Dark Places

  The back door was open, even though it was freezing, and the pit bulls were running in and out, like some sort of magic act—no pit bull, one pit bull, two pit bulls in the yard! Three! Three pit bulls in the yard, prancing around in rough circles, then shooting back inside. They looked like birds in flight, teasing and nipping at each other in formation.

  “I hate those fucking dogs,” Trey groaned, pulled to a stop.

  “She spoils them.”

  The dogs launched into a round of attack-barking as Ben and Trey walked toward the front of the house, the animals trailing them obsessively along the fence, snouts and paws poking through the gaps, barking barking barking.

  The front door was open, too, the heat pouring out. They passed through the pink-papered entryway—Ben unable to resist shutting the door behind him, save some energy—and downstairs, which was Diondra’s floor. Diondra was in the rec room, dancing, half naked in oversized hot pink socks, no pants and a sweater built for two, with giant cables that reminded Ben of something a fisherman would wear, not a girl. Then again, all the girls at school wore their shirts big. They called them boyfriend shirts or daddy sweaters. Diondra, of course, had to wear them super big and layered with stuff underneath: a T-shirt hanging down, then some sort of tank top, and a bright striped collar-shirt. Ben had once offered Diondra one of his big black sweaters to be a boyfriend sweater, him being her boyfriend, but she’d wrinkled her nose and proclaimed, “That’s not the right kind. And there’s a hole in it.” Like a hole in a shirt was worse than dog shit all over your carpet. Ben was never sure if Diondra knew all sorts of secret rules, private protocols, or if she just made shit up to make him feel like a tool.

  She was bouncing around to Highway to Hell, the fireplace shooting flames behind her, her cigarette held far away from her new clothes. She had about twelve items all in plastic wraps or on hangers or in shiny bags with tissue paper sparking out the top like fire. Also, a couple of shoe boxes and the tiny packets he knew meant jewelry. When she looked up and saw his black hair, she gave him a giant happy smile and a thumbs-up. “Awesome.” And Ben felt a little better, not as stupid. “I told you it’d look good, Benji.” And that was it.

  “What’d you buy, Dio?” Trey asked, rummaging in the bags. He took a drag from her cigarette while she was still holding it, while she was without pants. She caught Ben’s look, flipped up the sweater to reveal boxers that weren’t his.

  “It’s OK, nerd-o.” She came over and kissed him, her smell of grape hairspray and cigarettes hitting him, calming him. He held her gently, the way he did now, loose-armed, and when he felt her tongue hit his, he twitched.

  “Oh God, please get over this ‘Diondra’s untouchable’ phase,” she snapped. “Unless I’m too old for you.”

  Ben laughed. “You’re seventeen.”

  “If you could hear what I hear,” Diondra sang to a silver-bell tune, sounding angry, sounding downright pissed.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Mean’s seventeen may just be too old for your taste.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say. To pursue something with Diondra when she was in this peekaboo mood only encouraged endless rounds of, “No it’s nothing,” and “I’ll tell you later,” or “Don’t worry, I can handle it.” She pulled her crunchy hair back and danced around for them, a drink now appearing from behind a shoe box. Her neck was lined with purple hickeys he’d given her on Sunday, him Draculing into her neck, her demanding more, “Harder, harder, it won’t leave a mark if you keep doing it that way, don’t tighten your lips, no tongue, no harder … Do! It! Harder! How can you not even know how to give a hickey?” and with a furious tight face, she’d grabbed him by the head, turned him sideways, and worked at his neck like a dying fish, the flesh going inoutinout in frantic rhythm. Then she pulled away, “There!” and made him look in the mirror. “Now do me, like that.”

  The result was a march of leeches down her throat, brown and blue and embarrassing to Ben until he caught Trey staring at them.

  “Oh no, baby, you’re all busted up.” Diondra simpered, finally noticing his cracked head. She licked a finger and started wiping at the blood. “Someone get to you?”

  “Baby fell off his bike,” Trey grinned. Ben hadn’t told him he fell off his bike, and he felt a billow of rage at Trey for trying to make fun of him and actually just telling the truth.

