Удушье (Choke)

'Oh, but I cant,' she says. 'The guilt is so bad, I can't even face him. I don't even know how he'll react.'

She says, 'Maybe it's better Victor never finds out.'

'So tell me,' I say. 'Get it off your chest,' I say, and I promise not to tell Victor, not unless she says it's okay.

She squints at me, her old skin all cinching tight around her eyes. With chocolate pudding smeared in the wrinkles around her mouth, she says, 'But how do I know I can trust you? I'm not even sure who you are.'

I smile and say, 'Of course you can trust me.'

And I stick the spoon in her mouth. The black pudding just sits on her tongue. It's better than a stomach tube. Okay, it's cheaper.

I take the remote control out of her reach and tell her, 'Swal­low.'

I tell her, 'You have to listen to me. You have to trust me.'

I say, 'I'm him. I'm Victor's father.'

And her milky eyes swell at me while the rest of her face, her wrinkles and skin, seem to slide into the collar of her nightgown. With one terrible yellow hand, she makes the sign of the cross and her mouth hangs open to her chest. 'Oh, you're him, and you've come back,' she says. 'Oh, blessed Father. Holy Father,' she says. 'Oh, please forgive me.'

Chapter 11

This is me talking to Denny

, locking him in the stocks again, this time for having a stamp on the back of his hand from some nightclub, and I say, 'Dude.'

I say, 'It's so weird.'

Denny's got both hands in place for me to lock them. He's got his shirt tucked in tight. He knows to bend his knees a little to take the stress off his back. He remembers to visit the restroom before he gets locked up. Our Denny's turned into a regular expert at getting punished. In good old Colonial Dunsboro, masochism is a valuable job skill.

It is in most jobs.

Yesterday at St. Anthony's, I tell him, it was the same as that old movie where there's a guy and a painting, and the guy gets to party and live to be about a hundred years old, and he never looks any different. The painting of him, it keeps getting uglier and trashed with alcohol-related everything and the nose falls off from secondary syphilis and the clap.

All the residents at St. Anthony's, now they're all eyes closed and humming. Everybody's all smiling and righteous.

Except me. I'm their stupid painting.

'Congratulate me, dude,' Denny says. 'Being in the stocks so much, I put together four weeks of sobriety. For sure, that's like four weeks more than I've had since I was thirteen.'

My mom's roommate, I tell him, Mrs. Novak, she's all nod­ding and satisfied now that I've finally fessed up to stealing her invention for toothpaste.

Another old lady is jabbering and happy as a parrot since I admitted to peeing in her bed every night.

Yeah, I tell them all, I did it. I burned down your house. I bombed your village. I deported your sister. I sold you a shitty blue Nash Rambler in 1968. Then, yeah, I killed your dog.

So get over it!

I tell them, heap it on me. Make me play the big passive bot­tom in your guilt gang bang. I'll take everybody's load.