Having lived in New York for the better part of the last ten years, I was not absent from the presence of violence. If not the sound of sirens burling through the streets every hour of the day or the mere details of crime that would come to us in the forms of homicide, thievery, and assault, then for the particular vulgarity in speech or terms of endearment that were littered with curse and insensitivities. But the crime traveling through the grapevine, the worry of being flashed walking from my apartment to the college, or the one neighbor who was beaten into the hospital by her boyfriend would never prepare me for the fear surging through me as I saw Xander still with the nose of the gun pressed to his temple. Just as he had done through the majority of this face, he would keep calm and
