THREE

1

It was a customer who told him.

As always, Kyle had parked this morning next to the metal trash bins in back of the store and had not gone outside since opening up. But when Rollie Brown came to trade in a bunch of Michael Connolly books for store credit, he happened to mention that the vacant space next to Brave New World was going to be home to a new bank.

Kyle frowned. “A bank? Are you sure? Seems kind of small for a bank.”

Rollie shrugged. “That’s what it says.”

Sure enough, when he went outside with Rollie to look, leaving Gary in the store, the adjacent space was no longer for lease. Not only was the Century 21 sign gone, but a new sign had gone up in its place, a square notice on the inside sill, leaning against the window, stating that this was to be “The Future Home of The First People’s Bank.”

“See?” Rollie said.

The First People’s Bank.

An interesting name, Kyle thought. Was it really the first people’s bank? Because he would be willing to bet there’d been others, if not in Arizona then in other states. And what exactly constituted a “people’s bank?” Or was it actually the first people’s bank? Which brought up the question: who were the “first people?” Native Americans? Was it owned by some tribe? Or were the first people some lost race that had been on Earth long before the rise of man?

This was why he never got anything done, he realized. He wasted his time on things like speculating about the etymology of names that had no meaning beyond commercial viability.

Kyle peered through the dusty glass. The single room inside was long and narrow, more suited to an ice cream parlor than a bank. Against the side wall opposite his own store, a built-in wooden counter ran most of the length of the space, and in the center of the floor lay a jumble of chairs and broken tables, along with a couple of empty cardboard boxes. It was the counter that had given him the idea of turning the place into a coffee bar, and he noted with regret that if the space was to become a bank, the counter would have to be demolished.

“You’re right,” Rollie said. “It is kind of small for a bank.”

Kyle nodded. “Yeah.”

Unfortunately, there went his hopes for expansion.

It had been a pipe dream, of course, particularly with the way things were going financially, but the death of any dream was hard to accept, and he walked back next door feeling oddly bereft.

Gary looked up from the counter, where he’d been tabulating the trade-in price for Rollie’s books. “Is it really going to be a bank?”

“Looks that way.”

“Where are they going to keep the money? There’s not even enough room for a safe.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Kyle shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“Oh, and the books?” Gary told Rollie. “Two dollars cash, six dollars in-store credit.”

“I’ll take the credit,” Rollie said.

“You want us to write you a credit slip,” Kyle asked, “or do you—?”

“I’ll pick out something right now.”

Nodding, Kyle left him to it, while Gary wrote the price of each book inside the front cover in pencil before shelving all of them in the Mystery/Suspense section.

Kyle put on a CD of Celtic music he’d bought at the Renaissance Faire in Phoenix back when he and Anita were dating, and the gentle sound of pipes and mandolin filled the store. He loved this music. Half of the songs were traditional, the other half originals, and the musicians were uniformly wonderful. He probably put on this CD at least once a month. Listening to it now, he wondered if the group had ever recorded another. Or if they even still performed together. The line between musicians who became successful, he thought, and those who didn’t was completely arbitrary. It had nothing to do with talent or technical ability and everything to do with luck. For his money, these guys were every bit as good as Mumford and Sons, but they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for all he knew they now spent their weekends watching football or shopping at Home Depot rather than playing music.

The thought depressed him.

It was much the same with literature. Some of his favorite books were by one-hit wonders, authors who’d had a single novel published and then dropped from sight. What happened to artistic drive when the talent behind it was not nurtured? he wondered. What were those authors doing now? Were they still writing, still trying to get published, or had they given up entirely?

The loss of the empty space next door had put him in a weird mood, and he was grateful when Rollie brought his purchases to the counter. In his usual meticulous way, Rollie had calculated the price of the two books he had chosen down to the last cent, even adding the tax, and when all was said and done, they owed him a nickel, which Kyle gave him rather than writing out a store credit slip.

