The Children(73)

He holds her there firmly, beard scraping her hair as he asks anodyne questions about what she likes. What books, songs, movies? Does she like any boys yet? He’s sure they like her. The heat of his body fills her limbs like an awful sedative.

Then her father is there. He lifts her carefully free and hits the man hard in the ear, palm cupped like a Dickensian brawler. The heel of it marks the man’s cheekbone as cleanly as a stripe of paint. Everyone pauses to watch, and at the same moment the record on the turntable ends.

Silence. It pours like bleach over the party, like honest sun. The man with the black beard hurries toward the doorway, her father lumbering after.

Somebody fumbles the next record into place. The needle drops, the room fills with music. And everyone forgets.





Thirty-Eight

2003




Edith was working. Smoking, typing, talking to herself, set off by the slightest sound. When she wrote she was as sensitive as a migraineur. Llewellyn was holed up in Art Church, painting, maybe. Or—entertaining.

Guinevere and Ennis had eaten all the cocktail olives and the Pop-Tarts and the cheddar on Ritz. They’d drunk the dregs of flat tonic, the devil’s soda pop. You could ask Llewellyn to go to the store and he’d say yes, but he might take days to actually get there.

“Come on,” Ennis said, stoic. “We have to learn to live off the land eventually.”

The day had a jumpy quality to it. Flickering, shifting, clouds moving so fast across the sun you could watch the shadows come and go on your skin. They’d just stepped into the trees when something flicked at Guinevere’s shoulder blades. The approach of some airborne malice. She turned.

A man in a Bonnie Raitt T-shirt and a shaved head was pelting over the grass, camera to his eye, snapping away. They froze. They must have, long enough for him to get one good shot.

“Leave us alone!” Ennis yelled.

“Suck my dick, little prince,” the man said easily, snapping away. “Hey, blondie. Look at me, honey. Damn, you’re pretty. Aw, come on, you’re not gonna cry.”

He had no face. His face was black plastic with a flashing Cyclops eye, spitting insect sounds. Guinevere threw peaches at him. He laughed and dodged and called out taunts, until Ennis took something from his pocket and pointed it at the sky.

Pop

“Holy shit!” The camera dropped. The face behind it was thin and startled, jaw shadowed blue like a comic-book detective’s.

The gun in Ennis’s hand was petite, with a pretty inlaid handle. The kind of thing Ava Gardner might’ve carried next to her lipstick. He pointed it at the photographer’s face. “Get off my land.”

“Jesus, that’s an actual gun.” His voice hopped an octave. “What are you, ten?”

Ennis panted a couple times before he could answer. “I said, get off my land.”

The man shook his head as he backed away. “You poor little fuckers. You don’t even know yet how messed up you are. Creepy little hayseed hicks.” He stumbled on grass, recovered. “I’ll watch out for news of your overdose, son. And you.” Palms pressed, camera between them, he gave Guinevere an ironic bow. “I look forward to your pornography career.”





Thirty-Nine

2003




It wasn’t accurate to say Guinevere didn’t think of that day again, or that man. It was just that she believed the mark he left was in a place no one else would see.

Two months after Ennis shot a gun at the sky, she woke early and trudged down the stairs. She was thinking over the ending of a book she’d read. If she hadn’t been so distracted she would’ve noticed the ominous odor of Swisher Sweets, or seen, through the fan window over the front door, the red slash of a parked BMW. As it was, she made it all the way into the kitchen before realizing she wasn’t alone.

“Morning,” Jonathan Froud said pleasantly.

In one hand he held his usual cigarillo, in the other a coffee cup. In front of him was a stack of printed pages, which meant he was reading a book he was editing or might acquire. Not one of Edith’s; she didn’t let him read her work in the house.

Sometimes when Guinevere and Ennis went wild swimming they found themselves stroking through a pocket of concentrated cold. Swam through a ghost! they’d yell. This phenomenon could happen on land. That kind of chill—immersive, reptilian—could emanate from a person.

Jonathan was middling height, slender, with thinning blond hair that curled Byronically over his brow. His eyes were sharp and unnervingly pale, the rest of his features the work of a quick-sketch artist: flat lines, vague curves. His hands were always in his pockets, those clever eyes always watching. He’d perfected the art of the uncomfortable silence, into which a person might drop anything.

“Morning,” she muttered, pulling down a box of cereal. Her favorite bowl was striped with dried yogurt. She ran water into it and scraped at the yogurt with her nails. Jonathan’s gaze pressed at her neck.

“Mind bringing me the coffeepot, dear?”

It was right there beside the sink. She carried it over and plunked it onto the table without looking at him, then felt angry at herself when he hooked one cool hand around her wrist. His cigarette burned away just over her skin.

“How does it feel, then, to be so famous?”