Christopher Golden: The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

“Where do you keep the wineglasses?” I asked.

He paused for a moment, and somewhere in his reptile brain a thousand possibilities played out, a thousand choices presented themselves, but there were really only two, and he chose between them without taking a moment to seriously consider the alternative. He looked at my lips, red as blood and glistening from a fresh application of lipstick, and gestured toward one of the cabinets. I took a glass, sat down across from him, and poured. I swirled my glass, took a sip, and then looked at the label.

“So, what?” he asked. “You’re some kind of bad girl?”

“I like wine,” I said. “I prefer old-world reds. You know, big Italian wines, especially anything from Piedmont, but this is pretty good for a California cab.” I took another sip and met his gaze, enjoying astonishment and pleasure, enjoying the distant thrum of gears turning in his mind. “Define ‘bad girl.’ ”

“Come on,” he said. “What are you doing with Neil? You are a beautiful young girl and Neil is … You know.”

I leaned forward, letting my top sag just enough to improve his view. “Tell me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Pete said, staring into my face because he dared not look down my top. “He’s just a loner. He doesn’t have a lot of friends. You must know that. Before you, he didn’t seem to have any friends, and he didn’t seem to mind. As near as I can tell, the other kids don’t pick on him. They hardly even notice him. When we have conferences at school, his teachers need a minute to go through his file, as if they’re trying to remember who he is. Christ, sometimes I come home and see him and remember that I have a son.”

“And you’re telling this to his only friend?”

“It’s crazy,” admitted Pete. “I guess I wonder if maybe you know him, really know him, in some way that Roberta and I don’t. Maybe you can tell me something.” He finished off his glass and poured himself another one. After a moment’s thought, he refilled mine. “I’m sorry. You must be uncomfortable.”

“No,” I said. “I appreciate that you talk to me like I’m a peer. You don’t talk down to me. You expect me to get things. And I do. I get a lot of things.”

“You seem very mature. For a ghoul.”

“Gotta respect the ghoul,” I said.

“Human flesh,” he said.

I smiled. “And disillusionment.”

“Tasty,” he said.

“You’d be surprised.” I met his gaze and held it until he looked away. Then I said, “So, we can be friends, right? We can hang out?”

“Come on.” He leaned away from the table, creating more space between us, not because that’s what he wanted to do, but because it was what he thought he ought to do. He liked the idea of being my friend. He liked the idea of hanging out with me. He hated that he liked the idea, but he liked it all the same.

“No,” I said. “You come on.”

“How exactly is that going to work? You’re in middle school, and you think we can just hang out? I’m forty-five years old,” he said, wanting, more than anything else, to hear that it didn’t matter.

“Forty-five,” I said. “Now that is an awkward age.”

I let the better part of a week go by, but on Thursday I called him on his cell phone, right after school, a good couple of hours before Roberta would be home. “Engineer any good software today?”

“How did you get this number?” he asked.

“I found it in Neil’s phone,” I told him. “I was snooping. I’m very curious.”

“Right,” he said. “I was about to run some errands. You’re lucky to catch me.”

“I am lucky to catch you,” I agreed.

“So, Mason,” he said. “Can I do something for you?”

“What do you have in mind?”

There was a pause. “I mean, are you calling for a reason?”

“Do I need a big reason? I thought we were going to be friends.”

“Mason, this is weird,” he said.

“I know. Right?”

Another pause. “I just don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Are you going to give me a lot of crap about age difference? Are you really that shallow? Because I don’t think you are. I enjoy your company and you enjoy mine, and there is no reason why we can’t be friends other than the fact that, on some abstract level, you think it can be interpreted as weird. And maybe that’s true. Maybe, in general, it is weird for a person as old and feeble and decayed as you to be friends with a bright young fountain of potential like me, but the question is, do you think it is always weird? Do you think it is weird in this particular instance?”

“Wow,” he said. “Have you been practicing that?”

“It just came out, but it sounded awesome, right? I know! I was totally on a roll!”

He laughed. “You make a convincing case.”

“Good, so I’m at home, my mom is not. Why don’t you come over. I’m about to watch this old movie, Showgirls? Have you ever seen it? It’s about strippers or something, and it’s supposed to be so terrible that it’s awesome.” I gave him a few seconds to consider all this. “Join me?”

He took a few seconds himself. “I can’t. I have, uh, errands.”

Is there a way to interpret an invitation to watch a semipornographic film in an empty house as anything other than a come-on? Pete worked hard to find another explanation, because the most obvious one seemed so improbable — and so very much what he wanted — that he found it impossible to accept. Mason did not understand what she was doing. Mason was naive. Mason was so incredibly not interested in Pete that she viewed him as essentially sexless, which meant there was no erotic component in watching a dirty movie with him. One of those things had to be true because the alternative, that sexy young Mason was into him, meant he would have to develop some kind of response. Of course he could not make a move. Any kind of sexual relationship with her was unthinkable — and a crime. If they were caught, it would mean scandal, prison, the destruction of his family. It was also adultery, and despite the chronological fatigue currently buckling the walls of his marriage, Pete loved Roberta, had never cheated on her, and didn’t relish the idea of doing so.

But there were those little nagging questions. Would cheating really be that big a deal? What was cheating — what was it really? Just body parts touching, when you thought about it. Like shaking hands. In the end, what did it really mean? And what if it turned out that he fell in love with Mason? Then shouldn’t he be with her? Statutory rape, as a law, made sense in most cases, but Mason was clearly no ordinary fourteen-year-old. She was a woman, and there was nothing perverted in desiring her since he desired her as a woman, not a child.

He desired her. Yes.

These thoughts ping-ponged through Pete’s mind as he ran his errands, through dinner, through after-dinner television. In the middle of a show he and Roberta always liked to watch together — though they watched it only because she had a crush on one of the actors — Pete got up and went to Neil’s room, knocking once, and then entering when Neil grunted his approval for entry.

Inside the room, Neil sat at his desk, using his mouse and keyboard to lead a knight on a horse across a hilly landscape.

“You have a minute?” Pete asked.

“Okay,” Neil said, not looking up. “I’m supposed to meet someone from my guild in like ten minutes.”

“Sure,” Pete said. He sat on Neil’s bed, which had been made with almost military precision. There was no junk on the floor. His books were put on their shelves in alphabetical order. There were no posters on the walls. It had never occurred to Neil that he might want to personalize his space.