Games Boys Play (9 page)

“Yeah.”

“What’d he want?”

Dylan was staring at him, waiting for an answer. He racked his brain, but the truth was the truth: “I don’t know. He just…pushed his way inside, shoved me against a wall…” Brian trailed off, his mouth open, looking at the wall where it had started, the memory of a gloved hand crushing his face against it making him want to go all the way back to the beginning and do it all over again. He shook his head. “I didn’t even see what he looked like.”

Dylan was still watching him, and Brian noticed that although he’d scrubbed off most of the blackout from around his eyes, traces remained, crinkled in the corners of his eyes, smeared near the side of his nose.

“Shit,” Dylan said. “What am I doing? You don’t want to sit here all night.” He started pulling the tape from Brian’s chest. “So what happened after he shoved you against the wall?”

“He tied me up like this and gagged me.”

The tape tugged at Brian’s shirt.

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. He was waiting for some other guys to show up, it sounded like.”

“What for?”

Brian shook his head. “They never showed anyway. He was on the phone complaining about it.”

Dylan, crouching, had moved to the tape around Brian’s left foot and ankle.

“Ever seen him before?”

“I told you, I didn’t see him at all. He was wearing a mask.”

“What kind?”

His foot was able to move a little, and then the last of the tape was pulled away and dropped to the floor. It never felt so good to have his foot flat on the floor. “Black ski mask. Eyeholes, no mouth.” His heart raced like he
had
in fact been attacked by an unknown intruder.

“Did he sound familiar?”

“Nuh-uh. Not that he said much.” He slowly stretched his leg in front of him, his knee complaining during the movement but then settling into a warm, happy freedom from pain.

“So he just left?”

“He got a call and left.”

“He just…
left
.”

“Yeah.”

“How long ago?”

Brian used the back of the chair to scratch an itch on his upper arm. “Fifteen minutes, maybe?”

Dylan looked up at him. “You don’t think he’s coming back, do you?”

“No. I mean. I don’t know.” Dylan’s expression of worry looked so genuine that an edge of doubt started to scratch in Brian’s head. But that was silly. Of
course
the intruder had been Dylan. “He didn’t say.”

Dylan glanced over his shoulder at the door, then turned his attention back to the tape around Brian’s right foot.

“Do
you
think he’ll be back?” Brian asked.

“There’s no telling, I guess.”

Brian’s foot dropped to the floor.

Dylan said, “We should call the police,” as he pushed to his feet.

“You think so?”

“After we finish getting you out of this.” He helped Brian stand, and just as he got there, Dylan’s grip tightened on his arm. Dylan turned his face toward the front of the apartment.

“What?”

“Shh.”

Brian listened.

With his ear still angled toward the door, Dylan slid his gaze over to Brian, his eyes a little wide, his eyebrows a little high. It was enough to get Brian’s heart racing again, even though he knew—he
knew
—the guy wasn’t going to come back through the door, because the guy was standing
right there
gripping his arm.

Right?
His mouth had gone dry all over again.

“Shit,” Dylan whispered. “I think— We’ve gotta get out of here.” But there was only the balcony, and where would they go from there? Splat? Dylan pulled him by the arm, and he followed, not toward the balcony but the hall. Dylan was walking fast, dragging Brian along, Brian’s legs still a little stiff and shaky from his ride on the chair. The hall was more of an alcove, darker than the dining area had been, with three doors off it: bathroom straight ahead, bedroom just before that on the left, and before the bedroom door, the coat closet.

Dylan slid the closet door open. Jackets and outerwear hung from the rack. Stuff he had no other place for was piled on the floor. Dylan pushed him in nonetheless, Brian stumbling against boxes, getting a face full of a wool coat as he crouched, with Dylan’s hand on the top of his head to guide him, to get under the closet bar.

“Just a sec,” Dylan whispered, turning away, sliding the door half-closed with Brian inside.

Between the wool coat and the door, he couldn’t see where Dylan had gone or what he was up to. He heard boots hurrying back, the door swept open again, and then Dylan was climbing into the cramped closet with him and dragging the door shut.