The store was dead for the rest of the morning, until Walter Peters, the Baptist minister, stopped by shortly before lunch. He was the only clergyman in town who was a regular reader—or at least who bought his books locally rather than online—but the minister’s taste ran to nonfiction books on sports and Las Vegas, and the store hadn’t gotten anything new in either of those areas for some time. The minister browsed the stacks for ten minutes or so, although he still left without making a purchase.

The last CD had ended some time ago, but Kyle hadn’t put on any more music. Sometimes he enjoyed the silence, though he knew that drove Gary crazy. Gary would rather listen to country music than work in silence—and he hated country music. Gary was going home for lunch, however, and for the next hour Kyle would have the place to himself.

“You want me to bring you anything?” Gary asked before he left.

Kyle shook his head. “I’m good. Got a sandwich and an apple in the fridge.”

“You sure?”

“I’m fine.”

“See you in a while.”

Gary walked back through the store and out the back door to where he’d parked his car.

Behind the register, Kyle sat down in the used office chair he’d bought at auction when Mandy Clegg’s travel agency had gone out of business two years ago. He stared out at the street, saw few cars and fewer pedestrians—no pedestrians, in fact—and wondered how much longer he was going to be able to last, how much longer any of the old downtown businesses were going to last. All of the action was at the other end of town by Wal-Mart and Safeway. If Brave New World were located in the Safeway center, he might have a chance at survival, but the rent was so high for those spaces that half of them were empty.

He picked up the Charles Williams book he’d been reading. One of the advantages of owning your own store. Hopefully, the lunch hour would bring in a few customers, but until then…

The quiet was conducive to concentration, and within minutes he was completely enveloped in Williams’ world of small town crime.

The stillness of the store was shattered not only by the ringing of the bell above the door but by the muttering of the man who stepped through it. Dirty, heavily bearded, wearing what looked like Aqualung’s coat and smelling of long-layered sweat, the man parked himself in front of the counter and stared unblinkingly at Kyle. “Did you eat it?” he asked in a gruff rumble.

Montgomery didn’t really have a homeless problem, and the few displaced individuals who resided in the area were generally well-known to local residents and, in a weird way, part of the community. But Kyle had dealt with this guy before, and he was no quirky eccentric. He was mentally ill and genuinely menacing.

“You need to leave,” Kyle said, politely but firmly.

The man grinned, his remaining teeth stained brown. “You need to eat it.”

He wasn’t about to get sucked into a conversation by asking, “Eat what?” He’d made that mistake last time, engaging in a dialog with the man, who had proceeded to start yelling before throwing a shelf full of books to the floor and running out.

“If you don’t leave,” Kyle said, “I’m calling the sheriff.”

“I’m the sheriff!” the man shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. “The other police are pansies!”

Kyle picked up the phone, dialed 911.

“You have to eat it!” the man insisted.

And then he was gone.

Kyle hung up the phone before it was answered. The bell above the door rang as the homeless man shoved it open and staggered across the sidewalk into the street, where a too-fast pickup truck honked and swerved around him.

“Fuck you!” the man yelled at the departing pickup.

Kyle watched him knock on the front window of a store across the street, then stumble down the sidewalk out of sight. Sitting back down, he attempted to return to his book, but the mood was gone, and he couldn’t get into the story. Luckily, a customer came in, a woman he didn’t recognize. He smiled at her, asked if she needed any help, and when she said, no, she was just browsing, he nodded and then put on some music.

2

Anita went to the nursery at lunch.

She hadn’t intended to go back at all, at least not by herself, but the text Steven had sent her had been a little too Fatal Attraction for her taste, and she felt the need to meet in person and put a definitive end to all of this. It was her own fault for not doing so earlier. At every juncture, she’d either continued onward or left things ambivalent. Even yesterday, standing him up, she hadn’t clearly put on the brakes.

Mostly because she hadn’t wanted to.

