Mr. and Mrs. Borden gave Roy permission to have supper with Colin. The boys ate at the counter at Charlie’s Cafe, basking in the incomparably wonderful aroma of bubbling grease and onions. Colin paid the check.
From the diner they went to the Pinball Pit, an amusement arcade that was one of the chief gathering places for young people in Santa Leona. It was a Friday night, and the Pit was crowded with kids feeding coins to pinball machines and a wide variety of electronic games.
Half the customers knew Roy. They called to him, and he called back. “Ho, Roy!” “Ho, Pete!” “Hi there, Roy!” “What ya say, Walt?” “Roy!” “Roy!” “Here, Roy!” They wanted to challenge him to games or tell him jokes or just talk. He stopped here and there for a minute or two at a time, but he didn’t want to play with anyone but Colin.
They competed in a two-player pinball game that was decorated with paintings of big-breasted, long-legged girls in skimpy bikinis. Roy chose that machine rather than one with pirates, monsters, or spacemen; and Colin tried not to blush.
Colin usually disliked cheap thrill palaces like the Pit and avoided them. The few times he’d ever ventured into one, he’d found the din unbearable. The sounds of computer scorekeepers and robot adversaries — beep — beep — beep, pong-pong-pong, bomp-bompada — bomp, whoop — whoop — whooooooooop-mixed with laughter and girls’ happy screams and half-shouted conversations. Assaulted by continuous, thunderous noise, he became claustrophobic. He always felt like an alien, a being from a distant world, trapped on a primitive planet, caught in a mob of hostile, screeching, gibbering, barbaric, loathsome natives.
But he didn’t feel that way tonight. He was enjoying every minute and he knew why. Because of Roy, he was no longer a frightened visitor from space; he was now one of the natives.
With his thick yellow hair, blue eyes, muscles, and quiet self-confidence, Roy drew the girls. Three of them-Kathy, Laurie, and Janet-gathered around to watch the game. They were all better than average-looking: taut, tan, vital teen-age girls in halter tops and shorts, with shiny hair and California complexions and budding breasts and slender legs.
Roy clearly favored Laurie, while Kathy and Janet showed more than passing interest in Colin. He didn’t think they were attracted to him for himself. In fact, he was certain they were not. He had no illusions. Before girls like them swooned over boys like him, the sun would rise in the west, tiny babies would grow beards, and an honest man would be elected President. They were flirting with him because he was Roy’s friend, or because they were jealous of Laurie and wanted to make Roy jealous of them. Whatever their reasons, they were concentrating on Colin, asking questions, drawing him out, laughing at his jokes, cheering when he won a game. Until now, girls had never wasted time with him. He really didn’t care what their motives were; he just reveled in all the attention and prayed it would never end. He knew he was blushing brightly, but the arcade’s odd orange lighting provided him with cover.
Forty minutes after entering the Pit, they left to a chorus of good-byes: “So long, Roy; take it easy, Roy; see ya around, Roy.” Roy seemed to want to be rid of all of them, including Kathy, Laurie, and Janet. Colin went reluctantly.
Outside, the evening air was mild. A light breeze carried the faint scent of the sea.
Complete darkness had not yet descended. Santa Leona lay in a smoky yellow twilight similar to that which Roy had created earlier in the day for the miniature world in the Borden garage.
Their bicycles were chained to a rack in the parking lot behind the Pit.
As he bent and unlocked his bike, Roy said, “You like the Pit?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you would.”
“You spend much time there?” Colin asked.
“Nah. Not much.”
“I thought you were a regular.”
Roy stood and pulled his bike from between the pipes. “I hardly ever go.”
“Everybody knew you.”
“I know the kids who are regulars. But not me. I’m not a fan of games. At least not games as easy as the ones in the Pit.”
Colin finished unchaining his bicycle. “If you don’t like it, why’d we come?”
“I knew you’d enjoy it,” Roy said.
Colin frowned. “But I don’t want to do things that bore you.”
“I wasn’t bored,” Roy said. “I didn’t mind playing a game or three. And I sure didn’t mind having a chance to look at Laurie. She has a terrific little body, doesn’t she?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess!”
“Well, sure … she has a nice body.”
“I’d like to settle down between her pretty legs for a few months.”
“You seemed anxious to get away from her.”
“After about fifteen minutes I get sick of talking to her,” Roy said.
“Then how could you stand her for a few months?”
“We wouldn’t talk,” Roy said, grinning wickedly.
“Oh.”
“Kathy, Janet, Laurie … all those girls are just teasers.”
“What do you mean?”
“They never put out.”
