Noah watched his face as he was talking, and could tell that Roger had regrets about the killings. “So, what’s your job assignment? Are they planning to use you as an assassin?”
Roger shook his head. “No, I lucked out on that,” he said. “They tell me I’m just going to be somebody’s muscle, kind of a backup. I still have to have the training, just in case I ever have to, you know, complete a mission—but I hope I don’t. You know, sometimes you do what you gotta do, but that doesn’t always mean it’s easy to live with.”
Noah looked at this young man, and wondered what it would be like to feel remorse over someone you killed, or over anything you did. “Yeah,” he said, “I know just what you mean.”
TEN
Noah bit into the triple-decked burger, and moaned in epicurean delight. “Oh, man,” he said. “Oh, that’s delicious. Can’t you just taste all the triglycerides?”
Roger laughed and looked over at him. “Not me,” he said. “I can’t get past the flavor of the MSG. At least they don’t try to shove health food down our throats, here. If there’s anything in the world that truly signifies the American way, it’s just plain got to be the fast food burger. Let’s face it, all those soldiers over there in the war, that’s what they’re really fighting for. Burgers and fries, and I am not referring to the French variety.”
Noah shrugged, but he was chuckling at the same time. “Hey, I was over there,” he said. “Not all of us dreamed about burgers, there were some of us over there who thought about girls, instead.”
Roger looked at him sideways. “You’re gonna sit there and moan about how good that burger is, and try to tell me that wasn’t one of the things you thought about while you were in that desert?”
Noah winked at him. “Hey, I said some of us thought about girls. I didn’t say I was always one of them. A lot of times, I was focused on burgers and pizza. As far as I’m concerned, burgers and pizza are the two primary food groups, with fried chicken making a good show of coming in third.” Noah took another bite. “How old are you, Roger?”
Roger leaned his head back against the headrest, and grimaced. “I’ll be twenty in two weeks,” he said. “I confess this wasn’t how I planned on spending my twentieth birthday, but at least I’m getting to have one. The way things were going, I wasn’t likely to have had the chance.”
“Things moved that fast? I mean, I’d think it would take them a while to get around to a trial.”
Roger nodded. “It did,” he said. “I sat in the jail cells for three years, while my public defenders kept trying everything they could think of to stall.”
“Three years? Then, I take it you were only sixteen at the time of the murders?”
“Yep,” Roger said. “Because of the number of victims, and what the prosecutor called the ‘animal ferocity’ of the way I killed them, the judge decided that I should be tried as an adult. We tried every possible way to get that decision thrown out, but it didn’t work.”
Noah shook his head in sympathy. “Man, I’m sorry. Nobody should have to deal with things like that in their teens.”