The Pet

by Charles L. Grant

  It wasn't right. He was acting like a fool, knew it, and couldn't do anything about it. He was beginning to regret his rash invitation; yet between classes he loitered near the doors as long as he dared, trying to get a glimpse of Tracey, just nod to her casually, give her a knowing smile, and remind her with a look of their date this week.

  He didn't see her.

  By Friday noon he hadn't seen her once close enough to give the signal and he became convinced she was avoiding him, ashamed because she couldn't think of a decent excuse to get out of their date. He knew, beyond question, there would be a message for him when he got home—she had a headache, she had to do her hair, she had to go back to her grandmother's on Long Island and they were leaving again right after school. By the end of his last class he was ready to believe that Brian had put her up to accepting, another classic gag on the stupid Duck, and since he was who he was, it didn't make any difference if his feelings were hurt.

  As he stowed his books in his locker, he almost cried; as he started for the side exit and a run around the track, he almost screamed Tracey's name. But he didn't. That was a rule too—it was all right for his mother to shout, to cry, but it wasn't all right for him. Or his father. Hold it in and work it out, his father had told him; hold it in and work it out. That's what a man does.

  Hold it in.

  Work it out.

  And it wasn't until he was halfway down the steps to the gym that he remembered today was the last day of his detention.

  The hell with it; he wasn't going to go. There was no way he was going to sit one more day in a stuffy room staring at the ceiling while his whole life was slipping away between his fingers. He gripped the railing and continued down, slower now, listening to his heels crack on the iron tips of the steps. No; he had to run. He had to think. And to think, he had to run.

  "Don?"

  His father was on the bottom landing with Gabby D'Amato, the head custodian. He glanced at his watch, then raised an eyebrow over a faintly amused look.

  "You forget something?"

  His face grew hot, and he almost told his father to shove it, to take the detention and cram it because it wasn't deserved and he didn't do it and who the hell was he to play God with his life?

  Why the hell, he wanted to shout, didn't the old man get the hell off his back and put the pressure on someone else for a change.

  He wanted to.

  He almost did.

  Until he thought about what it would be like when he got home, what his mother would say, how his father would treat him.

  Hold it in; work it out.

  Shit, he thought; oh, shit.

  So he gave his father a sheepish smile and headed back to his locker to get something to read. Below, he heard the two men talking, laughing quietly, Norman's slap of the hunkered old man's shoulder. If the black horse were here, he thought as he pushed into the hall, he'd smash them into the wall without a second thought.

  Dinner was almost like the good old days. His father was in a great mood, his mother chatted excitedly about the committee meeting at the high school that night, and he managed not to tell them about what had happened after detention.

  First it had been Tar and Brian.

  They were on their way to practice and had wedged him into a corner, slapping his shoulder and punching him lightly on the arm.

  "Hey, fucker," Tar said, his mood as black as his hair, "you trying to get us in trouble?"

  "What?"

  Brian, who thought that his rugged playing-field-bashed face and close-cropped blond hair made him look like a marine, took hold of his belt and yanked him closer. "Your daddy had a talk with us, sonny. He said we shouldn't do things like stink up Hedley's room anymore."

  Oh, Christ, Don thought; oh, Christ.

  "Now, he didn't do nothing," Tar said, grinning to show Don a mouth filled with nicotined teeth, "but he did say he'd keep an eye on us, didn't he, Brian?"

  "Damn right."

  "Now look, guys," Don said, and gasped when a stiff finger jabbed into his stomach.

  "No," Brian said. "You look, Duck. You look good, because Tar baby and me, we don't forget. And we sure as shit don't forgive."

  They grinned and stepped away, and as they moved toward the door, Brian looked over his shoulder. "Watch your back, Duck. I'm gonna bust it, and I ain't telling you when."

  After they left, Falcone came up to him, frowning. "You having trouble with the boys, Donald?"

  "No, sir."

  "Oh, good." And he handed him his test paper and said with a smile, "For you, Boyd, just for you." A look at his grade and he groaned—passing, but just barely.

