The Kingdom of Childhood

He moved toward the door, and she backed against the doorknob, reaching to loop her fingers into the waistband of his jeans as though that were the reason for his approach. She tugged loose his thermal from his pants and slid her hands up his chest.

“I know you don’t have much time,” she whispered.

He leveled his condescending glare on her and felt all his tumultuous thoughts reduce to a single sentence: just get out the fucking door. She broke away her gaze and nuzzled his neck, softly this time, her hands roaming everywhere despite his utter lack of response. He closed his eyes and fantasized about Fairen. Of her body, her face, the way she sneered at people who perturbed her, her dirty mouth. Then his eyes snapped open and, abruptly, he spun Judy to face the wall, shoved her skirt up, and did what he needed to do.

A handful of her hair fell from his fingers, once he was done.

He opened the door immediately and zipped up as he walked through the kitchen. His down vest was still on, and heat spiked on the back of his neck. He heard her footsteps behind him, the slight pat echoing each thump of his sneakers.

“Zach,” she said.

He turned at the front door and looked at her. With one hand she rubbed the back of her head. Her shirt still hung open, revealing the strip of black satin at the center of her bra that reminded him of a semibreve rest on a musical score. Pause and breathe, the universe seemed to be telling him, and the wisdom resonated just now.

She smiled with an affection than looked almost pained. “Thanks for coming over,” she said. “It’s always good to see you.”

Without a word he headed out the door.

26

He jogged through the dark neighborhood to the main road. Once on the sidewalk, its ancient cement crumbled by giant tree roots, he faced the remaining half mile like an obstacle course. Goal: to get to the McDonald’s parking lot as quickly as possible. Action hero Zach Patterson, third-degree black belt, able to leap orange construction netting in a single bound. He jumped over a Jersey wall, scrambled up the chain-link fence behind the Planned Parenthood clinic, dropped onto the lawn of a rehabilitation center and, with an elegance that he felt in his bones, vaulted with one hand over the ranch-style fence on the lawn’s opposite side. He ducked through some brush, and voila, emerged on the far end of the parking lot of the McDonald’s. Temple stood outside the van, leaning against it with his ankles crossed, waiting for him.

“Where the hell were you?” he shouted across the lot.

“Yardwork.”

“At night?”

Zach shrugged. My stupid parents. He knew Temple wouldn’t buy the excuse for a second, and with a hard glance he dared his friend to pose a theory. But Temple only threw an arm in the air in a gesture of frustration, then said, “Get in the car.”

Zach climbed in the side door. Kaitlyn was in the front, munching on a cheeseburger; Fairen sat on the bench seat beside him, while Scott and Tally were thigh-to-thigh in the back. Scott had his arm around her shoulders. He did not acknowledge Zach’s wave of greeting. Being around Tally always made Scott so self-consciously cool that Zach felt clownish in contrast; he always felt the impulse to make an ass of himself in a way Scott couldn’t help but acknowledge, to throw him off-base. He grinned and faced the front of the van, trying to ignore the slightly nauseating smell of mass-produced cheeseburger.

The engine rumbled and turned over. “So about this hospital thing,” Tally said. “Are you sure this place is safe?”

“Actually it’s extremely unsafe,” Zach told her.

“And illegal,” Temple added.

“Then why are we going?”

“Because it’ll be fun,” said Scott. “It’s trespassing. Therefore, it’s fun.”

Fairen reached over and rubbed Zach’s forearm. For a moment she laced her fingers into his, then let her hand wander onto his thigh. He looked down at his leg in surprise.

Tally asked, “Have you ever actually seen this Bunny Man person Scott was telling me about?”

“Nope,” said Temple. “And we won’t tonight, either. But Fairen’ll get some good photos for our report.”

Kaitlyn began to sing, “‘One night in my ramble I chanced to see, a thing like a spirit, it frightened me—’”

Scott threw a balled-up receipt at her head. Fairen snickered, but Temple said, “Hey. Don’t throw shit while I’m driving.”

Fairen let her hand come to rest on the inside of his thigh, her fingers tucked between his leg and the upholstery. She wasn’t particularly high up, only a bit above his knee, but it didn’t matter. He put his arm across the seat back, slid his hand under her hair, and stroked the nape of her neck.

Temple pulled into the parking lot of the town house complex, and Zach regretfully disentangled himself from Fairen. He would rather have sat with her in the van all night than gone looking for some guy in a rabbit costume, as entertaining as that search could be. Something about her touch felt restorative just now, when he still felt dirty from his tryst with Judy. Why had he even shown up? When the hell had he started feeling so obligated to her, as though she were some sort of girlfriend he couldn’t shake loose? And in the end it had been so pointless, so remote from the allure that had once felt infinite to him. He itched to take a shower.

Fairen slung her camera around her neck and hopped out of the van. They hurried through the forest, past the swamp that gleamed like obsidian and smelled like rot, and emerged in the shadow of the hospital’s towering main building, all the while peering around for cops. Scott—Indiana Jones all of a sudden, now that they had his girlfriend in tow—led the way toward the black gap that formed the building’s front door. Tally hesitated at the entrance, her slim fingers on the moulding, and peered cautiously around inside.

“I’m not so sure about this,” she said.