The People Next Door (8 page)

The late afternoon sun beamed in low on the boy’s face, leaving him pliable and slightly high on the park bench. He was pretending
he was blind, cataloguing sounds: high heels clopping along worn bricks like an anxious pony; the shaggy messiah dude with
the bone necklace hunched over his hammered dulcimer, lost in a sonic desert without structure or destination; a group of
chattering ladies, their shopping bags paper-rattling against each other. Nearer, in an almost symphonic spurt, an avalanche
of flavored popcorn tinkled into a tin barrel, a Labrador panted, and the waxy rubber buzz of skateboard wheels swerved and
faded away. The air smelled of waffle cones and incense and Kyle Nash’s childhood.

It was here on the Pearl Street Mall, at age nine, he saw his first live topless woman, a pagan sprite in a circle of other
brown, barefooted creatures in tie-dye skirts and rope bracelets, dancing an ancient footbag to one another. Beaded blonde
braids clicked off her darkened shoulders and wet thickets of black hair gleamed under her arms. The breasts were round and
smallish, the
nipples changing shape while she laughed. She was something from the myths, and no one seemed to care.

Maybe that’s why they kept coming back, he and his friends. You never knew what you would see, what fun you might chance into.

‘Is he sleeping?’ a bored voice called. ‘Hey, nutchugger, wake up.’

Kyle raised his head and blinked, realizing Lucas and Will were talking to him. They were slouched on the animal sculptures
like overgrown toddlers; Lucas on the white rabbit, Will leaning against the brassy frog. They were staring at Kyle as if
he had done something wrong again.

‘What?’

‘Do you need a nap?’ Lucas was lean, his muscles tight under his pale skin, and his red hair was cut low for the summer. He
had three earrings and was always fondling himself, rubbing his pecs or diving a hand under his shorts.

Kyle shrugged. ‘Where’d Ben go?’

‘He’s in ’Bo’s,’ the taller boy said. Will was six-three but stooped, a sapling in need of cables to keep him upright. His
eyes were dark and his pajama bottoms hung loose around his hips as if he’d just gotten out of the hospital.

‘We just ate,’ Kyle said, still full of the tacos they had scarfed at Juanita’s.

‘Yeah, well, maybe he’s still hungry,’ Lucas sneered.

‘Hungry for cock,’ Will said. They each shot Kyle a look and laughed.

Kyle pretended to laugh, but this was becoming more difficult as summer wore on. Everything that came out of Ben, Will and
Lucas’s mouths these days was about one of four things: cock, vadge, weed, and dooty. Who had the biggest, who was gonna put
his finger in some tonight, where they could score more, and who had taken the grossest one that day (or, even better, where
the all-time greatest place to take one would be; Taylor Rutledge’s pool was this week’s consensus). Kyle tried to contribute,
but it always sounded false and their suspicion of him seemed to be growing. Like they were trying to decide how much longer
they could hang with a kid who wasn’t convinced the world revolved around these four elements.

‘I’m hungry for some of
that
,’ Lucas said.

Kyle and Will turned to see a girl of perhaps thirteen walking with her mother. They were high-end prep, Boulder Country Club
tennis kittens in plimsolls and pink skirts, the girl a near clone of her mother.

‘Dude, you are fucking warped,’ Will said.

‘She’s gonna be a stone-cold fox.’ The conviction in Lucas’s voice made Kyle feel sick. ‘In, like, a year.’

And Kyle thought, Now Will will say something evil about the mom.

‘Hell with the girl,’ Will said. ‘I’d hit the mamma-san.’

‘Both. At the same time,’ Lucas said. ‘That would be the trifecta.’

‘Trifecta means three of something,’ Kyle said, but Lucas ignored it.

‘I like mine mature,’ Will said. ‘Are you kiddin’ me? Moms know how to tug it.’

‘You guys are fuckin’ idiots,’ Kyle said. Any mention of moms made him think of his mom, and he didn’t understand how anyone
could think about sex in such terms.

