The Tragic Age (23 page)

“Maybe they'll be here, maybe they won't,” I say. “You probably have ten minutes.”

“Asshole,” says Twom. He and Deliza turn away and are gone.

“What do we
do
?” Ephraim says. He's ready to shred his skin. He has no real idea why he's here.

“I don't care what you do, Ephraim. Just leave me alone.”

He hesitates, looking like he wants to implode, and then he runs from the room.

There's nothing I want to do in this house. Explore in this house. Learn in this house. There is no place I will lie down in this house.

I follow my fellow Night Visitors toward the kitchen.

As Deliza rakes shrieking appliances from the countertops, Twom pulls a drawer from a counter and throws it into a glass-fronted cabinet. Crystal glasses disintegrate into dust and broken glass. As he goes for another drawer, Ephraim has the refrigerator open and is sweeping food and jars and bottles out and onto the floor. Deliza picks up a bottle of ketchup and throws it. It explodes on the wall like a blood bomb.

We move into the adjacent family room. Twom and Deliza bring kitchen knives. I watch as artwork is slashed and wallpaper is slit. I do nothing as chairs and sofa are stabbed, cut, and hacked. Stuffing flies like guts and entrails.

I turn as something crashes. Ephraim has pulled a huge, flat-screen TV out of a pewter-colored media cabinet. Wires and cords and veins and arteries tear free and tangle. DVDs fly and fall. Ephraim begins to crazily jump up and down on the television, the look on his face saying he's been wanting to destroy things his entire life and only now does he have the courage and the opportunity to do so.

I move into the dining room just in time to see Twom and Deliza pull a large gilt-framed mirror from the wall.

Breaking a mirror is not just the destruction of your appearance but also the shattering of your soul.

The mirror lands on the dining room chairs and table. It shatters. Shards soar across the room. The floor is covered with scattered reflections. In each one, Deliza laughs like a delighted goblin at a children's party.

There is a gold chandelier above the table. Jumping up onto a chair, Twom grabs it and swings. His weight rips it creaking from the ceiling and it crashes down onto the table, splintering it. The sound reverberates through the entire house.

I turn away. I walk down a hall. I've become like Twom. None of this is really happening and if it is I couldn't care less.

I stop in the doorway to a study just in time see Ephraim pick up a laptop computer—his totem, his brother and sister, his kin. He raises it high and smashes it down on the floor. He picks it up and throws it down again, disengaging battery from deck, life force from carcass.

I turn away.

I follow Twom and Deliza to the garage. I stand watching as Deliza rakes the hood of Montebello's Porsche with a screwdriver. Taking a can of white house paint from a shelf, Twom dumps it onto the seats. It's old and curdled, the color of decaying teeth.

I turn away.

I find Ephraim in a bedroom. He's breaking children's toys one after another. Snatching a stuffed unicorn from the bed, Ephraim rips it to shreds. He turns to see me watching him.

“Get away from me!”

He picks up a book and throws it at me. It bounces off the doorjamb. I look down at it.
Where the Wild Things Are.
The story of a boy who wreaks havoc and runs off to an island inhabited by mythical, fanged beasts. No. The beasts, the wolves—the wild things—are here in this house tonight.

I turn away.

In the master bedroom, Twom pulls drawers out of a bureau and throws them to the floor. He picks up a jewelry box and heaves it at a lamp across the room. Somewhere, somehow he's cut his hands. Laughing, Deliza takes them and, lifting them to her mouth, licks the blood from his knuckles. They kiss feverishly. Twom paws Deliza's breasts with bloody hands. She wraps a leg around Twom's hips, pushing her pelvis against him.

“Stop it!” Ephraim screams from the doorway. “Don't do that!” His eyes are bulging, ready to burst behind his glasses.

Deliza turns her head to look at him. She laughs. Taking a step back, she falls back onto the bed, pulling Twom down on top of her and between her legs.

Ephraim runs.

I watch, not really seeing, as Twom and Deliza begin to have sex on the bed. I'm no longer embarrassed. It's not like it's even them. Whenever I close my eyes, then open them, it's someone else. It's Linda and Gordon. Dad and Mrs. Taylor. Miss Barber and Gretchen. Everyone trying to escape into one another, even if it's just for a moment.

