What Came Before He Shot Her

            “What brings you to Sixth Avenue, Joel?”

            Joel went for the easiest reply. “Saw the advert.”

            Ivan raised an eyebrow in need of trimming. “Which would be . . . ?”

            “The one for the script class. At Paddington Arts. Dat’s you teachin it, innit?”

            Ivan looked pleased. “Indeed. Are you going to enrol? Have you come to ask me about it? Age is no object, if that concerns you. We always engage in a collaborative effort, from which will emerge the fi lm itself.”

            “What? You make a real fi lm?”

            “Yes indeed. I did tell you I once produced films, yes? Well, this is where every film begins: with a script. I’ve found that the more minds that engage in the process, the better the process in its initial stages. Later on as we begin to edit and polish, someone emerges as the strongest voice. Does this interest you?”

            “I was getting a sign f’r birthdays,” Joel said. “Down the Harrow Road.”

            “Oh. I see. Don’t fancy a career in film, then? Well, I suppose I can hardly blame you, modern films being mostly blue screens, miniatures, car chases, and explosions. Hitchcock, I tell you, Joel, is spinning in his grave. Not to mention  what Cecil B. DeMille is doing. So what do you have in store for yourself? Rock ’n’ roll singer? Footballer? Lord chief justice? Scientist? Banker?”

            Joel got to his feet abruptly. While other elements of the conversation might have been tough for him, he did  know when someone was having a laugh at his expense, even if that person was not actually laughing. He said, “I’m off, man,” and he took off the gloves and picked up his banner.

            “Good heavens!” Ivan jumped to his feet. “What’s wrong? Have I said . . . ? See here, I can see I’ve offended you in some way, but rest assured I had no intention . . . Oh. I do think I know. You’ve assumed . . . I say, Joel, have you assumed I was taking the mickey? But why should you not be lord chief justice or prime minister if that’s what you prefer?

            Why shouldn’t you be an astronaut or a neurosurgeon if that’s your interest?”

            Joel hesitated, gauging the words, their tone, and Ivan’s expression. The man stood with his hand extended, white gloved like Mickey Mouse.

            Ivan said, “Joel. Perhaps you ought to tell me.”

            Joel felt a chill. “What?”

            “Most people do find me as harmless as a box of cotton wool. I do natter on sometimes without thinking exactly how I sound. But, good Lord, you know that by now, don’t you? And if we’re to become friends instead of acting out the roles assigned to us at Holland Park School— and by this I mean mentor and pupil—then it seems that as friends—”

            “Who says friends?” Joel felt laughed at again. He ought to have felt cautious as well, with a grown man talking about friendship between them. But he didn’t feel cautious, just confused. And even then it was a confusion born of the novelty of the situation. No adult had ever asked him for friendship, if that was what Ivan was indeed doing.

            “No one, actually,” Ivan said. “But why shouldn’t we be friends if that’s what we mutually decide and want? Can one actually have  enough friends when it comes down to it? I don’t think so. As far as I’m concerned, if I share with someone an interest, an enthusiasm, a particular way of looking at life . . . whatever it is . . . that makes that person a kindred soul no matter who he is. Or she, for that matter. Or even what, because frankly, there are insects, birds, and animals with whom I have more in common sometimes than with people.”

            At this Joel smiled, taken by the image of Ivan Weatherall in communion with a flock of birds. He lowered the banner to his side. He heard himself saying what he’d never expected even to whisper to another living soul. “Psychiatrist.”

            Ivan nodded thoughtfully. “Noble work. The analysis and reconstitution of the suffering mind. Assisted brain chemistry. I’m impressed. How did you settle on psychiatry?” He returned to his seat and gestured Joel back to his side to continue their inventory of parts for the clock.

