The bench in the Playground: Roy Tony as the Brighton Projects' daylight heroin source

texture · 24 Dec YDPAH (2008)

• When: 24 Dec YDPAH (the yrstruly crew's Christmas-Eve crewing day), late AM and again post-2200
• What: In yrstruly's narration, Roy Tony is the fixed point of the Brighton Projects drug economy: "Roy Tony was always there on his bench in the Playground in late AM," and the crew — yrstruly, C, and Poor Tony Krause — "go back to the Brighton Projects to cop," and "we cop half a bundle from Roy Tony" to hold them through Christmas. His operation keeps business hours: returning after dark the crew finds "its' post 2200 its' too late Roy Tony hasnt' got his pissboys out hes' not open for comerce," and without his commerce running, the Playground's after-dark drinkers and smokers — men yrstruly's slur-laden idiom renders as Roy Tony's own — are a danger the crew flees. The scene never touches Wardine or the parole backstory; what it attests is a Roy Tony holding the same named ground (the Playground of the Brighton Projects) in the same proprietary way scene 008 described as where "Roy Tony do business" (see Dating notes on the weld). It is also the text's own proof that Roy Tony and Poor Tony are two different people: they stand at opposite ends of the same transaction.