  “Fuck off, Trey.”

  “Heyyyy,” said Trey, his hands shooting up, his eyes going slate.

  “Someone push you off the bike, baby? Someone try to hurt you?” Diondra petted at him.

  “You buy anything for Benny-boy, so he doesn’t have to wear those shitty work jeans for another month?” Trey asked.

  “Of course I did.” She grinned, forgetting Ben’s injury, which he’d imagined would take up much more time. She skipped across to a giant red bag and pulled out a pair of black leather pants, thick as cow hide, a striped T-shirt, and a black denim jacket with studs gleaming off it.

  “Whoa, leather pants, you think you’re dating David Lee Roth?” Trey cackled.

  “He’ll look good. Go try ’em on.” She scrunched her nose up at him as he tried to pull her to him. “You ever heard of a shower, Ben? You smell like the cafeteria.” She pushed the clothes into Ben’s hands and shuffled him off to the bedroom. “It’s a gift, Ben,” she yelled after him. “You might want to say thank you at some point.”

  “Thank you!” he called back.

  “Take a shower before you put them on, for Christsakes.” So she was actually serious, he stunk. He knew he stunk, but hoped no one else could smell him. He walked into the bathroom across from Diondra’s bedroom—she had her own dang bathroom, and her parents had their own giant one with two sinks—and dropped his stained clothes into a ball on the bright pink carpet. His crotch was still wet from the bucket spill at his school, his dick shriveled and clammy. The shower felt good, felt relaxing. He and Diondra had had sex a lot in this shower, all sudsy and warm. The soap was always there, you didn’t have to wash yourself with baby shampoo because your mom couldn’t ever fucking get to a store.

  He dried off, put his boxers back on. He was wearing boxers Diondra had also bought him. The first time they got naked, she’d laughed at his tightie-whities til she actually choked on her own spit. He tried to jam the boxers into the taut leather—all snaps and zippers and hooks, and him squirming to haul them up over his ass, which Diondra said was his best feature. The problem was the boxers, they bunched up around his waist when he got the pants on, leaving bulbs in all the wrong places. He yanked the pants back off and kicked his boxers onto the pile of his old clothes, his hackles going up as Trey and Diondra whispered and giggled in the other room. He got back into the pants with nothing underneath, and they clung like a leathery scuba suit. Hot. His ass was already sweating.

  “Come model for us, stud,” Diondra called.

  He pulled on the T-shirt, walked into her bedroom to check the mirror. The metalhead rockers Diondra loved stared at him from posters on the walls, even on the ceiling over her bed, giant pointy hair and bodies tightly packed in leather with buckles and belts like alien robot knobs. He didn’t think he looked bad. He looked pretty on target. When he walked back into the living room, Diondra squealed and ran to him, jumped into his arms.

  “I knew it. I knew it. You are a stud.” She flipped his hair back, which was at an awkward bushy chin-length. “You need to keep growing this out, but otherwise, you are a stud.”

  Ben looked at Trey, who shrugged. “I’m not the one going to fuck you tonight, don’t look at me.”

  On the floor was a pile of garbage, long, fingerlike wrappers from the Slim Jims, and a plastic square with a few streaks of cheese and some nacho crumbs.

  “You already ate everything?” Ben asked.

  “Now your turn, Teep-beep,” Diondra gushed, taking her hand from Ben’s hair.

  Trey held up a metal-studded shirt that Diondra had bought for him (and why does Trey get something,
Ben thought), and slunk back toward the bedroom for his portion of the fashion show. From the hallway came silence, then the pop of a beer, and then laughter, teary, fall-on-the-floor laughter.

  “Diondra, come here!”

  Diondra was already laughing as she ran back to Trey, Ben left standing, sweating in his new tight pants. Soon she was howling too, and they emerged, faces folded in pure joy, Trey shirtless, holding Ben’s boxers.

