Slippin' into Darkness

2:49 A.M.

They were in Shutterbug’s bedroom.

Griz Cody stood before the dresser mirror. He raised his sweatshirt, exposing a startlingly white roll of fat dappled with a red welt that was roughly the same configuration as a beer can. Griz squirted a gob of Sportscreme into one large paw and massaged his jiggling flesh, moaning with pleasure.

Bat Bautista sat on Shutterbug’s bed, twisting his head from side to side, wincing at the little popping sounds made by sore vertebra. “Damn,” he said, “now I’m going to have to go to the chiropractor for sure.”

Leaning against the doorjamb with a beer in one hand, Todd Gould laughed. “Shit, you did okay when Shutterbug hit you in the head. It was the punch to the belly that gave you trouble. That cheeseburger wasn’t any prettier coming up than it was going down. You should try chewing sometime, Bat.”

“Cheeseburger ain’t what did it.” Derwin MacAskill pointed a thick finger at Bat. “You Filipino boys just can’t take it in the belly. Eat too much of that lumpia and shit, all those veggies that look like little worms.”

Bat Bautista only twisted his head in reply, listening to a private chorus of firecracker pops.

And Shutterbug drank it all in, thinking just a little wryly. So, this is what I was missing all those years. This is what it’s like to be one of the boys.

Shutterbug sat on the floor. He’d changed from the black silk robe to jeans and a Perry Ellis shirt and his comfortable loafers, and he was busy digging through some boxes in the bottom of his closet. He reached for his beer, tipped it up, and allowed a quarter of the can’s contents to tickle over his throat like cold fingers of satisfaction. He had downed four brews in less than twenty minutes, and that was a personal best. Usually he required at least twenty minutes to drain a single beer, and his choice was certainly never a beer brewed in the United States of America, let alone a beer that came out of a can. But after having his home invaded by four drunks, after watching a volley of beer cans destroy his stereo, after downing Bat Bautista with two punches, and after realizing that he was actually going to live to tell the tale of this night, Shutterbug felt that he deserved a little something that would take the edge off.

One by one, Shutterbug uncoiled the headers of a dozen old 16mm loops. He held each spool to the light and examined the first few frames while the patter continued behind him. The voices of the four men were slow and easy and the subject matter was unrestrained, as if Shutterbug were a regular part of their conversations.

And Shutterbug found that he was actually enjoying the conversation. Some of that could be blamed on the beer, but not all of it. Even the rude jokes brought quiet laughter to his lips.

Amazing. The A-Squad was actually in his house. In his room, staring up at the wall of eighteen-year-old faces that Shutterbug had maintained since high school.

Griz Cody unbuttoned his pants, dropped them, and sank into a small chair that creaked as it accepted his bulk. He went to work on his hairy knees with the Sportscreme, but his movements were automatic-his attention was really focused on the young faces mounted on the wall. “Man,” he said, “those sure bring back some memories.”

Derwin gave a low chuckle. “Damn straight. It appears old Shutterbug had hisself a taste for the white girls.”

There it was, blunt and honest and right out in the open. And they all laughed about it. Horny, dark laughter followed by an awkward silence, which was finally broken by a question from Todd Gould. “How come you did it, Shutterbug? I mean, how come you kept those pictures up there, all these years?”

Shutterbug stared at a frame of film. The light muted behind it, the colors not what they should be. A class picnic in the Berkeley hills, girls wearing bikinis, the scene locked in murky twilight instead of summertime brightness. He twisted the film onto the spool and snapped the plastic lid over it, the sound as sharp as the crack of Bat Bautista’s vertebra. “I don’t know why I kept them,” Shutterbug said, answering honestly. “Maybe I left them up there because I couldn’t bring myself to take them down.”

Todd scratched his forehead, which had been much too low at eighteen. His receding hairline actually made him look more intelligent. But looks were deceiving. Shutterbug knew that. He tipped back his beer, let another generous swallow slide down his throat. He felt like an ass. Certainly, he had said the wrong thing.

Then Derwin spoke up. “Yeah, I know what you mean, man. It’s the shits gettin’ old. Lost my job at the shipyard last year. Now I’m living in a shack behind somebody’s house-probably used to be some kid’s playhouse. Me and a lawn mower that I make the rounds with every day. Shit, I even got me a kid’s job.” He laughed bitterly, killed his beer, and crumpled the can. “And you know what I got on the shelf above my bed?”

“What?” Shutterbug asked.

“Fuckin’ basketball trophies. They ain’t worth a damn. Every one of ’em peelin’ those thin gold coats. Either that or they’re gettin’ tarnished. But I keep ’em, all the same. Like they tell me I did something once.”

