Bad Games (14 page)

“Grade school reminiscing are we?” Amy pulled her hair into a ponytail and fastened a band around it. “What am I thinking? You need to graduate before you can reminisce.”

Patrick started putting on his sneakers. “And yet you married me.”

“I lost a bet.”

Patrick finished tying his shoes and stood. “I wonder where our dumb dog is anyway. Carrie said she couldn’t find him earlier. I haven’t seen him either. Have you?”

Amy was frowning.

Patrick said, “What?”

“
Our
dog?”

“He’s been great with Carrie. She loves him to bits.”

Amy’s frown was going nowhere. “There is no way on earth that dog is coming home with us. You know that right? Please tell me you know that.”

Patrick looked away and nodded.

“
Patrick?
”

“Alright, alright. I guess I’m just thinking about what to say when Carrie inevitably asks.”

“How about ‘no’?”

“Okay fine, but you’re the one who’s telling her.”

“Okay I will. But you know she’ll run right to you afterwards and try again. So prepare yourself, buddy boy.” She ended her spiel with a
good-luck-with-that
slap to his chest.

“Ouch—stop abusing your husband. He’s very delicate.”

“Well bring your delicate butt along—I want to get a romantic stroll in before the kids come back.”

“Patience, my darling. You can’t rush romance.”

“You can when you’ve got a four- and six-year-old headed back from the movies with sugar in their blood and cartoon animals bouncing around in their heads.”

“Good point. Let’s go.”

Maury and Lois Blocker lay next to one another in bed. Lois wept silently. Maury’s pale complexion was now a sickly white. The couple was too scared too even hold on to one another.

“You need to get off the fence here, bro,” Jim said to Arty. “We’re wasting time.”

Arty stood at the foot of the bed. He held an aluminum baseball bat along the length of his leg. Jim was to the right of the bed, a pistol pointed at the couple.

“I’m still thinking,” Arty said.

“What’s to think about?”

“Leaving too big a mess is what. You feel like cleaning up?”

“No, but our choices were pretty fucking limited from the start. Either someone was home or they weren’t.”

Maury Blocker cleared his throat. “Please,” he said. “If it’s money—”

“Shut up,” Arty said. He spoke to the couple as if they repulsed him. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“Tick tock, bro,” Jim said.

Arty nodded. “I’m just thinking about efficiency. The less mess, the sooner we can get started.”

Jim shrugged. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Well we gotta get rid of their car, right?”

Jim nodded.

Arty tapped the bat against Lois Blocker’s foot. “How tall are you?”

Her fear meshed with a confused frown. “What?”

“
How tall?
”

“I don’t…five-two?”

Arty tapped the bat on Maury’s foot. “You?”

“About five-seven, I guess.”

Arty brought the aluminum bat down onto Maury Blocker’s head once, then twice. Lois Blocker screamed after the second hit, immediately prompting her turn. Arty crushed her skull with the first swing.

Panting, Arty turned to his brother, bat in both hands. “Sometimes you just get up to the line of scrimmage and need to call an audible, James my boy.”

Jim started laughing. “The fuck are you talking about?”

Arty threw the bat into the corner where it landed with a distinctive twang. “They’re short little fuckers. We can stuff ’em in the trunk before we ditch the car. I
really
didn’t feel like digging any holes this weekend.” He tapped the side of his forehead. “Efficiency.”

“I’ve got the smartest big brother in the whole wide world.”

Arty held out a fist. “Rock, scissor, paper to see who strips the sheets?”

Patrick and Amy were barely down the length of their driveway when Lorraine called to them from next door.

“
Shit
,” Patrick whispered.

“
Told you
,” Amy whispered back.

“You guys back so soon?” Patrick called over to her.

The couple met Lorraine halfway, on the strip of lawn between the two cabins.

“Norman decided to take the kids for ice cream after the film. The parlor is a bit out of the way, so you two still have a good deal of time left to yourselves.” Lorraine winked at them.

“Perfect,” Amy said. “We were just about to take a moon-lit walk around the lake.”

“Romantic stuff, ya know?” Patrick said.

Amy elbowed him. Lorraine smiled and looked up at the sky. “Well you couldn’t have picked a better night for it. It’s a beautiful one.”