“Put out what?”
“Ass, for Christ’s sake! They never put out any ass, not ever, not for anyone.”
“Oh.”
“Laurie shakes it at me, but if I actually put a hand on her tits, she’d scream so loud the roof would fall in.”
Colin was blushing and sweating. “Well, after all, she’s only fourteen, isn’t she?”
“Plenty old enough.”
Colin wasn’t pleased with the direction the conversation had taken. He tried to get back on course. “Anyway, what I wanted to say was, from now on let’s not do anything that bores you.”
Roy put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “Listen, Colin, am I your friend or not?”
“Sure you are.”
“A good friend should be willing to keep you company even when you’re doing things that you enjoy but maybe he doesn’t care so much about. I mean, I can’t expect to always do exactly what I like, and I can’t expect that you and I will always want to do the same things.”
“We like the same things,” Colin said. “We have the same interests.” He was afraid Roy would suddenly realize how different they were and would walk away, never to be seen again.
“You love horror films,” Roy said. “I don’t have any interest in that stuff.”
“Well, aside from that one thing-”
“We’ve got other differences. But the point is, if you’re my buddy, you’ll do things with me that I want to do but that you don’t like at all. So it works both ways.”
“No, it doesn‘t,” Colin said, “because I happen to like doing everything you suggest.”
“So far,” Roy said. “But there’ll come a time when you won’t want to do something that’s important to me, but you will do it because we’re friends.”
“I can’t imagine what,” Colin said.
“Just wait,” Roy said. “You’ll see. Sooner or later, good buddy, the time will come.”
The scarlet light of the Pit’s neon sign was refracted in Roy’s eyes, giving them a strange and somewhat frightening aspect. Colin thought they resembled a movie vampire’s eyes: glassy, red, violent, two windows on a soul that had been corrupted by the repeated satisfaction of unnatural desires. (But then again, Colin thought the same thing every time he saw Mr. Arkin’s eyes, and Mr. Arkin was just the man who owned the comer grocery store; the closest thing Mr. Arkin had to an unnatural desire was a taste for liquor, and his red eyes were nothing more than the most obvious sign of a nearly continuous hangover.)
“Just the same,” Colin said to Roy, “I hate the idea that I’m boring you with-”
“I wasn’t bored! Will you relax? I don’t mind going to the Pit if that’s what you want. just remember what I said about those girls. They’ll hang on you a little bit. Now and then they’ll ‘accidentally’ rub their tight little asses against you or maybe ’accidentally’ brush their boobs against your arm. But you’ll never have any real fun with them. Their idea of a big, big night is to sneak out to the parking lot, hide in the shadows, and steal kisses.”
That was also Colin’s idea of a big, big night. In fact, it was his idea of heaven on earth, but he didn’t tell Roy.
They walked their bicycles across the lot to the alley.
Before Roy could climb on his bike and pedal away, Colin got up the nerve to say: “Why me?”
“Huh?”
“Why do you want to be friends with me?”
“Why shouldn’t I be friends with you?”
“I mean with a nobody like me.”
“Who said you’re a nobody?”
“I did.”
“What kind of a thing is that to say about yourself?”
“Anyway, I’ve been wondering for a month.”
“Wondering what? You aren’t making sense.”
“I’ve been wondering why you want to be friends with someone like me.”
“What do you mean? What makes you different? You got leprosy or something?”
Colin wished he had never brought up the subject, but now that he had done so, he stumbled ahead with it. “Well, you know, someone who’s not normally very popular and, you know, not good at sports, you know, not really good at much of anything and … well, you know.”
“Stop saying, ‘you know,’ ” Roy said. “I hate that. One of the reasons I want to be friends with you is that you can talk. Most kids around here chatter away all day and never use more than twenty words. Two of which are ‘you know.’ But you actually have a decent vocabulary. It’s refreshing.”
Colin blinked. “You want to be friends because of my vocabulary?”
“I want to be friends because you’re as smart as I am. Most kids bore me.”
“But you could pal around with any guy in town, any guy your age, even some a year or two older than you. Most of those guys in the Pit-”
“They’re assholes.”
“Be serious. They’re some of the most popular guys in town.”
“Assholes, I tell you.”
“Not all of them.”
“Believe me, Colin, all of them. Half of them can’t figure any way to have a good time except to smoke dope or pop pills or get stinking drunk and vomit all over themselves. The rest of them want to be either John Travolta or Donny Osmond. Yech!”
“But they like you.”
“Everyone likes me,” Roy said. “I make sure of that.”
“I sure wish I knew how to make everyone like me.”