Bat laughed at that. “You got that one right. A couple of months ago, me and the wife got into a real pisser of a fight. Woman couldn’t even understand what made me mad. See, she took one of my baseballs and played catch with the kids. The only problem was that it was the ball I used to pitch that no-hitter when I went all-city in our senior year. It was autographed by everyone who was on the team. And my wife and the kids scuffed up the damn thing, throwing it around the street. Man, I went ballistic, and she just didn’t get it.”

“No doubt about it,” Griz Cody said. “Definite grounds for a D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” He spelled the last word out with a nasal twang in his voice, the way a country singer would, and everyone laughed.

“Yeah…well…”Shutterbug wondered how far he should go with this. “I guess these pictures were my trophies.”

“They’re one hell of a lot better lookin’ than a pot-metal football player,” Griz said, doing a stiff imitation of the running back straight-arm pose that most trophies portrayed.

Derwin struck a frozen basketball free-throw pose. Bat followed with a pitcher’s windup. Todd puffed out his chest, straining toward an imaginary finish line. Everyone laughed, including Shutterbug, who suddenly felt that he was in the company of a bunch of gone-to-seed mimes.

Todd asked, “Who wants another beer?” and the jocks nodded as one.

Shutterbug unspooled another roll of film.

“Marvis, how about you?”

The man with the reel of film in his hands came up short. Marvis. That’s what Todd had said. Marvis. Not Shutterbug.

“Yeah,” Marvis said, smiling. “That would great.”

They were having a real big, macho, male-bonding time of it. Marvis was wondering if he should invite them into the back yard, where they could strip naked and pound drums and howl at the moon like a bunch of crazy yupsters.

He resisted the temptation. Instead, he continued sorting through the 16mm loops, but finding the right one didn’t seem to matter much anymore.

“Y’know,” Bat said, still staring at Marvis’s gallery, “those were some good times, back then. Shit, I wish you wouldn’t have broken that CD player, Griz. It would have been good to listen to some of those old tunes.”

“Not that white boy music, though,” Derwin said. “I couldn’t take hearin’ that nonsense again.”

“Man,” Griz said, “you’re about the biggest racist I know.”

“Oh yeah? I s’pose you liked listenin’ to all the songs about white girls and dead horses named Wildfire and shit.”

“Well, it was better than ‘Jungle Boogie.’ ”

“Shit if it was. That wasn’t nothin’ compared to ‘You Light Up My Life.’ ”

Griz sang, “I’m gonna boogie-oogie-oogie’ til I jes can’t boogie no more…”

“You’re havin’ mah baybeeeee -”

Griz laughed, spitting beer. “Okay…okay…Igive up…”

Derwin wasn’t done yet. “-what a lovely way of say in’ how much you luuuvvv meeeeeeeee…”

“Okay! Okay!”

It was quiet for a few seconds.

“Damn,” Todd said. “I wish the CD player wasn’t broken.”

“Yeah,” Derwin agreed.

Griz Cody nodded.

One by one, they rated the girls on the wall. Both Bat and Marvis had attended the fifteen year reunion, and they took turns detailing what had happened to each girl as she grew older. Plenty of positive and negative adjectives were thrown around. Speculation was made concerning the possibility of breast enhancement and liposuction. It was decided, in general terms, that there was a desperate need for electrolysis professionals in this day and age, and for a time the conversation turned to the outstanding prospects a seasoned professional could expect in a seemingly competition-free environment.

Bat finally grew weary of that line of conversation and returned to the original subject. “That Amelia Peyton, now she was fine. I never even noticed her in high school. Back then she was trying too hard to be like everyone else. Just another April Destino clone. But now…I got one look at her at the reunion and my wife got mad, told me she thought she’d need a winch to get my tongue back in my mouth.”

Marvis eyed Bat-his little-old-man gut, his dirty fingernails. The very idea of Bat Bautista with Amy Peyton was ludicrous. A guy like Bautista wouldn’t have idea one of how to get with her.

The words came out of Marvis’s mouth automatically. “Amy isn’t bad.”

“Whoa!” Derwin said. “Is this the voice of experience, Marv?”

Marvis didn’t answer directly. “It wasn’t as if we had a big affair or anything. I only saw her twice, when she was between husbands. She worked at the bank across the street from my camera shop, and we kind of hit it off. I took her out to dinner one time. A real nice place up in the Napa Valley. I picked the right wines, ordered for her. She liked that. Then the other time I took her to a photography exhibit over in San Francisco. I knew the photographer, and we went to a private party at the Mark Hopkins afterward and-”

“Yeah,” Griz said. “Okay. I don’t want to hear about silverware and place settings. What I want to know is… did you chop her beef?”

Marvis laughed. Did you chop her beef? How delicate. “That’s why you guys would never get a woman like Amy.”

The four jocks were speechless. Marvis felt wonderful. Every one of them was dying for a little taste of Amy Peyton. Every one of them was dying for something he’d had. They were envious, and it showed. Serious salivation-it was practically dripping off of them.

