Blacktop Wasteland

Kia is Bug’s wife of 15 years. Together they have two sons, Javon who is 12 and Darren who is eight. Bug reflects glowingly on his first meeting with Kia, an 18-year-old beauty with whom it was mutual love at first sight. Their shared affection has not diminished over the years. Kia is frank and honest. She has high expectations for her husband and her children.

Kia works as a housekeeper at a nearby Comfort Inn, and she is quite willing to pick up the financial slack from the decline of Bug’s income if it were possible. As she reflects on the days when Bug was in “the Life” as an active getaway driver, however, she has mixed emotions. There was a lot more money but also grave danger, as when Bug once came home from a job with a bullet wound. Thus, though they are beset with financial woes, Kia does not want Bug to return to driving getaway cars.

When thugs arrive on her doorstep to kidnap her and her sons, resulting in Javon’s lethal self-defense and Darren being shot, Kia is driven to new depths of fear and despair. She perceives this conflict comes from Bug’s illegal ventures and that he cannot overcome them. In their last conversation of the novel, she is torn in not wanting to lose her husband but not willing to live with his criminal behavior.

Ronnie is a career criminal who, at the beginning of the novel, has recently finished a “bid”—a prison sentence—of several years, only to become immediately reimmersed in crime. After obtaining thousands of ill-gotten dollars, Ronnie loses it all in a drug-fueled gambling binge and ends up owing $15,000 that he must pay off in 30 days. He envisions himself a ladies’ man, though all his relationships with women are fueled by substance use. Styling himself as “Rock and Roll Ronnie,” he has a series of Elvis Presley tattoos on one arm that chronologically depict the life of Elvis. Ronnie lives in a world of magical thinking.

Ronnie epitomizes indulgent self-absorption. Incapable of empathy and willing to double-cross anyone if he thinks he can, he is a braggart who seems unaware that he is perpetually his own worst enemy. Among his failings are the inability to keep silent about his crimes, the inability to perceive the long-term consequences of his actions, and his propensity for cheating those who would be his allies. His habitual duplicity ultimately results in not only his death but the death of his relatively innocuous brother, Reggie.