The fourth member of their entourage strutted out of Abo’s like he had just gotten laid and purchased a really kind bag of
grass, though he had done neither. He was dressed like a middle-class panhandler from the Bay Area: perforated surf shirt,
skate shorts, neck bandana and old school Dunk lows, the ensemble as carefully coordinated as a prom dress. He was holding
a slice of cheese pizza above his head, letting the point drip hot oil onto his tongue. He craned his neck and leapt, teasing
himself with his own treat, and bumped into a woman walking with her boyfriend or husband.

The couple gave him a look, but Ben didn’t even acknowledge them. The slice scalded him and he made a yowling noise as he
spit the gob of mozzarella onto the mall. It was classic Ben and of course Will and Lucas found it hilarious.

‘That’s disgusting,’ the woman said. She was pretty in a plain way, Kyle thought, with a kind of long face and frail, pointy
frame.

‘Watch your step, dickhead,’ the guy added. He was sorta buff, but it was going soft, like he had stopped working out once
he hit his twenties.

Ben halted, snapping to attention. ‘Sorry! Did you want a bite of my pizza pie, baby girl?’

The woman scoffed and kept walking up the mall.

‘Hey!’ The man stopped and turned. There was
something sad and defeated in his eyes, in the puffy face, as if he expected to step in dogshit every time he went out the
front door. ‘Knock it off, all right?’

‘Sorry, man,’ Ben said. ‘Accident. It’s cool. We’re cool.’

The guy shot the others a look, then turned and rejoined his girlfriend.

Kyle thought, Jesus, that was close. Fucking Ben.

Ben waited until their backs were turned before he threw the slice. It folded through the air like a sheet of paper and slapped
against the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Held for a moment. Then unglued and left a trail of sauce as it slid to
the promenade. The woman tensed and began to hiss.

Will and Lucas burst into raucous laughter. Kyle bolted up from the park bench and the boyfriend whirled and charged at Ben
in five big strides, face purpling.

‘Gonna knock your fucking head off!’

They scattered, the guy’s hand missing the collar of Ben’s shirt by about two inches. The mall became a tunneled blur as Kyle
passed the Russian Tea Room, the Art Mart, Mountain Sun Brewery, and weaved through the bus-stop shelter at the mall’s east
end, watching the backs of his friends as they zigzagged madly, hurdling planters and fleeing around the corner.

Behind them the woman was yelling. ‘Doug, no, stop! Doug! You’re on parole! Pleeeeease!’

The word ‘parole’ made Kyle’s hair stand up. He could hear ‘Doug’ closing behind him, a man’s breathing, labored and heavy
as a bull’s, and Kyle thought, Oh, holy
fuck, if he catches one of us, he isn’t gonna chew us out or call our parents. He’s really going to beat the ever-loving shit
out of all of us. He’s praying for the chance, can fucking taste the beating he’s going to throw down and –

‘Dead, ya fucking dead,’ the guy chanted. ‘DEAD!’

Flying past the First Presbyterian Church, doubling back toward the post office, it finally dawned on Kyle: they weren’t kids
any more. The world was no longer their playground. It had become an angry place, full of pleasant-faced people waiting to
explode. He’d seen them on the news, in school, in his dad’s bar. But he’d never been the target, until now. Sneakers slapping
the sidewalk, Kyle understood at a fundamental level that the next Mercedes they pelted with a few green apples would not
dislodge a finger-wagging old coot who’d say, ‘Why, you little rapscallions, shame on you!’ They had crossed a barrier. From
now on, all the drivers and lifeguards and mailbox owners would just as likely brandish a tire iron, a baseball bat, a gun.

Kyle cut across Canyon Boulevard’s four lanes of traffic. Up ahead, the guys were jogging into Central Park, already slowing
to a confident trot. He chanced a look back. Doug had been no match for kids who had spent most of the school year and every
day this summer pushing skateboards five or six miles across town, walking another three or four miles to some party or another
at night. They were greyhounds, high on energy drinks and candy and the fumes of their own adolescence. They dispersed into
downtown Boulder’s alleyways and
tree-lined bike paths like terrorists retreating into the mountains of Afghanistan.

Kyle was shocked to realize it had all lasted less than a minute, and now they were free again. Lucas cut through the grass
at Canyon Park, the others coming upon the bandshell, hooting and slapping each other on the backs. From a distance they looked
older, bigger. Unlike Ben’s sad little goatee, Will had a real beard going, and with his height you could see how he might
be mistaken for eighteen or twenty instead of fifteen. Kyle didn’t feel the way his friends looked, and he had the feeling
maybe the others wouldn’t have minded if he got caught while they escaped.

