Summary
Dani asks Will again what he needs a gun for. Will’s face hardens and he explains that it had to be Riggs who killed Shawn. Will explains The Rules, and says he would have done the same for her when they were kids. Dani asks what happens if he misses, guessing correctly that he’s never shot a gun. She is disappointed and worried.
Buck offers Dani a cigarette. Will is shocked when she takes one, as he doesn’t like smoking himself. He expresses surprise to her and she sarcastically comments that her smoking is no worse or more surprising than him shooting. Buck strikes the match and the elevator stops again.
On the fifth floor, the thick smoke stays inside when the doors open. Through the smoke come two big hands that grasp Will’s shirt. Then the hands put him in a headlock like the kind Shawn used to give him. There is laughter. Finally Will realizes it is Uncle Mark.
Will wonders if he is going insane. Mark tells Will he looks like his “damn daddy.” Will comments that Uncle Mark got his parents together because he cast them in the same cheesy movie he wrote. They’ve never met as far as Will can remember, but Mark hugs him.
He asks why Mark is there. Mark smooths the wrinkles in his dress shirt and pants then asks Will why he is there. Will is skeptical, knowing that a question in response to a question is usually “a setup.” Will feigns ignorance and Mark threatens to wrestle him again. Mark huffs when Will mentions the rules as the reason he is out for revenge.
Mark goes over the events like it’s a movie, setting the scene. Together they trade off lines, narrating the shooting of Shawn, Will thinking about the Rules, finding the gun, taking the elevator, walking to Riggs’s, "and—" Will finds that he can’t say the final part. Mark prompts him to finish it. He tries to say it but his mouth dries out, like an allergic reaction to the thought of shooting a man.
Mark finishes it for him, drawing out the "ssssshhhh" sound in "shoot." Will comments that his uncle lost the camera he used to shoot his films with. To make money to buy another, he decided to sell crack for a day. He went to a corner to sell, “pockets full of rocks to become rolls.” In an hour, he had enough money, but kept selling until the end of the day.
But he held the corner for longer than a month, becoming a full-blown drug pusher. Another dealer snatched the corner from Mark by shooting him dead. No witnesses talked to the police. Will asks if there’s anything else after “shoot.” Mark says that’s the end. He pulls out his own cigarette and goes to Buck for a match. The elevator opens.
Analysis
Just as Buck challenged Will’s plan to carry out Rule No. 3, Dani questions what Will needs a gun for. Will explains again the obligation to kill Riggs in retaliation, but Dani points out an issue he hasn’t considered: what if he misses? Although the question is coming from someone who was herself killed because someone missed their shot, Will tries to maintain his masculine front, insisting that her concerns don’t matter.
The next ghost on the elevator is Will’s uncle, Mark, who is another shooting victim. Because Mark was a wannabe filmmaker when alive, he walks Will through his plan to kill Riggs as though Will is the protagonist not of the book we are reading but of a movie. Despite Mark’s prompting, Will discovers that he can’t even speak the final part of his plan—the climax in which he shoots Riggs. In this moment, Will’s fear and uncertainty rise to the surface, drying out his mouth as he tries to speak. Mark, however, has no issue saying “shoot.”
Reynolds builds further on the themes of revenge, grief, and gun violence during Will’s explanation of Mark’s backstory. It turns out that Mark only became involved in selling drugs because he needed money to buy a camera and pursue his passion for filmmaking—a passion that brought together Will’s parents because Mark cast them in the same film.
Unfortunately, Mark’s crack dealing (“rocks”) followed a familiar trajectory when he continued earning ostensibly easy money (“rolls”) beyond what he needed for the camera. Mark became the target of a gang hit because a rival dealer wanted the “turf” of his street corner and the regular customers who came with it.
With this narrative within the narrative, Reynolds shows another example of how violence and grief have touched Will’s life as a member of a Black American community rent apart by a disproportionately high incidence of gun homicide. By this point in the novel, when Buck strikes another match and the elevator stops, the reader can safely assume Will is about to encounter another loved one who was needlessly killed.