It was just them and their breathing and the smell of stored clothing, the cigarette smoke that clung to Dylan’s hair and clothes, and Brian’s sweat. Dylan was on the other side of the wool coat. Part of him was wedged against Brian’s knee, but Brian couldn’t tell what part. His back was starting to ache from his crouched-bent position.

Dylan’s hand reached through the coats and gripped his elbow.

Then there was a sound outside the closet.

Brian shifted his head a little, but that just made noise inside the closet, right at his ears.

Footsteps? Had he heard footsteps?

He heard nothing.

And then footsteps.

And then: “Oh, that’s cute. That’s really fucking cute.”

It was
his
voice, the intruder’s voice. Brian’s heart pounded. If his hands were free, he’d be gripping Dylan’s arm twice as tightly as Dylan was gripping his. He shifted his foot, his knee digging harder against Dylan, who was here, in the closet with him—so who the
fuck
was out there?

“Where’d you go, shitheel?”

There came a clatter—the sound of a chair being knocked over?

Dylan’s fingers tightened.

Brian closed his eyes.

The wool coat scratched against his cheek.

Footsteps stamped across the floor.

“I’ll find you. Wherever the fuck you went, I’ll find you.”

Shit shit shit shit shit.

A door slammed.

Dylan’s grip was so hard it almost hurt. If Brian weren’t in a near panic, it
would
hurt. More bruises, he thought. But outside the closet, there was nothing.

Silence.

They crouched there unmoving, but there was nothing else.

Eventually Dylan said quietly, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I think it’s safe.”

“Yeah. Good.” He hoped it was safe.

Dylan eased the door open. He stuck his head out, then stepped into the hall. He helped Brian climb out, keeping him steady as he straightened, his wrists still taped tight behind him.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Brian nodded, his gaze darting around the room.
Had
someone been there?

The chair was upright.

The chair was upright.

He sagged a little, relieved. The chair was upright. Nothing else, from what he could tell, had been disturbed. But an iPhone lay on the kitchen counter, just a few feet from the closet door, its screen still lit up. Dylan must have set it there and started up a sound file before jumping into the closet.

“Let’s get you free,” Dylan said, flipping on the hallway light.

He turned to let Dylan undo his wrists. They were standing close to a wall; he leaned until his shoulder touched it, then let it take his weight. “That was close,” he said quietly.

“Shit yeah.”

As the tape tugged his wrists, he said, “Who the fuck
are
you anyway?”—and then sucked in a gasp as the tape tore hair right out of his wrist. He turned, bringing his arms in front of him, rubbing his wrists, his back against the wall.

Dylan just shrugged.

Brian let his knees bend, let the wall support him as he slid down until he was sitting on his ass in the hall, rubbing a wrist, watching his cousin and best friend watch him back. “I can’t believe you did all this.”

Dylan lowered himself to the floor.

“Changing clothes, the recording,” Brian said. “You had to make that ahead of time.”

Dylan circled his knees with his arms.

“And the mask. The hoodie. The gun. I remember that fucking gun, you know.” Brian tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “I remember that gun.”

“Aunt Terri didn’t let you have toy guns growing up.”

“Neither did any of my friends’ moms.” He’d grown up in California. He and Dylan hadn’t met—hadn’t
really
met—until Brian was fifteen and his parents had moved back East again. That cap gun was the first toy gun he’d ever held in his hands. The smell… He’d fallen in love with the smell of fired caps. Dylan must not have fired any after digging the gun out of his mom’s basement, because Brian would have recognized that smell right off the bat.

“Was it all right?” Dylan asked. “Did I cross any lines?”

Brian was still getting a grip on things. He looked toward the counter, where the phone sat, and over Dylan’s shoulder to the chair, discarded tape scattered around it like Christmas ribbons. The front door, where it had all started. He felt simultaneously wiped and caffeine jittery. “I can’t believe you did all this,” he said. “It was… Wow. It was fucking unbelievable.”

“You want some water or something to drink?” Dylan was getting to his feet.

“Yeah. Ice water. Thanks.”

When he didn’t make any move to get up too, Dylan said, “Are you really okay?”