Amy looked up with her.

Patrick asked about the kids and Norman again. “So wait, what happened? Did Norm come back and drop you off
before
heading back out with the kids?”

Lorraine nodded. “I was getting tired. Glad I’m a grandmother now and can give them back at the end of the night. I forgot how exhausting it can be.”

Amy gripped her husband’s forearm with both hands and began dragging him away from Lorraine. “Hence the reason we treasure
every
minute.”

Patrick pretended he was being dragged harder than he actually was and gave Lorraine a silly look. “I guess that means we’re going. Thanks again Lorraine, we’ll be back soon.”

Lorraine laughed and headed back inside.

They had just finished their stroll around the lake.

“I don’t see Norm’s car in the driveway yet,” Patrick said, squinting towards the Mitchell’s cabin. “We can do another lap if you want.”

“Oh, so you’re liking this now, are you?” Amy asked.

Patrick looked out onto the lake before answering. The smooth black surface of the lake reflected hypnotic patterns of moonlight that held his gaze like a shiny pendulum.

While the serenity of the cabin and its remote surroundings were the primary motives for their sojourn west, Patrick only just realized, to his own surprise, that it was his wife’s suggestion of observing the lake at night that proved to be the most tranquil and soothing element of the entire vacation thus far.

“Yeah,” he sighed. He pulled her close and looked out onto the lake again. “It really is beautiful.” A shimmer of moonlight reflected off the lake and caressed the contours of Patrick’s face as though it appreciated the compliment.

Amy rubbed his chest. “I’ve got such a big, sensitive man.”

“Sensitive but tough, right?”

“Oh of course, baby—the toughest.”

“Good. Because I can be macho too you know. I can belch or fart or punch an animal if you want.”

“Please don’t.” She pulled away and took hold of his arm to start lap number two.

They strolled a good twenty yards more, periodically glancing left at the lit cabins before shifting their gaze east to become entranced once more by the lake’s reflection of the moon.

“Beautiful night for a walk,” a male voice said to their left.

They stopped. Patrick smiled and said, “Sure is.”

Amy squinted and leaned forward towards the voice. When her eyes settled she recoiled as if a bug had flown in her face. She spun into Patrick.

“
It’s him
,” she said.

Patrick looked down at his wife, then up at the wooden porch from where the man had greeted them. The porch was roughly ten feet away, three small stairs leading up to it. The man who had addressed them was leaning against a banister and periodically flicking a metal wind chime that hung just above and in front of his face. The man’s head was shaved and he was leering, not smiling, at the couple.

“Who?” Patrick asked.

“Him from the store. From Giant.
From the fucking window in our bedroom!
”

Patrick stared at his wife in disbelief. The man flicked the wind chime again, the ding lifting Patrick’s head towards him once more. He spoke to Amy but kept his eyes on the man on the porch. “
What?
Are you sure?”

Amy held on to Patrick’s hand with a death-grip and stepped forward, her husband’s arm like a rope while scaling down a mountain. She squinted again. The man with the shaved took a step forward, took a bow, and blew her a kiss.

Motherfucker.

Patrick ripped his arm away from Amy and charged the porch, only to stop instantly on the first step. The man had drawn a gun, Patrick’s head the target. Patrick stood frozen in mid-stride, like a child playing a game of Red light, Green light.

“Whoa, easy there, stud,” the man with the shaved head said. “You’ve got an awfully mean look in your eyes. I’d hate to have to shoot them out.”

Patrick remained still. Amy’s heavy breathing could be heard behind his back. The man with the gun shifted his head to the left and looked past Patrick, towards the heavy breathing.

“Hey, lover,” the man said to Amy. “I take it you remember me then?”

Amy said nothing. She had chosen, like her husband, to stay frozen and silent while the gun was still up and pointed in their direction.

“Of course you do,” the man continued. “I mean a woman who gets
that
worked up over a few harmless words in a supermarket isn’t likely to forget so easily.” The man kept the gun up, turned his head and wiped his mouth on his shoulder. He’d started to salivate. “But if you ask me, that was nothing to how worked up you were last night when this stud right here was pumpin’ away between those sexy little legs of yours.”