She wanted to now, though. She wasn’t sure when the epiphany had come, but this morning, helping Iris Jensen pick out a new pair of glasses, Iris Jensen who had been her eleventh grade biology teacher, Iris Jensen who had been married to Coach Thomas for over thirty years, Anita realized that she couldn’t lose what she had, that she was lucky to have the life she had with Kyle, with Nick, and it would be crazy for her to throw it all away. What had she been thinking? How had she ever let it get this far? Maybe, between financial problems with the store and the tribulations of raising a teenager, they had let the romance gradually slip away, but that was no reason to start something with someone else. Kyle wasn’t hitting on young women buying used copies of Fifty Shades of Grey. Why had she succumbed to Steven’s flirtations?

No matter. She was stopping it now, before things went too far, before what happened could not be forgiven. She loved Kyle, and if their life together wasn’t a passionfest, that was on her as well as him. It was a cliché trotted out by every fake-credentialed relationship adviser on every daytime talk show, but the two of them needed to talk. They needed to communicate.

There were no other cars in the nursery parking lot when Anita arrived, and that gave her pause. She’d been hoping to talk to him when others were around, wanting the safety of witnesses, and she almost decided to drive away and come back later, but at the last minute, she parked in the gravel next to the open gate and shut off the engine. She waited, hoping he might come out, hoping she wouldn’t have to leave the car, but when he didn’t emerge after several minutes, she grabbed her purse, got out, and walked into the nursery. The register was unattended, and the potting shed behind it was empty.

“Steven!” she called. She looked around, not seeing him among the vegetables, bedding plants, shrubs or fruit trees.

“In here!”

Her eyes looked toward the greenhouse where the nursery grew exotic and indoor plants. She hesitated, thinking it might be better if he came out, but then dismissed her concerns as paranoia, and walked over to the small building.

Steven was misting some orchids at the far end of the room. He put down the mister as she approached. “Hey,” he said.

“I told you, I don’t want you texting me,” she told him.

Steven smiled, held up his hands. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to overstep my bounds. The loving hubby didn’t see it, did he?”

“And I want you to stop calling him ‘the loving hubby.’”

Steven frowned. “Hey, hey, hey. What’s going on here? I’m getting kind of a vibe.”

Anita took a deep breath, hoping this would go well but afraid that it wouldn’t. “I think we need to stop,” she said.

“Stop? Stop what?”

“This,” she said, indicating the air between them. “Whatever is going on here.”

The frown deepened. “What’s going on here…” He waved his hands in a mockery of her motion. “…is a mutual—”

“Was a mutual—”

He nodded, smiling tightly. “I get it. I know what’s happening. You’ve come by to end it.”

“There’s nothing to end.”

“That’s not what you said at lunch the other day.”

Anita reddened. “Okay. You’re right. But I’m ending it now. It’s gone far enough.”

“Is it the text? I admit, maybe I was a little forward, or a little too enthusiastic, but you’ve got to admit, we’ve had some pretty—”

“It’s not the text. Or not just the text.” Once again, she breathed deeply. “I made a mistake, okay? It’s my fault. But now I’m correcting that mistake.”

“That’s what you think we were? A mistake?”

He walked out from behind the orchid table, and she gasped. He had undone his pants, unbuckling, unzipping and spreading open the front of his jeans, and his penis was sticking out, completely erect. A week ago—two days ago, even—she might have been amused or even aroused by such a gesture, but now there seemed something threatening about it, and she took an involuntary step backward.

“A lot of things grow in here,” he said. There was an insistence in his smile that caused her to gauge how far it was to the exit. “Come on. You know you want it.”

Any thought she had of being strong and standing her ground fled, and without another word, Anita turned tail and ran. She sped out of the greenhouse, past the potting shed and the register counter, into the parking lot, where she scrambled into her car and started the engine. Filled with panic, she dared not even glance toward the nursery, but kept her eyes on the rearview mirror as she swung the car around then determinedly faced forward as she drove out of the parking lot onto the street.

Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel the pulse in her wrists, hear the blood thumping in her head. Farther down the street, she saw Nick’s friend Victor walking his dog. Wasn’t he supposed to be in school? He looked over at her as if he didn’t recognize her, then turned his attention to the sidewalk in front of him.

He knows! was her first thought. It didn’t make any sense, but it was easy for her to imagine that he’d walked his dog over to the nursery and had been about to come in when he saw Steven with his exposed erection.

