“What do you mean?”
“They never put out.”
“Put out what?”
“Ass, for Christ’s sake! They never put out any ass, not ever, not for anyone.”
“Oh.”
“Laurie shakes it at me, but if I actually put a hand on her tits, she’d scream so loud the roof would fall in.”
Colin was blushing and sweating. “Well, after all, she’s only fourteen, isn’t she?”
“Plenty old enough.”
Colin wasn’t pleased with the direction the conversation had taken. He tried to get back on course. “Anyway, what I wanted to say was, from now on let’s not do anything that bores you.”
Roy put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “Listen, Colin, am I your friend or not?”
“Sure you are.”
“A good friend should be willing to keep you company even when you’re doing things that you enjoy but maybe he doesn’t care so much about. I mean, I can’t expect to always do exactly what
I
like, and I can’t expect that you and I will always want to do the same things.”
“We like the same things,” Colin said. “We have the same interests.” He was afraid Roy would suddenly realize how different they were and would walk away, never to be seen again.
“You love horror films,” Roy said. “I don’t have any interest in that stuff.”
“Well, aside from that one thing—”
“We’ve got other differences. But the point is, if you’re my buddy, you’ll do things with me that
I
want to do but that you don’t like at all. So it works both ways.”
“No, it doesn‘t,” Colin said, “because I happen to like doing everything you suggest.”
“So far,” Roy said. “But there’ll come a time when you won’t want to do something that’s important to me, but you will do it because we’re friends.”
“I can’t imagine what,” Colin said.
“Just wait,” Roy said. “You’ll see. Sooner or later, good buddy, the time will come.”
The scarlet light of the Pit’s neon sign was refracted in Roy’s eyes, giving them a strange and somewhat frightening aspect. Colin thought they resembled a movie vampire’s eyes: glassy, red, violent, two windows on a soul that had been corrupted by the repeated satisfaction of unnatural desires. (But then again, Colin thought the same thing every time he saw Mr. Arkin’s eyes, and Mr. Arkin was just the man who owned the corner grocery store; the closest thing Mr. Arkin had to an unnatural desire was a taste for liquor, and his red eyes were nothing more than the most obvious sign of a nearly continuous hangover.)
“Just the same,” Colin said to Roy, “I hate the idea that I’m boring you with—”
“I wasn’t bored! Will you relax? I don’t mind going to the Pit if that’s what you want. just remember what I said about those girls. They’ll hang on you a little bit. Now and then they’ll ‘accidentally’ rub their tight little asses against you or maybe ’accidentally’ brush their boobs against your arm. But you’ll never have any real fun with them. Their idea of a big, big night is to sneak out to the parking lot, hide in the shadows, and steal kisses.”
That was also Colin’s idea of a big, big night. In fact, it was his idea of heaven on earth, but he didn’t tell Roy.
They walked their bicycles across the lot to the alley.
Before Roy could climb on his bike and pedal away, Colin got up the nerve to say: “Why me?”
“Huh?”
“Why do you want to be friends with me?”
“Why shouldn’t I be friends with you?”
“I mean with a nobody like me.”
“Who said you’re a nobody?”
“I did.”
“What kind of a thing is that to say about yourself?”
“Anyway, I’ve been wondering for a month.”
“Wondering what? You aren’t making sense.”
“I’ve been wondering why you want to be friends with someone like me.”
“What do you mean? What makes you different? You got leprosy or something?”
Colin wished he had never brought up the subject, but now that he had done so, he stumbled ahead with it. “Well, you know, someone who’s not normally very popular and, you know, not good at sports, you know, not really good at much of anything and ... well, you know.”
“Stop saying, ‘you know,’ ” Roy said. “I hate that. One of the reasons I want to be friends with you is that you can talk. Most kids around here chatter away all day and never use more than twenty words. Two of which are ‘you know.’ But you actually have a decent vocabulary. It’s refreshing.”
Colin blinked. “You want to be friends because of my vocabulary?”
