Part 4 (1/2)

But then there's some other force upon him, other arms, belonging to this other person, the pa.s.senger, who has run around the car and is behind him now, pulling.

Robin wriggles sideways, frees himself, and gets a look at this guy: skinny, tiny waist, bony arms. Blond hair the color of Robin's and blue eyes much like his, too. A puffy lower lip and a soft chin. A smooth, hairless face.

Now all three of them are standing in a tense, triangular face-off. ”Calm down, Robin,” Peter says. ”Just calm down.”

”Ohhhh,” the kid says. ”You're Robin Robin.”

”And who the f.u.c.k are you?”

Peter answers for him. ”Douglas is, was, one of my students.”

”Hi, Douglas,” Robin says, his voice calm for a split second before he's shouting, ”What the f.u.c.k are you doing making out with my boyfriend?”

”Ex-boyfriend,” Douglas says.

Robin swings his arm and lunges, ready to smack this boy on the mouth, the mouth that Peter just kissed, but Douglas blocks the blow, grabs Robin's fingers, and twists. There's a struggle for a moment, the two of them intertwined, and then Robin turns the momentum around, getting Douglas's arm in his grip, yanking it behind him. ”Ow!” Douglas shouts.

Peter yells, ”Stop it, Robin, stop it!”

With a rush of force he didn't know he had, Robin pushes Douglas into the street. He watches as Douglas stumbles and falls to the pavement.

There's a sudden glow of headlights, a car approaching from the end of the alley, the sound of tires on asphalt.

Peter rushes to Douglas and pulls him out of the way. The approaching car stops, blinding them with light, not the elevating light of the stage but the overpowering light of interrogation. Robin backs away, but Peter is suddenly on him, spinning him around, shoving him toward the Honda, pinning him facedown against the door. Robin smells the dry dust on the window and the mechanical odors of the engine. The will to struggle seeps away, replaced by the sensation, the vision, of lying in bed on his stomach with Peter on top of him; Peter has just finished f.u.c.king him, the heat still lingering, their bodies compacted and trembling.

Then there's another voice shouting, ”Let him go.” It's George, silhouetted in the headlights. It was George's Cadillac that came down the alley. ”Get off him, Peter.”

”George. Hey...” Peter loosens his hold, but Robin remains against the car, depleted.

George has something in his hands, brandished like a club-it is is a club, it's The Club, the weighty, metal steering-wheel lock that everyone uses these days. a club, it's The Club, the weighty, metal steering-wheel lock that everyone uses these days.

”Oh, my G.o.d,” Douglas says.

George looks over at Douglas, then back at Robin. ”Are you all right?”

Robin nods.

”He's not all right, he's crazy,” Peter says. ”You owe us an apology.”

”Us?” Robin asks.

”I'm calling the police,” says Douglas, standing behind Peter and sucking up snot, wild-eyed, defiant. He's shaking his injured hand. Robin wants to charge at him all over again, land a powerful blow on that pure, pale skin. He feels the strength he is capable of, the harm he could cause. This knowledge of his capacity for violence is old and powerful; it runs through him in a line straighter than a sword. But he stops himself, because he sees the look on Peter's face: mortified, disappointed, maybe even disgusted.

”Why were you kissing him?” Robin asks.

”Why are you even here?” Peter snarls.

”He's obviously stalking you,” Douglas says.

Douglas, you're scrawny and annoying, you have empty eyes and a weak chin. Peter will use you for as long as he wants, he'll f.u.c.k you without a condom and blame you for it, then he'll leave you for someone younger who looks just like you. He doesn't say any of this. The words stay trapped in his throat. He doesn't say any of this. The words stay trapped in his throat.

”George, do me a favor, talk some sense into him,” Peter says.

”No one's doing you any favors,” George says. Firmly, he takes Robin by the arm and says, ”I don't want to be here if the cops show up.”

Robin nods. He understands.

Driving away, Robin feels like they're escaping the scene of a crime, like he's in some movie where you yell to the taxi driver, ”Just go!” without any sense of where to. They pa.s.s through a neighborhood Robin doesn't know: unpopulated, vaguely industrial, marked by chain-link fences, heavy machinery, rubbish at the side of the road. He stares out the window into a desolate, inert night marked by the eerie glow of a rising full moon.

