linguine alle vongole.
Vincent approached.
“Karma.”
“Puglia.”
“We need to talk.”
David set down his fork.
“Then talk.”
Vincent pulled out a chair.
A black folder landed on the table.
“We've investigated you.”
David looked at the folder.
“Your education.”
Silence.
“Your career.”
David's expression did not change.
“Your religious history.”
The room seemed quieter.
“Your ancestry.”
David looked up.
Vincent opened the folder.
“There are questions.”
“Ask one.”
Vincent did not.
“There are inconsistencies.”
“Name one.”
Again, Vincent did not.
Salvatore leaned closer.
“Actually, we're only trying to establish—”
David looked at him.
Salvatore stopped.
Vincent finally said it.
“People think you're a phony.”
The sentence remained between them.
David looked past Vincent toward the ruined sanctuary.
For years he had imagined this moment.
He had imagined anger.
A speech.
Some flawless, devastating answer.
Instead he felt tired.
He folded his napkin once.
Then again.
“For years,” he said quietly, “I've wondered what it would take.”
Vincent frowned.
“To do what?”
“To satisfy people like you.”
“You could start by answering questions.”
“I have.”
Vincent touched the folder.
“Not to us.”
There it was.
Not truth.
Jurisdiction.
David smiled.
Joey, behind the bar, saw the smile and stopped polishing his glass.
“No.”
Vincent looked at him.
“No what?”
Joey kept his eyes on David.
“Whatever he's thinking.”
David stood.
“Bring the folder.”
Vincent hesitated.
“Where are we going?”
“Downstairs.”
Joey frowned.
“We are downstairs.”
David buttoned his jacket.
“Further.”
Joey's face changed.
“No.”
David walked toward the kitchen.
“David.”
David kept walking.
“You told me there wasn't another basement.”
“I lied.”
Salvatore inhaled.
“Actually—”
David turned.
“Not tonight, Sal.”
Behind the walk-in freezer stood a steel door.
Behind the door waited an elevator.
Joey stared at it.
Then at David.
“I have owned forty-nine percent of this building for eleven years.”
“Correct.”
“There is an elevator behind my freezer.”
“Yes.”
“Where does it go?”
David pressed the call button.
“Down.”
Joey stared at him.
The doors opened.
Nobody moved.
Vincent's certainty had diminished.
David gestured inside.
“You wanted proof.”
They entered.
The elevator descended.
B1.
B2.
B3.
Then the display went blank.
Michael looked at it.
“How deep are we going?”
David faced forward.
“Deep enough.”
No one laughed.
The doors opened.
White light spilled into the elevator.
Beyond it was a laboratory that should not have existed.
Concrete walls vanished into darkness.
Copper cables crossed the floor.
Vacuum tubes glowed behind steel cages.
Analog gauges trembled beside neurological displays.
At the center stood a black reclining chair beneath a surgical lamp.
Beside the chair:
electrodes.
syringes.
clamps.
a scalpel.
Michael stopped.
Vincent stopped.
Salvatore said nothing.
Joey stared at David.
“What did you build?”
David stepped into the room.
“The Veritas.”
Lights awakened one by one.
A circular lens descended from the ceiling.
Its iris opened.
Vincent looked from the machine to the chair.
“What happens down here?”
“Questions get answered.”
Michael moved backward.
David noticed.
“You're free to leave.”
Nobody did.
Vincent recovered enough to say:
“This is theater.”
The machine woke.
UNSOLICITED STATEMENT DETECTED.
Vincent looked upward.
ANALYSIS: SPEAKER DOES NOT BELIEVE STATEMENT.
No one spoke.
David removed his jacket.
Joey grabbed his arm.
“How much?”
David did not answer.
Joey tightened his grip.
“How much did this cost?”
“Twenty-three point eight.”
Joey stared.
“Million?”
David looked away.
Joey let go.
For the first time that night, he looked afraid of David.
“You built a twenty-four-million-dollar machine.”
“It wasn't built from scratch.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Kasparov Laboratories.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Most people haven't.”
Joey looked around.
“What happened to them?”
David said nothing.
The machine answered.
KASPAROV LABORATORIES CEASED OPERATIONS FOLLOWING THREE FATAL TEST INCIDENTS.
Silence.
Joey slowly turned toward David.
“Three people died?”
“The prototype had problems.”
Joey stared at him.
David walked toward the chair.
“I'm not asking anybody else to sit in it.”
He lay back.