Patrick clenched his jaw. His body was twitching now, begging to let his common sense disappear so he could rush forward at all costs. The man with the shaved head cocked the gun’s trigger, his leer becoming a laugh.

“Am I pissin’ you off, big man? Is it pissin’ you off that I saw your slutty little wife riding your pole, her beautiful titties bouncing up and down like—” He moaned. “—like two scoops of
fuck yeah
?” He wiped his mouth again, continued leering. “Because I know it would piss
me
off. I mean if some guy hit on my woman in a supermarket, then returned later that night to watch her get
fucked
?
Jeeeesus
would I be pissed.”

Patrick, slow and deliberate, took two steps backwards and stood upright. He paused, then chanced a few more steps until he was beside his wife. He maneuvered Amy behind him to shield her.

“Well maybe you’re not so pissed after all,” the man said after Patrick backed off. “Me? I would have ran up on this porch and taught me a lesson.”

The words were out of Patrick’s mouth before he could snatch them back. “Put that gun down and I’ll show you how pissed off I am.”

The man with the shaved head held the gun up to his face, gave it a curious look and said, “What? This? Is
this
the reason you won’t grow a pair and come on up to defend your wife’s honor?”

Patrick said nothing.

“You’re thinking I’d
shoot
you
if you came up here?” the man continued. “I couldn’t shoot you, pal. I could never hurt anyone. Just isn’t in me.”

The man walked towards a wicker table in the center of the porch and set the gun down. “There.” He splayed empty hands. “All gone.”

The man then turned those open hands into fists and put them up in a classic 19
^th
century boxing stance, one fist behind the other, chin ludicrously high. “Come on then, stud. Let’s do a bit of fisticuffs, yeah?” He made small circles with his fists as though ready for the opening bell. “Come on, you don’t want your wife to think you’re a pussy, do ya? Because no matter what they might tell you, it’s always the knight-in-shining-armor shit that gets ’em wet. You see, a woman will make love to a pacifist…” He smirked. “But she’ll
fuck
a knight.”

Patrick twitched again.

The man exaggerated his stance, raised his fists high. “So what’s it gonna be, stud? You gonna be the knight or the pussy?”

Patrick started forward.

Amy lunged after her husband, grabbed his arm with both hands. “
No!
” She fronted Patrick and placed both hands on his chest. “No, Patrick, he’ll grab the gun as soon as you go up there.
He’s
the pussy!” She turned and faced the man, one hand still on her husband’s chest. “
YOU’RE the pussy!”
She turned back to Patrick. “We’ll call the police. We’ll go home right now and call the police.” Back over her shoulder again at the man, “
WE’RE CALLING THE POLICE!
”

The screen door to the cabin opened, a metallic bang declaring it shut once the porch’s newest occupant appeared. He was a man with dark hair, dark eyes, and a welt on his cheek. He was holding a doll. “What the
hell
is going on out here?” the man asked. “Can’t a guy play with his doll in peace?”

Patrick’s mouth fell open.

Amy leaned forward and squinted. “Is that…?”

“
Arty
,” Patrick whispered.

Arty held up Josie the doll. He made one of the plastic arms wave at the stunned couple. “Howdy, Penn State fans.”

“We’re leaving
tonight
,” Amy said. “The second the kids come back, and the second the sheriff arrests those assholes,
we-are-leaving.
”

Patrick sat at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of water. Frequent jabs of ire flooded his limbs and tempted him to squeeze until the glass shattered in his hand.

“They know each other,” he said. “They
fucking
know
each other
.”

“It makes sense,” Amy said. She was pacing throughout the kitchen. “Arty knew which car was ours from the gas station. For all we know he was there with the bald guy at the supermarket.”

“They’re fucking with us,” Patrick said with a pitiful laugh. “They’ve been watching us and fucking with us this whole time.”

“They couldn’t possibly
live
in that cabin could they? I mean there’s no way, right?” Amy asked.

“No,” Patrick said. “No way.”

“Well how does
that
work then? If they don’t live there—”

“I don’t know, Amy. Maybe they broke into the place.”

“Well if that’s true, then what about the people who
do
live there? What happened to them?”