I turn away.

I'm on my way out the back door when I smell the smoke.

 

63

In the living room, the gas jets of the fireplace are on high. The hissing flames rise from the gas line and fill the entire hearth, blue at the bottom, white at the top. Throw pillows burn in the grate, the down stuffing charring black. Torn, pulled down, silk curtains hang from the mantel in flames. Fire has begun to crawl across the adjacent wall.

Ephraim's back is to me. He is spraying something from an aerosol can onto the wall in grand sweeps. The wallpaper bursts into flames so suddenly that Ephraim throws up an arm to protect himself. He turns, facing me. He is holding the can in one hand. He is holding the gun in the other.

This is not how it happens.

“I told your mother I left my jacket in your room,” says Ephraim, brandishing the gun. His voice comes from a sinkhole. His face is stained with soot. His eyes are liquid behind his glasses. Something inside the wall snaps as the heat hits it. Paint bubbles and burns as the fire climbs toward the ceiling where the smoke alarm hangs, disconnected and useless.

“I turned it off,” says Ephraim. “I turned everything off.”

This cannot be how it happens.

“This is so bad, Ephraim. This is so, so bad.” It was from the beginning. We knew it would be. But not this. “We've got to get out of here.”

Ephraim raises the gun and aims it at me. I quickly back up, wondering if I'll hear it or feel it first.

“You think you're smart. Always so smart? Well, I'm smart too, you know! I matter too!” Spittle flies from Ephraim's lips.

“No one ever said you didn't,” I say. But no one ever said you did, I think.

“Fuck that! Fuck it!” Ephraim throws the aerosol can at me. He misses by a mile. “Ephraim the nerd! Ephraim the geek! Knock faggot Ephraim down in the shower!”

He's crying. His hopelessness is more frightening than his anger. He sags. The gun lowers just a bit.

“It's always her, Billy. Why her? Why not me?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Ephraim pushes the gun toward my face, furious again. “Don't say that! Don't say that! You know. You know!”

I do.

“Ephraim, you're my friend,” I say. What else is there to say?

“Am I, Billy? Am I really?” His voice is sad and plaintive. He wants to be.

“Sure you are,” I say. I try to smile as if it's all okay. “Now c'mon, let's get out of here. We'll go home, order up a pizza, some sodas, it'll all be fine.” I sound incredibly reasonable. Considering the circumstances, I'm proud of myself. Maybe I have a future in this. Deal making. Hostage negotiations.

“Yes. Go,” says Ephraim, and putting the barrel of the Glock into his mouth, he pulls the trigger.

This is how it happens.

I've turned away. My eyes are closed and I stumble into something—a chair, a couch, furniture. The shot has my ears ringing so loudly I can barely hear myself howl. I tell myself over and over again this is impossible, that it's all part of another bad dream and it's time to wake up now, it's time to wake up. But I know I'm already awake.

I turn back. Ephraim's body is on the floor. He's on his back. His glasses are broken. There is blood in his nose and mouth. His eyes are open and staring. Part of his skull is gone.

It's so easy.

“Billy! Dude! Where are you? Billy?”

I hear voices calling from somewhere else in the house. Maybe the people who own them will keep going. Maybe they'll just leave. They don't.

The two of them enter the room, Twom raises his arm, as if trying to ward off the heat. The synthetic chemical smell of the burning couch stuffing suggests poison.

“What the hell, man!” he says. “What the hell!”

His eyes go from the burning walls to the floor. To Ephraim. To the gun on the floor.

“Oh, Jesus…” Twom looks at me. “Billy…?” His look asks the question.
Did you do this?

“He did it himself,” I say. I wonder if I should tell him why. I don't.

Twom moves closer, bends down to view the ruin that is Ephraim's head. He turns away, gagging. “Oh, Jesus, dude. Oh, shit.”

“What a
chingado
douche bag,” says Deliza. She shakes her head, both furious and disgusted.

I can't believe it.

“What?” I say.

