When he was done, he grabbed the second AriZona and went upstairs. Got into his room and flicked the light off, shut the blinds, locked the door behind him. He turned on the TV and Xbox, and scooted his fat leather beanbag chair up to the screen. Then he grabbed the controller, upped the sound until it felt like he was sitting inside it.
The game he was working on was Call of Duty: Black Ops II. In the middle of the screen were two white hands holding a handgun. His hands. His gun. He started stalking through some farm that was on fire. All charred-out barns and shit and darkness. Jolly cowboy music echoed in the background. Then zombies started coming out of shadows to veer toward him, eyes blazing. One came too close, so he swapped his gun for a knife and stabbed its chest. It groaned and screamed. Then another zombo came toward him and he stopped it with three gunshots: pop-pop pop. Blood spurted out of the hole where its head was.
When his mom had got him this game, she’d asked him, Was it like Mario. He said Sure, but of course that was a jaws. In this game, there weren’t gold coins you got or anything. The only point was not to die.
The screen changed. Now he was in a town that was set on fire just like the farm had been. The air all dark and smoky. Ground torn up. Fancy burned-out cars and broken windows. Flames jumping up everywhere. Embers hanging in the air like fireflies, and horror-movie music swelling all around him. A girl zombo came at him waving its arms around like some hella fucked-up dance routine. He shot its face and blood washed the screen dark red. Another one got too close and swiped him. He fell on the pavement and dropped his gun and this cheery-ass song started blasting.
“Motherfucker!” he yelled. But it didn’t really matter. He got another life. Same busted town, but the zombos in this one started running at him. If he capped them in the head, they’d die faster. And sometimes the head exploded and shot fireworks of blood and bone into the sky and for a minute he felt hella raw.
Damon’s problem was, his dad was so fuckin’ loud he could hear him even with the game turned up as high as it would go. Whatever he did, there was always his dad pushing through, hollering the same old shit, like Get your ass downstairs.
Damon paused the game and went down.
His parents were waiting in the great room. His mom in an armchair and his dad at the foot of the staircase in black suit pants and a shirt the color of fogged-in sky. A glass in his hand—rye whiskey, had to be. His tie was off. How many had he had already? Two? Three?
“You want to explain yourself?” his dad said, pointing to the coffee table where there were crinkled-up Cheeto bags and cellophane, an empty AriZona can, little twisted papers from the Rips.
Damon shrugged.
“Don’t be an asshole,” his dad said.
“Fuckin’ chill,” Damon muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s right nothing. You better believe it nothing.”
Damon stuck his hand in his pocket. His Swiss army knife was there like always, and he flicked its small blade up and down, sliding his thumb against the steel. He said, “Yes, sir, Drill Sergeant, sir.”
“That’s all you have to say to me?”
“The fuck else do you want?”
“What do I want?” his dad said. “What do I want?” Then he started yelling shit Damon wasn’t tryna hear. How Damon was always pissing everybody off, how his dad had given him everything a kid could want and he’d done nothing, not one single thing, to deserve it. How he was the luckiest kid on the planet and he didn’t even know it. “And I want to know. When are you going to grow up? Learn to act like a goddamn human being?”
Damon’s mom stood up, crossed her arms. “Hey. Cut it out, you two.”
Damon’s dad said, “How much money have I wasted already, trying to set you straight?”
“What are you even talking about?” Damon said. What was money? It came, it went. It always came again. “Who gives a shit?”
“Okay, smartass.” Damon’s dad waved his glass around the great room—plush leather furniture, huge stone fireplace, giant-sized windows with fancy silk curtains—as if Damon gave a shit about any of it. “You like your life? How bout that Xbox? Those ridiculous clothes?” His eyes moved over Damon’s oversized baby-blue T-shirt, his jeans sagging over his crotch, his coordinating blue and green Adidas. “For Chrissake, why don’t you pull your pants up for once. The world doesn’t need to see your ass hanging out twenty-four/seven.”
Damon glanced at his mom, but she ducked her head, studied her fingernails like she’d just now noticed they were there.
“Why, so I could look like you? Fuckin’ fatass.”
His dad’s face flared red. His mom stuck her palms up, like I surrender. She went into the kitchen and the next sound was water blasting in the sink.
His dad went and clattered his glass on the marble-topped bar; the ice cubes cracked and smacked together. He came back. Stepped to Damon to show how he was still the bigger man. “You will not talk to me that way. Not in my house.”