“Achilles,” I said. There had to be great control in that annoyance, that fed-up-ness. “For Christ’s sake, did those bastards leave the back door open again?”
The mule, true to form, toughed it out, deadpan.
Bluntly, boredly, he asked the usual pair of questions: What?
What’s so unusual about this?
He was right; it was the fourth or fifth time that month. Probably close to a record.
“Here,” I said, handling him quickly, holding the thatch of his neck.
At the door I spoke back to the Murderer.
Back but matter-of-fact.
“Just so you know, you’re next.”
The city was dark but alive.
The car, inside, was quiet.
There was nothing now but homecoming.
Earlier, the beer had come out, it was shared around.
Seldom, Tinker, Maguire.
Schwartz and Starkey.
They all took some cash, as did the kid called Leper, who’d bet fourteen minutes flat. When he’d started gloating, they all told him to go get a skin graft. Henry kept the rest. All of it was performed under a pink and grey sky. The best graffiti in town.
At one point, Schwartz was telling them about the spitting shenanigans at the 200, and the girl had asked the question. She loitered with Starkey in the car park.
“What the hell’s wrong with that guy?” That wasn’t the question in question, though; it would be here in moments to come. “Running like that. Fighting like that.” She thought about it and scoffed. “What sort of stupid game is it, anyway? You’re all a bunch of dumbshits.”
“Dumbshits,” said Starkey, “thanks a lot.” He put his arm around her like it was a compliment.
“Hey, love!”
Henry.
Both girl and gargoyle turned, and Henry swerved a smile. “It’s not a game, it’s just training!”
She put a hand on her hip, and you know what she asked next, the lacy-limp girl, and Henry would do his best. “Go on, Clay, enlighten us. What the hell are you training for?”
But Clay had turned from her shoulder this time. He felt his pulse in the graze on his cheekbone—courtesy of Starkey’s whiskers. With his good hand, he searched his pocket, very deliberately, then crouched.
It bears mentioning now that exactly what our brother was training for was as much a mystery to him. He only knew that he was working and waiting for the day he’d find out—and that day, as it was, was today. It was waiting at home in the kitchen.
* * *
—
Carbine Street and Empire Lane, and then the stretch of Poseidon.
Clay always liked this ride home.
He liked the moths gathering tall and tight-knit at their various streetlight postings. He wondered if the night excited or soothed and settled them; if nothing else, it gave them purpose. These moths knew what to do.
Soon they came to Archer Street.
Henry: driving, one-handed, smiling.
Rory: feet up on the dash.
Tommy: half asleep against the quick-panting Rosy.
Clay: unknowing this was it.
Eventually, Rory couldn’t take it any longer—the calmness.
“Shit, Tommy, does that dog have to pant so bloody loud?”
Three of them laughed, short and stout.
Clay looked out the window.
Maybe it would have been fitting for Henry to drive the car ramshackle, to rampage onto the driveway, but it wasn’t like that at all.
The blinker on at Mrs. Chilman’s, next door.
A tranquil turn at our place—as clean as his car could be.
Headlights off.
Doors opened.
The only thing betraying total peace was the closing of the car. With four quick shots, the doors were fired at the house, and all went straight for the kitchen.
Together, they crossed the lawn.
“Any of you bastards know what’s for dinner?”
“Leftovers.”
“That’d be right.”
Their feet all plowed the porch.
* * *
—
“Here they come,” I said, “so you might as well get ready to leave.”
“I understand.”
“You understand nothing.”
Right then I was trying to work out why I’d let him stay. Just a few minutes earlier, when he’d told me why he’d come, my voice had ricocheted off the dishes and gone right for the Murderer’s throat: “You want what?”
Maybe it was the belief that this was already in motion; it was going to happen anyway, and if the moment was now, so be it. Also, despite the Murderer’s pitiful state, I could also sense something else. There was resolve there as well, and sure, throwing him out would have been such a pleasure—oh, grabbing his arm. Standing him up. Pushing him out the door. Jesus H. Christ, it would have been bloody beautiful! But it would also leave us open. The Murderer could strike again when I wasn’t around.
No. Better like this.
The best way of controlling it was to have all five of us together in a show of strength.
Okay, stop.
Make that four of us, and one betrayer.
* * *
—
This time, it was instant.
Henry and Rory might have failed to sense the danger earlier, but now the house was rich with it. There was argument in the air, and the smell of burnt cigarette.
“Shh.” Henry slung an arm back and whispered. “Careful.”
They walked the hallway. “Matthew?”
“Here.” Pensive and deep, my voice confirmed everything.
For a few moments, the four of them looked at each other, alert, confused, all rifling through some internal catalogue, for their next official move.
Henry again: “You all right, Matthew?”
“I’m brilliant, just get in ’ere.”
They shrugged, they open-palmed.
There was no reason now not to go in, and one by one, they stepped toward the kitchen, where the light was like a river mouth. It changed from yellow to white.
Inside, I was standing at the sink, arms folded. Behind me were the dishes; clean and gleaming, like a rare, exotic museum piece.
To their left, at the table, was him.
* * *
—
God, can you hear it?
The hearts of them?
The kitchen was its own small continent now, and the four boys, they stood in no-man’s-land, before a kind of group migration. When they made it to the sink, we stayed close in together, and Rosy somewhere between us. It’s funny that way, how boys are; we don’t mind touching—shoulders, elbows, knuckles, arms—and all of us looked at our killer, who was sitting, alone, at the table. A total nervous wreck.
What was there to think?
Five boys and scrambled thoughts, and a show of teeth from Rosy.
Yes, the dog knew instinctively to despise him as well, and it was she who broke the silence; she snarled and edged toward him.
I pointed, calm and mean. “Rosy.”
She stopped.
The Murderer’s mouth soon opened.
But nothing at all came out.
The light was aspirin-white.
* * *
—
The kitchen began to open then, or at least it did for Clay. The rest of the house broke off, and the backyard dropped, into nothingness. The city and suburbs and all the forgotten fields were razed and chopped away, in one apocalyptic sweep—black. For Clay there was only here, the kitchen, which in one evening had grown from climate to continent, and now this:
A world with table-and-toaster.
Of brothers and sweat by the sink.
The oppressive weather remained; its atmosphere hot and grainy, like the air before a hurricane.
As if pondering that, the Murderer’s face seemed far away, but soon he hauled it in. Now, he thought, you have to do it now, and he did, he made a colossal effort. He stood, and there was something terrifying about his sadness. He’d imagined this moment countless times, but he’d arrived here hollowed out. A shell of all he was. He might as well have tumbled from the wardrobe, or appeared from under the bed: A meek and mixed-up monster.
A nightmare, suddenly fresh.
* * *
—