”Did I just make an a.s.s of myself?” Robin asks.

”Now you know what kind of person Peter really is.”

”But what if he wasn't wasn't cheating on me, what if he just ran into this kid at the club and the kiss was some spontaneous-” cheating on me, what if he just ran into this kid at the club and the kiss was some spontaneous-”

”They were in his car,” George says. ”They were at it. at it.”

”So you don't think I overreacted?”

”You were in shock. That can make it difficult to control your impulses.”

”Maybe.” But it doesn't feel like shock as much as its opposite: not something unexpected, but something long dreaded, coming to pa.s.s. Earlier, at the Greek restaurant, Peter made it sound like he wanted to be with someone his own age. Robin knows why Peter lied, and this knowledge is the tip of something sharp poking his skin, jabbing and jabbing, drawing pinp.r.i.c.ks of blood that Robin licks away but can not stanch. The rage that surfaced was bigger than simple anger at Peter and his boy toy. It was the fury Robin holds in check all the time, and has for years and years. He lets some out every now and then, throws something across the room, slams a door hard enough to jiggle the hinges. But not in public, not with his fists.

George says, ”The only other time I saw you lose it like that was a long time ago. After your brother died, after the funeral.”

Robin looks at him. ”Jackson's funeral? You were there?”

”Yeah, I was there!”

”I don't remember that day too well.”

”I was hanging out with Ruby and some kids from school. We all saw it: You got in a fight with your cousin. You looked like you were gonna asphyxiate him.”

Memories of Jackson's funeral exist in fragments: a Catholic ma.s.s, a limousine ride to the cemetery, their house full of people, all those neighborhood women carrying covered dishes, his mother in an expensive black dress. And then, yes, fighting with obnoxious Cousin Larry on the roof outside Robin's bedroom window. How did they wind up on the roof? How did Robin's fingers wind up squeezing Larry's neck? Or was it the other way around? Had it been Larry who was choking him? Robin holds some sensation in his body: his own breathing is too short, too shallow, his head is burning up.... For days after the funeral, Robin lay in bed with a fever that spiked so high it nearly put him in the hospital. The illness had the effect of erasing what happened, so that images of that day now rise up and veer off without warning, like bits of a dream, impossible to grasp. He can't at all picture George there, though of course he would have been. A lot of kids from school came. It was a big deal in Greenlawn: a local kid in an accident, in a coma, dead at age ten. ”Coma Boy,” that's what they used to whisper about Jackson in the halls of Greenlawn High. Robin was Coma Boy's Brother.

Remembering this, his heart races. His throat goes dry. The idea of Jackson's birthday looming tomorrow dredges up pain from deep inside, not the pain of grief or loss but the pain of blame, of responsibility. He was there when it happened, the accident that started everything. They were fighting on the playground slide, Robin and Ruby and Larry and Jackson, a confusing scuffle that ended with Jackson tumbling to the pavement and landing on his head.

He says, ”It's like I was some other person.” George reaches over and ruffles the back of Robin's hair, rubs his neck, grips the tendons.

Robin breathes into the force, banis.h.i.+ng the image of Jackson's fall, as he always eventually does. ”I'm sorry you had to see that. With Peter.”

George allows himself a smile. ”I'm glad I did.”

Robin sees admiration on George's face, and there's more to it than just George's loathing of Peter. It's like yesterday at the restaurant, George smiling while Robin opened that wine bottle on the floor. It's a little bit dangerous, being appreciated for being wild, for the ways you break the rules. With a start, Robin realizes how far they've come from their early days of talking current events in study hall and riding the subway to Grandma Lincoln's. Nor is George's reaction here some methodical, unemotional response, like after Robin first came out to him. He's changed; they've changed each other. Peter is back there somewhere, turning into the past, and George is right here at his side, as he's been all along.

Robin realizes he needs to say something more. ”Hey, I'm sorry for before, when you came back from your date? You were feeling bad, and I tried to make a joke. And then I tricked you into bringing me to that club.”