  “Dude, you wearing those ballhuggers naked?” Trey said between laughs, his eyes crazy-big. “Do you know how many dudes have jammed their shit into those pants before you got ’em? Right now you got eight different guys’ ballsweat on you. Your asshole is pressed right against some other guy’s asshole.” They laughed again, Diondra making her poor-Ben sound: Ooohhhaaa.

  “I think these got some shit stains in them too, Diondra,” Trey said, peeking inside the boxers. “You better take care of this, little woman.”

  Diondra plucked them by two fingers, walked across the living room, and tossed them in the fire, where they sizzled but didn’t catch.

  “Even fire can’t destroy those things,” Trey wheezed. “What are they, Ben, polyester?” They plopped down on the couch, Diondra huddling on her side to finish laughing, Trey’s head on her haunches. She laughed with her face squeezed shut, then, still reclining, blinked one bright blue eye open, and assessed him. He was about to walk back to the bathroom to change into his jeans, when Diondra leapt up and grabbed him by the hand.

  “Oh, sweetie, don’t be mad. You look great. You really do. Ignore us.”

  “They are cool, dude. And stewing in another guy’s juices might be just what you need to grow a pair, right?” He started laughing again, but when Diondra didn’t join, he went to the fridge and got another beer. Trey still hadn’t put on the new shirt, he seemed to like walking around shirtless, sprigs of black chest hair and dark nipples the size of fifty-cent pieces, muscles lumping everywhere, a treasure trail down his belly Ben would never get. Ben, pale and small-boned and red-headed, would never look like that, not five years, not ten years from now. He glanced at Trey, wanting to take a long look but knowing that was a bad idea.

  “Come on, Ben, let’s not fight,” Diondra said, pulling him down on the sofa. “After all the shit I heard today about you, I should be the one who’s mad.”

  “See? Now what does that even mean?” Ben said. “It’s like you’re talking in code or something. I’ve had a shit day and I’m not in the goddam mood!”

  This is what Diondra did, she baited you, nips and bites here and there til you were half crazy, and then she was all, “Why are you so upset?”

  “Awwww,” she whispered into his ear. “Let’s not fight. We’re together, let’s not fight with each other. Come to my room and we’ll make up.” She had beer breath and her long fingernails rested on his crotch. She pulled him up.

  “Trey’s here.”

  “Trey won’t care,” she said, and then louder. “Watch some cable for a little bit, Trey.”

  Trey made an mmmm sound, didn’t even look at them, and flopped headlong on the sofa, his beer spraying like a fountain.

  Ben was pissed off now, which was always how Diondra seemed to like him. He wanted to ram it into her, make her whine. So as soon as they closed the door, that plywood door Trey could surely hear through—good—Ben reached to grab her and Diondra turned around and scratched his face, hard, drawing blood.

  “Diondra, what the hell?” He now had another scrape on his face, and he didn’t mind it. Scar up these big baby cheeks, do it. Diondra stepped back for a second, opened her mouth, then just pulled him toward her til they fell on her bed, stuffed animals bouncing to lemming deaths on either side. She scratched him again on his neck and he really wanted to fuck her good then, he was literally seeing red, like they say in cartoons, and she helped him get the pants back off, peeling down like a sunburn, and his dick bouncing right up, hard as it ever had been. She pulled off her sweater, her tits huge, milk-blue and soft, and he ripped down her boxers. When he stared at her belly, she turned her back to him and guided him in from behind, her yelling, Is that it? Is that all you got for me? You can do me harder than that and him pounding away ’til his balls ached and his eyes went blind and then it was over and he was on his back, wondering if he was having a heart attack. He was heaving for air, fighting off that depression that always came to smother him after they had sex, the that’s-all blues.

  Ben had had sex twenty-two times now, he was keeping track, all with Diondra, and he’d seen enough TV to know that men were supposed to fall peacefully asleep right afterward. He never did. He got more agitated, actually, like he’d had too much caffeine, snappy and mean. He thought sex was supposed to chill you out—and the during part was good, the coming part was great. But afterward, for about ten minutes he felt like crying. He felt like, Is this it? The greatest thing in life, the thing men kill for and this is it, over in a few minutes, leaving you all gutted and depressed. He could never tell if Diondra liked it or not, came or not. She grunted and screamed but she never seemed happy afterward. She lay next to him now, her belly up, not touching him, barely breathing.

