Page 65

Please.

Adage.

Below that:

P.S.: If you got the tape, listen to it.

Ahead, a couple with matching Mohawks argues with the driver over what currently constitutes exact change. An elderly woman squeezes past, cradling an overweight pug on one hip and a bag of groceries on the other. Somebody drops a dime. Dust motes tremble, caught in mid-flight, as the doors slam shut.

Mike sighs.

He flips the cassette case open, and lets the tape fall into place.

* * *

A low hiss.

“Testing, one, two, three. Testing. Hello?”

Click.

Rewind, and press play.

“Testing, one, two—”

Click.

Softly: “All right, then.”

* * *

“July twenty-third, nineteen-ninety. About . . . quarter to twelve.”

Silence. In the background, a distant sitcom’s laugh track seeps up through the floor like a forming blister.

“Okay. I’m gonna tell you a story.

“It’s a red one, through and through. The words I’ll use are stained so deep nothing could wash them clean. They reek and shine. Red the same way the moon would be red tonight, if you could see it. Red the same way the river is red. A red moon, a red rising tide, a red river breaking its banks, and a deep red tale somebody beside me has to hear before the world ends or I do, whichever comes first. And Larry’s dead, so it might as well be you.

“Here’s how it goes.”

* * *

Mike hops the curb and stumbles, nearly sprawling waist deep in a puddle.

Uck.

He scans for the Meat Market sign—a steak on a phallic neon stick—as his mind races backwards.

Larry.

Last name—Gurley? Garvey? A skinny kid, bigger even than Adage, who’d spurted to full height that year, the way girls tend to. They spent their summers at the cottage—Mike with his parents. Adage her grandparents—and played in the woods, down by the lake. Always together, but always alone. And not minding.

Right up until Larry’s Winnebago pulled into the vacant lot across the road.

Mike shuts his eyes. Beneath his coat, against his side, he feels the cold iron weight of his father’s gun.

* * *