Oh God, Anita thought. What if he tells Nick? Or Kyle? Or his parents? Or anyone?

But that was the guilt talking. He couldn’t have seen anything. The event had happened in the greenhouse, away from the street. He would have had to come into the building in order to see anything—and he hadn’t.

Still, she remained nervous and jumpy, and she found herself driving up Airport Road and then back to the downtown along Frontier Street, next to the creek, in order to calm herself down. She still had nearly a half hour to spare, and though she’d brought her lunch today, she’d left it back at the office. Not yet ready to face people, she went through the drive-thru at Burger King and ate in the car in the Safeway parking lot before heading back to work.

Her phone rang when she was halfway between her car and the office door. After checking to make sure it wasn’t Steven, she picked up. “Hello?”

A woman’s voice with a Southern accent: “Am I speaking to Anita Decker?”

“Yes,” she said suspiciously.

“This is Marjorie with Citibank. We are detecting attempted activity on your Visa account at—” There was a second’s hesitation. “—the Best Buy at 7400 Brookpark Road in Cleveland, Ohio.”

“What?”

“The purchase location triggered an automatic warning, which is why we are contacting you. Would you like us to put a stop to this transaction and place a hold on your card?”

“Yes!” she said frantically.

Another short pause. “The transaction has been denied and the account placed on hold. We are alerting local authorities of an incident of attempted credit card fraud and providing them with the location.”

Holding the phone between her neck and shoulder, Anita rummaged through her purse, where she found her Visa card. “How can they be using my card?” she asked. “I have it right here.”

“Thieves engaging in identity theft often make their own cards—”

“Is there anything else I need to do?” she interrupted. In her mind, high-tech thieves were simultaneously making online purchases, cleaning out her bank account and opening new lines of exploitable credit using her identity.

“In the event of an identity breach, we suggest that you immediately call the credit monitoring companies Experian, Equifax…”

She stood in the center of the small parking lot, listening to the litany of steps she needed to take to ensure that this attempted identity theft intruded no further into her life, stunned that such a thing could happen.

First Steven, then this…

Could things fall apart any more completely? What was next? Was their house going to be robbed this afternoon? Was the bookstore going to burn down? Was Dr. Wilson going to fire her?

She glanced down at her watch. Her lunch ended in two minutes, and the optometrist was not the most sympathetic person when it came to excuses for being tardy. She hurried inside the building. There was a whole host of things she needed to do in order to protect her financial security. Dr. Wilson glanced at her when he saw her, then glanced up at the clock and then without a word walked down the short hallway to his private office, shutting the door.

There were no patients yet, and Anita commandeered one of the computers, then thought the better of it and used her phone to access the Experian site, then thought the better of that and got a phone number from the website so she could call the credit monitoring company directly. She didn’t trust the security of anything at this point, but she needed to do what the woman had told her and get control of her personal information, not to mention freeze all of her accounts.

“What’s going on?” Jen asked, walking in and putting her purse under the counter. “You look kind of frazzled.”

Anita shook her head. “You won’t believe it.”

“What?”

“Credit card fraud. Someone pretended they were me and tried to charge something. I got a call about it five minutes ago, when I was walking in.”

“Jesus!”

“It was happening right then. Live! As they were talking to me on the phone! Some guy in a Best Buy in Ohio was trying to use my card to buy…I don’t even know! I forgot to ask! How stupid can I get?”

Jen put a hand on her arm. “Calm down. It’s not your fault. You’re not stupid. You’re just upset.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Of course! Something like that? I’d feel so…violated.”

Violated

An image flashed in her mind: Steven with his erect penis.

You know you want it

She pushed the thought away. “I need to get this taken care of. Cover for me, will you? I’m going to go in the bathroom and make some calls.”

“You don’t have to hide in the bathroom. He’ll understand.”

Anita glanced toward the optometrist’s closed door. “You didn’t see the look he gave me when I came in. Because I was almost late. Cover for me?”

“Sure.”