  “So I saw some girls at the mall today,” Diondra said next to him. “They say you’re fucking little girls at school. Like ten-year-olds.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ben said, still dazed.

  “Do you know a little girl named Krissi Cates?”

  Ben tried to keep himself from bolting up. He crossed an arm behind his head, put it back down by his side, crossed it over his chest.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess. She’s in that art class I been helping out after school.”

  “Never told me about no art class,” Diondra said.

  “Nothing to tell, I just did it a few times.”

  “Just did what a few times?”

  “The art class,” Ben said. “Just helping kids. One of my old teachers asked me to.”

  “They say the police want to talk to you. That you did some wrong stuff with some of those girls, girls who are, like, your sisters’ age. Touched them funny. Everyone’s calling you a perv.”

  He sat upright, a vision of the basketball team mocking his dark hair, his perviness, trapped in the locker room while they fucked with him til they were bored, drove off in their bigass trucks. “You think I’m a perv?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Why’d you just have sex with me if you think I might be a perv?”

  “I wanted to see if you could still get it up with me. If you would still come a lot.” She turned away from him again, her legs pulled up to her chest.

  “Well, that’s pretty fucked up, Diondra.” She said nothing. “So do you want to hear me say it: I didn’t do anything with any girls. I haven’t done anything with anyone but you since we started going out. I love you. I don’t want to have sex with any little girls. OK?” Silence. “OK?”

  Diondra turned part of her face toward him, that single blue eye fixed on him with no emotion: “Shhh. The baby’s kicking.”

  Libby Day

  NOW

  Lyle was stiff and silent as we drove toward Magda’s for our meeting. I wondered if he was judging me, me and my packet of notes I was going to sell. Nothing I’d decided to part with was particularly interesting: I had five birthday cards my mom had given Michelle and Debby over the years, cheerful quick notes scrawled at the bottom, and I had a birthday card she’d written to Ben I thought might bring decent money. I felt guilty about all of it, not good at all, but I feared having no money, really feared being broke, and that came before being nice. The note to Ben, on the inside of a card for his twelfth birthday, read: You are growing up before my eyes, before I know it you’ll be driving! When I read it, I had to turn it facedown and back away, because my mom would be dead before Ben would ever learn how to drive. And Ben would be in prison, would never learn how to drive anyway.

  Anyway.

  We drove across the Missouri River, the water n
ot even bothering to glisten in the afternoon sun. What I didn’t want was to watch these people read the notes, there was something too intimate about that. Maybe I could leave while they looked at them, assessed them like old candlesticks at a yard sale.

  Lyle guided me to Magda’s, through middle-middle-class neighborhoods where every few houses waved a St. Patrick’s Day flag—all bright clovers and leprechauns just a few days stale. I could feel Lyle fiddling beside me, twitchy as usual, and then he turned toward me, his knees almost punching my stickshift out of gear.

  “So,” he said.

  “So.”

  “This meeting, as is often the case with Magda, has turned into something a little different than planned.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well, you know she’s in that group—the Free Day Society. To get Ben out of prison. And so she’s invited a few of those … women.”

  “Oh. No.” I said. I pulled the car over to the curb.

  “Listen, listen, you said you wanted to look into Runner. Well, this is it. They will pay us—you—to find him, ask him some questions, father to daughter.”

  “Daughter to father?”

  “Right. See, I’m running out of money. So this is where the next funding will come from.”

  “So I have to sit here and let them be rude to me? Like last time?”

  “No, no, they can fill you in on the investigation into Runner. Bring you up to speed. I mean, you think Ben is innocent now, right?”

  I had a flash of Ben watching TV, my mom rustling his hair with one hand as she walked past with a load of laundry on her hip, and him smiling but not turning around. Waiting til she left the room before he combed his hair back into place.