“I want to be friends because you’re as smart as I am. Most kids bore me.”
“But you could pal around with any guy in town, any guy your age, even some a year or two older than you. Most of those guys in the Pit—”
“They’re assholes.”
“Be serious. They’re some of the most popular guys in town.”
“Assholes, I tell you.”
“Not all of them.”
“Believe me, Colin, all of them. Half of them can’t figure any way to have a good time except to smoke dope or pop pills or get stinking drunk and vomit all over themselves. The rest of them want to be either John Travolta or Donny Osmond.
Yech!”
“But they like you.”
“Everyone likes me,” Roy said. “I make sure of that.”
“I sure wish I knew how to make everyone like
me.”
“It’s easy. You just have to know how to manipulate them.”
“Okay. How?”
“Stick around me long enough, and you’ll learn.”
Instead of riding away from the Pit, they walked down the alley, side by side, pushing their bikes. They both knew there was more to be said.
They passed an oleander hedge. The flowers looked slightly phosphorescent in the growing gloom, and Colin took a deep whiff of them.
Oleander berries contained one of the deadliest substances known to man. Colin had seen an old movie in which a lunatic had murdered a dozen people with a poison extracted from the plant. He couldn’t remember the title. It had been a really dumb film, even worse than Godzilla Versus King
Kong,
which meant it was one of the all-time most terrible works in cinematic history.
After they had gone nearly a block, Colin said, “You ever used dope?”
“Once,” Roy said.
“What was it?”
“Hash. Through a waterpipe.”
“You like it?”
“Once was enough. What about you?”
“No,” Colin said. “Drugs scare me.”
“You know why?”
“You can get killed.”
“Dying doesn’t scare you.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Not much.”
“Dying scares me a lot.”
“No,” Roy insisted. “You’re like me, exactly like me. Drugs scare you because if you used them you wouldn’t be in control. You can’t bear the idea of losing control of yourself.”
“Well, sure, that’s part of it.”
Roy lowered his voice, as if he were afraid someone would overhear, and he spoke rapidly, running the words together in his eagerness to get them out. “You’ve got to stay sharp, on your toes, alert. Always look over your shoulder. Always protect yourself. Don’t let your guard down for even a second. There are people who will take advantage of you the moment they see you’re not in complete control. The world’s filled with people like that. Nearly everyone you meet is like that. We’re animals in a jungle, and we’ve got to be prepared to fight if we want to survive.”
Roy walked his bike with his head thrust forward, shoulders hunched, muscles corded in his neck, as if he expected someone to strike him hard on the back of the head. Even in the fast-dwindling, purple-amber light of late evening, the sudden sprinkle of sweat on his forehead and upper lip was visible; darkly glistening jewels. “You can’t trust hardly anyone, hardly anyone at all. Even people who’re supposed to like you can turn on you faster than you think. Even friends. People who say they love you are the worst, the most dangerous, the most untrustworthy of all.” He was breathing harder, talking faster by the moment. “People who say they love you will pounce when they get the chance. You gotta always remember that they’re just waiting for the opportunity to get you. Love’s a trick. A cover. A way to catch you off guard. Never let down your guard. Never.” He glanced at Colin, and his eyes were wild.
“Do you think I’d turn on you, tell lies about you, snitch on you to your parents, things like that?”
“Would you?” Roy asked.
“Of course not.”
“Not even if your own neck was in the wringer, too, and the only way you could save yourself was to snitch on me?”
“Not even then.”
“What if I broke some law, some really serious law, and the cops were after me and came to you with a lot of questions?”
“I wouldn’t snitch on you.”
“I hope you wouldn’t.”
“You can trust me.”
“I hope so. I really hope so.”
“You don’t have to hope. You should
know.”
“I gotta be careful.”
“Should I be careful of you?”
Roy said nothing.
“Should I be careful of you?” Colin asked again.
“Maybe. Yeah, maybe you should. When I said we were all just animals, just a bunch of selfish animals, I meant me, too.”
There was such a haunted look in Roy’s eyes, such a knowledge of pain that Colin had to look away.
