26 THE YOUNG PSYCHOPATH AT HOME

26

THE YOUNG PSYCHOPATH AT HOME

On that Monday in the previous August, Vida parks in a lay-by and walks the last quarter of a mile to the Slyke house.

Although she takes no pride in Nature's gift, she knows men find her exceptionally attractive. She doesn't need to have attended public school to understand what fantasies preoccupy self-absorbed teenage boys like Morgan. She's wearing a white T-shirt, no bra, faded-denim cutoffs, and pale-blue sneakers with white ankle socks. With her hair tied in a ponytail, she is able to pass for a high-school senior, and she feels confident that she can conduct herself like one well enough to support her impersonation. To the best of her knowledge, the kid has never seen her before.

Vida climbs the porch steps, rings the bell, waits, and rings it again. Just as she wonders if the boy has gone out while she's been en route, the door opens.

Morgan is barefoot and shirtless, in a pair of faded jeans. His tousled hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and soft mouth suggest that he has been rung out of bed by the doorbell and isn't yet fully awake.

Imagining how a cheerleader might speak to the school's star quarterback, Vida says, "Hey, hi, I'm Connie Cooper. We moved in up the road. I thought I'd introduce myself."

He regards her with bewilderment, wiping a hand down his face as if to strip off a cobweb he walked through. "Introduce yourself?"

"Yeah, you know, 'cause we're neighbors and all. Like a mile or so up the road, but there aren't a lot of right-next-door neighbors around here. Says ‘Slyke' on your mailbox. What's your first name?"

He still seems puzzled, uncertain, but the clouds lift a little when he looks her up and down in a slow, bold assessment. When his gaze returns to her eyes, he says, "Morgan Slyke."

"Cool name. My favorite breed of horse is the Morgan. I had one before we moved here. He was so beautiful. And really strong."

That is all a lie, but she hasn't come here with the intention of telling any truths.

He looks past her, toward the driveway. "Where's your wheels?"

"I walked. I walk a lot. I just got some county trail maps. Looks like great hiking territory. I like to stay in shape."

"You said your name," he remembers.

"Connie Cooper. Friends call me Ceecee." He looks as though he'll stand here all day in a state of stupefaction, so Vida tries to finesse her way inside with a come-on. "You're in great shape. Driving into town for this or that, I've seen you in the yard, seen you working out. Are you on the football team? I'll be a senior at Long Valley High this fall." She can't tell if he's dubious or just has a slow computer between his ears. When he wipes one hand down his face again, she realizes he's wasted on something—at nine o'clock in the morning. "I failed a grade," she adds, "'cause of some bad shit I got into. Can't wait to be done with the school thing."

He stands a little taller. "Teachers was done with it years ago. They don't give a shit. Now it's all about nothin' but doin' time, them and us."

"That's for sure the truth."

"Doin' time."

When he fails to invite her inside, she says, "Maybe I can say hello to your folks."

"Like introduce yourself."

"Yeah."

"Nobody home but me."

She cocks her head. "So why am I standing out here on the porch? You afraid of me, Morgan Slyke?"

He rises out of his fog enough to smile. "I think maybe I could be." He steps back. "You maybe want to come in for some breakfast, Ceecee?"

Entering the house, she says, "You cook?"

"Monday breakfast is special. Monday breakfast isn't about cookin' anything." He closes the door and heads back along the hallway.

Following him, she says, "What's Monday breakfast about?"

The kitchen decor is calculated country. The knotty-pine table has four captain's chairs with tie-on green cushions.

"Warm a chair," he says. From a cabinet he extracts two tall glasses and puts them on the table. "I celebrate with mimosas."

"What're you celebrating?"

"Monday." He opens the refrigerator. "Monday is my day of celebration." He takes a carton of orange juice from the door and brings it to the table.

"Why Monday?" she asks.

"Weekends are for makin' money. Mondays are for doin' what I make money for."

Pouring half a glass of orange juice for each of them, she says, "Where do you work weekends?"

"All around," he says as he opens an under-the-counter wine cooler and extracts a bottle of chilled champagne. "I work all around, here and there, wherever there's my kind of work to do."

"What kind of work is that?"

