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He cut the engine, pulled hard on the parking brake and got out. The early August sun was bright and Colesceau shaded his eyes and leaned forward as he trotted toward the front door of 12 Meadowlark. He could feel the duct tape around his body, but he didn’t think anyone else could see it through his Pratt Automotive shirt that said “Moros” over the pocket. The terms of his parole said nothing about duct tape.

He read the newspapers, however, and with the new applications of Megan’s Law, cops were now telling people when “high risk” offenders were living in their neighborhoods. Here in Orange County they called it the SONAR program, for Sexual Offenders Notification and Registration. What it did was get you run out of your home if you had a history of sexual offenses and were considered “high risk” as opposed to “serious.” He understood that this interview would help determine whether his neighbors were informed about his past.

Colesceau could think of no fate more humiliating than to be driven out of his apartment by squeaky clean blond people who did nothing more daring in life than cheat on their taxes.

Holtz was standing in his kitchen, drinking one of Colesceau’s root beers. Holtz was fat with quick eyes and the habit of smiling when he gave you bad news. Colesceau had never once seen the lenses of his glasses clean. Holtz acted like a friend at times, but he wasn’t.

“Moros! How are you?”

“Fine, Al.”

“Hot one today.”

“It is drastic.”

“Carla should be here any minute.”

Colesceau always saw himself from the outside when he was with other people. He always had, even as a boy. It was like watching a play he was in. The characters spoke, and he was one of them. He was a spectator and a participant. He had always assumed it had something to do with not being comfortable with the people around him. But you don’t really choose your own company, he knew: especially in a family, a prison or a hospital.

So for a brief moment Colesceau saw himself standing there, talking to the fat man in his kitchen. Yes, that’s me, he thought — short and pudgy, wearing a blue short-sleeve shirt with a patch and his name over the pocket. Mid-twenties. Hair medium length, black and wavy, complexion pale, lips pink and thick. Colesceau noted his own slightly enlarged breasts, courtesy of the hormone-altering drug Depo-Provera, which was part of his punishment. Treatment, he corrected himself: chemical castration is part of my treatment. And I’ll be done with that treatment in eight days.

“Al, I have a new egg.”

“Lay it on me.”

Colesceau left the kitchen and walked into his darkened living room. He kept the blinds drawn tightly against daylight, especially in the infernal Southern California summer. The far side of the living room had three lawyers’ bookcases against the wall — the kind with the glassed-in shelves and the interior lights so you could see your books.

He flipped on the lights in the middle case.

Colesceau: “Another emu egg. The blue one.”

He pointed and Holtz leaned forward, his nose up close to the glass.

“Nice.”

“She’s producing more and more these days.”

The egg producer was Colesceau’s mother, Helena. Painting eggs was an old Romanian folk art and Helena had done hundreds in her life. Most of them ended up here, in the lawyer’s bookcases. They were painted in every color imaginable, and in many designs and patterns. The older ones were simple. The later ones featured lace, frill, bric-a-brac, bits of yarn and various textiles, and lately even plastic eyes with pupils that rolled around inside.

“Very nice.”

“It’s one of my favorites.”

Colesceau always tried to endear himself to Holtz, who was a big proponent of what he called “family values.” So Colesceau talked well of his mother whenever he could. In fact, Colesceau didn’t care much for the hollow eggs his mother decorated. They were morbid and trite. If she hadn’t paid for the three bookshelves he would have boxed them up and left them in the spare bedroom upstairs. But the display of eggs and his flattering words were a small price to pay for mollifying two of the most important people in his life. As one of his keepers at Atascadero always said, you catch more flies with honey, though Colesceau had wondered then — and still wondered now — why anybody would want to catch flies in the first place. The doorbell rang.

“Ah, that must be Carla!”

Colesceau went down the hallway and opened the door. Carla it was, tanned and blond and beaming as usual, with her prematurely wrinkled face and luminous teeth. Colesceau had never understood why California women so eagerly courted the damage of the sun.

“Hello, Moros.”

“Hello, Dr. Fontana. You are free to come in.”

She nodded, stepped inside and followed him back toward the living room. He could feel her behind him like a shadow. He watched her shake hands with Holtz, the PA eyeing her greedily through the dusty lenses of his glasses.

And then, like watching a play again, he found himself approaching the sofa, Dr. Fontana and Holtz settling into chairs equidistant from him. He watched himself curl into place on the couch. Colesceau considered himself catlike. He took off his shoes and pulled his feet under his legs as he sat.

Holtz held open a notebook that Colesceau had never once seen him write one letter in. Pen in fat right hand.

Dr. Fontana pulled a tape recorder from her purse and set it on the coffee table. She smiled at him with her halogen teeth. Holtz looked at him.

Careful. Colesceau thought of the fog along the river Olt and the way it hid your thoughts.

It was Dr. Fontana who began. “I think we should start with your general outlook about things, Mr. Colesceau — Moros. Can you tell us how your job and family life are progressing, for instance?”

And it was Colesceau who answered as he watched and listened. “Yes. Very satisfactory to me. My job is retail, automotive parts and supplies. I spend many hours on the computer, to order and check availability. It’s not difficult work, but it spends the hours rapidly.”

Holtz: “He pretty much runs the place, Carla.”

Carla Fontana listened to Colesceau’s faint accent. His diction and syntax were a little off. Romanian, she knew. Colesceau came to the United States as a political refugee with his mother when he eight. By age ten he’d killed six dogs in his Anaheim neighborhood, more suspected. He used Liva-Snaps to get them looking up, then an ice pick to lance their hearts. His mother caught him with the tails saved in a box taped to the frame of his bicycle.

Carla listened and questioned and listened and tried to do her job.

Her instinct was to pity him, but her job was to protect the citizens of Orange County from pathetic little monsters like Moros. Her heart told her he was harmless now, ready to begin a new life. But her brain buzzed with a high-pitched warning that said he might be dangerous... we’ve got to tell his neighbors...

Holtz tried to show no emotion as the interview went on, but all he could really feel for this guy was pity. God knew, he’d met the mother, Helena, and the woman was a hellish crone. No surprise that Matamoros was misshapen as a tumor. But what got to Holtz most was the fact that Helena’s husband had been machine-gunned by Ceausescu’s government police while she and six-year-old Matamoros were forced to watch. When the boy rushed to his father’s body, the police dogs mauled him. Thus political asylum in the United States for Helena and her traumatized son.

Holtz listened and questioned and listened and tried to do his job.