In the bathroom, she sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. She tried to call Kyle, but he’d set his phone to voicemail, and when she called the store, the line was busy. So she spent the next ten minutes talking first to a computer, then to a man with a thick Southern accent who elicited the information needed to secure her credit line. She was about to call Equifax when Jen came in and said, “Better wrap it up. Mrs. Wheeler’s here for her appointment. He’ll be out in a minute.”

“Thanks,” Anita said, shutting off her phone.

It was a busy afternoon.

She didn’t have time to call Kyle until it was almost time to go home.

3

Only one day to go and his suspension was over.

If this was one of those 1980s teen movies his parents always forced him to watch when they came on TV, he’d return a hero, his street cred boosted by his battle with The Man. But things didn’t work that way anymore—if they ever had. What was actually going to happen was that he would go back to school to find that no one had even noticed he’d been gone.

Nick finished watching the last of the morning’s Parks and Recreation reruns on FX, then turned off the TV and reluctantly switched on his laptop. His teachers had not only emailed his homework assignments, they’d tacked on extra work, apparently to punish him for getting suspended. As if that weren’t bad enough, his dad was making him help out at the bookstore this afternoon. So after he finished his schoolwork and after he ate his lunch, he was supposed to show up at Brave New World to shelve books or straighten books or do something equally useless.

Feeling depressed, he checked his email, scrolling down. The spam he received was getting much more adult. Not porno-adult but business-adult. There were offers to enroll in real estate seminars, ads for automobiles, lists of job opportunities and several recommendations for various financial institutions. He tried to remember if one of his fake profiles had him recently turning eighteen. That could explain this sudden influx of commercial announcements.

His attention was caught by the tagline of the last email: Nicholas Decker! Are you bored, suspended from school and in need of money? Just click…

Suspended from school?

That was pretty specific.

He knew enough not to click on spam from unknown senders, but the fact that the description was tailored so directly to his own situation intrigued him. He deleted it along with the rest of the spam and, seconds later, another email popped up: Nick! Need some easy money? Before you go to the bathroom and pop some Pringles, click on this!

That was not just specific, it was downright creepy.

He did have to go to the bathroom. And he had been planning to grab some Pringles before starting on his homework.

He deleted the unopened message and quickly exited his email account. It had to be a coincidence. Still, it was more than a little unnerving, and he forgot about going to the bathroom, skipped the Pringles and got to work on his algebra. It was after ten and the day was bright, but the inside of the house seemed dark, and after the third math problem, he got up and turned on not only the light in the dining room, where he was working, but in the kitchen and the living room as well. It suddenly seemed quiet, too, and he turned the television back on, lowering the volume until he could hear a murmur of voices loud enough to make it seem as though he was not alone, but not loud enough to be distracting. Feeling better, he worked on his homework until he was finished, then made some macaroni and cheese for lunch.

He was done eating by twelve forty-five, but the Twilight Zone episode he was watching was a good one, so he waited until it was over before heading to the bookstore. Taking his bike out of the garage, Nick thought about how far it was to Brave New World, and how, even if he took the shortcut, he would have to pedal up the high hill on Bluff Road.

He needed his own car.

But his parents were adamant that he was not going to get one until he graduated from high school—and then only if he maintained a 3.5 average his senior year.

He rode his bike out of their neighborhood, onto the highway and toward downtown, staying as close to the shoulder as possible. The high school’s lunch period was over, but in a small redneck burg like Montgomery, teenagers weren’t the only ones who liked to swerve their pickups in order to scare bicyclists.

The afternoon was warm, and Nick was sweating by the time he approached the center of town. Frowning, he looked to his left. Was that his mom’s car in front of the nursery? She was a plant lover with an impressive yardful of flowers that had been a stop on the Montgomery Garden Tour last year, so there was nothing inherently unusual about her spending her lunch hour looking at plants. But the sight of her Kia parked in the gravel lot gave him an uneasy feeling. He couldn’t say why, or what about it felt wrong, but something sure did, and he found himself pedaling faster in order to get away from the nursery before she came out and saw him.

He turned onto Main.

