Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

"Right," Randy says. "You think Tracey is in the Thurman house."

"I only know that I won't be able to live with myself if I guessed right that someone's in there and I didn't do anything about it."

My intention is to leave, but my legs aren't folowing orders. I'm standing by the window, arms crossed, waiting for my engine to start.

"You sound just like Ben," Randy says.

"You don't think I know that?"

"And we remember how that turned out."

"Yes. We remember," I say. "But was he wrong?"

Something in the force of these words lubricates my joints, and I'm launched toward the door. But Randy beats me to it.

"You figure Thiessen's Hardware is stil open out on King?" he says. "Because I'm guessing neither of us packed gloves and flashlights."

Randy suggested we wait to go in at midnight. Yet when I pointed out that it got dark at seven this time of year and asked what was to be gained by waiting around another five hours, he had no answer, other than "Isn't this the sort of stuff you do at midnight?"

We're up in Ben's room, passing around a mickey of Lamb's that Randy picked up on the way over. It helps. The rum's warmth lends some humour to the situation.

We are nothing more than a pair of grown men contemplating a harmless stunt. The hiring of a stag-party stripper or cocooning the groom's car in toilet paper.

"Did you like it?" Randy asks after a couple swalows. "The whole nightclub business. Was it what you wanted?"

"It was very profitable for a time."

"I'm not asking about that:"

"I know you're not." Randy passes the bottle and I take a swalow. "Okay. This is going to sound ridiculous."

"And what we're doing tonight isn't?"

"I think I worked so hard the past fifteen years to build something I could hide behind," I say. "People think anybody who runs a place like mine is in it for the girls or the dope or having people stop to look as you drive by in your Merc with the personalized Retox plates. But honestly, I didn't realy care about any of that."

"Doesn't sound too bad to me."

"It wasn't. It was neither good nor bad, nor anything. It was just this thoughtless, gleaming, perfect skin I could wear."

I hold the Lamb's out to Randy, who takes a glug. And then another.

"It's a funny thing," he says. "But I think I was trying to do the exact opposite."

"How's that?"

"Al this time I've been working to take my skin off Show what lies beneath. Which might sound like drama school crap, but I believed it."

"You didn't seem to take it too seriously."

"But I did. ," he says, passing the bottle back to me. '"Just act normal.' Remember?"

"Acting was more than just a job for you? That what you're saying?"

"It wasn't a job at al. In fact, it's the job part that I hate."

"Or not getting the job."

"Yes. That sucks too."

I try to screw the cap back onto the bottle, but my fingers aren't cooperating, so I take another drink instead and leave it open.

"I've never understood something about the whole drama thing," I say.

"What?"

"Are actors faking being someone else or opening up what they already are?"

"The lousy ones—the ones like me-—are just making faces and saying lines they memorized. The good ones become."

"Become what?"

"Something new out of something they've always been."

Randy appears reflective, and at first I suspect it is the beginning of a routine, a comic mask of seriousness he's put on to set a mood before delivering the punchline.

But when he speaks next, it doesn't sound anything like humour.

"You know what the worst part of getting old is?"

"Old?" I say. "We're only forty, Randy."

"Don't give me that 'only forty' bulshit. Because I know you know what I'm talking about."

"Okay, you got me. What's the worst part?"

"Realizing you haven't done a goddamn thing with your life."

"There's only so many Nobel Prizes to go around."

"It doesn't have to be that big. Nobody else even needs to know about it other than you. It just has to be, I don't know, remarkable."

"There's stil time."

"I don't think so," Randy says, and the lost look in his eyes is suddenly real, a joke-repelent sadness. "That's al I've wanted since I left this place. To do one smal, remarkable thing. It could have changed everything."

"Changed you, you mean?"

"Everything."

Outside, the wind blows night over the town. A grey sand that settles on the roof shingles and in the crooks of tree limbs. Randy is watching it come when he asks, for the first time out loud, a question I have asked myself a thousand times before.

"Who is he?" he says.

"I don't know."

"What do you think he wants?"

"I've got a theory on that one."

"Shoot."

"More."

"More what?"

"Whatever it is someone might be able to give him. More of themselves."

"The worst part of themselves."

"Exactly."

"It's like he pushes you."

"And he does it by pretending he knows you," I say. "He's almost sympathetic , you know? We're all flawed, all have impure thoughts, no big deal. So let's have some fun. He makes it feel like the two of you are best friends."

"Except he actualy hates you," Randy says. "He hates you, and he wants you to rot and hate in there with him."

It's night now. Dinnertime, though it could be any of the long hours between now and the reluctant October dawn. This, and our talk of the boy, has chiled the previous ilusion of good humour and left us stone-faced and cold, wishing for homes we haven't known for half a lifetime.

"This was my idea, so I guess I ought to lead the way," I announce finaly, working my way to the top of the attic stairs. For the time it takes me to reach the second-floor landing, I can't hear any steps behind me and figure Randy has decided to stay behind. Yet when I look back he is there.

"Night, Mrs. McAuliffe," I cal through her closed bedroom door as we pass.

"You boys try to stay out of trouble!"

"In Grimshaw?"

"Oh, you can find trouble just about anywhere if you're looking for it," the old woman says, and from under the door, the light from her bedside lamp retreats into shadow.

Just as we crossed Caledonia Street with the intention of entering the Thurman house when we were sixteen, we don't even try the front door, and instead prowl along the hedgerow to the back. On our way, I measure the side windows that look into the living room, half expecting to stil see the fuckt drawn into the dust. But there is no message there at al now except for the streaks of condensation that have left lines over the glass like tear stains.

The backyard is the same as I remember it, if smaler. The rusted swing set and see-saw built for dwarves, the fence around the lot that looks like even I could heave myself over it if I came at it with a little speed.

And then we look up at the back of the house, and it seems to have grown over the second we took our eyes off it. The brick arse of the place looming over where we stand, the windows unshuttered and lightless. The headless rooster weather vane spinning left, then right, then back again, as though trying to decide which way offers the best route for escape.

"It's just the same as every other place along this street," Randy whispers. "So why is it the only one that's so friggin' ugly?"

"Because it's not the same as every other place," I answer, and start toward the back door.

Start, then stop. Wait for Randy to take my arm for a few steps when my legs refuse to carry me any closer.

"You okay?" he asks, and with my nod, he goes in.

Which leaves me on my own. And I'm turning around. Ready to get as far from the bad smel that exhales from the open doorway as my feet are prepared to take me.