That stopped everyone.
David looked at Vincent.
“You came here to decide whether I'm a liar.”
Vincent's eyes moved toward the scalpel.
David saw it.
“Ask.”
The Veritas had begun as an attempt to correct the fatal weakness of the polygraph.
Polygraphs measured stress.
Stress meant nothing.
Truthful people panicked.
Liars slept beautifully.
Dr. Miriam Kasparov believed deception existed elsewhere—in the tiny collision between memory and language.
A person knowingly contradicting what he remembered created work.
Microscopic work.
Invisible work.
But work.
The Veritas measured that conflict across cortical activation, ocular movement, autonomic response, micro-muscular preparation, and memory recall.
It did not reveal objective truth.
It did something narrower.
It determined whether the speaker believed his own words.
Joey stood at the console.
His eyes settled on faint black discoloration along one armrest.
“What happened there?”
David did not answer.
Joey looked at him.
“The prototype?”
“Yes.”
“David.”
“This isn't the prototype.”
Joey stepped away from the controls.
“No.”
“Joey.”
“No.”
Vincent watched.
David sat up.
“What?”
Joey's voice stayed low.
“You spent twenty-four million dollars building a courtroom underneath a nightclub.”
“For truth.”
“For them.”
He pointed toward Vincent.
David's expression hardened.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You don't understand.”
“I understand exactly.”
David stood.
Joey stepped closer.
“You built all this because some assholes didn't believe you.”
The words landed harder than shouting.
David looked toward Vincent.
That glance answered for him.
Joey's face changed.
“You wanted a machine that could make them admit you were real.”
David looked away.
“Ask your questions.”
“David—”
“Ask.”
Vincent opened the folder.
“State your name.”
“David Charles Karma.”
A green line appeared.
TRUE.
“Were you born David Charles Karma?”
“No.”
“What name were you born with?”
“David Charles Kramer.”
TRUE.
“Why did you change it?”
“To write under.”
The machine pulsed.
TRUE — INCOMPLETE.
Vincent looked up.
David's face tightened.
“It was also a way to become somebody I chose.”
TRUE.
Vincent continued.
“Are you a professional musician?”
“Yes.”
TRUE.
“Do you possess the education you've claimed?”
“Yes.”
TRUE.
“Have you fabricated your religious background?”
“No.”
TRUE.
“Your ancestry?”
“No.”
TRUE.
Vincent turned a page.
“Do you believe in God?”
“Yes.”
TRUE.
“Do you believe Jesus Christ is the Messiah?”
David looked directly at him.
“Yes.”
The room went silent.
Every gauge fell to zero.
The lights dimmed.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then the monitors turned white.
TRUE.
Vincent's voice changed.
“Do you believe He died?”
“Yes.”
TRUE.
“Rose from the dead?”
“Yes.”
TRUE.
“Is Lord?”
“Yes.”
TRUE.
Vincent looked down at the folder.
“Have you lost something because of that belief?”
David did not answer.
The lens adjusted.
His hands closed around the chair arms.
Memory arrived without permission.
Airports.
Letters.
Government offices.
Religious men discussing his identity while he sat three feet away.
People explaining what he was.
What he wasn't.
What he could not be.
“Yes.”
TRUE.
Something clicked inside the wall.
A gauge needle trembled beyond its marked range.
Joey saw it.
“What is that?”
“Nothing.”
Vincent looked at the next page.
“One more.”
Joey stepped forward.
“No.”
David said:
“Ask.”
Vincent looked at him.
Then asked the question he had not intended to ask.
“Do you believe proving all this will finally make people accept you?”
David froze.
The Veritas began recording before he answered.
Joey looked at Vincent.
Vincent looked almost startled by his own words.
David's mouth opened.
“Yes.”
The machine screamed.
A metallic tone ripped through the room.
The surgical lamp flashed red.
DECEPTION DETECTED.
The restraints snapped shut around David's wrists.
He jerked.
“What the hell?”
COGNITIVE CONFLICT EXCEEDS BASELINE.
Joey hit the console.
“Cancel test.”
TEST CONTINUES.
“Veritas, release restraints.”
SUBJECT DECEPTION UNRESOLVED.
The scalpel tray moved.
Two inches.
Everyone saw it.
David stared.
“That isn't connected.”
The tray moved again.
Joey looked at him.
“You said the prototype had problems.”
“This isn't the prototype.”
RESTATE ANSWER.
David pulled against the restraints.
