“Someday,” Darryl murmured, lying on his back and tracking the blinking lights of a passing airplane, “I’ll get me a sweet little .357 Magnum and take Jorge’s heart for a spin over the red line. I surely will. I swear it on the grave of my Aunt Alice, who always had a strap handy for uppity children — I’m not joking,” he said, turning toward Caroline.
“You’re my big strong hero,” she said, fondling him. “Sure you are.”
Kyle flitted from room to room, growing more and more upset. He was alone, all alone in this dark house. They’d gone away and left him. Even the cat was gone.
Or maybe they were playing a joke on him? Yes, that was it, he thought with a burst of blistering hatred, because Courtney was a bully and she always got what she wanted and she loved to gang up on him, and now they’d taken her side. Now they were all together someplace, laughing at him. They were waiting for him to act like a baby. Well, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t call out or turn on any lights.
But what was he supposed to do? Where was everybody? He’d checked everywhere — now he was coming out of his parents’ bathroom, leaving a safe zone of damp towels and reassuring smells, the scent of his mother’s perfumed powder, his father’s cologne. He walked through a house now unfamiliar, pretending not to notice how the walls bulged out at him. It was hard not to shout with fear when he saw the dark hairy animals that had taken the place of the chairs and sofas he had known. He pretended he didn’t see them, and the animals stopped breathing and watched with glowing eyes as he passed. He heard their hearts beating; they gave off a rank, rotten smell as they inched nearer in the darkness, on every side. He knew that they longed to touch him.
He slipped into the kitchen, quietly closing the door behind him, sniffing the air and finding faint traces of the pork chop and rice Mrs. Hernandez had served him for supper. He missed her and her kindly, rough hands. He felt so alone. He fetched up in front of the refrigerator, pondering his father’s last words: “This is now officially a ghost house.” Was that a secret message which Courtney had understood, but which he, Kyle, had missed? Would it be a ghost house forever? Did they have to abandon it? As Kyle repeated his father’s words in his mind, they became alien and threatening. He opened the refrigerator door. The light was wonderfully bright and warm. He reached in, grabbed four slices of bologna, shut the refrigerator door, and stuffed the bologna into his mouth. He stood there in the dark, chewing.
The more Kyle thought about it, the more he grew convinced that they were all someplace together, Mom, Dad, and Courtney. Well, if they weren’t inside, they weren’t playing fair.
They were together outside. That had to be it. He pictured them sitting together on the back terrace, near the pool, waiting to see how long it would take dumb Kyle to figure out their big joke, and because this picture was the brightest thing in his world at the moment, Kyle accepted it as the truth. Courtney had gotten hold of his mom and dad. Now they were on her side.
So now he’d leave the house too. He’d sneak around to the terrace, where they were sitting around playing their big joke on him, and he’d leap out of the bushes and give them the fright of their lives. “Ha, ha, ha,” he’d yell. He’d beat up Courtney. He’d wipe everybody out, pow, pow, pow. Then they’d be sorry. Boy, would everybody be sorry when Kyle the Avenger jumped onto that terrace. They’d see how Courtney had lied to them and they’d never ever play a stupid joke on Kyle again.
He grinned as he opened the kitchen door, slipped into the night, and began trotting toward the back of the house and the terrace. He was playing that scene over again in his mind, the one where Kyle the Avenger jumps onto the terrace and frightens the willies out of everybody, when he heard a noise behind him. He dropped down on the ground and froze against the side of the house. He looked back and saw two figures in dark clothes detach themselves from the Surinam cherry hedge. They had come from the Dominguezes’ yard. They walked directly over to the kitchen door and opened it, silently entered the house, and just as silently closed the door behind them. Kyle stared at where they’d been. They’d moved so smoothly, so quickly, so quietly. Like ghosts. For a moment, Kyle found it hard to breathe. He felt dizzy and lightheaded; he wanted to clear his throat, but he fought against it, and then he began to gag.
He jumped up and plunged through the Surinam cherry hedge and landed on his hands and knees in the Dominguezes’ yard, where he quietly vomited up the bologna. He wiped his mouth with his hand and flopped onto his back in the grass and lay shaking in the darkness. Music poured from the Dominguezes’ house, and it felt soothing and familiar to him. Dad hadn’t told him there were other people playing the game. Where’d they come from? Why were they wearing dark clothes?
Lying in the Dominguezes’ yard, Kyle looked up at the moon and thought of the ghosts in dark clothes. Boy, were they scary. He never wanted to play this game again. He closed his eyes and saw stars and felt dizzy, so he opened his eyes and stared up at the sky and wondered how long he’d have to wait until the game was finally over and he could go home and fall asleep in his own bed.
“Christ Almighty’, would you listen to that racket?” Darryl said when the heavy metal rock music started up at the Dominguez house. Darryl and Caroline had dozed off again; the music had awakened them.
“I’m going to the head,” Caroline muttered, “and then let’s collect the kids. Don’t forget we’ve got to take them to Dairy Queen.” She kissed him, then groaned as she got off the deck. “I’m getting old, sweetness,” she said, descending the stairs. “Old.”
Darryl moved to a chair moist with dew. He looked up at the stars and over at the lurid night sky above downtown Miami. He felt better than he had in a long while. Getting out of the house and away from the telephone and making love to Caroline in the moonlight had brought him to a place of balance between the ever-tight-ening inner craziness of the last few weeks and a sense of future possibilities. He felt refreshed. Hopeful. He loved his wife and he loved his children. He stretched, feeling sexy and content and not at all drunk. He knew he could solve his problems. He was ready to fight the fight. “Fucking rock music,” he muttered, staring at his neighbor’s house. How could old Dominguez stand that shit? Was he deaf?
“That client — the one who’s been threatening you?” Caroline was coming back up onto the deck.
Darryl sighed.
She peered up at the sky and began to pick up her clothes. “What are you going to do?”
“Make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I’ll make them happy. I’m thinking of a way to pay them back.” She stopped dressing and stared at him. “Them?”
“Yes.” He looked at her. “I told you that.”
“You did?” She began crying.
He touched her, but she moved away. He opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say. He pulled on his shorts and T-shirt.
She zipped up her shorts, weeping. “What are we going to do?”