You're Next

there. We’ll handle it.’ She hangs up, says to Mike, ‘I don’t want this going on here,’ and disappears into the nursery.

Shep withdraws his head from the window, wiping beer spray from his face. ‘Couple of his buddies must’ve followed me home,’ he says. ‘I’ll handle it.’

Calmly, he goes outside. Sitting on the couch, Mike lowers his face into his hands. There is a crash. And then another. Then silence.

A moment later Shep reappears. ‘My bad,’ he says.

‘Look,’ Mike says, ‘maybe you should split before more guys show up.’

‘What?’

‘I think maybe this isn’t the best time…’ He is grasping for words, stuck between a blood-sworn loyalty and what he owes that grandfather from the park who bought his soul for fifteen grand. He considers the Couch Mother, the superintendent, Annabel, Kat, himself. Obligation makes for tough sledding.

Shep says, ‘The guy came at me. I was defending myself.’

Shep is a lot of things, but he is not a liar.

Mike thinks about his mother’s faint cinnamon smell, his meandering graveyard walks, and Kat asleep in the next room. He will not – cannot – let anything put that child or her future at risk. And yet Shep is Shep, their friendship battle-tested like no other relationship Mike has ever known. Life is unfair; Mike knows this firsthand. But in this moment he hates that he is now on the high end of the seesaw, enjoying the better view.

He is sweating, unsure of himself, filled with self-loathing. He says, ‘I know that, but it’s not… safe. I mean, I got a baby now. The neighbors. I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out, you know?’

Shep snaps off a nod and stands, his face betraying nothing. Feeling like a heel, Mike walks him down. His broad frame cut from the slanting yellow of the streetlights, Shep heads toward the Wash, Mike a half step behind. A narrow footbridge extends across the river. Black water rustles against concrete banks below. Mike is hustling to keep up, calling after him – ‘Shep. Shep. Shep.’ – sure that Shep is, for the first time ever, mad at him.

But halfway across, when Shep finally hears and turns, his face shows no anger.

Bugs ping off the lights overhead. The eastern horizon has moved from black to charcoal. They are centered above a river moving invisibly beneath them.

Mike clears his throat. ‘You told me once… you said, “You can be whatever you want to be.”’ He wants to cry – he almost is – and he doesn’t understand himself. It is as though his face is having its own reaction to this while his heart stays resolute and hunkered down. ‘Well’ – he casts his arms wide – ‘this is who I want to be.’

Shep’s mouth moves a bit, forming something like a sad smile. Blood shines darkly in those claw marks beneath his eye. He says, ‘Then it’s who I want you to be, too.’

They both seem to sense the finality in those words, in this moment. The wind comes up, cutting through Mike’s jacket. Shep offers his hand, and they clasp, gripping around the thumbs.

‘You’re my only family,’ Shep says.

He walks off before Mike can reply.

Mike watches Shep’s shoulders fading into the early-morning dark. He bites his lip, turns back into the wet wind, and starts for home.

NOW Chapter 15

Mike stood before the closet, finally stripping off that button-up shirt. One-thirty A.M., and he’d only just finished installing a second heavy-duty lock on Kat’s window. Despite his prompting, Kat didn’t want to sleep in their bedroom, and he could tell by the set of Annabel’s mouth that she found his request a bit over the top as well. He wasn’t so sure about an evidence-free home break-in anymore himself. But still, additional lock aside, he got a prickling beneath his skin when he contemplated the view of the dark backyard through Kat’s window. He could have pressed the point and made Kat move, but he didn’t want to give in to his fear that way. Or force them to give in to it.

He folded his dress pants, worked at the beer stain with a thumbnail, then gave up. Neatly folded clothes stared back from the crammed shelves. All those shirts. Such a long way from the communal dresser of his childhood. He regarded the closet with something like survivor’s guilt.

Annabel sat on the bed behind him, kicked off her high heels with a groan, and rubbed her feet. ‘I’m just saying,’ she remarked, picking up the thread of the discussion they’d interrupted a half hour ago, ‘They had an agenda, those detectives. When she was on the phone back there – Elzey – I didn’t like her expression. How animated she was. And the way they came back out swinging at you.’

Down to his boxers, he turned. ‘Something was off with those cops. No question. They’re not gonna help us. We need to figure out how to protect ourselves.’ He paused, wet his lips. ‘Maybe I should call him.’

‘Him? Him him?’ She leaned back on her elbows, shook her head vehemently. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Uh-uh. He scares me.’

‘He would know what to do.’

‘Or how to escalate things. Besides, you haven’t talked to Shepherd in years.’

Except for the Couch Mother, Annabel was the only one who ever referred to Shep by his full name. Mike used to think it stemmed from her discomfort with Mike’s past, not wanting to use the abbreviated name from the stories. But he’d figured out it was more of a maternal nod to the given name, to the boy – a mother’s sympathy for that thin-necked kid who didn’t jump when someone dropped a lunch tray six inches from his nose.

‘And the way you left things,’ she continued. ‘What makes you think he’d be there?’

‘Shep would be there,’ Mike said firmly.

‘We have other friends. Terrance next door. Barry and Kay-’

‘What’s Barry gonna do, portfolio-manage them into submission? This isn’t the kind of problem you call people like our friends for.’

‘Then why don’t you talk to that private investigator, Hank? I mean, isn’t that what a PI’s supposed to do? Find out information on people? Look – just think about it. I don’t think we want to release the bull into the china shop. Yet.’

‘Hank’s sick. I told you.’

‘Hank never struck me as big on pity. You don’t think it might help him to have something to do?’ She pulled free a hairpin, shook out her mane. ‘I’ll go in to school tomorrow with Kat and update the contact and pickup lists, make sure they keep a close eye on her, all that.’

‘And talk to her-’

‘Of course. We’ve had the stranger-danger talk a million times, but I’ll go over it again. Now, come here. Unzip me.’

She held up her hair, exposing the light down of her nape. He drew the zipper south, admiring the slash of flesh, and she shrugged out of the dress and draped it over the upholstered chair in the corner. They took the duvet off together as they had every night for years – fold, step, fold, step – a marital square dance. And then she went into the bathroom and emerged with her toothbrush poking out of her mouth and his sporting a bead of paste. Leaning over to tug off his socks, he paused, and she popped his toothbrush into his mouth before returning to the bathroom, wearing a clown mouth of foam. The everyday physics of intimacy.

Brushing his teeth, he walked down the hall to Kat’s room. She was out cold, the curtain drawn, the locks secure.

He finished up in the bathroom, slid into bed next to Annabel, turned up the monitor, and exhaled. She had leaned his award plaque against the wall by the closet, no doubt unsure what to do with the thing. His name, etched in the bluish mirror beneath the seal of California. When he turned back, Annabel was studying him.

He said, ‘What an asshole I was standing up there accepting that award.’

‘And what an asshole I was sitting there playing the dutiful wife, clapping along.’ She rolled over, her face soft, and rested a hand on his cheek. ‘It’s less lonely being assholes together.’