Andrew Vachss - Only Child

“Anybody?”

I let the silence hold for a second, then said, “It’s on Roosevelt Island. The only way I found out, I had a job out there once. But you ask a thousand people in this city, cab drivers to panhandlers, they’ll never have heard of it.”

“Where you going, son?” the Prof asked.

“To the truth, Prof. Just because a man knows something, that doesn’t make him smart. Watch a quiz show on TV sometime. One guy’ll know the first seven kings of Egypt, how many years each one ruled, and where they’re buried. But ask him who Tommy Hearns beat for his first welterweight title, and he’ll draw a total blank.”

“I understand,” Clarence said. “Burke, you are saying it isn’t that these kids would be so smart, smarter than us, even. Just that they know different things. I mean, things we don’t.”

“That’s it. And it would take us a dozen years to learn what they take for granted. Our problem is to get them to tell us. And tell us quick.”

“The Mole will know,” Michelle insisted, after the others had left the restaurant.

“Mole? This isn’t science, girl. It’s...it’s not the kind of thing the Mole does. What’s he going to do, give me some truth serum?”

“Come on, baby,” she said. “What do you have to lose? A couple of hours. Come on. I’ll go with you.”

“You just want a ride.”

“And if I do?”

“So your theory is that they have some sort of...collective knowledge?”

“I don’t think they all know—”

“Collective, not shared,” the Mole said. “Not the same thing. Each molecule is complete by itself, but the interaction between them is what produces energy.”

“I...So you’re saying they may have the information but they don’t know what they know?”

“I think that is what you are saying.”

“Fine. But that doesn’t get me any closer. I need to tap into them, somehow. It’s not enough to be around them, I have to get them talking. Maybe about stuff they wouldn’t usually talk about.”

“If you want to stimulate a reaction from a disparate sampling, you need to isolate common ground.”

“With kids? How in hell would we ever—?”

“I think I know,” Terry said.

We all looked at him. Nobody spoke. He flushed, not used to the spotlight. But he squared up, said, “I’m in science, right?” nodding at the Mole. “But I’m not on another planet. On campus, I know maybe two or three kids who want to write books. And a half-dozen who write poetry, okay?

“But I must know a hundred who’ve already written screenplays. I was talking with a girl at school...” He caught Michelle’s look, reddened even more deeply, but soldiered on. “...and you know what she said? ‘Movies are amazing .’ You see where I’m going?”

I shook my head “No.” Michelle widened her eyes and clasped her hands, the universal girl-signal for “Keep talking.” The Mole’s face was a mask, as if he feared any expression would divert his son.

“ Movies are amazing,” Terry said. “Not any particular movie, just ‘movies.’ That such a thing could even exist. To this girl, whoever invented movies made a greater contribution to civilization than movable type.”

“So what does one airhead have to do with—?”

“She’s no airhead, Mom,” Terry said. “I mean, well, maybe she is, but that...attitude, it’s like, everyone has it. Religious. Movies, they’re something...different from anything else. Some guys, they’re fans of bad movies, and people think that’s way cool.

“Kids blow off some kinds of movies. It’s not, like, edgy to go for those Tom Hanks–Meg Ryan flicks. Extreme uncool. But it’d be like...heresy to put down movies themselves.

“And you know what else?” he said, sure of his ground now. “Everybody wants to be involved with them. It’s not just the performing-arts crowd. Even the suit-and-tie kids, they want to produce movies...or own a studio, or whatever. The techie kids just love them. The stoners. The jocks. Everyone .”

“See?” Michelle said, glowing at her son.

“Is it really you?” the tall, slim blonde asked, cocking her head like a dubious bird. Even that slight movement sent her improbably huge breasts quivering.

“It’s him or his ghost,” the shorter, muscular brunette said, through a mouth that looked like a soft bruise. “Who else would know about what happened to Gresh—?”

“Shut up, Rejji,” the blonde snapped. “You want to tell the world, why don’t you just take out an ad in the papers?”

“Oh, chill,” the brunette replied. And “Come on in,” to me.

I sat down on a canted-back couch, glanced over at the side table, located an ashtray, and lit a smoke. The Burke they knew smoked, and, where they came from, nobody ever broke a habit.

“You’ve got to give us more,” the blonde said.

“Where’ve I heard that before?” the brunette mock-giggled.

“Rejji...”

“All right . Fine. I’ll go gag myself.”

“Bitch.”

The brunette grinned, stuck out her tongue, and runway-walked out of the room.

“What do you want me to show you, Cyn?” I asked the blonde.

“I’m not...sure, exactly. Scars all look alike to me. But I know you...Burke...didn’t have that tattoo on his hand.”

“It’s new,” I said quietly. “Like my face. But I’m still me.”

“Prove it,” the blonde said, vainly trying to cross her arms over her chest. “I don’t mean to sound...ungrateful, or anything. We both...Ah, never mind. Just prove you’re who you say you are, and we’ll do what you want.”

“How do you know what I—?”

“What ever it is,” she cut me off. “Maybe I don’t know your face—the face you have—but I remember what you...what Burke did. So...?”

“You and Rejji are in the—”

“Don’t tell us about us . We already know about us.”

“And you don’t really know anything about me,” I said. “So how am I supposed to...?”

The blonde didn’t say anything. The brunette came back into the living room, fastening a ball gag behind her head the way another woman might adjust a piece of jewelry. She dropped to her knees, pulled the red ball portion away from her mouth, looked up at me, said, “You like me in this shade?”

That’s when the key to their lock dropped into my hand. “Thanks, Rej,” I said. I turned to the blonde. “The last time I was here, you told me I was so vanilla that, if I walked into a room and saw a woman all bound and gagged, the first thing I’d do would be to start looking around for the villain with the black hat and mustache.”

“It’s you,” the blonde laughed, coming over to the couch. She bent down, kissed the side of my mouth.

“You’re the closest thing to movie people I know,” I said, after I told them how I wanted to go in.

“We don’t do mainstream,” Rejji said. “But...well, two things: One, we do what we do for money. So, if anyone paid us, we would; it’s not some artistic thing. Two, movies are movies, I think. They make them all the same way. The budgets are different, maybe. The scripts are for damn sure different. But the process, I think it’s close enough.”

“So you think we could fake it?”

“Fake what?” Rejji asked. “Fake making an adult video? Why would anybody fake that? I mean, how could you tell? Maybe somebody watching it later, maybe they could tell. But when you’re making the movie, you don’t know how it’s going to look. Only how it feels. Sometimes, if it’s no good, not even that.”