“He was an asshole!” Deliza spits the words at me. “He couldn't do this at home?”

I'm screaming at her before I even know I'm screaming.

“Shut up! Just you shut up! You treated him like crap!” I should stop but I can't stop. I don't want to stop. Fists clenched, I start toward her. “Why don't you get naked in front of his corpse, you bitch!”

Twom quickly steps between us and pushes me back so hard, I stumble and fall. “Both of you just calm the fuck down!”

“It's all going to be just fine,” whispers Ephraim's corpse.

Twom picks the gun up off the floor. “We're outta here,” he says. “Are you coming?”

I don't move.

“Get out of here, Billy,” says Ephraim's body.

I don't move.

“Baby, we gotta go,” says Deliza.

Twom hesitates. He shrugs. “Can't wait for you, bro.” They turn and hurry from the burning room.

I kneel beside Ephraim. I look down into his broken face. The world will keep turning. He was born too late, that's all. Even his parents will find it easy to let him go. They can travel now.

“Ephraim,” I say. “You were my friend.” Rising, I follow the only two that remain to me out of the house.

 

64

There are neighbors in the street but they back away when they see the gun in Twom's hand. Turning to look back, I can see flames through the living room window. Somewhere in the distance I can hear the sound of a siren.

Twom and Deliza leap into the car, Twom hesitating just long enough to aim the gun at a man behind the Mercedes.

“Away from the car!”

The man quickly steps back.

“Billy! Let's go!” I run down the walk and across the street. I clamber into the backseat. Twom puts the gas pedal to the floor, the tires squeal and we're away. When I look back, I see the man is writing something down.

“They have the license plate.”

“Mierda!”
says Deliza. “My father is
so
going to ground me.” I actually laugh. Being forced to stay home for the next three months or so without visitors sounds great just now.

“Come on, Billy, you're the brains, what do we do?” I can see Twom's face in the rearview mirror. It's the first time I've ever seen him in a panic.

“I'll tell you what we do,” says Deliza. “We're going to Mexico. We can be across the border into TJ in forty-five minutes. My family has people there.”

TJ. Tijuana. Mexico. As in come for our beaches, stay for our kidnappings and decapitations. Of course Deliza would have people there.

“Billy? Come on, what do you think? Say something!”

“Who cares what he thinks!” shouts Deliza.

She's right.
I
don't even care what I think anymore “I need to stop first,” I say.

They argue with me for a while but there's no voting on this. It's what we do.

 

65

I use the EZ pick to open the lock. It hardly takes a moment. I'm good at it now. I key in the security code. I had Ephraim get it for me months ago. I didn't know why. I just wanted it. Maybe I was preparing for a night like this.

I could sleep in this house. Even on the hardwood floor, I could curl up and sleep.

Instead I stand and listen to the sound of Gretchen's breath. Her hair is spread against the white of her pillow. She is on her side. I see the curve of her hip against the blanket. Her room smells faintly of the perfume she wore on Valentine's Day. It makes me aware that my hair and clothes stink of smoke and sweat.

The grandfather clock out in the hallway click-tocks, suddenly rumbles and then chimes once, twice, all the way to eleven times. It's loud and yet I've never been aware of it when in the house before. The clicks and chimes of the clock rumble and then repeat and this time they feel like they're proclaiming the hours of my life, passing, never to be reclaimed.

The art of clock repair is dying. It, too, will never be reclaimed.

The sound of Gretchen's breath changes slightly. She stirs and then suddenly, as if sensing something, she sits up in bed. Holding the sheet and blanket to her chin, she peers into the darkness.

I don't want to scare her.

“Hey. It's just me,” I whisper.

“Billy?”

“Yeah. Surprise.” Trying to smile, trying to show her that nothing's wrong, I step closer toward the bed. Gretchen doesn't look alarmed as much as puzzled. “How did you get in?”

“I broke in,” I say. I show her the EZ pick. It's still in my hand.

“I don't understand,” Gretchen says.

“All the break-ins,” I say. “The Night Visitors. It's me.”

If she's shocked, she doesn't show it. Maybe it's not such a big deal, maybe if I can explain, she'll understand.