"I don't believe you," Alan said. "And it's urgent, and I'm not in the
mood to play around. Can you get Krishna for me, Natalie?"
"I told you," she said, not meeting his eyes, "he's not here."
"That's enough," Alan said in his boss voice, his
more-in-anger-than-in-sorrow voice. "Get him, Natalie. You don't need to
be in the middle of this -- it's not right for him to ask you to. Get
him."
Natalie closed the door and he heard the deadbolt turn. *Is she going to
fetch him, or is she locking me out?*
He was on the verge of hammering the buzzer again, but he got his
answer. Krishna opened the door and stepped onto the dripping porch,
bulling Alan out with his chest.
He smiled grimly at Alan and made a well-go-on gesture.
"What did you see?" Alan said, his voice tight but under control.
"Saw you and that fat guy," Krishna said. "Saw you rooting around in the
park. Saw him disappear down the fountain."
"He's my brother," Alan said.
"So what, he ain't heavy? He's fat, but I expect there's a reason for
that. I've seen your kind before, Adam. I don't like you, and I don't
owe you any favors." He turned and reached for the screen door.
"No," Alan said, taking him by the wrist, squeezing harder than was
necessary. "Not yet. You said, 'Lost another one.' What other one,
Krishna? What else did you see?"
Krishna gnawed on his neatly trimmed soul patch. "Let go of me, Andrew,"
he said, almost too softly to be heard over the rain.
"Tell me what you saw," Alan said. "Tell me, and I'll let you go." His
other hand balled into a fist. "Goddammit, *tell me*!" Alan yelled, and
twisted Krishna's arm behind his back.
"I called the cops," Krishna said. "I called them again and they're on
their way. Let me go, freak show."
"I don't like you, either, Krishna," Alan said, twisting the arm
higher. He let go suddenly, then stumbled back as Krishna scraped the
heel of his motorcycle boot down his shin and hammered it into the top
of his foot.
He dropped to one knee and grabbed his foot while Krishna slipped into
the house and shot the lock. Then he hobbled home as quickly as he
could. He tried to pace off the ache in his foot, but the throbbing got
worse, so he made himself a drippy ice pack and sat on the sofa in the
immaculate living room and rocked back and forth, holding the ice to his
bare foot.
#
At five, Davey graduated from torturing animals to beating up on smaller
children. Alan took him down to the school on the day after Labor Day,
to sign him up for kindergarten. He was wearing his stiff new blue jeans
and sneakers, his knapsack stuffed with fresh binders and
pencils. Finding out about these things had been Alan's first experience
with the wide world, a kindergartner sizing up his surroundings at speed
so that he could try to fit in. David was a cute kid and had the benefit
of Alan's experience. He had a foxy little face and shaggy blond hair,
all clever smiles and awkward winks, and for all that he was still a
monster.
They came and got Alan twenty minutes after classes started, when his
new home-room teacher was still briefing them on the rules and
regulations for junior high students. He was painfully aware of all the
eyes on his back as he followed the office lady out of the portable and
into the old school building where the kindergarten and the
administration was housed.
"We need to reach your parents," the office lady said, once they were
alone in the empty hallways of the old building.
"You can't," Alan said. "They don't have a phone."
"Then we can drive out to see them," the office lady said. She smelled
of artificial floral scent and Ivory soap, like the female hygiene aisle
at the drugstore.
"Mom's still real sick," Alan said, sticking to his traditional story.
"Your father, then," the office lady said. He'd had variations on this
conversation with every office lady at the school, and he knew he'd win
it in the end. Meantime, what did they want?
"My dad's, you know, gone," he said. "Since I was a little kid." That
line always got the office ladies, "since I was a little kid," made them
want to write it down for their family Christmas newsletters.
The office lady smiled a powdery smile and put her hand on his
shoulder. "All right, Alan, come with me."
Davey was sitting on the dusty sofa in the vice principal's office. He
punched the sofa cushion rhythmically. "Alan," he said when the office
lady led him in.
"Hi, Dave," Alan said. "What's going on?"
"They're stupid here. I hate them." He gave the sofa a particularly
vicious punch.
"I'll get Mr Davenport," the office lady said, and closed the door
behind her.
"What did you do?" Alan asked.
"She wouldn't let me play!" David said, glaring at him.
"Who wouldn't?"