‘Close one, huh, Nash?’ Lucas said, wiggling his eyebrows.

Kyle only shook his head in disgust.

‘I could have taken him,’ Ben said, but Kyle could see he was rattled. His eyes were still jittery, a fresh layer of sweat
over his pimples.

‘Yeah, right,’ Kyle said. ‘That guy would have caved your head in, Ben. He was out of his mind. Why you gotta do shit like
that, man?’

Ben scowled. ‘Because I feel like it, faggot.’

‘What time is that thing at Shaheen’s house tomorrow night?’ Lucas asked, bending to retie his shoes.

‘“Because I feel like it, faggot,”’ Kyle echoed. ‘That’s brilliant, Ben. You’re an asshole, you know that?’

Ben shoved Kyle and Will walked between them. ‘Cut the shit, guys.’

‘Do you think he’s gonna have any booze?’ Lucas
continued. ‘I want like six Captain and Cokes. I’m gonna get red-assed. That’s what my dad calls it. What do you think about
that, Nash? You ready to get red-assed?’

Kyle shrugged, hoping to appear coolly detached. Ever since spring break, when he’d drunk eleven shots of peach Schnapps and
vomited all over Ben’s dad’s walk-in closet, alcohol made his mouth water for the wrong reasons. Maybe he was allergic to
the stuff. When he woke up after that little swing dance with the sauce, he had black magic marker drawings all over his face.
One of them – he never found out which – had drawn a big veined penis aimed at the corner of his mouth and a set of hairy
balls on his chin. The drawing made him feel worse than the hangover, and suddenly going to Shaheen’s party seemed like more
trouble than it could possibly be worth.

‘Who’s gonna be there?’ Kyle said.

This caused Will to perk up. ‘Why, you finally gonna try for some wool, Nash?’

‘He likes Michelle Harper,’ Lucas said. ‘Talk about wool. That girl’s got a patch like Bigfoot.’

‘Yeah, like you know,’ Kyle said. Though now that he thought about it, Michelle
did
have dark hair, and her arms
were
a bit fuzzier than the other girls’. Kyle had never gotten further than frenching Rachel Simms last summer (and that was
for all of about twenty seconds, because dumbass Lucas was spying on them and Rachel got spooked), so he was in no position
to be picky. But the thought of Lucas being with Michelle Harper, in any way, ruined something.

‘Strong stable,’ Lucas said. ‘My girls be willin’ and able.’

‘Let’s hit the Cornucopia,’ Will said. ‘If that Daryl guy’s working, he’ll sell me some forties.’

The others fell into a heated discussion about beer-purchasing strategies, but Kyle tuned them out. Standing about twenty
yards down the bike path, at the edge of the tree line on the north bank of Boulder Creek, was a girl, maybe
the
girl, the most beautiful he had ever seen.

She was maybe a year or two older than him, sixteen or seventeen, but in another way newly born, as if fallen from the sky
fully formed. Her long brown hair was plainly styled or not styled at all, but radiant against her creamy skin. Dressed in
white sneakers, a simple denim mini-skirt, and a red T-shirt, she was standing in profile, facing the creek. She wasn’t flashy
or vamping, she just seemed the very model of unblemished, wholesome girl.

He felt guilty for staring, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She studied him a moment and turned, letting him look. She wore
a red T-shirt featuring a strange silk screen, a kind of negative space of a woman with dark flowing hair, white nurse’s cap
and surgical mask. The mask spelled something in distorted letters, but Kyle couldn’t read the message. Her lips moved as
if she were whispering, and then she stepped out of her white sneakers one at a time. She set her bare feet down as if she
had never walked on grass, savoring the texture of moist blades and cool soil. She was still smiling as she picked up her
shoes and walked down the bank into Boulder Creek.

‘Nash, you coming?’ Ben said.

He imagined touching her leg, just the back of her calf, oh so delicately, and maybe that perfect milk chocolate hair …

‘Nash! Yo, assface!’

Kyle turned, blinking. ‘What?’

