The Guardians

'I'm fine.'

'Whatever you say.'

'Is that coffee?'

Randy looks down at the two paper cups screwed into the tray in his hand as though a stranger had asked him to hold it and had yet to return.

'It appears it is,' he says, then tries to look past my shoulder. 'You got company?'

'No. Why?'

'You look al blotchy and flustered, for one thing. And for another, you're not letting me in.'

'I thought there was someone else at the door.'

'Who?'

'Nobody.'

'Funny. I thought there was nobody knocking at my door this morning too.'

Randy comes in, stands with his back to me as I take a seat at the desk, steadying my hands by gripping its edge. 'You up for some breakfast?'

'I'l just grab something on my way to the McAuliffes'.'

'Right. Trevor the Executor.'

'Care to join me?'

'Me and you folding Ben's underwear and filing his Hustlers? I'm good, thanks.'

Randy notices the Dictaphone I've left on the desktop.

'What's that?'

'A tape recorder,' I say, slipping it into my jacket pocket. 'Except it doesn't use tapes. So I suppose it's not realy a tape recorder. It's digital.'

'I know what it is. I'm wondering what you're using it for.'

Randy stares at my hands, white knuckled and ridged, both returned to clutching the edge of the desk.

'I'm keeping a kind of diary,' I say.

'Realy.'

'One of my doctors said they sometimes help.'

'Help what?'

'People with diseases like mine.'

'Yeah? How's that work?'

'It's supposed to make you feel less alone or something.'

'I'm just trying to picture you sitting here talking into that thing, counting up how many beers you had last night and the crap you took this morning and how many hairs you puled out of the drain after your shower.'

'It's not like that.'

'No? What's it like?'

'I'm not keeping a diary of the present, but the past.'

This loosens the teasing grin from Randy's face, so that he appears vaguely pained, as though waiting for a stomach cramp to release its hold.

'The past,' he says finaly. 'How far back you going?'

'Guess.'

'The winter when we were sixteen.'

'That's not a bad title for it.'

Randy sits on the end of the bed. Rests his hands on his knees in the way of a man who thinks his body might be about to betray him in some unpredictable way.

'You think that's a good idea?' he says.

'In what sense?'

'In the sense of anyone reading or listening to this diary of yours?'

'Nobody's ever going to read it.'

'Because we promised. You too. You promised never to tel.'

'I'm not teling. It's just for me.'

'To be forgiven.'

'That's asking too much.'