He stands behind Claudio and stares at the back of his skull until he can’t take it anymore. Then he steps to the side door—his rubber soles soundless on the linoleum—unlatches it, and slips onto the porch. He does this without so much as creaking a plank, but Claudio must feel the air change when the door swings open. Stanley? he says.
Stanley leaves the door ajar behind him. He’s pretty sure that Synn?ve’s in the bathroom, not anyplace where she’ll see him leave, but he rushes across the yard anyway, vaults the fence, jogs the half-block to Pacific Avenue. He’s breathing hard now. His own pulse hammers his eardrums like the footfalls of pursuers.
By the time he makes it back to the squat the wind has picked up, levitating loose papers from ashcans, rocking streetlamps into herky-jerky pendulums. Below the wall of incoming clouds a sliver of red sun has dipped into the ocean. Stanley glimpses it for a second as he passes Horizon Ave; when he turns onto Horizon Court he loses it again.
Before he left this morning he put his things away with care, just like always; it doesn’t take him long to find the items he needs. After a minute of packing up Claudio’s stuff he’s on the street again, dodging oncoming cars on the Speedway, moving with tunnel-visioned ease, like he’s lived in this neighborhood for years. Even with the sun gone and bad weather coming, the world feels disenchanted, shrunken. Stanley’s on familiar ground now, comfortable and sad.
The first big drops catch him on the boardwalk, as he’s settling onto a bench; they flash under the streetlamps, leave jagged silver-dollar-size sunbursts on the wooden planks. When they strike his skin they’re heavy and cold, like shoulder-taps from a ghost.
He watches the windows of the penny-arcade—still a block away—until he’s good and soaked, and his wet shirtsleeves have become loose reptile-skin on his arms. At this distance he can just make out faces: Whitey with a fat lip and a swollen eye, his two junior punks with minor scratches. All three look sullen, unhappy with each other and with themselves.
People pass between Stanley and the arcade in a steady stream, moving quickly in the rain: some share umbrellas, some huddle under newspapers. Their silhouettes pulse across the windows like gaps between cards on a Mutoscope spool. From time to time someone joins Stanley on his bench—a drunk, a grifter, a pervert—but Stanley won’t look and won’t say a word, and eventually they all go away.
Stanley thinks of Welles’s list of names in his pocket. He should have left it at the squat; the ink will run when it gets wet. Not much to be done about it at this point. It was probably bullshit anyway. It was a bad move, trying to play the game on Welles’s terms instead of his own. He can see that well enough now.
One of the two punk Dogs—the one farthest from the door—finally steps away from his machine, headed for the john. Stanley rises from his bench. He closes the distance in a hurry without breaking into a run, and he takes deep breaths as he goes. A couple of the people he passes must be able to read the intention in his face; they avert their nervous eyes, give him a wide berth. Soon he’s standing in the door, puddling the concrete with the rain he’s accrued. The punk is just a few feet ahead, his back turned. Whitey’s clear across the room, facing Stanley, blinded by the game he plays, or by whatever he’s thinking about. For a flickering instant Stanley thinks what he always thinks at these times: You don’t have to do this. You can walk away. The idea slows him up more than he’s used to. He feels like he’s at the first tall drop of a rollercoaster track; his eyes are squeezed tight with the effort of imagining himself elsewhere. But of course he is not elsewhere. He is here.
He takes a few quick steps, passes behind the first punk, stops, and elbows him in the kidney. A half-human moan bursts from the guy’s lips as his knees fold. Stanley drops with him, fingers tangled in his greasy hair, to drive his face into the steel coinbox.
Stanley scrambles on all fours to the corner, past the row of machines, then stands up as he circles around to Whitey. A couple of people are staring at the fallen punk; a few more hotfoot to the exit, but Whitey plays on without looking up. Stanley is close enough now to see his score: two million points, one ball left to play. The guy isn’t bad; he knows what he’s doing.
As Stanley comes up behind Whitey he peeks over his shoulder for a second at the bubbling seahorses and topless mermaids of the playfield, the flash of the silver ball. He lets Whitey keep playing until the guy feels eyes on his back, realizes that something is wrong. His concentration wavers. The ball drains.
Stanley pulps Whitey’s right hand against the cabinet’s edge with the swung blackjack. Then he hits him again on the side of the head, and keeps hitting him until he’s motionless on the concrete. A girl a few machines down screams.