“It’s easy. You just have to know how to manipulate them.”
“Okay. How?”
“Stick around me long enough, and you’ll learn.”
Instead of riding away from the Pit, they walked down the alley, side by side, pushing their bikes. They both knew there was more to be said.
They passed an oleander hedge. The flowers looked slightly phosphorescent in the growing gloom, and Colin took a deep whiff of them.
Oleander berries contained one of the deadliest substances known to man. Colin had seen an old movie in which a lunatic had murdered a dozen people with a poison extracted from the plant. He couldn’t remember the title. It had been a really dumb film, even worse than Godzilla Versus King Kong, which meant it was one of the all-time most terrible works in cinematic history.
After they had gone nearly a block, Colin said, “You ever used dope?”
“Once,” Roy said.
“What was it?”
“Hash. Through a waterpipe.”
“You like it?”
“Once was enough. What about you?”
“No,” Colin said. “Drugs scare me.”
“You know why?”
“You can get killed.”
“Dying doesn’t scare you.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Not much.”
“Dying scares me a lot.”
“No,” Roy insisted. “You’re like me, exactly like me. Drugs scare you because if you used them you wouldn’t be in control. You can’t bear the idea of losing control of yourself.”
“Well, sure, that’s part of it.”
Roy lowered his voice, as if he were afraid someone would overhear, and he spoke rapidly, running the words together in his eagerness to get them out. “You’ve got to stay sharp, on your toes, alert. Always look over your shoulder. Always protect yourself. Don’t let your guard down for even a second. There are people who will take advantage of you the moment they see you’re not in complete control. The world’s filled with people like that. Nearly everyone you meet is like that. We’re animals in a jungle, and we’ve got to be prepared to fight if we want to survive.”
Roy walked his bike with his head thrust forward, shoulders hunched, muscles corded in his neck, as if he expected someone to strike him hard on the back of the head. Even in the fast-dwindling, purple-amber light of late evening, the sudden sprinkle of sweat on his forehead and upper lip was visible; darkly glistening jewels. “You can’t trust hardly anyone, hardly anyone at all. Even people who’re supposed to like you can turn on you faster than you think. Even friends. People who say they love you are the worst, the most dangerous, the most untrustworthy of all.” He was breathing harder, talking faster by the moment. “People who say they love you will pounce when they get the chance. You gotta always remember that they’re just waiting for the opportunity to get you. Love’s a trick. A cover. A way to catch you off guard. Never let down your guard. Never.” He glanced at Colin, and his eyes were wild.
“Do you think I’d turn on you, tell lies about you, snitch on you to your parents, things like that?”
“Would you?” Roy asked.
“Of course not.”
“Not even if your own neck was in the wringer, too, and the only way you could save yourself was to snitch on me?”
“Not even then.”
“What if I broke some law, some really serious law, and the cops were after me and came to you with a lot of questions?”
“I wouldn’t snitch on you.”
“I hope you wouldn’t.”
“You can trust me.”
“I hope so. I really hope so.”
“You don’t have to hope. You should know.”
“I gotta be careful.”
“Should I be careful of you?”
Roy said nothing.
“Should I be careful of you?” Colin asked again.
“Maybe. Yeah, maybe you should. When I said we were all just animals, just a bunch of selfish animals, I meant me, too.”
There was such a haunted look in Roy’s eyes, such a knowledge of pain that Colin had to look away.
He didn’t know what had sparked Roy’s diatribe, but he didn’t want to pursue the subject. He was worried that it would lead to an argument and that Roy would never want to see him again; and he desperately wanted to be friends with Roy for the rest of their lives. If he blew apart this relationship, he would never get another chance to be best buddies with anyone as terrific as Roy. He was positive of that. If he spoiled this, he would have to go back to being a loner; and now that he had experienced acceptance, companionship, and involvement, he didn’t think he could go back.
For a while they walked in silence. They crossed a busy side street under a canopy of oak trees and entered another block of the alleyway.
Gradually the extraordinary tension that had given Roy the appearance of an angry snake began to seep out of him, much to Colin’s relief. Roy lifted his head and let his shoulders down and stopped breathing like a horse at the end of an eight-furlong race.
Colin knew a bit about race horses. His father had taken him to the track half a dozen times, expecting him to be impressed with the amount of money wagered and with the sweaty manliness of the sport. Instead, Colin had been delighted by the grace of the horses and had spoken of them as if they were dancers. His father hadn’t liked that and had thereafter gone to the races alone.
He and Roy reached another comer, turned left, out of the alley, and pushed their bicycles along an ivy-framed sidewalk.
