intimidating.
“Hi,” he said with deliberate flatness.
Sam slapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, loosen up, man!”
He turned to me.
“Mark’s kind of pissed because I kicked him out of his room so you’d have somewhere to sleep.”
“You didn’t need to do that!” I protested. “I could have slept anywhere. I don’t want anyone to have to give up …”
“Hey, it’s OK!” Sam replied. “Not a big deal. Right, Mark?”
Mark shot him a look, shrugged and walked back to the TV. I wasn’t the only person who was embarrassed by this, I realized. Several of the others shuffled about and looked at the floor as though they wished they were somewhere else. I found myself looking especially hard at one of the women.
I hadn’t noticed her the first time around, but now something about her struck me. She seemed different from the others, in a way I couldn’t quite pin down. She was dressed equally shabbily, in a pair of old khakis and a baggy gray sweater, but she managed to suggest that this was meant to conceal a great body, and had almost succeeded. Her face looked tired, but her brown eyes had an intelligent wariness which contrasted strongly with the flat, vapid expressions all around.
Our eyes met briefly. There was definitely a flicker of interest there, an intensity that made me realize that the facile smiles of the others had been directed at Sam, not at me. If I existed for them, it was simply as an extension of him.
“Come on, Phil,” Sam said, putting his arm around me. “I’ll show you where to bed down. We can talk in the morning.”
He led me around a massive rectangular dining table to a door at the end of the hall. The small room inside was furnished with a bed, a chair, a chest of drawers and an empty bookshelf. There was no window, and the air felt cold and damp.
“The Hilton it ain’t,” said Sam wryly. “This place was an old summer camp used to belong to some nutty sect. We’ve made a few improvements, but everything’s still kind of basic.”
“It’s great,” I murmured. “I just wished you hadn’t inconvenienced that guy for my sake.”
“It wasn’t just for your sake,” Sam replied, lowering his voice. “Truth is, Mark had it coming. He’s been getting out of line lately. This’ll be a good lesson.”
I wondered which line Mark had been getting out of, and why such a mean-looking dude would let someone like Sam push him around.
“Anyway, it’s just for now,” Sam went on. “Later on we can make other arrangements.”
“Oh, I won’t be able to stay long,” I said quickly “I’ve got to be getting back in a week or two, and there’s a couple of other places I want to see first.”
I wanted this established right away. I planned to stay a few days, a week at most. It would be something to look back on later as an “interesting experience.”
“If you need the can, there’s one across the yard,” Sam continued, ignoring my comment. “It’s kind of primitive, but you’ll get used to it.”
He stepped forward and grasped my hand.
“You’re going to find happiness here, Phil. A happiness you never dared dream would come to pass. I know that may seem kind of strange now, but it’s true. I’ll prove it to you.”
I smiled weakly and nodded.
“Great. Thanks a lot for inviting me.”
Sam turned in the doorway. He shook his head solemnly.
“You invited yourself, Phil. Everyone who comes here invites themselves. They’re the only invitations we accept.”
He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him. I undressed quickly, turned out the light and got into bed, pulling the covers over my head just as I had as a child in our badly heated house in Holland. Shivering with cold, I lay there sorting out stray sounds which seeped in through the cracks in the walls: a flurry of indistinct voices next door, rapid spasms of gunfire from the video, the dull thud of the Costeo goodies being stashed away, and then the disturbingly familiar sound of a child crying somewhere in the distance. That was the last thing I was conscious of, and when I thought it over in the morning I wasn’t sure if I had really heard it or if it was part of a dream.
Over the next few days, I explored my new home and fell in love.
9
Beyond the window streaked with grime, the flat, featureless landscape slipped past like a loop of film repeated interminably Where the hell were they? After three days on the road, he’d even lost track of what state it was. The occasional towns they hit offered no clue, just the usual run-down Main Street, a few parked cars and pickups, a cluster of people waiting to board the Greyhound, a row of hardscrabble businesses, a water tower with some no-hope name painted on it.
Pat glanced at his watch. Still another three and half hours to go. He looked across the aisle at the girl in the leather jacket and tight jeans. She had sweet, mean, trailer-trash looks, and a body to match. He knew just how she’d fuck, but how would she die? He imagined pressing the pistol to her head, just behind the ear, the way he’d practiced so many times. Ease the muzzle right in there, in the little hollow he’d have licked if he’d been going to fuck her.
She’d like that. After all the guys who’d just climbed on top of her and shot their wad, she’d appreciate a little gesture like that. She’d think he was classy. But not if it was a revolver he was sticking in there. That would make him just like all those other guys, plus she’d be dead. But then maybe she already was. You couldn’t tell, that was the whole point. Not until you tried.
Sensing Pat’s eyes on her, the girl turned and stared right back at him, sassy and challenging. He looked away, feigning a sudden interest in what was happening outside the window. Which was nothing. And if he’d had to shoot her? Would he have blown that, too? In that case, of course, everything would be different. He’d be psyched up and ready to go, and Russ would be there to help. Even so, nothing could guarantee that he’d be able to go through with it. Dale had proved that once and for all.
Pat still found it very difficult to accept what had happened to Dale. For a couple of days in there, he’d almost lost his faith. And he wasn’t the only one. Even the real hard guys like Mark and Lenny had been shaken.
Andy had laid the whole thing out for them: how he and Dale had found the house empty, how he’d tricked the real-estate agency into revealing the time of the next viewing, how they’d dressed up as joggers and circled the block until the client and the agent showed, then followed them inside. Everything had gone without a hitch. The victims had been positioned, cuffed and taped. All that remained was the act itself, the ritual revelation of Life and Death which would raise Dale to the ranks of the initiates.
But then it had all gone wrong. Pat and the others had listened in stunned silence as Andy described how Dale had broken down and then turned the gun on himself, leaving his partner to execute the witnesses and withdraw as best he could.
It was a brutal reality check for all of them, but especially for Pat. He and Dale had been real close. They had arrived at almost the same time, and a bond had formed between them back in those early days when everything could seem kind of creepy at times. Plus they had similar tastes in music and movies. They’d even shared the same woman for a while. And now Dale was gone. Even worse, he’d never really been there in the first place. That was the hardest thing to accept, but there was no other possible explanation. Facts were facts. Get over it.
Pat had tried, but the best he could do was to separate the two Dales in his mind: the dead one, and the person he’d joked and bullshitted with for hours on end, day in, day out. He hadn’t admitted this to any of the others, of course. He knew it was heresy. But there was no way he could convince himself that the Dale he’d known had been any less real than he was himself.
But how real