“A little mind-blown. I’ll get over it.” He rubbed his wrists, staring at the chair he’d been unable to get up from, the tape on the floor. His eyes slipped closed, and he was back in the closet, him and Dylan cramped together in hiding, alone with the sound of their breaths. Just the two of them—crazy but perfect, Dylan in as much danger as he was. It was fucking
perfect.

Dylan dropped down in front of him again, holding forth a glass.

He drank one swallow after another, the cold hurting but the thirst quenching too good to stop. As Brian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, Dylan said, “More?”

He shook his head. Held up an arm for an assist.

Dylan pulled him to his feet. “Get some air?”

He nodded.

“Good, ’cause I could use a fucking smoke.”

Following Dylan to the balcony, he said again, “I can’t believe you did all that.”

Dylan set the lock bar aside. Fresh air tumbled in as he slid open the door. He already had an unlit cigarette between his teeth. Brian followed him outside, walked over to the balcony railing, looked down at the darkness.

After a minute of listening to the soft hiss of paper burning, he said, “I wish you’d say something.” And then, instead,
he
said something. “That was crazy.” After another few seconds, he said it again. “That was just crazy.”

“Crazy good or crazy bad?” Dylan asked.

“Crazy fucking amazing.” Brian put his elbows on the railing and dropped his head into his hands, grasping at the hair at the front of his head, tugging it as if to reassure himself, through a little bit of pain, that he was in fact still real.

“I’m kind of surprised I went all the way through with it, to tell you the truth.”

“Yeah?”

“It was like this grand plan in my head, but I kept thinking it would come down to it and I’d hold back. Standing outside the door the first time was hard. Really fucking hard. I had to work up the nerve to knock and kick the whole thing off.”

Brian turned and leaned against the railing.

“Once I came through the door and you didn’t crack up laughing, that was a big help. If you’d so much as snickered, I’d have bust out laughing. I was so nervous, and that would have been it. It would have been all over.” He took a quick hit off his cigarette, pushed twin streams of smoke through his nostrils. “I’m so glad you didn’t laugh.”

Brian laughed now and turned back around.

“So it was okay?” Dylan asked. “I’m serious. Be honest.”

“It was amazing. But weren’t you bored out of your skull, just sitting around all that time?” He looked over his shoulder at Dylan.

“Were you?”

“No, but…” He laughed. He looked up at the sky. Only the brightest stars showed against the city’s light, but he knew the rest of them were up there. “I would have been bored in your shoes.”

“I kept busy. Time flew anyway.”

“How long did it go on?”

“The first part about an hour fifteen—”

“Is that all?”

Dylan nodded. “Then when I went down to my car, almost fifteen. Then probably a little more than fifteen at the end, when I came back. Maybe a little less.” He took a long, slow drag, the cherry end glowing red. “But my biggest worry”—he crouched to tamp out the butt, then dropped it in the can Brian kept in the corner—“was when I was out at my car. I kept thinking, ‘What if something goes wrong? What if something happens, and I’m not there, and it’s my fault?’ I’d have killed myself if anything had happened because I’d gone out to the street for ten minutes. And changing clothes never took so long in my fucking life, getting out of the shirt I was wearing, getting into this one. Scrubbing the black off my face. I was cursing that brilliant idea the whole time.” He shook out another cigarette. “I got back up here in eight and a half minutes, then stood with my back against your door, listening. Arguing with myself about whether I should wait the whole fifteen minutes just because I’d decided earlier that fifteen minutes was a reasonable time to make it look like it wasn’t ‘Bye, Dylan. Hi, Dylan.’” A whiff of sulfur spilled into the air as Dylan flashed the match to life.

“I can’t believe you recorded that part for the end. I was impressed. I
am
impressed. That was fucking wicked.”

“I felt like a fool doing it, standing there playacting with myself.”

“I actually looked for the chair when we got out of the closet. I wanted to see if it was still standing.”

“That’s the one part of the plan I fucked up! Sitting there in the closet, I was like, ‘Fuck! I forgot to put the chair on its side!’ Nothing I could do about it at that point, though.” Dylan laughed.

“I’m kind of half-glad you forgot. I’d be standing here still trying to convince myself it really was you. Jesus. That whole thing was intense. Crazy, crazy intense.” Brian toed the balcony floor.