Danny arrived home to an empty yard. Mister Sardo and Doctor Vink had apparently given up their watch for him. Even Doctor Vink's light-up He-Man sword had been retrieved. Danny parked his bike by the side of the trailer and went up through the weedy path to the door.
"Mom?" Danny asked timidly once inside, shuffling his feet and making puppy dog eyes. "Can Doctor Vink and Mister Sardo sleep over tonight?"
Danny's mom knew he was up to something right away. Not only did Danny openly hate his two friends and would never want them near the inside of the trailer under any ordinary circumstances, but he was also holding something behind his back.
"What you got behind your back, mister?"
"The Regulator," he told her. "It's a movie."
"What's it about?" his mom demanded. "Goth stuff?" She was more or less permanently on guard against any new goth stuff Danny might try to introduce into their lives. The posters, the loud music, the dyed hair, and the omnipresent smells she already had to deal with were bad enough.
"No way! It's about cowboys!"
"What's it rated?"
Danny thought for a minute. "G," he said cleverly.
Danny's mom put her hands on her hips and leaned forward to give him an interrogative glare. "What're its central themes?"
"Uh, friendship, overcoming adversity, not skipping any school," Danny droned, gazing blankly at the ceiling, "donating fire water to the Indians, going to church, eating healthy and getting enough sleep, not swearing, respecting the sheriff, aaaand…" He probed deeply in his mind for the final theme that would lock in the sleepover. "Uh, keeping the street clean."
"That movie's about keeping the street clean?"
"Yes'm!"
"Well," Danny's mom supposed, "I guess it's okay if Mister Sardo and Doctor Vink sleep over just this once, then. As long as you boys keep it quiet and don't play any goth music."
"Aw, mom!"
"No goth music!" Danny's mom screamed, and whammed the side of the refrigerator with her fist. "If I hear even so much as a drum machine tonight I'll stick my hand down the garbage disposal."
Danny looked at the floor and sighed. His mom threatened to stick her hand down the garbage disposal all the time. In the past week alone she had wanted to put her hand down the garbage disposal in protest of the ants in Danny's room, an unusual stain that had come home with Danny on the back of one of his shirts, the way Danny "ran funny," and the big tabloid reveal that one of her favorite celebrities identified as gothic. She had also threatened to stick both hands down the garbage disposal if Danny ever tested positive for Crack Cocaine, a substance that had gained proper noun status in her mind after seeing the infamous Pee-wee Herman PSA.
The door to the trailer suddenly banged open and Danny's dad came inside, home from his high-powered office job.
"Whew," he announced grandly as he crossed the trailer to the sofa and laid his briefcase on the ottoman.
"How was your day, dear?" Danny's mom asked.
Danny's dad loosened his tie and sank back into the cushions. "Oh," he said, "you know. Another long one. Two new clients, plus the Proulx account. And the boss was all over my ass about the crow makeup again."
"Watch your language!" Danny's mom screamed, pulling a spatula from the sink to brandish at him like a butcher knife. "You'll corrupt the boy!"
"How was your day, sport?" Danny's dad asked, and reached to ruffle Danny's snarly purple head.
"It was all right I guess. I'm going to have my friends over tonight to watch a movie. You don't mind, do you? Dad?"
Danny's dad's face had clouded over. He got up from the couch and took a towel from the countertop, which he began using to clean the white makeup from his face. He was careful, going to great lengths not to get any makeup or water on his expensive suit. He owned dozens of tailored Armanis and could easily afford a dozen more, but one of the reasons he had been able to so swiftly climb the corporate ladder was the great care with which he always treated his belongings.
"Those two neighbor boys?" Danny's dad asked apprehensively.
"Yeah, Mister Sardo and Doctor Vink."
Danny's dad, peering into the broken shard of mirror glued above the sink, carefully mopped the black from his left eyelid. "I'm not too sure about those guys, Danny. Sometimes I get a bad feeling about that one with the beard in particular. Don't you know any nice girls you'd like to invite over instead?"
"Girls?!" Danny cried, seeing in his mind a gleaming vision of a bikinied Emma rising seductively on a billow of red smoke from a pit full of flaming serpents.
"Yeah, kiddo, girls. You're not afraid of girls, are you?"
"No way! I just, uh—I want to hang out with Mister Sardo and Doctor Vink tonight, that's all."
Danny went awkwardly into his room and shut the door.
"I'm worried about Danny," Danny's dad said conspiratorially to his wife. "How's he ever going to get laid if he keeps hanging around with those two weird guys? There's something wrong with them."