Look-alike stucco houses lay on both sides of the street, sheltering under a variety of palm trees, skirted by oleander and jade plants and dracaena and schefflera and roses and cacti and holly and ferns and poinsettia bushes-ugly houses made elegant by California’s lush natural beauty.
Finally Roy spoke. “Colin, you remember what I said about how a guy sometimes has to do things his buddy wants to do even if he himself maybe really doesn’t like it?”
“I remember.”
“That’s one of the true tests of friendship. Don’t you agree?”
“I guess so.”
“For Christ’s sake, can’t you at least once in a while have a firm opinion about something? You never say a flat yes or no. You’re always ‘guessing.’ ”
Stung, Colin said, “All right. I think it’s a true test of friendship. I agree with you.”
“Well, what if I said I wanted to kill something just for fun and I wanted you to help me.”
“You mean like a cat?”
“I’ve already killed a cat.”
“Yeah. It was in all the newspapers.”
“I did. In a cage. Like I said.”
“I just can’t believe it.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Okay, okay,” Colin said. “Let’s not go through the whole argument again. Let’s pretend I swallowed your story-hook, line, and sinker. You killed a cat in a birdcage. So what next-a dog?”
“If I wanted to kill a dog, would you help?”
“Why would you want to?”
“It might be a popper.”
“Jeez.”
“Would you help kill it?”
“Where would you get the dog? You think the humane society gives them out to people who want to torture them?”
“I’d just steal the first pooch I saw,” Roy said.
“Someone’s pet?”
“Sure.”
“How would you kill it?”
“Shoot it. Blow its head off.”
“And the neighbors wouldn’t hear?”
“We’d take it out in the hills first.”
“You expect it to just pose and smile while we plug it?”
“We’d tie it up and shoot it a dozen times.”
“Where do you expect to get the gun?”
“What about your mother?” Roy asked.
“You think my mother sells illegal guns out of the kitchen or something?”
“Doesn’t she have a gun of her own?”
“Sure. A million of ‘em. And a tank and a bazooka and a nuclear missile.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Why would she have a gun?”
“A sexy woman living alone usually has a gun for protection.”
“But she doesn’t live alone,” Colin said. “Did you forget about me?”
“If some crazy rapist wanted to get his hands on your mom, he’d walk right over you.”
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“Be serious. Does your mother have a gun?”
Colin didn’t want to admit there was a gun in the house. He had a hunch that he would save himself a lot of trouble if he lied. But at last he said, “Yeah. She has a pistol.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. But I don’t think she keeps it loaded. She could never shoot anyone. My father loves guns: ergo, my mother hates them. And so do I. I’m not going to borrow her gun to do something crazy like shoot your neighbor’s dog.”
“Well, we could kill it some other way.”
“What would we do-bite it?”
A night bird sang in the branches above them.
The sea breeze was cooler than it had been ten minutes ago.
Colin was tired of pushing the bike, but he sensed that Roy still had a lot to say and wanted to say it quietly, which he couldn’t do if they were riding.
Roy said, “We could tie the dog up and kill it with a pitchfork.”
“Jeez.”
“That would be a popper!”
“You’re making me sick.”
“Would you help me?”
“You don’t need my help.”
“But it would prove you’re not just a fair-weather friend.”
After a long while Colin said, “I suppose if it was really important to you, if you just had to do it or die, I could be there when you did it.”
“What do you mean by ‘be there’?”
“I mean… I guess I could watch.”
“What if I wanted you to do more than watch?”
“Like what?”
“What if I wanted you to take the pitchfork and stab the dog a few times yourself?”
“Sometimes you can be really weird, Roy.”
“Could you stab it?” Roy persisted.
“No.”
“I’ll bet you could.”
“I couldn’t ever kill anything.”
“But you could watch?”
“Well, if it would prove to you once and for all that I’m your friend and that I can be trusted…”
They entered the circle of light under a street lamp, and Roy stopped. He was grinning. “You’re getting better every day.”
“Oh?”
“You’re developing nicely,” Roy said.
“Am I?”
“Yesterday, you’d have said you couldn’t even watch a dog being killed. Today, you say you could watch but you couldn’t participate. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, you’ll tell me you could find it within yourself to pick up that pitchfork and make mincemeat of that damned dog.”
“No. Never.”
“And a week from now, you’ll finally admit that you’d enjoy killing something.”
“No. You’re wrong. This is stupid.”
“I’m right. You’re just like me.”
“And you’re no killer.”
“I am.”
“Not in a million years.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You’re Roy Borden.”
“I mean what’s inside me. You don’t know, but you’ll learn.”
