Faces in the Fire (27 page)

And all of it was fueled by that pathetic look from Kurt Marlowe. All of it.

“I'll take Kurt,” he said.

Silence for a few moments. Not even the squeak of shoes on the floor, as every boy, and Mr. Sherman himself, froze in place. Even Kurt Marlowe seemed stunned. But after a few agonizing seconds, Kurt jogged over to stand behind Stan, offering a nod.

Stan refused to look at Mr. Sherman. “Your pick, Neil,” he said, referring to Kramden, the other team captain, by his first name. Mostly because Mr. Sherman never did. Enjoying his new role as class contrarian.

Kramden seemed to shake himself out of shock and made his pick. “Robbie,” he said.

An obvious choice. Robbie Lane was always one of the first two boys picked.

Stan didn't hesitate; he'd picked this path, and now he was determined to walk it. “Sam,” he said. Always one of the last picked, Sam was a freckled kid with a patch of dark-red hair and awkward, lanky limbs.

Kramden—Neil, he should call him Neil—picked Max. Now he had the two boys who never played on the same team, because they were always the first two picked.

Smiling, Stan picked Joe, Eddie, Ron, Harold, and Tim with his remaining choices. His last two, Harold and Tim, were actually pretty good athletes; he'd already filled his team with the gym class rejects.

Through it all, Mr. Sherman stayed quiet. Stan was careful never to look in his direction, fearing he would lose his nerve, be reminded of his own stupidity.

No one was left, even though Kramden still had a pick.

“We're one short,” Kramden said to no one in particular.

Stan heard Floyd snort from Kramden's team, then mutter under his breath, “Yeah, right. We're one short.”

Scattered bits of laughter.

“I'll jump in for this one,” Mr. Sherman said.

The room went quiet again; Mr. Sherman had never participated in any of their gym class activities.

Stan felt his gambit starting to reach a dangerous new level. He finally turned and let himself look at Mr. Sherman, who was moving toward Kramden's group.

Mr. Sherman spoke, his back to Stan. “Evidently, Hawkins doesn't think this is a
game
. He thinks it's a joke.” He turned and stared at Stan. “You're skins.”

Expected. Every gym class involved a team sport of some kind—never individual sports and never anything noncompetitive, because it wasn't the Sherman Way—and every team sport always split into Shirts vs. Skins, because this definitely
was
the Sherman Way. One team kept their shirts on, while the other team took off their shirts and became the Skins. It was an added level of anxiety for boys starting to go through so many physical changes, and Stan was sure, deep inside, that Mr. Sherman knew this and enjoyed it.

Quietly, the boys standing behind him, most of them the gym-class castoffs no one wanted to pick in lineups, began peeling off their shirts. Usually at this time a bit of posturing would begin. Some of the boys would be clapping, trading high fives with other team members, getting into the spirit of the competition, as Mr. Sherman might like to say.

But today was different. Today silence ruled, save for the occasional squeak of shoes on the polished gym floor. Four boys took the floor from Kramden's team, with Mr. Sherman himself at midcourt.

“Pick your starters, Hawkins,” he said, and smiled. “Then you and me can tip off.”

Stan turned to his team, led them off to the opposite side of the floor. Harold grabbed his arm as they went to the wood benches.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a whisper. “We're gonna get slaughtered.”

What was he doing? He wasn't sure.

“I—” he started, but his voice squeaked as he said it.

His voice was changing, getting that deeper timbre, and yet the irony of it all was that a fair number of his words became high-pitched squeals. Usually such a squeak would raise a few snickers, but none of the boys on the team seemed to notice. Or care.

Stan cleared his throat, shifted gears, decided he wouldn't try explaining what he couldn't. “Yeah,” he finally said. “We're gonna get slaughtered.”

He peeled off his shirt and stood looking at his charges. “Now, who wants to get slaughtered with me?” he asked.

Kurt Marlowe's hand went up immediately, followed by Eddie, Ron, Tim, Joe, and finally, Harold.

Stan smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Let's do this.” He walked toward Mr. Sherman and certain doom waiting at center court, feeling as if his whole life were downshifting into slow motion.