  The red had come then.

  The familiar red that took him when he started to lose his temper (hold it in), the red cloud that whirled around him and threatened to suck the ground from under his feet and left only when he forced himself to remember the rule (work it out). But this time it was hard. Hedley and Mrs. Klass had been lecturing him all week during detention on his responsibilities, on his daydreaming, on the slip of his grades. And now this.

  It lasted only a moment, and when the red left, he was leaning against the wall, trembling, and Falcone was gone.

  Now dinner was fun, and he didn't mention that test paper for fear he'd be grounded for the rest of his life. Nor did he say anything about Brian and Tar. Norman would only tell him he'd simply handed them a friendly warning; he wouldn't believe that one of these days Don was going to pay for his father's big mouth.

  He showered after dessert, washed his hair, and nearly cried when he couldn't locate a clean pair of jeans right away. A quick whisper to the horse about the girl he was seeing and a wish that he not make a complete fool of himself-and he touched the animal's nose for luck. A shirt with a pullover sweater, shoes generally worn on Sundays, and he was finally in the foyer checking his wallet when his father came out of the kitchen munching on an apple.

  "Out with the boys, huh?" Norman said.

  "No," his mother called gaily from the kitchen. "I think he has a date."

  "He does? No kidding."

  "No," his mother said. "Really."

  Don felt as if he had been rendered invisible and shifted to recapture his father's attention. "Yeah," he said, stepping back for approval.

  "Going to a movie. Maybe to Beacher's for something after. I don't know. She has to be back by midnight."

  "Ah, Cinderella," his mother said, laughing, and he wondered how her hearing had gotten suddenly so acute.

  "Who is it?" Norman asked, his hand magically holding a ten-dollar bill when Don turned back from the coat closet with his windbreaker in hand.

  "An advance on your allowance," he explained when Don hesitated. "Hell, why not. Anyone I know?"

  "Probably," he said, slipping on the coat and opening the door. "Tracey Quintero."

  "Quintero?" Norman frowned for a moment. "Oh! Oh, yes, yes. Little Italian girl. In your class. A senior."

  "Spanish, Dad. She's Spanish. Her father's from Madrid. He's a cop."

  "Oh. Well."

  "Remind him about tonight, Norm," Joyce called over the rush of water from the faucet.

  Don waited, smiling, while his father rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

  "You remember the meeting, right?"

  "Right." He grinned. "And I know if I'm home before you are, the key's in the garage if I've lost mine, and I'd better be home before you are or I'll be in deep ... trouble."

  Norman grinned and slapped his arm. "Just watch it, okay? Don't give your mother hysterics by being too late."

  Joyce called out something else, but it was drowned in a louder roar from the garbage disposal, and he nodded quickly to his father, was answered with a wink, and left as fast as he dared. He knew that look on the man's face it came when Norman thought it was time to have a man-to-man talk, usually when one or the other had only five minutes to get where they were going. And usually it was aborted before the first sentence was done.

  God, that was close
, he thought, shook himself dramatically and waved to his mother, who was standing in the living room window drying her hands, Norman at her side. They always did that, waiting as if he were going off to war; and if he didn't get back first, they would be there when he returned, slightly drunk from the bourbons they'd had while watching TV.

  Waiting for their baby.

  But tonight, if he were lucky, they would have had a good meeting—teacher , public officials, and the Ashford Day committee—and won't be stiff from a fight.

  Can it, he ordered then. This wasn't the time to be thinking about them when he had himself to worry about what to say, how to say it, how to impress Tracey without tripping over his tongue. His usual dates weren't really dates at all but a gathering of forces down at Beacher's Diner next to the theater. It might have been a real diner once, but now it was more like a restaurant with a counter in front. Weeknights it closed at nine; weekends it catered to the movie crowd and the teens, and more often than not six or seven of them would troop into the theater together.

  On the other hand, when he was alone with a girl he was lucky if he could think of a dozen coherent words to say between the time he picked her up and the time he brought her home.