Ordinarily, he would have ridden his bike through the alley to the back of the store, but the last time he’d done that, he’d gotten a nail in his tire. Not wanting to risk another flat, he got off his bike at the gas station and walked it along the sidewalk the rest of the way down the block.

There was a big white sign in the dingy window of the empty storefront next to Brave New World, and he stopped to check it out. The sign stated that the space was to be the new home of The First People’s Bank. Nick was surprised. A bank in a narrow, crappy little spot like this? That made no sense. There was movement behind the window, a furtive shifting from one side of the room to the other, though the darkness and dirty glass would not let him see the figure clearly.

He purposely turned away, not wanting to see it.

As pathetic as it was, and as impossible as it might seem to be frightened in the middle of the day on a public street, he was frightened. Something about the figure’s quick jerky moves reminded him of a nightmare he’d had, and Nick pushed his bike forward, opening the door of the bookshop and pulling the cycle in behind him.

His dad was already grinning. “Ready for work?”

“Can I at least put my bike away first?”

“Against the wall by the bathroom.”

“I know. I’ve done it a million times.”

“You’re going to have a fun afternoon!”

He did not have a fun afternoon. There were no customers, and after about an hour, he ran out of things to do, so he spent the rest of the day browsing shelves he knew by heart while his dad and Gary chatted by the front counter.

Even school was preferable to this. He didn’t understand how his dad could spend all day every day cooped up in here, and Nick vowed that as soon as he graduated he would put Montgomery in his rearview mirror and move somewhere cool. Los Angeles, New York or, heck, even Austin.

Of course, he would need to get a rearview mirror first.

He definitely needed that car. And then he’d need to win a scholarship to a decent college in a decent city, because unless they hit the lottery, the only thing his parents could afford to send him to was Montgomery JC. The problem was, he wouldn’t be able to get a scholarship without teacher recommendations. Which were going to be pretty tough to come by unless his situation at school started changing pretty quickly.

Life was getting complicated.

“You okay back there?” his dad called.

“Fine!” he called back.

He put the horror movie book he’d been perusing back on the shelf. Hearing an unexpected noise behind him, he turned, startled. There came a quiet knocking from the other side of the wall.

It was mid-afternoon, and his dad and Gary were ten feet away, but the sound still gave him goosebumps. He thought of that vague dark figure moving behind the window next door and imagined it positioned on the other side of the wall, tapping with a claw-like finger in an effort to get his attention.

“Hey, Dad!” he called. “Come here!”

He’d hailed his father out of panic, but it occurred to him even before his dad came over that since there was going to be a new bank on the other side of the wall, they were probably just starting construction.

Still, he found the noise unsettling, and when his dad heard it and wondered what was going on, the two of them and Gary walked outside and peered through the dirty windows of the nascent bank.

The space was empty, no one there.

“Rats?” Gary suggested.

“Too regular for rats,” his dad said. “It sounded like someone tapping on the wall, maybe looking for a stud or a beam.”

Nick popped back into the bookstore. The noise was still audible. He hurried outside to tell Gary and his father.

“It has to be something in the walls,” his dad acknowledged.

“Better hope it’s not termites,” Gary said as they walked back into the shop.

It wasn’t termites, Nick knew. He didn’t know what it was, but his dad was right. It sounded like builders. The fact that they could all hear the tapping while none of them could see anything did not sit well with him, and rather than stay by himself in one of the aisles, Nick hung out with his dad and Gary by the register.

Victor stopped by after school let out. His friend already had a car—a Jeep his dad had picked up for two hundred bucks at the county sheriff’s auction last year. The transmission could not be put into reverse—which made for some awkward and complicated parking arrangements—but other than that, the vehicle ran fine, and when Victor asked if Nick could cruise with him over to Sonic and hang out, his dad let him go.

“Punishment’s over,” he said. “Have fun.”

They didn’t actually go to Sonic. They went over to the high school, where Victor pulled around to the parking lot next to the field so they could watch the cheerleaders practice. He had a crush on Stacey Wilder, who wouldn’t give him the time of day at school but who had said hi to him during the summer when he’d seen her at the movie theater. He seemed to be laboring under the delusion that if he put himself in close proximity to her, she would somehow succumb to his charms.

