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Authors: Marc Laidlaw

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BOOK: The Orchid Eater
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23

 

Someone was
watching the house. Ryan James was convinced of it. Mike and Edgar had laughed
at him the night of the burglary, but he’d been right then—and he was
absolutely, positively . . . well . . .
almost
sure of it now. He hadn’t
seen anyone moving down there today, but as it got darker, he became less sure
of what he was or wasn’t seeing.

For a couple
of days—especially in the evenings—he’d seen movement in the gulley behind the
house, creeps in the bushes. He couldn’t tell if it was one person moving
around a lot, or a few people hiding out in different places. Mike had looked
upset and said he was crazy when he mentioned it.

It was
probably kids. Ryan himself used to wander in the canyon, following trails
through the brush. There were plenty of places you could hide where dense
branches formed canopies and caves. But not now . . . nothing would lure him
out now. The sliding glass door on his balcony stayed locked. Sure, his deck
was on the second floor, but he’d scaled it himself and knew it wasn’t hard.

Jack had
installed security bolts everywhere. He was talking about putting in an alarm
system, but that was a big project and might never happen. Ryan wouldn’t mind
if it did. What scared him most was the door near his bed, which opened out
under the house, by the hot tub. It had a deadbolt and a spyhole in it, but
Ryan couldn’t help imagining someone standing right outside, out of the spyhole’s
view, listening to every sound he made. That was the first door in need of an
alarm.

It was safe
for the night, at least. Jack was out there, firing up the tub. Leonard and
Davis, the homos next door, were throwing a party tonight, so Jack had offered
use of the tub. There’d be a crowd in the way of anyone who tried to come
through that door.

While Ryan
was looking down into the gloomy canyon, he saw the door open behind him,
reflected in the sliding glass. Jack walked in, drying his hands. The tub
rumbled in the background.

“Whatcha
doing, champ?”

“Watching.
In case he comes back.”

“Hey, it’ll
never happen.” Jack tousled his hair. “Vandals like that are kids, probably no
older than you or Mike, hormones going haywire. You know about hormones.”

Ryan grinned
and pushed Jack’s hand away. “No . . .”

“It wasn’t
planned, Rye. It was an impulse thing, nothing personal, break in and wreck
stuff up. It’s not so unusual. I mean, I’m sure you’ve done a little
vandalizing, right?”

“No way,”
Ryan said, indignant, thinking simultaneously of several instances of what an
adult might call “vandalism,” but which had seemed to him at the time like just
plain “fun.” He saw them differently now.

“Now, come
on. I remember when I was about fifteen in Pennsylvania, in the winter we used
to go out to the summer houses at this lake near us. We’d, you know, jimmy a
window, climb in, throw parties, eat canned food . . . sometimes even mess the
place up a bit. Nothing drastic, not like this, but . . . I can see how it
might happen. Maybe this is my karma coming back at me. I wrecked somebody’s
place when I was a kid, now my house gets wrecked. Cosmic, huh?”

Ryan
shrugged, still unconvinced.

“Rest easy,”
Jack said, than tramped away up the stairs.

Ryan scanned
the room, even more depressed now that he had begun to consider his own
behavior. Only a few of the mirrored tiles remained on the walls; the broken
ones had been pulled down, leaving bare, unpainted patches lumpy with tile
adhesive. Jack had patched the larger gouges here and there, but nothing was
repainted yet. Sports posters covered the worst spots. Once it had been clean
and white and bright in here, everything gleaming like the beach. That was how
Ryan liked it. Now it all looked grubby and sad.

The head had
even been snapped off his soccer trophy. Who would do that? Maybe somebody from
the AYSO league, someone on an enemy team? What about that one goalie, the kid
who’d gotten so mad when Ryan kicked the ball in his crotch? But how would he
get here? Did vandals’ mothers drive them to the places they wanted to wreck,
wait in the street, then make a speedy getaway before the cops showed up?

He felt like
killing whoever had done it. Hearing that it was probably a kid made him feel
much better. A grown man might be too strong; Ryan would probably back down.
But with a kid it was different. He’d choke him to death, or kick his face in
with his soccer cleats!

It was
getting too dark to see the canyon. Suddenly he realized that standing at the
glass with the lights on, he was totally visible to whoever might be watching.
He jumped back and lowered the silver metal Levolors.

So what was
he going to do? Dirk was out of town with his parents. He’d been bragging they
would leave him home all weekend and he would throw a kegger for his friends,
but that was a typical Dirk lie. He could read: He was halfway through
Super Cops,
which
wasn’t like the boring books they assigned in school. But he didn’t think he
could concentrate on that. He had to be in the mood.
Night of the Living Dead
was on TV
later; that was a possibility.

Maybe . . . he
blushed excitedly at a thought. Maybe Mike would go out tonight, and he could
check out his stash of porno magazines. Mike didn’t know Ryan knew about them.
The other night, when he was following the police around the house, one of the
cops had rummaged through Mike’s desk drawers and uncovered them. The cop had
pretended not to see them, though his smirk said he had.

“Ryan?” his
mother called. He went to the foot of the stairs and looked up at her, hoping
she couldn’t read his face. She was brushing her hair, not even looking at him
directly.

