Chapter Three.
He suddenly seems dangerous to you.
xXx
There's friction in the place where you used to be blind. There's sparks flying inside that void you called your mother—but now instead of illuminating the dark of her shadow, you're blinded even more by those sparks. What are they? Where do they come from? They flare seductively, teasing you, then dissolve at the fringe of your mind, which frustrates you to no end.
Fuck that. You got better things to do.
You thank Tim Shepard's service by slashing his motorcycle tires a week later. A pride of people come and hail the new phenomenon around the watering hole. Dallas. Your name is a poison, hushed among them. Silence. A silence transmitted only by the dark flare in their eyes.
You savor the silence with a middle fuckin' finger.
xXx
You let dumbasses think what they want. You're not in the business of pushing dead philosophies through their thick skulls. You had a home, it broke, you left. Case closed.
Somewhere in the back of your mind the image of the kid on the motorcycle burns. You don't know why it does, or even what his name was. It doesn't seem too important right now.
"Hey, New York."
You turn around.
The kid's got back-up. About four or five of them. You glance behind them. You've crossed the tracks; you suspect that you crossed right into their territory.
He's got a steel baseball bat flung across his shoulders. The others seem like something you remember cut out from another scene in New York. You release a light, tired sigh. All the gangs have the regular molds. The good-looking kid. Two of 'em. The short kid. One. The fuckup kid. You imagine there's one. The brawny kid. All of them. The brainy kid. Just the leader. The Scottish or Italian or Jewish or wherever-the-hell-he-comes-from kid. Maybe there's two of them, if the kid on the left squints the right way.
If you're lucky enough, you've got a wallet chain, and maybe a broken bottleneck, if they let you break for it back some thirty steps.
You don't know why shards of ice are stabbing your gut. It's too nice a mornin' to kick the bucket, you think. But a glow like that could see your severed head with auroral indifference. The Earth turns and it turns and it turns. Time pushes on with regard to no fuckin' man.
Likewise, the blue fog in Brooklyn cast illusion over the city. The morning sun is supposed to be a shield. But you were young then. You'd thought differently on reality's mode of operations. You'd seen a woman shot while she was holding her infant son, her empty body tossed down the steps of the apartment building bathed in the glow of a kindly sun. You'd cried. Last time you did.
He's wearing a Fuck you kinda smile today. You reciprocate.
"Hey there, New York," —he grins and flicks a spindle to the opposite corner of his mouth— "seems you slashed my tires."
You nod accordingly.
"Know what that means?"
You try to speak, but it's been two days since you've last spoken, and the words rattle an empty venom in the desert of your mouth.
He drives the heel of his steel toe into the soft crevice between your ribcage—that wide, unencumbering spot where it seems all the air in your body resides. You land on your haunches with a solid thup, red puffs of dust collecting at your legs.
The others jump you. You know the procedure. If you curl up into a ball, it'll only fuel them more. Make 'em hungrier. Better to give them their money's worth than be devoured. Somebody's gonna get tired and knock it off eventually. The unknown variable is time.
Two minutes. Three. A bike chain rips through the skin of your forearm. You punch that kid stiff in the bottom lip.
Five minutes. Seven.
Ten minutes. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. You don't mean to, but you fall forward. Dust collects at your palms, your arms, your pillars. You can't quiver now, you've got to get up, got to show Mr. That-and-a-Can-of-Fucking-Beans you don't fall over and die like a puss...but the pain in your arm blazes, screaming for your attention.
You look up; and in the morning sun you think you see him close, assessing you. He's probably checking for a pulse. You don't like the way the hairs on the skin of your neck bristle as his breath brushes into your ear.
Pretty-lookin' kid.
You hear the voice come in so low it rushes in your ear like a cold dark tide, sweeping all other thoughts away. It is a mutterance, a venom, a curse; but the poison lay in the fact you're sure it came from him. And suddenly you feel like a nine-year old prisoner again, shivering in a cell not of your own design.
The inside of your mouth gushes blood. Rusty, salty blood. Like licking a rotting steel pipe. The red quivers down your chin, staining the white porcelain of your ruined virgin face. You spit at him through the clouds of a swollen eye. No fucking martyrs here, buddy.
Wait—what was that?
"He knows," he calls out. The others, bloodied and satisfied, disband.
Then, larger than the morning sun, he looks down.