"A girl! She had the blocks and I wanted to play with them and she
wouldn't let me!"
"What did you hit her with?" Alan asked, dreading the answer.
"A block," David said, suddenly and murderously cheerful. "I hit her in
the eye!"
Alan groaned. The door opened and the vice principal, Mr. Davenport,
came in and sat behind his desk. He was the punishment man, the one that
no one wanted to be sent in to see.
"Hello, Alan," he said gravely. Alan hadn't ever been personally called
before Mr. Davenport, but Billy got into some spot of precognitive
trouble from time to time, rushing out of class to stop some disaster at
home or somewhere else in the school. Mr. Davenport knew that Alan was a
straight arrow, not someone he'd ever need to personally take an
interest in.
He crouched down next to Darren, hitching up his slacks. "You must be
David," he said, ducking down low to meet Davey's downcast gaze.
Davey punched the sofa.
"I'm Mr. Davenport," he said, and extended a hand with a big class ring
on it and a smaller wedding band.
Davey kicked him in the nose, and the vice principal toppled over
backward, whacking his head on the sharp corner of his desk. He tumbled
over onto his side and clutched his head. "Mother*fucker*!" he gasped,
and Davey giggled maniacally.
Alan grabbed Davey's wrist and bent his arm behind his back, shoving him
across his knee. He swatted the little boy on the ass as hard as he
could, three times. "Don't you ever --" Alan began.
The vice principal sat up, still clutching his head. "That's enough!" he
said, catching Alan's arm.
"Sorry," Alan said. "And David's sorry, too, right?" He glared at David.
"You're a stupid mother*fucker*!" David said, and squirmed off of Alan's
lap.
The vice principal's lips tightened. "Alan," he said quietly, "take your
brother into the hallway. I am going to write a note that your mother
will have to sign before David comes back to school, after his two-week
suspension."
David glared at them each in turn. "I'm not coming back to this
mother*fucker* place!" he said.
He didn't.
#
The rain let up by afternoon, leaving a crystalline, fresh-mown air
hanging over the Market.
Andrew sat in his office by his laptop and watched the sun come out. He
needed to find Ed, needed to find Frank, needed to find Grant, but he
was out of practice when it came to the ways of the mountain and its
sons. Whenever he tried to imagine a thing to do next, his mind spun and
the worldless howling thing inside him stirred. The more he tried to
remember what it was like to be a son of the mountain, the more he felt
something he'd worked very hard for, his delicate normalcy, slipping
away.
So he put his soaked clothes in the dryer, clamped his laptop under his
arm, and went out. He moped around the park and the fountain, but the
stroller moms whose tots were splashing in the wading pool gave him
sufficient dirty looks that he walked up to the Greek's, took a table on
the patio, and ordered a murderously strong cup of coffee.
He opened up the screen and rotated around the little café table until
the screen was in the shade and his wireless card was aligned for best
reception from the yagi antenna poking out of his back window. He opened
up a browser and hit MapQuest, then brought up a street-detailed map of
the Market. He pasted it into his CAD app and started to mark it up,
noting all the different approaches to his house that Davey might take
the next time he came. The maps soothed him, made him feel like a part
of the known world.
Augusta Avenue and Oxford were both out; even after midnight, when the
stores were all shuttered, there was far too much foot traffic for Davey
to pass by unnoticed. But the alleys that mazed the back ways were
ideal. Some were fenced off, some were too narrow to pass, but most of
them -- he'd tried to navigate them by bicycle once and found himself
utterly lost. He'd had to turn around slowly until he spotted the CN
Tower and use it to get his bearings.
He poked at the map, sipping the coffee, then ordering another from the
Greek's son, who hadn't yet figured out that he was a regular and so
sneered at his laptop with undisguised contempt. "Computers, huh?" he
said. "Doesn't anyone just read a book anymore?"
"I used to own a bookstore," Alan said, then held up a finger and moused
over to his photo album and brought up the thumbnails of his old
bookstore. "See?"
The Greek's son, thirty with a paunch and sweat-rings under the pits of
his white "The Greek's" T-shirt, sat down and looked at the photos. "I
remember that place, on Harbord Street, right?"
Alan smiled. "Yup. We lost the store when they blew up the abortion
clinic next door," he said. "Insurance paid out, but I wasn't ready to
start over with another bookstore."