“We’re going
next door to the party for a while. Do you need anything before we go?”

“No.”

“There’s ice
cream in the freezer.”

He’d already
eaten half of it, but didn’t say so.

“Did you
have plans for tonight?”

He shrugged.
“Dirk’s out of town. I guess I’ll watch TV.”

“I asked
Mike to keep an eye on things, but we’re only next door if you need us.”

“Okay,” he
said. She blew him a kiss and walked back into her room.

Shit, he
thought. Mike
would
have to stay home on the one night he might have had the house to
himself.

A steady
thudding started up, pounding through the walls from next door. Disco music,
like a heartbeat, boom-boom-boom. Chattering voices grew louder in the space
between the houses. He checked the peephole in his back door and saw nothing
but the bubbling tub.

Quietly he
undid the deadbolt and opened the door a crack, peering around the edge of the
frame to see who was out there. Candles in colored glass globes were set on the
steps that ran down the hillside between the two houses. In the wavering light,
he could see a few couples sitting on the steps or standing in the little
sculpted patio garden under the neighboring house. They were all men, of
course.

The
neighbors, Leonard and Davis, were nice enough guys, Ryan had to admit. As the
only homos he knew personally, he found it hard to hate them the way he was
supposed to. They’d hired him to carry rolls of sod down the stairs to their
lower garden last weekend, and they never flirted with him or anything. They
were pretty regular, really. He might not have known they were fags at all if
his mother hadn’t told him. They’d both been married and Davis even had kids.

Most of
their friends, though, were more obvious. Listening to the fruity voices rising
and falling, the high-pitched laughter, the musical way some of them talked, he
thought they sounded like they were making fun of themselves, mocking all the
jokes he and his friends cracked about fags. He watched until he saw two men
press together in the shadows. Kissing! At that, he pulled back into the room,
locking the door as if the danger level had just shot up into the red.

Stifling
laughter, he ran upstairs. Jack and Mom were already gone. He knocked on Mike’s
door and went in.

His brother
was lying on the bed, a sketch pad propped on his knees. He dropped the pad and
Ryan saw it was blank.

“What do
you
want?”

“Did you see
next door?”

“What about
it?”

“Thay there,
thweety . . . the boyth are having a pah-tee.”

“Why are you
so interested?” Mike said.

“I’m not—not
at all. But they’re all over out there! It’s hard to ignore.”

Mike picked
up his sketch pad again. “I’ve managed so far.”

“What are
you drawing?” Ryan took a step closer, only one, since he hadn’t actually been
invited into the room. Mike didn’t seem to mind.

“I’m not.
I’m doing an experiment.”

“More of
that ESP stuff you and Edgar were doing?”

Mike nodded.
“I was trying . . . to reach him.”

“Reach him?
How?”

“It’s
stupid. I’m trying to imagine I can see what he sees. I thought that would show
me where he is.”

“And . . .
?”

Mike pushed
the blank pad toward him. “See for yourself. It’s not working.”

“You think he
ran away?” Ryan said.

“Why would
he?”

“I heard the
police were looking for him.”

Mike’s face
twisted up.

“You don’t
think Edgar . . . ?”

Mike jumped
off the bed. “Don’t be an idiot. I was with him that night, while it was
happening.”

“That’s not
what you told the cops.”

“Because, I
told you, Edgar was doing drugs. I couldn’t tell them that, could I?”

“No . . .
Did you do any?”

“No!” Mike
looked both angry and scared. “He asked me to watch him, in case he had a bad
trip or something.”

“Wow . . .
what was it? Heroin?”

“It was
marijuana.”

“Oh. Dirk
did that once, he told me. He said he could get some more and we could try it. He
can get all kinds of stuff.”

Mike stared
at him steadily. “I wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because of
what happened to Edgar.”

“What
happened to him?”

“I don’t
know. He never got home, that’s what. He ran off and that’s the last I saw of
him.”

Ryan
swallowed—a painful gulp. “Man . . . 

“Right.”

“I wish I
knew who broke in. Wouldn’t you like to kill them?”

“Yeah.”

Ryan walked
over to the wall and stared at the nasty, crumbling hole. On an impulse, he
stuck his hand into it.

“Don’t do
that!” Mike grabbed his wrist violently and yanked it out.

“Ow!” Ryan
pulled his hand free and swung it at Mike, who flinched and ducked, barely
avoiding the blow.

“Watch who
you’re messing with!” Ryan said.

“You watch
out, I’m older than you.”

“Older and
weaker!”

Mike shoved
him backward, trying to force him out of the room. Ryan fought to keep his
place. They grunted and groaned, straining to overpower each other. Ryan
usually won fairly quickly in contests of strength, but Mike must have been
desperate because somehow he managed to push Ryan all the way to the door and
out into the hall, which almost never happened. Usually he just fell down
kicking and gave up. Ryan grabbed the door frame and clung with all his might
until Mike shoved hard one more time, catching him off guard. He flew so far
that he hit the top step and would have gone backward down the stairs if he
hadn’t caught hold of the stair rail.

Ryan, gasping
for breath, saw Mike’s face hanging over him, white with fear. “Are you okay?”

BOOK: The Orchid Eater
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