The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

“I found it in Neil’s phone,” I told him. “I was snooping. I’m very curious.”

“Right,” he said. “I was about to run some errands. You’re lucky to catch me.”

“I am lucky to catch you,” I agreed.

“So, Mason,” he said. “Can I do something for you?”

“What do you have in mind?”

There was a pause. “I mean, are you calling for a reason?”

“Do I need a big reason? I thought we were going to be friends.”

“Mason, this is weird,” he said.

“I know. Right?”

Another pause. “I just don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Are you going to give me a lot of crap about age difference? Are you really that shallow? Because I don’t think you are. I enjoy your company and you enjoy mine, and there is no reason why we can’t be friends other than the fact that, on some abstract level, you think it can be interpreted as weird. And maybe that’s true. Maybe, in general, it is weird for a person as old and feeble and decayed as you to be friends with a bright young fountain of potential like me, but the question is, do you think it is always weird? Do you think it is weird in this particular instance?”

“Wow,” he said. “Have you been practicing that?”

“It just came out, but it sounded awesome, right? I know! I was totally on a roll!”

He laughed. “You make a convincing case.”

“Good, so I’m at home, my mom is not. Why don’t you come over. I’m about to watch this old movie, Showgirls? Have you ever seen it? It’s about strippers or something, and it’s supposed to be so terrible that it’s awesome.” I gave him a few seconds to consider all this. “Join me?”

He took a few seconds himself. “I can’t. I have, uh, errands.”

Is there a way to interpret an invitation to watch a semipornographic film in an empty house as anything other than a come-on? Pete worked hard to find another explanation, because the most obvious one seemed so improbable — and so very much what he wanted — that he found it impossible to accept. Mason did not understand what she was doing. Mason was naive. Mason was so incredibly not interested in Pete that she viewed him as essentially sexless, which meant there was no erotic component in watching a dirty movie with him. One of those things had to be true because the alternative, that sexy young Mason was into him, meant he would have to develop some kind of response. Of course he could not make a move. Any kind of sexual relationship with her was unthinkable — and a crime. If they were caught, it would mean scandal, prison, the destruction of his family. It was also adultery, and despite the chronological fatigue currently buckling the walls of his marriage, Pete loved Roberta, had never cheated on her, and didn’t relish the idea of doing so.

But there were those little nagging questions. Would cheating really be that big a deal? What was cheating — what was it really? Just body parts touching, when you thought about it. Like shaking hands. In the end, what did it really mean? And what if it turned out that he fell in love with Mason? Then shouldn’t he be with her? Statutory rape, as a law, made sense in most cases, but Mason was clearly no ordinary fourteen-year-old. She was a woman, and there was nothing perverted in desiring her since he desired her as a woman, not a child.

He desired her. Yes.

These thoughts ping-ponged through Pete’s mind as he ran his errands, through dinner, through after-dinner television. In the middle of a show he and Roberta always liked to watch together — though they watched it only because she had a crush on one of the actors — Pete got up and went to Neil’s room, knocking once, and then entering when Neil grunted his approval for entry.

Inside the room, Neil sat at his desk, using his mouse and keyboard to lead a knight on a horse across a hilly landscape.

“You have a minute?” Pete asked.

“Okay,” Neil said, not looking up. “I’m supposed to meet someone from my guild in like ten minutes.”

“Sure,” Pete said. He sat on Neil’s bed, which had been made with almost military precision. There was no junk on the floor. His books were put on their shelves in alphabetical order. There were no posters on the walls. It had never occurred to Neil that he might want to personalize his space.

“Are you still friends with Mason?” Pete asked.

“I guess,” Neil said, continuing to ride his horse across the landscape. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Do you like her? I mean, like for a girlfriend?”

“Nah.”

Pete needed a moment here. There was no awkwardness in this. No embarrassment. Pete had the distinct feeling that Neil had never considered Mason as an object of desire — that now that the topic had been raised, he still didn’t.

“Does she still want to hang out?” he managed.

“Not really.”

“Since when?”

“Sleepover, I guess.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

Neil shrugged. “I don’t feel anything about it.”

Pete stood up. “You don’t feel anything about it? You don’t have any friends, Neil. Don’t you care that you don’t have friends? Don’t you care that this beautiful girl wants to spend time with you, that she’s been — I don’t know — chasing you? Haven’t you noticed? Are you just going to let her get away from you without even noticing that she’s there?”

Neil stared at his father with a surprise that bordered on a kind of confused alarm. “She’s okay, but you know.”

“Okay,” Pete said. He walked toward the door, now afraid he’d raised his voice, that Roberta had heard him. He put his hand on the doorknob, turned back to Neil, and said, “Okay,” again. And that was it. Neil was already back at his keyboard, piloting his horse toward another figure on a horse. He tried not to think about the impossible, nonsensical, fantastical possibility that Mason had used his son to get to him. Why would she do that? Who was Pete that a fourteen-year-old girl would give a crap? Maybe Mason liked Neil for his own sake. Maybe she saw something in him that his own father simply could not, and while Pete found that thought as comforting as he did shameful, he could not make himself believe it. Even if it was the most logical explanation, it did not feel true.

Pete walked back to the TV room and sat next to Roberta, who hadn’t noticed he’d been gone, let alone heard him raise his voice. Roberta watched her show, and Pete thought about what might have happened if he had watched Showgirls with Mason.

Wasting no time, I texted Pete just before noon the next day.

ME: what r you up2

HIM: Hi Mason. I’m working. Shouldn’t you be furthering your education?

ME: take me 2 lunch

HIM: Wouldn’t you have to miss school?

ME: So not ur problem 12:15 at gas station, 1 block north of school

HIM: I don’t know.

ME: Yes u do I’ll b there

He came. Of course he came. How could he not? I’d made it so easy to say yes, so hard to say no. He picked me up in his Accord and smiled politely and did not touch me or leer at me, despite my wearing a very tight black T-shirt and short skirt in which I looked entirely like a woman and nothing like a child. I had my hair back in a ponytail, and he liked the way it looked. He liked being able to see my white neck. He liked my profile. He liked it all.

Pete had decided he would do everything he could to act as though meeting me for lunch, helping me to skip school, were the most natural thing in the world. He wore khakis and a button-down shirt, and he felt certain he looked handsome and competent, and he felt muscular and trim and ten years younger than he was, and he kept trying to forget what he was doing, how crazy and strange and dangerous it was. He wanted to enjoy the sensation of being near me, of being so close to my youth and vitality and freshness, and my near total absence of world-