'I don't envy anybody.' Abby twirled her salad fork, letting-the tines catch the candlelight.
'Green's not my color.'
Hickle picked up his club sandwich and tore off a chunk with his teeth.
'You don't envy them because you don't have to. You fit right in. You belong here.'
'And you don't?' Though of course he didn't.
He waved his arm vaguely at the crowd in a loose, graceless motion that nearly upset his beer mug.
'I'm not in their league.'
'They're not that special.'
'Oh, yes, they are. Can't you feel it?' He lowered his voice, leaning forward, shoulders hunched defensively.
'There was a movie once with a strange title, The Killer Elite.
Whenever I come to a place like this, those are the words I think of.
The killer elite.'
She noted the word killer and the fact that he projected it onto those around him, when it applied far more realistically to himself.
'They're just kids out for a burger and a beer,' she said mildly.
'Kids, yes, but not just kids. They have the look.'
'The what?' 'The look,' he said again, with peculiar earnestness.
'You know how they say the world is divided into the haves and the have-nots? Well, it's true, but not the way most people think.' He tipped the beer mug to his mouth and swallowed a third of its contents with a canine slurp.
'It's not about money. Money is nothing; anybody can get money. Show up for work on time, display a modicum of intelligence, and in three months your boss will be offering you a promotion whether you want it or not.' 'Why wouldn't you want it?' Abby asked, but Hickle didn't hear.
'What matters,' he said, his voice too loud, his eyes too bright, 'is the look. That's what the haves have and what the have-nots haven't got. You should know because you've got it. Every woman in this room has it. Every guy, too…' His hand closed into a fist, though he was unconscious of the gesture.
'Except me.'
His anger was growing dangerously large. She tried to contain it.
'You're being way too hard on yourself.'
'Just honest. See, in the end, brains don't matter.
You can be the brainiest guy in the class, straight A's, but if you don't have the look, you can't get a date to the prom. Without the look you're nothing. You're either class clown or class… freak.' He took a last, listless bite of his sandwich and set down the remnant wearily.
'Hell, you're not going to understand. I'll bet you didn't have any trouble getting dates.'
He was studying her with a lopsided smile that was meant to look friendly but conveyed, instead, a cold and cramped malice.
Abby kept her tone light.
'I was a tomboy, really.
Not very popular. Certainly not a prom queen.'
This surprised him. His expression softened a little.
'Is that so?' he asked quietly.
'I was kind of a washout in most my classes. My mind had this tendency to wander. I was basically a loner. When I wasn't in school I spent most of my time hiking in the desert or grooming horses at a ranch. I was always dirty, hair mussed, no makeup. Mosquito bites on my arms, and a million freckles all over my face.' Every word of this was true.
'My dad called me a late bloomer.'
Hickle considered her, and she felt his resentment cool.
'Well,' he said at last, 'you've flowered nicely.'
She smiled.
'I'm a whole different person now. So I guess there. really is life after high school.'
'Wrong.' Hickle stamped the flat of his hand on the table, rattling the plates, then bit his lip in embarrassment.
'Sorry, I don't mean to be overemphatic. But people are always saying stuff like that. I heard it the whole time I was growing up. Get out in the adult world, and everything changes for you. That's what they say.'
'But it doesn't?'
'Not at all. High school's real life. It's real life without any pretense.'
He took another gulp of beer, but it wasn't alcohol that was allowing him to talk so freely now. It was her questions, each as gently probing as a scalpel, and her calm, meditative gaze, and the silences she gave him in which he could say whatever he liked without judgment or reproach.
'Let me tell you about high school.' He picked up a carrot stick from a side dish and toyed with it distractedly.
'There was this guy in our class, Robert Chase.
He wasn't particularly smart. Not an idiot, you understand, but no genius either, and not a good student. He cut class, got C's and D's, smoked dope in the bathroom, screwed around. But he had one advantage.'
'Let me take a wild stab. Was it… the look?'
'That's right. Good old Bob Chase.' Hickle's mouth twisted into an ugly shape.
'The girls called him Bobby with that sigh in their voice, you know? He was tall, had thick curly hair and washboard abs, was a star on the basketball team. They all loved him.'
She heard the stale envy in his voice. She said nothing.
'So a couple of months ago I'm reading the LA Times, and what do I see?
Robert Chase from my hometown is chief of staff for a member of Congress in Washington, DC. He's an up-and-comer. They say he might run for office himself. He could end up as the goddamned-sorry-end up as President. Why? I'm smarter than he is. I got better grades. I didn't slam kids into lockers and sucker-punch them for laughs.'
Hickle snapped the carrot stick, tossed the pieces aside, and picked up another.
'But I don't have the look. Be honest. Could I ever be President?'
In her mind Abby saw a convention hall, balloons, cheers, and in the spotlight the baffled, rumpled, shaggy figure of Raymond Hickle, black hair sloppily askew, neck red with acne, face drawn and fleshy at the same time- hollow around the eyes, meaty and thick at the jaw. She imagined him trying to make a speech, command respect, summon all his authority, and what she heard was a crowd's laughter.
'Not everybody has to be President,' Abby said gently.
Hickle waved off this reply as if irritated by it.
'The President was just an example. People like Bob Chase are the winners in life. They can do whatever they want. They can have whoever they want. Anyone, anything.' He turned his head, averting his gaze from the truths he was telling.
'If they want money, it flows to them. Or fame… look at them on every magazine cover. Or, well'-he blushed-'sex, you know-if that's what they want, they get it.'
Abby nodded, thinking hard. Years ago Hickle had fastened on Jill Dahlbeck, an aspiring actress not unlike many of the women in this room.
Now his obsession was Kris Barwood, a more accomplished celebrity. Most likely there had been others, all famous or striving for fame. He was drawn to beautiful women, but beauty was not enough for him. There had to be stardom or the promise of it. Stars were golden people, and he desperately wanted to be one of them. He had not outgrown his adolescent longings for approval and admiration. For him, all of life was prom night, and he was the only one going stag.
'How about happiness?' Abby asked softly.
'Do they get that too?'
'Of course. We just drove through Beverly Hills.
Did you see the houses? Or go up to Malibu…'