Mr. Sherman's smile was as wide as ever, but it wasn't a smile of pleasure or reassurance. It was a smile of hunger, of pain. That was why he always felt uncomfortable whenever Mr. Sherman smiled, Stan suddenly realized.

Stan took his place opposite Mr. Sherman, forced himself to return the gaze.

“Who's gonna ref?” someone asked, but Stan didn't look to see who it was. Harold, maybe. It would be something Harold would do: worry about the rules being broken while the world crumbled around him.

“We don't need a ref, do we?” Mr. Sherman said, staring at Stan. “Just a friendly game of basketball.”

Now Stan smiled. “That's what this is to you, Sherman?” he said, using his gym teacher's last name only for the first and only time. “A game?”

Mr. Sherman's smile faltered, but only for a moment. “Lane,” he said, “throw this jump ball so we can get started.” He held out the basketball, and Robbie approached to take it gingerly.

Robbie held the ball in both hands, looked at Stan as if trying to solve some deep problem, glanced at Mr. Sherman, then balanced the ball on one hand. He threw the ball into the air, straight and true.

Mr. Sherman jumped, went after the ball, but Stan stood still. Mr. Sherman tipped the ball behind him, toward Max, but Stan didn't follow the path of the ball.

He simply stood at center court, waiting.

Sherman had come back to the ground and turned to follow the game, but now he finally seemed to realize things weren't progressing according to plan.

And oddly enough, the other four starters on Stan's team had remained still as well. No one moved, even as Max took Mr. Sherman's tip-off and made an easy layup. The ball slid through the net with a
thwik
and then bounced on the floor, slowly rolling away and coming to a stop. No one from Stan's team made a move to retrieve the ball and inbound it.

Maybe they were all too stunned by the events leading up to the game. This was unexplored territory, and they were probably wishing it had remained that way.

Too late for that.

Mr. Sherman's eyebrows furrowed, and he moved back toward Stan at center court. “What are you doing?” he asked,
anger now starting to flash in his eyes.

Stan made no answer, but he held Mr. Sherman's gaze.

Mr. Sherman reached out to grab Stan's arm, but Stan backed away before he could.

“Don't touch me,” he said through clenched teeth.

Mr. Sherman stopped his advance for a few moments, then began it again with renewed force. His hand shot out, not to grab Stan, but to hit him.

Stan sidestepped, unconsciously, and put out his hand to stop the progress of Mr. Sherman's blow. His hand clasped at Mr. Sherman's sinewy forearm, and as he made contact, Stan felt an icy shock. Like the static electricity that builds up on a carpet then releases when you touch a friend's hand, perhaps, but stronger. More . . . internal. The shock originated not at his hand, the point of contact with Mr. Sherman, but from somewhere deep and dark inside his own gut. He felt his insides roll in reaction to the sudden sensation.

Immediately, Mr. Sherman fell to the hardwood floor, spasming. His arm, now limp, slipped from Stan's grasp, and his face—his
face
—literally bounced on the floor like the basketball had only moments before.

Blood began to stream from Mr. Sherman's nose, and another hushed quiet fell over the room as Mr. Sherman continued to convulse in front of them.

“Someone go get help,” Stan yelled, and a few seconds later, Harold ran through the double doors at the end of the gym and disappeared.

A phone started ringing somewhere, its insistent tone breaking the stillness. Stan looked around him, at all the boys still motionless, his gaze finally stopping on Kurt Marlowe, who simply nodded.

Ring
. Not one of those old-fashioned rings, but the ring of a cell phone, out of place in this setting.

“You told him not to touch you,” Kurt Marlowe said to him.

Ring
.

6.

Ring
.

Stan opened his eyes, Kurt Marlowe's words still in his ears. He reached for the cell phone that had pulled him from his never-ending dream.

“Hello?” His eyes were open, but his mind was still flooded with dream images.

“Good morning, Bleach.” The voice on the line spoke with a slight Eastern European accent, and he recognized it instantly.

“Good morning, Viktor. Surprised to get a call from you.”

“I would expect you'd be used to our calls by now.”