Vincent backed away.
Michael reached the elevator.
The doors did not open.
“David,” Joey said.
The machine repeated:
RESTATE ANSWER.
A current passed through David's arms.
His back arched.
He cried out.
Joey slammed both fists on the console.
“Shut it down!”
RESTATE ANSWER.
David breathed through clenched teeth.
“All right.”
Silence.
The question remained across the central screen.
DO YOU BELIEVE PROVING ALL OF THIS WILL FINALLY MAKE PEOPLE ACCEPT YOU?
David looked at Vincent.
Then Joey.
“No.”
Green.
TRUE.
The restraints remained locked.
David looked at the screen.
FOLLOW-UP REQUIRED.
His face went pale.
WHY BUILD VERITAS?
David laughed once.
Bitter.
“I don't have to answer that.”
The current hit again.
Joey flinched as if he'd been struck.
“Answer it.”
David glared at him.
Joey's eyes were wet.
“Answer the damn thing.”
The room smelled of ozone.
David looked at Vincent.
Then Michael.
Then Salvatore.
No clever line came.
No joke.
No posture.
Only a man strapped to a machine he had built because he could not bear being called a liar.
His voice dropped.
“Because I wanted them to hurt.”
The machine went quiet.
TRUE.
Joey lowered his head.
David continued.
“I wanted to put people in this room.”
TRUE.
“I wanted them to watch that screen.”
TRUE.
“I wanted to see their faces when it said I wasn't lying.”
TRUE.
David swallowed.
“I told myself I wanted justice.”
His eyes closed.
“I wanted humiliation.”
TRUE.
“I wanted them to know what it felt like.”
TRUE.
He looked at Joey.
“And I thought if I proved enough…”
His voice nearly disappeared.
“…maybe I'd stop feeling like I had to prove anything.”
The machine waited.
Then:
TRUE.
The restraints released.
For several seconds nobody moved.
The scalpel tray rolled slowly back into place.
Joey crossed the room and removed the electrodes from David's temples.
His hands shook.
Vincent lowered the folder.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
Finally, Vincent said:
“This machine only proves what you believe.”
David looked at him.
“It doesn't prove what you are.”
The Veritas beeped.
Vincent shut his eyes.
ANALYZING UNSOLICITED ASSERTION.
STATEMENT CONTAINS UNDECLARED PREMISE.
Vincent exhaled.
“What premise?”
THAT VINCENT PUGLIA POSSESSES AUTHORITY TO DEFINE SUBJECT.
Joey made a sound that might have become laughter on another night.
Vincent looked toward the lens.
“I do possess that authority.”
FALSE.
Vincent's face reddened.
“This machine doesn't understand ecclesiology.”
PARTIALLY TRUE.
Vincent almost smiled.
Then:
NEITHER DO YOU.
This time even David laughed.
It hurt.
Vincent looked at him.
David looked back at the machine.
The green lights.
The questions.
The apparatus he had imagined as a throne and discovered was a mirror.
“Turn it off.”
Joey looked over.
“What?”
“Turn it off.”
Joey hesitated.
Then killed the power.
The room became ordinary.
No machine.
No green lights.
No verdict.
The silence that followed felt different.
Nobody had authority over it.
David stood.
His wrists were red.
He walked toward the surgical tray.
Vincent watched him carefully.
David picked up the scalpel.
Michael stepped backward.
Salvatore's mouth opened.
David turned the blade beneath the light.
For several seconds nobody knew what he intended.
Joey did not either.
“Dave.”
David reached into a paper bag on the counter.
He removed a cannoli.
With precise care, he sliced it in half.
Joey exhaled.
David set the scalpel down.
“You know what that is?”
Vincent looked at the blade.
“A scalpel.”
“Same thing can save somebody or butcher him.”
David tapped the black folder.
“Words too.”
Vincent's eyes moved to it.
“You can investigate somebody.”
Tap.
“Teach him.”
Tap.
“Warn him.”
Tap.
“Defend him.”
David stopped.
“Or you can cut him open because hearing yourself talk feels better than admitting you don't know.”
Vincent's expression hardened.
David did not stop.
“I don't know everything about you.”
“Good.”
“I don't know who hurt you.”
Something changed in Vincent's face.
“I don't know who you buried.”
Vincent's left hand moved unconsciously toward the ring on his right hand.
Not a wedding band.
A thin gold signet ring worn smooth with age.
Michael saw it.