Victor got out of the car and Nick followed suit, both of them leaning against the side of the Jeep, facing the field.

“Rumor has it,” Victor said, “that your mom’s getting boned by the gardener.”

Nick felt the heat rush to his face. “Who said that? We don’t even have a gardener.” But an image flashed in his mind of his mom’s car parked in front of the nursery.

Victor shrugged.

“You can’t just tell me something like that and then pussy out when I ask who said it. Who said it?”

“Mrs. Nelson.”

“Asshole.”

“I don’t know, dude. It’s a rumor going around. Who gives a shit? Just enjoy the view.”

They were silent for a moment, watching the cheerleaders perform a routine.

“You really think this is going to impress Stacey? Stalking her?”

“I’m not stalking her.”

“We’re spying on her cheerleader practice. It’s creepy. Chicks don’t like that.”

“Is there an ounce of testosterone in your body? You have no idea what chicks like.”

They’d been ranking on each other, half-joking, the way they usually did, but a touch of anger had entered Victor’s voice, and the look on his face was serious.

Nick backed off, backed down.

Montgomery?

He wouldn’t mind putting his friends in the rearview mirror.

Silently, he turned his attention to the cheerleaders.

4

V.J. killed the dog out in the open, and it felt glorious. Rather than dispatching it in the garage or storage shed, the way he usually did, he took the animal to the park and slaughtered it on the tennis court. There were little kids and their parents in the playground, and a few joggers on the paths, but the basketball and tennis courts were all empty, so he had this section of the park to himself.

There was something exciting about doing it where he could possibly get caught, and even as he entered the park with the stolen pet, leading it on a leash, there was a bounce in his step. The terrier barked at another dog—a setter being walked by a hot woman in tight exercise pants—and he and the woman nodded at each other and smiled, sharing the camaraderie of fellow dog walkers.

He passed a homeless old fuck digging through a garbage can by the side of the path and muttering to himself. V.J. ignored the shambling man and strode up to the tennis court, opening the chain-link gate and shepherding in the terrier. From the other side of the park, he heard the familiar sounds of children playing, and, from the street, the noise of passing cars. Tying the dog’s leash to one of the low poles that held up what was left of the net bisecting the center of the court, V.J. withdrew the sacrificial knife from the sheath attached to his belt. Before the animal could sense anything amiss, he knelt down, petted the dog’s head with his left hand and with his right hand shoved the knife deep into the terrier’s heart. There was a gush of blood, a single bark and then the dog was still.

V.J. glanced about to make sure he hadn’t been seen. He could still hear the children playing, and far away saw a woman jogging, but no one was in this part of the park—except that homeless fuck, staring at him from the other side of the fence.

His heart lurched in his chest when he saw the ragged figure. But the bum was crazy and even if he told people what he’d seen, no one would believe him.

V.J. stood, raising the bloody knife, intending to scare the man off, but to his surprise, the bum nodded his approval and smiled.

Respect.

The man was giving him respect, and V.J. was filled with a satisfied sense of pride. He nodded back his acknowledgment, and the derelict wandered off, carrying a bag of recyclable cans and bottles over his shoulder

V.J. got back to work.

The dog had four legs, so after amputating the last one, V.J. took out the compact mirror he carried in his pocket and carefully pulled out four of his eyelashes, two from the left lid, two from the right. Aloud, he said, “One, two, three four, that’s all there is and there ain’t no more.” Then he put the eyelashes in his mouth and swallowed.

Placing one dog leg in each of the tennis court’s four corners, he left the limbless body at the foot of the net, equidistant from each side, and then walked around the net four times, stomping his left foot at the completion of each circuit.

It was freeing to perform such an expansive version of the ritual and to do it outdoors, exhilarating to kill the animal in such close proximity to other people. He felt invincible, and as a special treat to himself, he pulled down his pants, pissed on the corpse, then pulled his pants up again and ran all the way home.