Stan squinted his eyes against the daylight streaming in through the pulled drapes. He stifled a sigh, not wanting Viktor to hear.

“Just not used to calls from you specifically.”

“I know, and I apologize. I really should try to communicate more often. You are well?”

“No worries, Viktor.”

“You are sleeping well?”

“Great.”

“And your mother. She is doing well.” Viktor said it as a statement, but there was a question hidden in the last word.

Eyes still closed, Stan rubbed at his temple, considering his words. “Yeah, Viktor,” he said. “My mother's doing fine.”

“Good, good. As I say, I do not take the opportunities to talk with you as I should. To make sure you are happy in our employ.”

Stan shook his head. Viktor always spoke with a slight air of formality, remnants, he was sure, of having learned English as a second language in Russia. Or wherever it was he came from. Stan always assumed it was Russia; it only made sense Viktor would have connections with the Russian Mafia.

He stifled another sigh. “What can I do for you, Viktor?”

“Ah, always so accommodating, Bleach. How considerate.

I have a project for you in . . . ah . . . Seattle.”

“Washington?” He winced. As if there were a hundred Seattles spread across the country.

“Yes.”

Usually Viktor had him working in large cities across the East and Midwest. Chicago, St. Louis, the Twin Cities, New York, Boston. Evidently, Viktor was stretching his reach into the West. Still, Stan made no comment. You don't say anything more to a guy like Viktor than you have to.

“Okay, Viktor. You got it.”

“You will leave tomorrow. Commercial flight, the usual routine. Your new documents should be at the front desk right now.”

“Okay.” Stan waited, feeling as if he was supposed to be saying something else. What, he wasn't sure. “Anything else I can do for you, Viktor?”

A pause on the other end of the line. “Only this, Bleach. Only this.”

“You got it.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.

He lay in bed, and the words of Kurt Marlowe in the dream returned to him:
You told him not to touch you
.

Good advice.

Stan pulled himself out of bed and into the shower, then dressed in the new clothing. He never had to pack or buy anything; fresh clothes, food, and other essentials always waited for him at his next suite, apartment, or hotel room. The Organization shuttled him from location to location following each job, always taking care of the logistics. One day a month, Stan carried out an assignment. The next three or four weeks, he stayed boarded up inside a room somewhere—always someplace different—until it was time to rise once more, like a deadly phoenix, and kill again.

But before this next assignment there was one other person he needed to see back on the East Coast.

7.

It had been a few months since his last visit to Aspen Meadows, and little had changed aside from the season. Last time the tree limbs hung heavy with spring blooms, and the gentle breeze carried the aroma of honeysuckle, earth, wood. Birds chattered in the air. Now the mixture of smells had been replaced with the heavy aroma of freshly cut summer grass, the bird calls were more infrequent, the trees and plants wilting in the late summer heat.

He shut the door on the rental car, walked across the asphalt to the front of the facility. The automatic doors whisked open, pushing a chill of conditioned air against his face as he entered.

A parrot in a cage squawked as he walked to the front desk, perhaps bothered by the tabby cat playing with a ball on the floor. He still had a hard time adjusting to the animals and pets in the common areas of the place; yes, he'd listened to the counselors tell him how therapeutic pets were for patients, but he couldn't quite bring himself to that way of thinking.

The presence of the animals made it seem as if the whole facility—cats, dogs, birds, fish, humans—was just a giant unwanted pet center, filled with animals waiting for families to come by and pet them, give them some attention.

He pushed the thought from his mind, uncomfortable with how well it fit. He visited his mother here every few months, and he was one of the more frequent visitors. Some of the people here, wards of the state, never had any company.

Luckily for them, this center for homeless pets didn't euthanize.

The young woman behind the glass at the desk was new, and pleasant enough—almost too pleasant—as she asked him to sign in and gave him a visitor pass, hesitating only briefly when she saw his hands encased in the latex gloves.

He smiled. “I'm a bit of a germ freak,” he said, holding up both hands, as if this somehow illustrated an obsession with cleanliness.

She just nodded, asked if he needed directions, and he politely told her no. He had been here before, often, including many times before this young woman worked here. She was the new person here, not he.