  He checked his watch under a streetlight and broke into a lazy trot.

  Tracey lived seven blocks down and two over, and he didn't want to be late. He only hoped that her father was on night shift this time; the man scared him to death. He was short, built like a concrete barrel, and if he ever had a good word to say about anyone under forty, Don had yet to hear it.

  Please, God, he pleaded as he turned into her block; please don't let Sergeant Quintero be there.

  And as he walked up to the door, he checked to be sure his fingernails were clean.

  "I swear to god," Brian said, his voice overriding the others sitting at the counter with him. "I mean, they were out to here!" He stretched out his arms, curved his hands back, and flexed his fingers. "To frigging here, for god's sake."

  There were a few sniggers, some groans, and Joe Beacher in his stained apron and squashed chef's cap scowled until Pratt shrugged an apology for the language.

  The front section of the diner was a long counter with eighteen stools and five jukebox terminals, and nine small tables arranged in front of the wall-long window; there was only one waitress and Joe Beacher himself, who knew he belonged in front, rough-dressed, and not in back wearing a suit. The decor was Formica and aluminum, with a round-faced clock on the wall beside the door, above an array of posters announcing upcoming charitable events, rummage sales, and the Ashford Little Theater's latest program. A wide passage straight from the entrance ran past the cash register to the larger dining room in back, where the walls were paneled in pine and had watercolor landscapes depicting each of the seasons. The tables were larger, were wood, and the menus were tucked into red leather binders; three waitresses here, and Joe's brother-in-law in a black suit that passed for gentility and a bit of class. Just now the room was nearly filled as families and high-spending seniors hurried to finish their meals in time for the nine-fifteen show; and despite the Jekyll-and-Hyde appearance, the food was about the best in town.

  Don stood just over the threshold, Tracey behind him, and he hesitated until she poked his back. A quick smile and he stepped aside, let her pass, and followed her to a small round table in the center of the diner's front window. When he held the chair for her, there were whistles from the counter; when he sat, Pratt cupped his hands around his mouth and made a loud farting noise.

  Don winced and there was laughter and more when his cheeks flushed a faint pink.

  "Damn," he muttered under his breath, and Tracey smiled at him, telling him silently to ignore it as she handed him a plastic-coated single-page menu from behind the napkin dispenser. He inhaled slowly and nodded, and scanned the offerings though he knew them by heart.

  "Hey, Don," said Tar Boston, spinning around on his stool, "a good flick or what?"

  He didn't know, though he said it was all right, nothing great, lots of blood, shooting, stuff like that. He didn't know because he had been too busy sneaking sideways looks at Tracey, debating whether to try to hold her hand, or put his arm around her shoulder, or even to steal a kiss.

  He had known her for years but had never been out with her alone; he had confided in her as a friend ever since junior high, but when she slipped off her jacket and he saw that she had, under all those clothes, an honest-to-god figure, he didn't know what to do. This wasn't Tracey the friend any longer; this was Tracey the woman, and suddenly he didn't know which rules to follow.

  The realization that things had changed without his knowing it made him miserable throughout the film, seeing nothing, hearing little, though he could have told anyone who asked exactly how many lines there were at the corner of her right eye, how high the white collar of her shirt reached toward her ear, how the intricate twirls and tucks of her hair related to each other as they brushed back toward her nape.

  Brian hummed the school song mockingly, loudly, then leapt from his stool and stretched as he announced it was time for the real men to head next door, to see how Dirty Harry compared unfavorably with the Pratt.

  Groans again, and only Tar strutted with him to the door, their dates hustling out behind them. Fleet and his girl, Amanda, stopped by the table and asked again about the film.

  "Boring," Tracey said. Then she winked at Amanda, "Unless you're into Eastwood."

  Amanda clung to Fleet's arm and feigned a swoon, and was rewarded with a slap to her rump for her troubles.

  Don laughed and relaxed a bit, and wondered aloud what the coach would think of his three top players staying out so late the night before a game.