He didn’t know what had sparked Roy’s diatribe, but he didn’t want to pursue the subject. He was worried that it would lead to an argument and that Roy would never want to see him again; and he desperately wanted to be friends with Roy for the rest of their lives. If he blew apart this relationship, he would never get another chance to be best buddies with anyone as terrific as Roy. He was positive of that. If he spoiled this, he would have to go back to being a loner; and now that he had experienced acceptance, companionship, and involvement, he didn’t think he could go back.
For a while they walked in silence. They crossed a busy side street under a canopy of oak trees and entered another block of the alleyway.
Gradually the extraordinary tension that had given Roy the appearance of an angry snake began to seep out of him, much to Colin’s relief. Roy lifted his head and let his shoulders down and stopped breathing like a horse at the end of an eight-furlong race.
Colin knew a bit about race horses. His father had taken him to the track half a dozen times, expecting him to be impressed with the amount of money wagered and with the sweaty manliness of the sport. Instead, Colin had been delighted by the grace of the horses and had spoken of them as if they were dancers. His father hadn’t liked that and had thereafter gone to the races alone.
He and Roy reached another corner, turned left, out of the alley, and pushed their bicycles along an ivy-framed sidewalk.
Look-alike stucco houses lay on both sides of the street, sheltering under a variety of palm trees, skirted by oleander and jade plants and dracaena and schefflera and roses and cacti and holly and ferns and poinsettia bushes—ugly houses made elegant by California’s lush natural beauty.
Finally Roy spoke. “Colin, you remember what I said about how a guy sometimes has to do things his buddy wants to do even if he himself maybe really doesn’t like it?”
“I remember.”
“That’s one of the true tests of friendship. Don’t you agree?”
“I guess so.”
“For Christ’s sake, can’t you at least once in a while have a firm opinion about something? You never say a flat yes or no. You’re always ‘guessing.’ ”
Stung, Colin said, “All right. I think it’s a true test of friendship. I agree with you.”
“Well, what if I said I wanted to kill something just for fun and I wanted you to help me.”
“You mean like a cat?”
“I’ve already killed a cat.”
“Yeah. It was in all the newspapers.”
“I did. In a cage. Like I said.”
“I just can’t believe it.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Okay, okay,” Colin said. “Let’s not go through the whole argument again. Let’s pretend I swallowed your story—hook, line, and sinker. You killed a cat in a birdcage. So what next—a dog?”
“If I wanted to kill a dog, would you help?”
“Why would you want to?”
“It might be a popper.”
“Jeez.”
“Would you help kill it?”
“Where would you get the dog? You think the humane society gives them out to people who want to torture them?”
“I’d just steal the first pooch I saw,” Roy said.
“Someone’s pet?”
“Sure.”
“How would you kill it?”
“Shoot it. Blow its head off.”
“And the neighbors wouldn’t hear?”
“We’d take it out in the hills first.”
“You expect it to just pose and smile while we plug it?”
“We’d tie it up and shoot it a dozen times.”
“Where do you expect to get the gun?”
“What about your mother?” Roy asked.
“You think my mother sells illegal guns out of the kitchen or something?”
“Doesn’t she have a gun of her own?”
“Sure. A million of ‘em. And a tank and a bazooka and a nuclear missile.”
“Just answer the question.”
“Why would she have a gun?”
“A sexy woman living alone usually has a gun for protection.”
“But she doesn’t live alone,” Colin said. “Did you forget about me?”
“If some crazy rapist wanted to get his hands on your mom, he’d walk right over you.”
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“Be serious. Does your mother have a gun?”
Colin didn’t want to admit there was a gun in the house. He had a hunch that he would save himself a lot of trouble if he lied. But at last he said, “Yeah. She has a pistol.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. But I don’t think she keeps it loaded. She could never shoot anyone. My father loves guns: ergo, my mother hates them. And so do I. I’m not going to borrow her gun to do something crazy like shoot your neighbor’s dog.”