'CAN YOU AT LEAST TELL US WHO SHE MIGHT TARGET NEXT?'
Shouting against the alarm, the foster mother asked:
'DON'T YOU WANT TO HELP US HELP HER?'
And the alarm stopped.
A lady stuck her head in the door and said, 'Don't panic, guys. It looks like another false alarm.'
A fire alarm is never about a fire, not anymore.
And this dumb-fuck little boy says, 'May I use your bathroom?'
Chapter 26
The half-moon looks up at us
, reflected in a silver pie tin of beer.
Denny and me kneel in somebody's backyard, and Denny kicks away the snails and slugs with little kicks of his index finger. Denny lifts the pie tin, full to the brim, bringing his reflection and his real face closer and closer until his fake lips meet his own lips.
Denny drinks about half the beer and says, 'This is how they drink beer in Europe, dude.'
Out of slug traps?
'No, dude,' Denny says. He hands me the pie tin and says, 'Flat and warm.'
I kiss my own reflection and drink, the moon watching over my shoulder.
On the sidewalk waiting for us is a baby stroller with its wheels splayed out wider at the bottom than the top. The bottom of the stroller drags against the ground, and wrapped in the pink baby blanket is a boulder of sandstone too big for Denny or me to lift. A pink rubber baby head is balanced inside the top edge of the blanket.
'About having sex in a church,' Denny says, 'tell me you didn't.'
It's not so much that I didn't. I couldn't.
Couldn't bone, shaft, drill, core, screw. All those euphemisms that aren't.
Denny and me, we're just two regular guys taking the baby out for a stroll at midnight. Just a couple of nice young guys in this fine neighborhood of big houses, each set back on its lawn. All these houses with their self-contained, climate-controlled, smug illusion of security.
Denny and me, we're about as innocent as a tumor.
Harmless as a psilocybin toadstool.
This is such a fine neighborhood, even the beer they leave out for the animals is imported from Germany or Mexico. We hop the fence into the next backyard and snoop under the plants for our next round.
Ducking to look under leaves and bushes, I say, 'Dude.' I say, 'You don't think I'm a good- hearted person, do you?'
And Denny says, 'Hell no, dude.'
After a few blocks, all those backyards of beer, I know Denny's being honest. I say, 'You don't think I'm really a secretly sensitive and Christlike manifestation of perfect love?'
'No way, dude,' Denny says. 'You're an asshole.'
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