"He'll never get laid, all right," Danny's mom answered, plunging her hands back into the soapy dishwater. "But it's your fault. Teaching him about all that goth shit. No young man should—"
"But goth shit is the best!" Danny's dad protested.
"It's embarrassing!" she screamed. "You're forty-three years old! Why do you still need to have those blue LEDs in the footwells of your car?"
"Because they're sweet!" Danny's dad cried. "Honestly, Sandra, again? My dad was a goth too, as you may remember. What's next? Why don't we dive back into the subject of the old man's face tats? Or how about the custom bloodred coffin I paid twenty thousand dollars to have him buried in? That's one of your favorites, isn't it?"
"I don't like Danny listening to that goth music! He should be listening to wholesome stuff like Neil Diamond and Boyz II Men. Not childish crap like… VERUCA SALT!" For some reason Danny's mother had taken a particularly strong disliking to Veruca Salt.
"Don't talk shit about goth music!" Danny's father bellowed. His eyeballs bulged with fury.
"Talk shit? It is shit!" Danny's mother hissed. "I'd rather stick my hand down the garbage disposal than find the wrapper from a Veruca Salt CD in my boy's room someday!"
Danny's dad threw his hands up in weary dismay. "Veruca Salt's not even goth, Sandra, they're grunge!"
"There's overlap!" Danny's mother shrieked.
This was a familiar argument in the Pescatori household, one Danny had heard through his bedroom door hundreds if not thousands of times. It was worn smooth with use and mostly ran itself on autopilot, even when both participants appeared to be completely engaged. Danny didn't mind when his parents started arguing about goth stuff because it usually ended with his dad sulking off to the friendly territory of Danny's bedroom to help his son hang new goth posters and to recommend new goth albums in an effort to reassure himself that Danny was turning out right after all.
"Don't listen to your mother," Danny's dad said, shaking his head and closing Danny's bedroom door behind him. He came over to sit on the bed. "In fact, you shouldn't even listen to me. One of the most important parts of being goth is telling your parents to go fuck themselves, no matter what it is they're trying to get you to do. If you want to hang out with those two messed up weirdos from down the block, you go right ahead." He ruffled Danny's hair and gave him a warm smile.
"Thanks, Dad."
"You betcha, son." Danny's dad chuckled wonderingly to himself. "You know, when I was your age, I swore I'd never turn out like my old man. Him and his dorky face paint and tendrils of black hair and his jacket covered in vestigial zippers and anarchy pins and diamond studs. Little did I know it was all part of his long con. Not wanting to turn out like your old man is the most gothic thing there is."
After Danny's dad had cheered himself up and gone back out into the trailer's main room to see what was for dinner, Danny turned and looked at the phone on his desk. Afraid of girls or not, he had to admit it would be pretty metal to call Emma on that phone. Probably even more metal than mentally damaging Mister Sardo and Doctor Vink with the scary movie he'd rented.
The movie! Danny turned the boxy VHS over in his hands and ran his fingertips along the edges, imagining the lightless inner chambers, wishing he could know in advance what insanities they held.
"Who is this?" Mister Sardo demanded in a high-pitched whine when he had answered the phone.
"Danny Pescatori, from down the street."
The line was quiet for a moment.
"Yes, Mister Pest-catori? What is it?"
"That's Pescatori!" Danny screamed, and whacked the surface of his desk. "No Mister! Accent on the 'tor'!"
"What do you want!" Mister Sardo pleaded, realizing he was outmatched.
"You wanna come over tonight and watch a movie? You and Doctor Vink?"
Danny could hear the plastic receiver of Mister Sardo's telephone creaking in his meaty paw. "Watch a movie?!" he demanded.
"Yeah, I just rented it. It's an ultraviolent shockfest about gunslingers and dead people and stuff."
"A movie?" Danny heard a man's voice roar distantly from the background of Mister Sardo's house. "What's it rated?"
"What's it rated?" Mister Sardo whispered feverishly.
"X."
"It's rated PG, Dad!" Mister Sardo screamed over his shoulder.
"Just get Doctor Vink and show up at my house around 10," Danny told him. "It'll be awesome."
"What should I wear?" Mister Sardo wondered. He sounded excited.
"What?" Danny said. "Who cares? Clothes."
"Will there be any girls there, though?"
Danny's heart gave a hard thump for Emma, wherever she was.
"No. Just you and me and Vink."
A relieved exhale rattled in Danny's ear.
"All right," Mister Sardo conceded, returning to his usual peevish and vaguely aristocratic tone. "We'll be there. I guess."
Danny hung up the phone and took the video tape back into his hands. He sat for a long while simply looking at it, perhaps to prevent it from simply vanishing, like the old man, into thin air.