Ghouls

He stopped at the road entrance. Nancy’s black Porsche was parked behind some trees on the other side of the chain. She leaned over and kissed him a last time, and for an imperceptible moment, he would not have let go of her hand even if told to do so at gunpoint. He wondered how much longer he could wear his despair so well.

“I won’t be able to see you tomorrow,” she said, looking away. “I have to go to Bethesda with Charles and help him with some things.”

Glen wilted, as if lanced. He was tired of these “things” that were so often popping up now. It hadn’t always been like that. Sometimes whole weeks would go by and she wouldn’t even mention her husband. She’d only seemed concerned with Glen. But even that had changed now. She’d been “busy,” with “things.”

“Okay,” he said. “Day after tomorrow then?”

“Sure. I’ll think of an excuse to get out of the house.” Her smile was bright; she touched his cheek, then scurried away to her car. Glen stared as the black Porsche drove off.

He remained there and listened to the truck rumble. Originally, he hadn’t been pleased with himself for sleeping with another man’s wife. But now it didn’t bother him because he knew that Willard didn’t love her. He pictured Willard in bed with her, moving over her beneath the sheets. It made Glen burn; it made him too conscious of the line between fucking and making love. He contemplated the Willard who lurked behind that astute, easy veneer, and he sensed a man who revolved solely around himself. Glen stared at the trees, now sick from the idea. Fucking, he thought. Fuck. Fucked. Fucking. The consequences stabbed his heart with ice. Fuck was a cruel word, perhaps the ugliest ever devised. Willard didn’t make love to his wife—he fucked her. He regarded her as an arrangement of sexual parts which existed to be done to, to be emptied into, to be fucked. Yes, he could picture Willard fucking her. And the saddest part was that Nancy didn’t seem to mind.

The thoughts churned further in his head. His guts constricted. He knew this secret relationship was the limit to his own corruption. Still, he often mused of how nice it would be if Willard were to just up and die. Stroke, car wreck, heart failure—any would do. Sometimes Glen even dared to fantasize of breaking into the mansion himself, killing Willard, and then rearranging the scene to look like a slipshod burglary. He actually asked himself if he could commit murder for the sake of his love and was disturbed at the time it took to decide he couldn’t.

In the rearview he glimpsed something tiny and red. Tail-lights? He made a quick three-point turn and drove out to the first clearing. Half a mile off, twin glowing red dots moved slowly through the trees, then intensified, then disappeared.

Glen cut the headlights. He pulled off slow, feeling for the ruts in the access road, and stopped before the first turn. Flashlight in one hand and shotgun in the other, he got out and ventured into the black woods. Was someone talking? He heard a noise, perhaps laughter, floating up, deflected by the trees. It sounded like a girl. Parkers, he thought. More parkers. But he remained watchful, just in case, for sight of a single-beam light, the poacher’s mark of trade. He’d been shot at more than once. “Here the deer shoot back!” was his favorite line, and then he’d always pump a few rounds into the air. That generally sent them packing.

More words issued up, verifying the gender. A girl said, “Well, come on. We haven’t got all night.”

Great, Glen thought. He’d give them a scare.

Past the first turn, he saw a car parked in the road. He leaned low, walking lightly, and soon details of the vehicle grew more precise. It was a big Lincoln, silver or light gray, and it was new. He inched right up to the passenger side and listened.

“That feels good,” the girl said. “I like that.”

Hope you like this, too, he thought. He aimed his flashlight at the open passenger window and turned it on.

Both of the people in the car were girls. They both screamed.

Glen couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The girl on the driver’s side withdrew her hand from the other girl’s pants. One was blonde, the other brunette. Frantic, the blonde pulled her shirttail down over her open jeans.

He stared a moment more. He blinked steadily, daring this scene to be a mirage that might disappear between blinks.

The two girls stopped screaming. Glen could tell by the looks on their faces that they weren’t exactly happy to see him.

“I told you we shouldn’t have come here,” the blonde said.

“Oh, shut up,” the brunette said back to her.

Frowning, the blonde dared to look up at Glen. “Well, you’ve scared the shit out of us,” she said. “What happens now?”

From the driver’s side, the brunette leaned over, her lips sealed in a similar, defiant smirk. She wore a black T-shirt with the white letters DISCHORD RECORDS centered breast level. “Are you gonna arrest us, or what?” she inquired of him.

Neither of them could’ve been more than eighteen.

“What the hell is this?” he was eventually able to say.

“We’re parking,” said the blonde.

“You’re both girls!”

“Clever of you to notice,” said the brunette.

Glen shined the light in back. “Girls don’t go parking without guys. Where are the guys?”

“We’re not into guys,” the brunette answered. This she stated quite solidly. There was no shame, no embarrassment.

“We’re into each other,” the blonde said.

No, no, come on. I can’t be expected to believe this. I just…can’t…believe—

“Why are you staring at us like that?” the blonde asked. “It’s not polite to stare.”

The brunette: “Yeah, what’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen two girls make it before?”

“No,” he said. “This is Maryland, not California.”

“We’re gay. We admit it.”

Glen squinted at them. He was thrown over. “How can you not admit it? I just saw you take your hand out of that girl’s pants!”

“That’s no reason to treat us like criminals!” the brunette shouted back. Her voice echoed through the forest. “We haven’t done anything wrong, so instead of staring at us like we’re a pair of midgets, why don’t you give us a break? If our parents find out about this, they’d make us go see shrinks.”

Finally, the shock began to rise. “How did you get in here?” he demanded. “Are you the people who’ve been cutting my chains?”

The blonde’s frown drew to a grimace. “We didn’t cut any damn chains.”

“We used one of those back roads on the town line,” the brunette added. “We didn’t mean any harm.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said. “Look, what you do with each other is your business, but when you do it here, it becomes my business. This is private property, and there’re signs posted all over the place, and did you ever stop to think that maybe the guy who owns this land doesn’t want you two coming out here to feel each other up? How would you like it if I parked my car in your yard and dorked my girlfriend there?”

“You don’t have to insult us,” the brunette snapped back. “It’s not against the law to be gay, you know.”

“Fine, I realize that. Just go be gay somewhere else.”

Excitement sparkled in the blonde’s eyes. “You mean you’re not going to squeal on us? You’re not going to report us?”

“No, I’m not going to report you. Just leave. Go out the way you came.”

“You mean that?” prodded the brunette. “You won’t tell our parents?”

“I won’t even tell your parents. Go away now. Beat it. Scram. Be like a hockey player and get the puck out of here.”

Seconds later, they were gone, the roar of their engine immense in the night. Glen made a small note of the incident in his daily log, then glanced up in time to see their taillights fade.

This was a first in his career. Crunching back through the woods to the truck, he could still scarcely believe it had even happened. Two girls, he thought. The new age has dawned before my very eyes. Wait’ll Kurt hears about this.