“There’s no cat-and-dog killer inside you.”
“I’ve killed things bigger than a cat.”
“Like what?”
“Like people.”
“And then I suppose you moved on to even bigger things-like elephants.”
“No elephants. just people.”
“I guess with an elephant there’s problems disposing of the corpse.”
“Just people.”
Another night bird cried hollowly from its perch in a nearby tree, and in the distance two lonely dogs howled to each other.
“This is ridiculous,” Colin said.
“No, it’s true.”
“You’re trying to tell me you’ve killed people?”
“Twice.”
“Why not a hundred times?”
“Because it was only twice.”
“Next you’ll be saying you’re really an eight-legged, six-eyed creature from Mars disguised as a human being.”
“I was born in Santa Leona,” Roy said soberly. “We’ve always lived here, all my life. I’ve never been to Mars.”
“Roy, this is getting boring.”
“Oh, it’ll be anything but boring. Before the summer’s through, you and me together, we’re going to kill someone.”
Colin pretended to think about it. “The President of the United States maybe?”
“Just someone here in Santa Leona. It’ll be a real popper.”
“Roy, you might as well give up. I don’t believe a word of this, and I’m never going to believe it.”
“You will. Eventually you will.”
“No. It’s just a fairy tale, a game, a test of some sort that you’re putting me through. And I wish you’d tell me what I’m being tested for.”
Roy said nothing.
“Well, so far as I can see,” Colin said, “I’ve passed the test, whatever it is. I’ve proven to you that I can’t be fooled. I won’t fall for this dumb story of yours. You understand?”
Roy smiled and nodded. He glanced at his watch. “Hey, what do you want to do now? Want to go out to the Fairmont and see a movie?”
Colin was disconcerted by the sudden change of subject and Roy’s abruptly transformed attitude. “What’s the Fairmont?”
“The Fairmont Drive-in, of course. If we ride way the hell out on Ranch Road and then double back through the hills, we’ll come out on the slope above the Fairmont. We can sit up there and watch the movie for nothing.”
“But can you hear it?”
“No, but you don’t need to hear the kind of movies they play at the Fairmont.”
“What the hell do they play-silent films?”
Roy was amazed. “You mean you’ve lived here a whole month and you don’t know what the Fairmont is?”
“You’re making me feel retarded.”
“You really don’t know?”
“You said it was a drive-in.”
“It’s more than that,” Roy said. “Boy, are you in for a surprise!”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“Come on. Let’s go.”
Roy climbed onto his bike and pedaled away. Colin followed, off the sidewalk and into the street, from lamppost to lamppost, through alternating patches of shadow and light, pumping his legs hard to keep up.
When they reached Ranch Road and headed southeast, away from town, there were no more street lamps, and they switched on their headlights. The last traces of the sun had disappeared from the westward edges of the high-flying clouds: Night had arrived. Chains of gentle, treeless, pitch-black hills rose on both sides, silhouetted against a gray-black sky. Now and then a car passed them, but most of the time they had the road to themselves.
Colin was not on good terms with darkness. He had never lost his childish fear of being alone at night, a weakness that sometimes dismayed his mother and never failed to infuriate his father. He always slept with a light on. And right now he stayed close to Roy, genuinely afraid that if he fell behind he would be in extreme danger; something hideous, something unhuman, something hiding in the impenetrable shadows of the roadside would reach out for him, seize him in ghastly claws as big as sickles, tear him from his seat, and devour him alive with a noisy crunching of bones and splattering of blood. Or worse. He was a devoted fan of horror movies and novels, not because they dealt with colorful myths and were crammed full of movement and excitement, but because, to his way of thinking, they explored a sobering reality that most adults refused to take seriously. Werewolves, vampires, zombies, decaying corpses that would not rest peacefully in their coffins, and a hundred other hellish creatures did exist. Intellectually he could dismiss them as mere beasts of fantasy, denizens of the imagination, but in his heart he knew the truth. They were out there. The undead. Lurking. Waiting. Concealed. Hungry. The night was a vast, dank cellar, home to that which crept and crawled and slithered. The night had ears and eyes. It had a horrible, scratchy old voice. If you listened closely, tuning out your doubt and keeping an open mind, you could hear the dreadful voice of the night. It whispered about graves and rotting flesh and demons and ghosts and swamp monsters. It spoke of unspeakable things.
I have absolutely got to stop this, he told himself. Why do I do this to myself all the time? Jeez.
He rose slightly from the bicycle seat to gain better leverage and jammed his thin legs down hard on the pedals, determined to stay close to Roy.
His arms had broken out in gooseflesh.