The Guardians

'Not realy much of a pattern. These things just happen. I wish they didn't, but they do.'

'You're forgetting Ben. He believed his watching the house was keeping something bad inside of it. And then, after he's gone, something bad happens.'

Randy sits down on the edge of the bed. 'I thought you got the police to go in there already.'

'I don't know how hard they looked.'

'How hard would they have to look?'

'You can miss places.'

'You mean a secret room you can get to only if you pul on a candlestick holder and the bookshelf spins around?'

'I mean a closet, under the floorboards. The celar.'

Randy looks up at the ceiling, as though reading a message in the plaster's cracks.

'You want us to go in there,' he says.

'I can't go to the police again. So that leaves us.'

'Because you think Heather is inside.'

'Tracey,' I correct.

'Right,' Randy says. 'You think Tracey is in the Thurman house.'

'I only know that I won't be able to live with myself if I guessed right that someone's in there and I didn't do anything about it.'

My intention is to leave, but my legs aren't folowing orders. I'm standing by the window, arms crossed, waiting for my engine to start.

'You sound just like Ben,' Randy says.

'You don't think I know that?'

'And we remember how that turned out.'

'Yes. We remember,' I say. 'But was he wrong?'

Something in the force of these words lubricates my joints, and I'm launched toward the door. But Randy beats me to it.

'You figure Thiessen's Hardware is stil open out on King?' he says. 'Because I'm guessing neither of us packed gloves and flashlights.'

Randy suggested we wait to go in at midnight. Yet when I pointed out that it got dark at seven this time of year and asked what was to be gained by waiting around another five hours, he had no answer, other than 'Isn't this the sort of stuff you do at midnight?'

We're up in Ben's room, passing around a mickey of Lamb's that Randy picked up on the way over. It helps. The rum's warmth lends some humour to the situation.

We are nothing more than a pair of grown men contemplating a harmless stunt. The hiring of a stag-party stripper or cocooning the groom's car in toilet paper.

'Did you like it?' Randy asks after a couple swalows. 'The whole nightclub business. Was it what you wanted?'

'It was very profitable for a time.'

'I'm not asking about that:'

'I know you're not.' Randy passes the bottle and I take a swalow. 'Okay. This is going to sound ridiculous.'

'And what we're doing tonight isn't?'

'I think I worked so hard the past fifteen years to build something I could hide behind,' I say. 'People think anybody who runs a place like mine is in it for the girls or the dope or having people stop to look as you drive by in your Merc with the personalized Retox plates. But honestly, I didn't realy care about any of that.'

'Doesn't sound too bad to me.'

'It wasn't. It was neither good nor bad, nor anything. It was just this thoughtless, gleaming, perfect skin I could wear.'

I hold the Lamb's out to Randy, who takes a glug. And then another.

'It's a funny thing,' he says. 'But I think I was trying to do the exact opposite.'

'How's that?'

'Al this time I've been working to take my skin off Show what lies beneath. Which might sound like drama school crap, but I believed it.'

'You didn't seem to take it too seriously.'

'But I did. ,' he says, passing the bottle back to me. ''Just act normal.' Remember?'

'Acting was more than just a job for you? That what you're saying?'

'It wasn't a job at al. In fact, it's the job part that I hate.'