‘I need five bucks for a High Life,’ Ben said.

‘You just bought a slice of pizza.’
And your parents have more money than mine
. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nah, I stole that shit. I’m tapped. Come on, help a brother out.’

Kyle looked back toward the creek. The girl wasn’t in the small section of burbling water that he could see, or on the banks,
or the bike path. What the hell? She couldn’t have gone far. Boulder Creek was only a few feet deep here, not really any kind
of swimming hole. This was cruel, her sudden disappearance from his life.

He walked up to the moist bank. The soil at the water’s edge was matted with dead grass raked smooth by the current. The water
was clear, the stream bed pebbles golden in patches of sunlight filtering through the trees. A downed branch of green leaves
fluttered in the small rapids. A thick stick, rubbed smooth of its bark, was trapped in the eddy beneath the branch, along
with a stray soda can bleached pink.

But there was no girl.

All at once he was standing in a pocket of cold, almost frigid air. The sun glinted off the water and his insides turned liquid.
Kyle’s teeth clacked and he stepped back, heart tripping as a kind of déjà vu of the body told him
he had been here before and something bad had happened. He stepped back on weak legs, slipped and almost fell on the moist
grass.

He reset his feet, turned – and almost walked into the pudgy guy who had crept up behind him. Kyle jolted and tried to step
back, but the guy reached out with the speed of a boxer and balled Kyle’s T-shirt in his fist. ‘I didn’t do any—’ Kyle started,
and Doug’s hamsteak of a right hook slammed into his mouth.

‘Think that’s funny? Hurling your lunch at my gal?’ Doug shook Kyle back and forth inside his shirt, eyes murderous. ‘Fucking
little cocksucker, show you funny.’

On the second punch Kyle’s feet went out from under him and he slapped down into the mud, face numb, the copper taste of blood
threading back over his tongue. His teeth seemed to be floating and involuntary tears spilled freely. Doug waded in for another
blow.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kyle cried, raising one arm in defense as he dragged himself closer to the water’s edge. ‘Jesus, don’t!’

Doug hesitated, fist cocked. ‘Where’d your weenie dick friends run off to?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kyle blubbered. ‘It wasn’t me, I swear.’

Perhaps Doug realized it hadn’t been Kyle who’d thrown the pizza, or that if he pushed this any further he could very easily
tumble head-first into Boulder Creek or, if there were any witnesses, into Boulder County Jail. Whatever the reason, he took
pity and dropped his fighter’s pose. He sniffed, his thick face draining of color.

‘Find yourself some new friends, shit for brains.’

When he was certain Doug wasn’t coming back to
kick him in the gut, Kyle crawled up the bank and got to his feet. He wiped blood from his lips and spat. The entire lower
half of his face felt puffy but his teeth weren’t loose, so that was something. He glanced around, wondering if the girl had
seen him get KO’d, but no one in the park was watching him and the girl was still missing, or vanished, whatever she had done,
and that was another small relief. Once he was on the bike path, his friends emerged from a thicket of bushes, their eyes
wide with a kind of awe they had never applied to him.

‘Dude!’ Will yelled up to him. ‘You all right?’

Ben and Lucas stared slack-jawed. Kyle nodded and wiped his face with his muddy shirt.

‘That was fucking awesome!’ Lucas said. ‘Strong stable, Nash. Tough little fuck, aren’t you?’

Ben smirked, and Kyle knew he was somehow jealous.

‘You dicks are buying the beer tonight,’ Kyle said, because it sounded like the right thing to say after you’d been in a fight,
though he couldn’t fool himself that was what it had been. ‘Especially you,
Benjamin
. I took one for you, you asshole.’

Ben nodded miserably as Will and Lucas seized upon his weakness. ‘Your fail, bro,’ Will said, batting Ben across the noggin.
‘Yeah, Ben, way to go, fuckin’ pussy,’ Lucas added, kicking him in the ass.

Kyle walked after them, smiling despite it all. His friends were already moving down the path, jumping on and off each other
like they were running on some
electrical current he had not learned how to plug into yet. Though this thing here today, maybe it was some kind of a start.

He glanced back at the creek once more, wondering if she was real or something conjured in his waking dreams, and either way
when he might see her again.