"Your name ain't even Renfield, you liar."
You don't know it yet, but you'll spend the rest of your life wondering how he knows that.
xXx
You run. You don't know where you're going, but you want your legs to carry you as far away from this shithole as possible. Your heart is a small bird set afire, slamming itself against your ribcage.
Pretty-lookin' kid.
You'll never hear him say it again. But it will turn around in your mind, dancing always on the precipice.
You step inside the nearest building and resist the reflex to suffocate.
"Hey, you! Yeah, you, you don't belong here. Scram. I don't serve to no minors. Got blindsided by a clothes-cop last week. Get out." You roll your eyes as the bartender, a cowboy with crooked teeth and wiry blond hair, pronounces get as git.
You slip him the last one hundred bucks you have, and the cowboy learns to shut his trap real good.
xXx
You aren't in the business of learning names. You can barely remember your own. From a few patrons you learn—again—his name is Tim. Tim Shepard. But this time it has a venom, a fire, a poison, a purpose. They say it with a revered quietness. You think briefly of New York. Last time they said someone's name with that much quietness the FBI blew up the cad's house.
You smirk as you raise a can, which gleams an unearthly ruby in the neon light.
To Tim.
Whoever the fuck he is.
xXx
You know you see him again, maybe a month later. His gaze follows you from the front porch. His eyes are nails, driving shards into your brain. Your heart is a hammer. He might figure you're a glutton for punishment, or just a dumbass. You run the same risk either way.
He descends the stoop like a cat.
You smile.
You know better, he says. His voice holds no warmth. But it holds no ice, either. Earth. Earthly. Perhaps soil, or even stone. A mine buried underground. Calm like a bomb.
You nod.
I know better.
xXx
One week later, Tim preaches to you the fuckin' gospel.
You talk funny.
I don't talk funny. You talk wrong.
Say drawer.
No.
Say it. Say the word drawer.
You know he's poking around for that inflection that will undoubtedly point to your New York origins. You suspect he might even be able to sniff out which borough. Drawer. Drau-err. How do they say it? Your mind tries to find the correct equivalent. Draur.
Draur. Brilliance.
Say Draur, you say to yourself. You look up to speak, then stop.
He suddenly seems dangerous to you.
Pretty-lookin' kid.
This notion of danger ignites your brain, striking it against the rock and setting the entire whetstone aflame.
You smile.
Drawer.
xXx
No. No. No, you think. Don't do that—
The inside of the house is empty. Foreclosed. Mother couldn't be bothered to pay. Everything he knows will be packaged and sold tomorrow.
Each Shepard child, you find, has his or her own way of coping with hardship. Curly leaves and doesn't come back until he's conquered the demon, red-faced and happily walking into walls and tables. Angela plays the Oedipal card and nutures her emptiness with mommying whatever boy she's lucky enough to meet.
Tim just looks at you. Nothing else. He stares a hole through your brain, at someplace between your eyes. You mutter something at him as you chew on the end of your cigarette. Don't blow yourself to bits. You wonder what's so fascinating. It's just you.
So you stare back. You notice a few things when you stare. His eyes got a little purple rim to them. The corners of his mouth tighten when you look at them. The shape of his nose. A faint shadow of a philtrum.
A scar, running down the contours of his face. Your fingers swell with the notion to touch it, to examine it. But you ain't like that.
The eternal whisper-thought becomes a shrill in your skull: pretty-lookin' kid.
Pretty-lookin' kid. He's said it; he's said it; he can't take it back. But he could tell you he's a mass murderer with a bomb pack strapped to his chest, he couldn't make you feel any more on edge. He don't need to.
You inhale. At first it's smoke, beer, the rain falling down the windows, dammit.
Seven hours later it's his scent: Sweat mixed with grease and that faint muffled sweetness you get when you press your face into a blanket and can breathe in nothing else.
Pretty-lookin' kid. Some other thoughts are added with them, fueling him, fueling you. I could lookit a kid like that. I could fuck a kid like that.
I could l—
"Don't do that, Tim," you say.
Don't do that.
The echo pierces the dark ether.
The rest is silence.
The clock ticks. Quarter after two. Rain rolls like a fog down the cold glass. You blink, unable to feel anything but a smothered heat below your waist, like a spark that has flared and died within you.
Two-twenty one.
It's already an eternity waiting for you out there.