Bad Games

21



The same pair of binoculars that had watched the silver Toyota Highlander back out of cabin number eight before exiting Crescent Lake was now watching a light blue Volvo station wagon back out of cabin number ten. Two adults and two children could be identified inside the Volvo.

“The Volvo folks are the neighbors,” Jim said as he handed the binoculars to Arty. “I’m assuming the kids in back…?”

Arty took the binoculars and peered through them. Dusk had arrived, but the binoculars were top of the line. “Yup—that’s them.” He motioned for them to move, but stopped suddenly. He turned to his brother, a devilish grin curling upwards onto his face. “Should we say something?” he said. “Should we say something cool, like the guys in those espionage movies do?”

Jim grinned back. “You mean like, ‘the hatchlings have left the nest.’”

Arty threw his head back and barked out a single laugh. He then straightened his posture, and, in a similarly deep and serious voice, “The bacon is in the pan.”

Jim shoved Arty back a step while barking his own laugh. Arty rolled with the shove, invigorated by his brother’s physical exuberance. Arty’s demonstrative love for the game had always been kept on a more composed leash in contrast to Jim’s, who often slipped his leash entirely, Arty the one to catch him before Jim was lost for good—more so lately due to the state of their mother.

But not tonight. Tonight, Jim’s contagion fueled Arty. Discretion was still paramount of course, always would be; it was what separated them from the rest of the sheep. But tonight Arty and Jim celebrated this stage of foreplay as one, not as individuals. They laughed and shoved one another with equal vigor on that wooded hill above Crescent Lake. Roughhoused and joked like drunken teens on prom night, their dates waiting in the cabins below, virginities ripe for the taking. All they had to do was go down and take it.

“Come on, my brother…” Arty eventually said, placing one hand on Jim’s shoulder, the other fanning across the darkening landscape. “Let’s go have some fun.”