His eyes lowered.
David noticed both men and understood that he had touched something real.
He did not ask what.
That was the point.
“I don't know what you've done that you still wake up thinking about.”
Vincent's hand closed around the ring.
David handed him half the cannoli.
“So I don't get to write your story.”
Vincent looked down at the pastry.
David's voice softened.
“Give me the same courtesy.”
Vincent looked at the black folder.
For the first time since entering the club, he did not open it.
He closed it.
Then he took the cannoli.
Not forgiveness.
Not agreement.
A cannoli.
Sometimes civilization survived on smaller gestures.
Vincent took a bite.
David asked:
“So what now?”
Vincent looked at him.
“I don't know.”
No machine spoke.
David nodded.
“That might be the smartest thing you've said tonight.”
Vincent almost objected.
Then didn't.
Michael and Vincent entered the elevator.
Salvatore remained.
He looked at David.
Then at the dark machine.
“Actually—”
He stopped himself.
David waited.
Salvatore tried again.
“I was an asshole.”
Nothing beeped.
No screen judged him.
David nodded.
“Yeah.”
Salvatore winced.
“Could've softened that.”
“You seemed committed to accuracy.”
Salvatore laughed once.
Then followed the others into the elevator.
The doors closed.
Joey waited until the floor indicator vanished.
Then he hit David.
Not hard.
Open hand.
Right shoulder.
“Ow.”
“You spent twenty-four million dollars on a murder basement.”
“It isn't a murder basement.”
“It electrocuted you.”
“Technically—”
Joey raised one finger.
“No.”
David stopped.
Joey looked at the marks on his wrists.
The anger drained out of him.
“You could've died.”
“I knew the limits.”
“Three people died.”
“Different unit.”
Joey looked at him for a long time.
“You didn't know.”
David said nothing.
“You hoped.”
Silence.
Joey walked toward the chair.
“You know what scares me?”
David looked at him.
“Not the machine.”
Joey turned.
“You.”
That landed harder than the current.
“Not because you're dangerous.”
David waited.
“Because you almost let people who don't love you turn you into somebody you don't recognize.”
David looked away.
Joey studied the restraints.
“I've watched men ruin their lives trying to make somebody sorry.”
He ran a thumb across the blackened leather.
“They never know when they've won.”
David looked at him.
For an instant Joey seemed older than sixty-three.
Then it was gone.
Joey pointed at the dead displays.
“You got everything you wanted tonight.”
“Did I?”
“Proof.”
He pointed toward the elevator.
“An audience.”
Then the chair.
“A verdict.”
Joey stepped closer.
“And you're still standing here looking like somebody stole something from you.”
David said nothing.
“What exactly were you waiting for that machine to give back?”
David had no answer.
For once, that was the answer.
At midnight, David went upstairs.
The club opened.
Six hundred people moved beneath the stone arches.
Catholics.
Protestants.
Jews.
Muslims.
Atheists.
People who had lost God.
People searching for Him.
People entirely certain what everyone else was.
People who had only come because tickets were cheaper before eleven.
David didn't ask.
That was the point.
He stepped into the booth.
The crowd saw DJ Corner Stoned and erupted.
Normally he loved the sound.
Tonight it unsettled him.
Hundreds of strangers telling him who he was.
He put on his headphones.
The cathedral went dark.
One kick drum sounded.
Then another.
Above the ruined apse, words appeared:
THE STONE THE BUILDERS REJECTED
HAS BECOME THE CORNERSTONE.
The crowd roared.
David reached for the microphone.
He had prepared a speech.
Something clever.
Something about judgment.
Something about people keeping their mouths shut.
He looked toward Joey behind the bar.
Joey gave him the slightest shake of the head.
Not don't speak.
Something else.
Tell the truth.
David raised the microphone.
“My name is David Charles Karma.”
The crowd cheered.
“Some of you know me as DJ Corner Stoned.”
Louder.
“I had a speech tonight.”
A few laughs.
“It was excellent.”
More.
“I was going to explain what everybody else gets wrong.”
Joey folded his arms.
David smiled.
“Turns out I had a productive evening.”
The room quieted.
“I've spent a lot of my life wanting people to understand me.”
The music moved beneath him.
“Then I wanted them to believe me.”
He looked over the crowd.
“And somewhere along the way, I started thinking those were the same thing as loving me.”
Silence.
“They aren't.”
He let that remain.
“You don't have to understand everybody.”
A few voices answered.
