A chime rang when we entered the store, and the lady at the counter, who had a thin body and long, pointy face like a witch, lifted her head with a smile and said, Oh, hello. This lady owned the store, and although she had plenty of hired help, still worked every Friday and Saturday night, and always talked to my dad at length, sometimes touching his wrist to drive her point home. She was older than my dad, but didn’t dress like it. Tonight, she was wearing a black T-shirt of some rock band I remembered she and my dad talking about our last time here. The shirt was faded and full of big holes where her pale skin peeked through, and the store smelled different, like strawberries.
“Hey, I like that shirt,” my dad said.
“I thought you would,” the witch lady said. She opened her mouth and showed pointy but straight teeth. “I see you brought backup.”
“Yeah, they love it here,” he said. “Can’t get enough.”
The witch lady thumbed the fat ring on her pointer finger. “Must run in the family,” she said.
My dad turned to us. “All right, boys, go pick some good ones.”
“Yes,” the witch lady said, “and take your time.”
My brother and I went straight to the horror section. Now that our mother wasn’t around to judge, our dad let us rent any movie we wanted, regardless of rating. The only catch was that we were not allowed to watch the movies alone. Our dad wanted to be there when a mummy gnawed an arm off or a hostage got dropped off a skyscraper. He wanted to remind us that none of it was real, and that if things turned too scary, he was just a couch cushion away.
My brother chose his movie carefully, sounding out the plot summaries on the backs of the boxes, while I picked mine based on the cover. Tonight, I selected the one where a green, bald-headed monster was popping out of a toilet. My brother’s pick, which he settled on ten minutes later, featured a southern black vampire who “enlists with a heavy heart to fight for the North.”
We brought our picks to our dad, who was leaning over the counter, still chatting with the witch lady. “These look like winners,” he said, and returned to his conversation. The witch lady took the tie out of her hair, let the black mess fall down. She stretched the tie around her hand and slid it up her skinny arm.
“What we need is more officers like you,” she said. “Good men. Men who spend time with their boys”—she winked at my brother—“even with a nut on the loose. All the prisoners in the world could escape. They could all do their worst, but if we had more men like you, it wouldn’t matter a bit.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” my dad said.
“I do. And I know you’ll nab this latest guy too. You grabbed him before and you’ll grab him again. Only a matter of time.”
“Well,” my dad said, “we’ll certainly do our best.”
The witch lady nodded and took the boxes into the back to retrieve the tapes. As soon as she disappeared, my dad checked his reflection in the counter’s glass candy case.
“You put the prisoner away?” my brother said.
“Yes.”
“Were you the one who caught him?”
“Yeah,” my dad said, fluffing his hair. “The first time. But it’s not a big deal. Nothing to worry about.”
The witch lady returned. She rang up our videos, but only charged us for one.
“Oh, is there a deal going on?” my dad said.
“Yes,” the witch lady said, sliding the videos to my dad. “The deal is if I ever need help, you better come running.”
My dad put his head down and laughed. There was a weird pause as he pulled out his wallet and paid, and by the time he finally said something back, I had stopped listening. I was staring at my reflection, imprisoned in the glass, studying my features and imagining what it would be like to be older. I tried to imagine what I would look like all grown up. Would I take after my dad, or my mother? Or maybe, when I hit a growth spurt, I would look just like my brother. Maybe people would mistake us for twins.
“I’ll see you out tonight?” the witch lady said.
“I will see you out tonight,” my dad repeated, as if when I wasn’t paying attention, he had fallen under her spell.
“We’ll have a good time?”
“We will have a good time.”
My dad said ’bye to the witch lady and wished her a good night. The witch lady touched my dad’s hand with her hand.
“Let’s both have a good night,” she said, adding something like sugar or sweetheart at the end.
* * *
I put my movie in and took my place at my dad’s side. Almost all of the movies we picked had cops in them — usually the stupid victim of some supervillain — and our dad liked to point out each thing the police did wrong. That’s not how you hold a gun, he would say. Or, You can’t just barge into someone’s house like that. He would then explain how things were really done, which was always boring and forgettable.
Tonight, after one bad cop got wasted by a hobgoblin, my dad let out a frustrated smile. My brother and I looked at each other and grinned, waiting for the lecture.
“Well what did he expect?” our dad said. “Entering a dark room without clearing it. Slice the pie!”
My brother and I rolled on our sides and laughed. Slicing the pie was one of our dad’s favorites. Any time a cop went running into a warehouse, chasing a criminal or monster, our dad would yell, Slice the pie! Slice the pie! And even though my brother and I knew this was a real police technique, used by policemen to clear an area before entering, we still liked to laugh. At the way it sounded, at how mad the movie made our dad. At the idea that if the policeman had just followed procedure, things would have ended better. You never know, my brother joked. Maybe the goblin would have surrendered, come out claws up.
When the goblin was done feasting on the cop’s insides, and my brother and I were spent from laughing, a sex scene came on. At this point, like usual, my dad covered our eyes with his hands, but didn’t turn the volume down. I heard a doomed couple exchange deep kisses. I heard saxophones and the tearing of clothes. I heard my dad say, “Kissy kissy.”
* * *
I woke up alone and out of place. The TV screen was black, and a pillow had replaced my dad’s chest. I sat up and tried to remember where I was. My dad came out of the kitchen. He had changed clothes. His shirt was tucked in. A button-up. He smelled different.
“Sleepy time,” he said. “Your brother is downstairs.”
As he reached out toward me, the dream I’d just had flashed in my mind. The escaped prisoner was on the loose and was coming after my dad. I was dressed as a cop and had been sent to investigate the video store, where the prisoner was last spotted. But I did everything wrong. I didn’t slice the pie or hold my gun right, and the entire time my dad shouted, What are you doing? That’s not what I taught you. You’re going to get yourself killed. Oh no, here he comes. Here comes the bad man.
I sat up and tried to forget about the dream world. I asked my dad if he had to go.
“Yes,” my dad said. “People are counting on me.”
I pictured the witch lady, leaning against a jukebox. I pictured the prisoner, sneaking around town, a shadow creeping closer and closer.
“Did we finish the movie?”
“I put it away,” he said. “We’ll watch the rest tomorrow. Now go be with your brother. Boys sleep in beds.” My dad and my mother both had sayings like these, things they said to us over and over. When my brother and I were mad at either of our parents, we used these sayings to make fun of them.
Downstairs, the only light came from a lamp I had to feel my way to in the dark. I clicked it once for its lowest setting so I wouldn’t wake my brother. He was sleeping with his mouth open. I wondered if I slept that way and decided to ask my brother tomorrow if he would draw a picture of me while I slept. I worried about swallowing spiders. We had seen lots when our dad first introduced us to the basement. He had a second bedroom but it was too small, and my dad said he didn’t want his boys living in a closet, even if it was just for the weekends. Boys don’t sleep in closets. Boys sleep in beds.