William Landay - The Strangler

“You seen this?” Michael nudged a long splinter in one of the floorboards with the toe of his penny loafer. He worked it back and forth until it flaked off. “Look at this.”

“I know. It’s a fuckin’ mess. We’ll fix it in the spring maybe. Come on, let’s go. It’s cold, I’m hungry.”

Michael scowled.

“What’s a matter, Mikey? You got a headache?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t have a problem.”

“You’ve got a puss on.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You do. I’m looking right at it. Puss.”

“I don’t have a puss.”

“You do. I’ll be in in a minute. ”

“Fuck you, Rick.”

“Fuck you, Rick.”

Ricky smirked. The same charmed, blithe, princely grin he’d been deploying since the day he was born, four years after Michael. Ricky had smirked before he even had teeth, as if he knew, even as an infant, that he was no ordinary child.

The gloom Michael was feeling lifted a little, enough that he could shake his head and say “fuck you” again, warmer this time, fuck you meaning stick around.

“Let me bum one of those, Mikey.”

Michael dug the pack of Larks from his pocket, and Ricky lit up using the end of Michael’s cigarette.

“Jesus, would you look at this,” Michael said.

The brothers peered through the window into the dining room, where an enormous red-faced man was taking his place at the head of the table. Brendan Conroy settled back in his chair, made various adjustments to his fork and knife, then shared an inaudible uproarious laugh with Joe Daley, who sat at his left hand.

“Honestly,” Michael said, “I think I’m going to hang myself.”

“Don’t like your new daddy?”

“What ever happened to waiting a decent interval?”

“Dad’s dead a year. How long do you want him to wait?”

“Longer.” Michael considered. “A lot longer.”

Ricky turned away. He took a deep, contented pull on his cigarette and gazed out at the street, at the unbroken line of little houses, all looking drab in the winter twilight. December in Savin Hill. Cars were parked nose-to-tail up and down the street. Soon there would be fights over who owned those spots; around here, shoveling a parking spot was tantamount to buying it for the season. Christmas lights were beginning to appear. Across the street the Daughertys had already put up their five ludicrous plastic reindeer, which were lit from the inside. There had used to be six. Joe had broken one in high school when he came home drunk one night and tried to ride it. The next day Joe Senior had made Joe march across the street and apologize for riding Mr. Daugherty’s reindeer. What he ought to have apologized for was riding Mr. Daugherty’s daughters, which Joe did with the same gleeful droit du seigneur he exercised over all the neighborhood girls. Even Eileen Daugherty, the youngest of the three, took her turn-in Joe’s car, if Ricky was remembering right. That last coupling precipitated a brawl between Joe and Michael, because Michael had loved Eileen ever since kindergarten. He’d imagined that Eileen had somehow defied her genes and was not like that, until Joe set Michael straight, explaining that his conquest of the Daugherty sisters was really a sort of territorial obligation, like Manifest Destiny, and he’d needed Eileen to complete the hat trick, and anyway she had been a screamer. All of which had led Michael to throw himself at Joe, despite Joe’s size, because he couldn’t stop loving Eileen Daugherty even after she had offered herself up to Joe for the ritual goring. Maybe Michael loved her even now, deep down, the memory of her at least. He was that kind of kid. What ever happened to Eileen? Ricky turned back to his brother, “Hey, what ever happened to-?”

But Michael was still engrossed in what was behind the window, a fresher outrage. “Would you look at this? Look at Joe! What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

Inside, Joe Daley and Brendan Conroy were holding up their glasses of pale beer, laughing.

“Look at him, with his head up Conroy’s ass. He’s like a tapeworm.”

“Conroy could use a tapeworm.”

“Really, Rick, the whole thing, it’s just-Doesn’t this bother you?”

“Not really. Hey, what ever happened to Eileen from across the street? You ever hear about her?”

“No.” Michael did not glance away from the window.

Joe’s wife, Kat, came out onto the porch. “Are you guys coming in or you want your supper out here?”

“Michael’s mad.”

“I’m not mad-”

“He thinks Mum’s going to lose her virginity-”

“I didn’t say-”

“-to Brendan.”

Kat thought it over. “Well,” she concluded, “she’ll probably wait till after dinner anyways.”

“There, see?” Ricky smiled. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Come on. In.” Kat herded them inside with a dish towel, and in they went. There was something about Kat-Kathleen-that suggested she wasn’t taking any shit. She was just Joe’s type, big and hippy and good-looking and stolid, and the Daley boys as a rule did not fuck with her.

Michael went in first, wearing a sour-mouthed pucker. Ricky gave him a playful biff on the back of the head, and Kat rubbed his shoulder, both gestures intended to cheer him up.

The house smelled of garlic, and the girls were bustling from the kitchen to the table with a few last things.

Amy sped past: “Hey, Michael. Thought we’d lost you.”

Little Joe passed without a word. Joe’s son, Little Joe, was thirteen and had taken over the title “Little Joe” from his father, who had been Little Joe to his own father’s Big Joe. The Daleys did not believe in Juniors and III’s and IV’s; too Yankee. So each succeeding Joe got a new middle name. The current Little Joe was Joseph Patrick. At the moment he was sulking, Michael had no idea about what.

Margaret Daley, the materfamilias, tweaked Michael about a “disappearing act,” which tipped his mood downward again. Over the years Michael had evolved an exquisite sensitivity to his mother’s voice, so that he could detect the slightest reprimand or disapproval. Margaret was well aware of this sensitivity-Michael was her most finely calibrated son, the quickest to take offense and the slowest to forgive-but Margaret simply did not know how to speak without setting him off, without triggering one of those little sensors, and so she could not help but resent him for being thin-skinned and fragile, though in this respect he reminded her of Joe Senior, another man she’d never quite known, even after sleeping in the same bed with him for thirty-some-odd years. She saw Michael’s face fall when she mentioned his disappearing act. She regretted the comment for a moment, then decided not to regret it. Let him regret it. He was the one who should regret it. Margaret would regret only that Michael might spoil their Sunday dinner with his sulking.

Michael stood behind a seat in the middle of the table, feeling awkward, a guest in the house where he had grown up.

“Sit down.” Conroy grinned. “You’re making me nervous.”

“Yeah, sit down, Michael. What is this?”

Michael looked at Joe, who continued to regard him with a quizzical, supercilious expression that said What is this? Joe was imitating Conroy; that was the insufferable part. Well, Michael sighed, dinner would only last an hour or two. The sooner it started, the sooner it would end. He could already see himself at home looking back on it.

Michael took his place and the others filled in around him. Margaret at the head, opposite Conroy, in the same chair she’d occupied forever. Ricky at the corner opposite Joe, as far from Joe as he could get, to minimize the fighting. Kat positioned herself next to Joe, where she could keep a stern eye on him. Michael liked Kat and liked Joe for liking her. God bless her, Kat would take a bullet for Joe or put one in him, as the occasion required.