“You don't have to agree with everybody.”
More.
“You are not required to approve of everything another person does.”
The room listened.
“But if you don't know somebody's story…”
David looked upward toward the cracked saints.
“…maybe hold the knife by the handle.”
He lowered the microphone.
For a few seconds, he let the silence live.
No punchline.
No machine.
Just six hundred people beneath the old arches and a low bass note moving through the floor.
Then David brought the music back.
The beat built slowly.
People began moving again.
A woman near the front raised both hands.
Someone behind her laughed.
A couple kissed beneath Saint Peter.
Joey poured a drink and gave David the smallest nod.
David closed his eyes.
For the first time that night, he wasn't explaining anything.
Then every screen in the club went black.
David opened his eyes.
“No.”
A circular symbol appeared.
The Veritas logo.
Joey looked toward the basement.
“You've got to be kidding me.”
Text appeared.
MORAL FUNCTION ENABLED.
David stared.
“Absolutely not.”
The crowd laughed, assuming it was part of the show.
GENERATING SUMMARY.
“Veritas.”
A pause.
ANALYSIS COMPLETE.
Four enormous words filled the apse.
SHUT YOUR MOUTH, SWINE.
For three seconds, six hundred people were silent.
Then the cathedral exploded.
Laughter.
Cheering.
People screaming.
Joey folded over the bar.
David stared at the words.
Then he laughed.
Not at Vincent.
Not at the committee.
Not even at the machine.
At himself.
Twenty-four million dollars.
A hidden laboratory.
A failed tribunal.
All because human beings had invented a problem centuries earlier with a completely free solution.
Occasionally:
shut up.
David raised both hands.
“Apparently the machine has notes.”
The crowd roared.
He dropped the track.
Bass crashed through the room.
And beneath the broken saints, believers and doubters, saints and sinners, frauds and truth-tellers, fools and geniuses, and every unfinished human being between them—
everybody danced.
At 3:11 in the morning, Joey found David sitting outside on the cathedral steps.
The rain had ended.
The broken neon hummed above them.
THE CORNER STONED
Joey sat beside him.
For a while neither spoke.
Finally:
“You destroying the machine?”
David looked at him.
“No.”
Joey sighed.
“Of course not.”
“I'm changing it.”
“Into what?”
David looked through the glass doors toward the empty dance floor.
“I don't know.”
Joey nodded.
“That might be the smartest thing you've said tonight.”
David smiled.
Joey stood.
“You coming inside?”
“In a minute.”
Joey left him beneath the neon.
Dawn had begun whitening the windows across the street.
David thought about all the years he'd spent explaining himself.
Every document.
Every argument.
Every person who demanded proof and then found a new question once proof arrived.
The Veritas could answer one thing with terrifying precision:
Does this person believe what he is saying?
It could never answer the question beneath the accusations.
Who gets to say what another human being is?
David had spent years assuming the answer had to be somebody.
A council.
A government.
A denomination.
An institution.
An audience.
An enemy.
Himself.
Now he wasn't sure.
Across the street, beneath a streetlamp, someone waited.
Salvatore Benvenuto.
He held a paper bag.
David squinted.
“Sal?”
Salvatore crossed the street.
He held out the bag.
“Cannoli.”
David accepted it.
“You rob a bakery?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Probably would've been easier.”
David opened the bag.
Salvatore shifted awkwardly.
“I wanted to say something.”
David waited.
Salvatore opened his mouth.
“Actually—”
He stopped.
Looked annoyed with himself.
Then started again.
“I was wrong.”
No machine spoke.
No gauge moved.
No green light appeared.
David studied him.
“You don't have to say that.”
“I know.”
That mattered.
David reached into the bag and took out a cannoli.
He looked around.
“No scalpel.”
“Probably healthier.”
David broke it with his hands.
Half for himself.
Half for Salvatore.
They sat on the steps.
For several minutes they ate without speaking.
Then Salvatore said:
“You know, technically, cannolo is singular. Cannoli is plural.”
David slowly turned toward him.
Salvatore smiled.
David laughed.
“You couldn't make it five minutes.”
“Fourteen years of habit.”
David raised the remaining piece of pastry.
“To incremental sanctification.”
Salvatore tapped his against it.
“To incremental sanctification.”
The sun rose over the cathedral.
Above them, the broken neon sign flickered once.
THE CORNER STONED
Two men sat beneath it eating cannoli.
For once, nobody asked for proof.
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