The Guardians

'Or not getting the job.'

'Yes. That sucks too.'

I try to screw the cap back onto the bottle, but my fingers aren't cooperating, so I take another drink instead and leave it open.

'I've never understood something about the whole drama thing,' I say.

'What?'

'Are actors faking being someone else or opening up what they already are?'

'The lousy ones—the ones like me-—are just making faces and saying lines they memorized. The good ones become.'

'Become what?'

'Something new out of something they've always been.'

Randy appears reflective, and at first I suspect it is the beginning of a routine, a comic mask of seriousness he's put on to set a mood before delivering the punchline.

But when he speaks next, it doesn't sound anything like humour.

'You know what the worst part of getting old is?'

'Old?' I say. 'We're only forty, Randy.'

'Don't give me that 'only forty' bulshit. Because I know you know what I'm talking about.'

'Okay, you got me. What's the worst part?'

'Realizing you haven't done a goddamn thing with your life.'

'There's only so many Nobel Prizes to go around.'

'It doesn't have to be that big. Nobody else even needs to know about it other than you. It just has to be, I don't know, remarkable.'

'There's stil time.'

'I don't think so,' Randy says, and the lost look in his eyes is suddenly real, a joke-repelent sadness. 'That's al I've wanted since I left this place. To do one smal, remarkable thing. It could have changed everything.'

'Changed you, you mean?'

'Everything.'

Outside, the wind blows night over the town. A grey sand that settles on the roof shingles and in the crooks of tree limbs. Randy is watching it come when he asks, for the first time out loud, a question I have asked myself a thousand times before.

'Who is he?' he says.

'I don't know.'

'What do you think he wants?'

'I've got a theory on that one.'

'Shoot.'

'More.'

'More what?'

'Whatever it is someone might be able to give him. More of themselves.'

'The worst part of themselves.'

'Exactly.'

'It's like he pushes you.'

'And he does it by pretending he knows you,' I say. 'He's almost sympathetic, you know? We're all flawed, all have impure thoughts, no big deal. So let's have some fun. He makes it feel like the two of you are best friends.'

'Except he actualy hates you,' Randy says. 'He hates you, and he wants you to rot and hate in there with him.'

It's night now. Dinnertime, though it could be any of the long hours between now and the reluctant October dawn. This, and our talk of the boy, has chiled the previous ilusion of good humour and left us stone-faced and cold, wishing for homes we haven't known for half a lifetime.

'This was my idea, so I guess I ought to lead the way,' I announce finaly, working my way to the top of the attic stairs. For the time it takes me to reach the second-floor landing, I can't hear any steps behind me and figure Randy has decided to stay behind. Yet when I look back he is there.

'Night, Mrs. McAuliffe,' I cal through her closed bedroom door as we pass.

'You boys try to stay out of trouble!'

'In Grimshaw?'

'Oh, you can find trouble just about anywhere if you're looking for it,' the old woman says, and from under the