            Joel didn’t move. There were some things that didn’t bear speaking of, even now. But he decided to try, at least in part. He said,

            “Toby’s birthday was las’ week. When it was someone’s birthday, we used to . . .” He felt a sting in his eyes, the way they would feel if smoke were seeping beneath his closed lids from someone’s cigarette. But there was no cigarette languishing in an ashtray in this room. There was only Ivan, and he was reaching for another sprig of mint, which he rolled between his fingers and popped into his mouth. He kept his gaze fixed on Joel, though, and Joel continued because it felt as if the words were actually being drawn  from him, not as if he were truly speaking. “Dad sang on birthdays, innit. But he couldn’t sing, not really, and we always had a laugh ’bout that. He had dis mad ukulele—yellow plastic, it was—an’ he pretend he knew how to play.

            ‘Takin requests now, boys and girls,’ he’d say. If Mum was there, she’d ask for an Elvis. An’ dad say, ‘Dat ol’ bag, Caro? You outta step wiv the times, woman.’ But he sing it anyways. He sing so bad, it’d make your ears hurt an’ everyone’d shout at him to stop.”

            Ivan sat still, one hand on the pamphlet they’d been using for the inventory and the other on his thigh. “And then?”

            “He’d stop. Bring the presents in instead. I got a football once. Ness got a Ken doll.”

            “Not then.” Ivan’s words sounded kind. “I meant later. I know you don’t live with your parents. The school told me that, of course. But I don’t know why. What happened to them?”

            This was no-man’s-land. Joel made no reply. But for the first time, he wanted to. Yet to speak was to violate a family taboo: No one talked about it; no one could cope with saying the words. Joel tried. “Cops said he went to the off licence. Mum told ’em no cos he was cured. He wa’n’t usin anymore, she said. He wasn’t usin nuffink. He was jus’ fetchin Ness from her dancin lesson like he always did. ’Sides, he had me an’ Toby wiv him. How’d they t’ink he meant to use if he had me an’ Toby wiv him?”

            But that was all he could manage. The rest of it . . . It was too sore a place. Even thinking about it hurt at a level no palliative could ever reach.

            Ivan was watching him. But now Joel didn’t want to be watched. There was only one option he could see at this point. Taking his banner with him, he hurried from the house.

            IN THE AFTERMATH of the Blade’s descent upon Edenham Way, Dix made his decision. And he communicated it to Kendra in a way that brooked neither refusal nor argument. He was moving in, he informed her. He wasn’t going to let her live on her own—even in the company of three children and perhaps because  of the company of those particular three children—while some lout like the Blade was intent upon sorting them out in a fashion anyone could easily guess at. Besides, whatever the Blade’s intentions had been on the night of his visit to Kendra and the Campbells, those intentions would now be fortifi ed by the treatment he’d received at Dix’s hands. And make no mistake about it, Dix told Kendra when she attempted to protest his plans, the Blade wasn’t going to target Dix for payback. That was not the way his type sought revenge. Instead, he was going to go after one of the other members of the household. Dix meant to be there to stop him.

He didn’t mention the fact that, by moving in, he’d be one step closer to getting what he wanted, which was a sense of permanency with Kendra. He couched the rest of his explanation in terms of his own need to get away from the Falcon, where living with two bodybuilding flatmates had long since constituted swimming in an excess of testosterone. To his parents he merely said that this was something he had to do. They had little choice but to accept his decision. They could see that Kendra was not an ordinary sort of woman—and this they decided was to her credit—but still they’d always had their own dreams about what sort of life their son ought to be leading, and that life had never contained a forty-year-old woman responsible for three children. Aside from their initial murmurs of caution, however, they kept their reservations to themselves.

            Joel and Toby were happy to have Dix join their household, for to them he was something of a god. Not only had he appeared from out of nowhere and saved the day in the fashion of a cinematic action hero, but he was also in their eyes perfect in all ways. He talked to them as if they were equals, he clearly adored their aunt— which was a plus, as they were becoming fond of her too—and if he was perhaps rather too single-minded on the subject of bodily perfection in general and