  "The man," Fleet said, "just doesn't realize that an athlete who is so smooth and graceful like myself needs a bit of relaxation and stimulation before the impending onslaught in the trenches." He grinned.

  "How 'bout them words, huh? Mandy makes me do crossword puzzles in bed."

  Amanda slapped his back, hard, and a brief scowl crossed his face before he laughed with the others and made his way to the door. As it hissed shut behind him, he stuck his head back in and winked broadly at Don, circling thumb and forefinger and making a fist with his free hand.

  Don grinned back, and sobered as soon as Robinson was gone. This was a disaster, and for the first time in ages he wished the guys had stuck around. Even the teasing he'd get would be better than sitting here like a dummy, playing with the salt shaker, rearranging the silverware and paper place mat, finally folding his hands on the table as if doing penance in the third grade.

  "Are you all right?" Tracey asked. "You've been awfully quiet since we left the house."

  He ducked his head and shook it. "Fine. I'm okay, no problem."

  "It was a lousy movie."

  "Yeah."

  "My father scared you, didn't he?"

  He looked up without raising his head and was pleasantly surprised to see the distress in her eyes. He couldn't deny it, however; Luis Quintero had scared the shit out of him, standing there, in uniform, in the middle of the living room and reading him, quietly, the that's-my-baby-and-don't-you-forget-it riot act: do not mess with her, do not corrupt her, do not get her drunk, do not bring her back a second late, do not show yourself in this house again if you as much as breathe on a single hair of her head. Then he had shaken Don's hand solemnly and walked out of the room, leaving him to wonder what the hell had happened to make the man so unpleasant.

  Tracey told him it was the Howler. It had taken her an hour to convince him Don wasn't the killer, that his father was the principal, for crying out loud, and that she wasn't going to have to enter a convent just because she went out with a boy.

  "Does ... does he do that all the time?" he asked finally.

  She sighed, and nodded. "If he's home when I go out, yes. Mother just stands there and holds her hands like she's going to cry any minute. If they had their way, my Aunt Theresa would be my duenna, for h
eaven's sake."

  He didn't know whether to say he was sorry or not, but she saw the sympathy and covered his hand with hers, squeezed it, and drew it back slowly.

  "So," she said explosively, "what'll we talk about?"

  He didn't know, but they must have talked about something because the waitress and the food came and went, and the next thing he knew he was standing in front of her house, holding her hand and wishing she didn't have to visit her grandmother again the next day.

  Then they could keep on walking, from one end of town to the other, laughing at the displays in the shop windows, making words from the three letters on the license plates they could catch, and trading notes on teachers they had in common. He said nothing about the biology grade.

  She mentioned the Howler only once, when they passed a corner bar and saw a pair of dingy men sitting with their backs against its wall, brown bags in hand. One was snoring, the other watching them intently, sneering as they walked by. They saw a third derelict at the next corner, but he ignored them, being too busy scrubbing his grizzled face dryly with his hands.

  Tracey had guessed that any one of them could be the kid killer, and he thought they were too weak-looking; this guy, this nut, had to be massive to do what he did to his victims.

  "My father," she said, "is shorter than you, and he can break the handle of a shovel over his knee when he's mad enough."

  That's when she had taken his hand, and that's when the fun and the conversation had stopped.

  "Well," she said, looking at the small house separated from its neighbors by paved alleyways leading to postage-stamp backyards.

  "Yeah."

  She stood in front of him and looked up. Shadows drifted over her face and made it soft, smooth, and he couldn't help but touch a finger to her cheek.

  God, her skin was soft.

  "Have a good time tomorrow," was the only thing he could say.

  She pouted. "Yeah, great. I'd rather go to the game."

  She leaned closer, stared at him, then raised herself up and kissed him.

  "See you Monday."

  She was up the stairs and through the door before he could think to kiss her in return, and he walked with his hands in his pockets and the tip of his tongue flicking out to test each part of his lips, to taste her, to remember, and finally to realize that she hadn't promised to call him, or perhaps see him on Sunday.