"The kind of work pays big but you don't break a sweat."

"How many guesses do I get?"

"How many guesses do you get?"

"To name what work you do," she says.

"I already told you what work."

"I get it. You're a man of mystery."

He likes the sound of that. "Exactly! I'm a man of mystery, Ceecee Cooper." He picks up a dish towel from beside the sink.

At the table again, he falls silent, attempting to open the champagne. The wire hood caging the cork is a simple fixture, but he struggles with it before stripping it off and throwing it aside with a snarled curse. He's in no condition to operate heavy machinery.

He pulls the cork. A large volume of thick, white foam gushes from the mouth of the bottle and down the neck into the dish towel.

Morgan grins at her. "That's the same how it looks like when I get off."

"You're bragging now," she says as he pours champagne.

From a bread box, he retrieves a package of cinnamon buns topped with icing and pecans. He tears it open and puts it on the table.

He sits across from her. They clink glasses and sip mimosas.

"What'll your mom and dad say about the champagne?"

"They don't say nothin' to me about my Mondays or nothin' else. They know better."

"You gotta tell me how I get a deal like that with my parents. They're always at me about something or other."

"You want to know?"

"I need to know."

"Two things. First, they gotta be afraid of you. So afraid they put a deadbolt on their bedroom door so they can sleep. Second, they gotta know it's not going to be forever, you're gonna get out, never come back."

"Your parents are really afraid of you?"

"They better be."

"How do you pull that off?"

"They don't make rules, I don't make trouble. It's been that way now for like three years."

As Morgan plucks a cinnamon roll from the package, Vida asks, "Weren't you afraid they'd send you somewhere to be rehabilitated?"

When he laughs, he unconsciously squeezes the roll, and some of it crumbles across the table. "See, I made up this story how my old man has been molestin' me since I was five years old, and how she knew but let him do it. Rehearsed the hell out of it, gave them a performance. I was so convincin', they're scared shitless I might walk into that stupid damn church of theirs one Sunday and shout it out, every nasty detail, overturn their borin' lives, the reputations that matter so much to them."

When Morgan bites off half the roll and chews vigorously, Vida says, "You really despise them."

Speaking with his mouth full, he says, "Why shouldn't I?"

"Did they beat you?"

He swallows noisily. "Shit, no. Those two feebs wouldn't dare touch me. Wouldn't dare. "

"I mean, when you were little."

"They brought me into this sick world, didn't they? That's enough to hate them, don't you think?"

"The world is screwed."

"Six ways from Sunday. I didn't ask to be born. They humped me into this world and ruled me and churched me, tried to shape me into knee-benders like them, and what I've done to those two pussies isn't half what they deserve."

Although Vida expected to find that Morgan was a problem kid, this boy is further out there than she imagined, as if he's come to Earth from the dark side of the moon. Getting into this house might prove to be a lot easier than getting out unscathed.

"We're cool, Morgan. I know where you are, but I'm not there yet. I mean, with my shitty parents. I hope they take it in the neck someday, but it won't be me that does them. I just want out the door and away."

He stares at her intently as he finishes his cinnamon roll and washes it down with mimosa. The kitchen is shadowy, but his pupils are tiny, as though he's in bright light, perhaps because of the drugs with which he's begun this day of celebration. Everything must look darker to him than to her. "Want me to deal them out for you? You be somewhere with an alibi. I can ghost through it sure enough."

"Jesus," she says.

"I'm serious."

"You sound serious."

"I'm dead serious."

"That would be something."

"Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be somethin'?"

He's flying. Whatever's got him eight miles high makes him mercurial and dangerous.

Meeting his stare, she takes quicker and shallower breaths, as though his offer excites her. "Let me think about it."

"You think about it. I'm here for you."

"No one's ever been here for me."

"That's changed. Each of us, we got what the other needs. Am I right?"

"No one's ever been more right."

"The bell rings and there you are. How's that happen?"

"I saw you in the yard. Saw you working out."

"You just ring the bell, and here you are."

Pouring more orange juice, she says, "Things happen because they're supposed to happen, how I kept seeing you in the yard."

He pours champagne. "And you liked what you saw."

"Totally," she says.