Derwin, who lived in a shack and mowed lawns for a living, stared at Marvis’s bedroom furnishings as if he were calculating the cost of every stick of furniture. Griz Cody sat there, too fat and too ugly and too crude to attract any woman. Todd Gould, with his perpetually wrinkled brow, thumbed through Marvis’s photography books as if they were written in hieroglyphics-just another anonymous balding guy who didn’t have much upstairs in more ways than one. And Bat Bautista, who spent his evenings with a fat wife and kids who irritated him, was the perfect picture of a guy who would never get a taste of a woman like Amy Peyton in this lifetime. They were flat-out, locked-jaw envious. And it was wonderful. Marvis grinned at them, thinking, Oh, how the mighty have fallen. He didn’t pass up the opportunity to rub it in. “Amy is a high-strung lady,” he concluded somewhat mysteriously. “Okay-in every way-but not someone I wanted to get involved with long-term.”

Amazing, those words spilling from his lips. Marvis had never before thought of himself as a master of understatement. In truth. Amy Peyton had three topics of discussion: money, Amy Peyton, and money. It had taken Marvis all of two dates to figure that out, after which he stopped returning her calls.

But he wasn’t going to share that information with the A-Squad. He preferred to allow their filthy imaginations to take the ball and run with it. He grinned.

“Just look at this shit-eater,” Derwin said.

Well fuck me.” Bat Bautista shook his head. “Marvis Hanks. Man, you’ve changed. I mean, I always knew you had some guts, deep down inside you. It took some guts not to give up that film of April when we came looking for it. And it took some guts not to spill your guts about what happened that night in Todd’s basement. I mean, you could have sunk all of us if you’d ever turned over that film to anyone. Even to your father-he was a cop, right? You could have given it to him, knowing that he would have found a way to protect you. You could have screwed us, big time.”

Marvis smiled at Bat’s misguided worries. He never would have turned over the film. If he’d done that, it would have been gone forever.

Bautista’s eyes were red with beer and fatigue. Words spilled from his lips in a thick blur. “And now you’re screwin’ fine women like Amelia Peyton. Drivin’ a Jaguar. Got your own business-”

Marvis shrugged. “It’s just the breaks of the game. I got lucky.” But he didn’t mean what he said. What he really wanted to say was. Take a long look at what I’ve got. See what idiots you’ve been. See how miserably you’ve screwed up, while old punk Shutterbug, old skinny Shutterbug who you used to bodyslam on cement floors, little old faggot Shutterbug who couldn’t book a ride on April Destino’s train, look what’s become of him.

Suddenly Marvis was ready to tell them everything. How much money he had, and how he earned it, and how much of it he didn’t dare show. Forget the Jag-he longed to brag that he could easily afford a Testarossa. He ached to tell them about the teenage girls; he wanted to describe in great detail how Shelly Desmond peeled off her clothes in front of his video cameras, and how she did each and everything that he told her to do.

What would they say if he spoke of those things? How would they react if he told them about the leather mask scarred over with silver zippers that he wore on the dangerous nights when he joined Shelly in front of the camera?

He wanted to find out in the absolute worst way. He stood staring into the closet, his gaze aimed at two shoeboxes shoved toward the back of the middle shelf. His hand went to the one on the left, the one that held several neatly sorted stacks of twenties and fifties. But ultimately his fingers settled on the box on the right.

Yes. The statement would be just as clear. He opened the box and tossed a Ziploc bag heavy with cocaine to Bat Bautista. “You fellows brought the beer. Here’s dessert.”

To a man, the A-Squad whooped and hollered, just as Marvis had expected. Derwin ran to the kitchen, returned with a spoon, carefully dipped it into white powder, and snorted. A stupid grin spread on his face, his black nose powdered white. “This,” he said, “is living.”

Derwin passed the Ziploc to Marvis, and he took a taste. Then he handed it to Griz Cody and returned his attention to the large cardboard box that lay on the floor.

One last roll of film waited for inspection. Marvis uncoiled the leader. Raised the first frame to the dim light, saw dull green felt and parchment-yellow flesh.

“This is the one,” Marvis announced. “April Destino.”

“All right!” Griz shouted. “Memory fuckin’ lane!”

Marvis grinned as the drug sizzled through him. He was almost ready to share another secret. The words stumbled on the tip of his tongue. He almost said, There’s a sequel to this, you know. April, Part II. It’s on video. Let’s go down to the basement. I’ll cue it up…”

But the Ziploc returned to his hands. Another toot and his mind raced forward. And when he passed the coke to Bat he saw that the moment had passed, anyway, because Todd Gould had turned his attention from the photography books to an old high school yearbook, the 1976 edition, to be exact.

“Check this out!” Todd shoved the book under Derwin’s dusted nose. “Check out what April wrote!”

Derwin’s lips formed silent words, snaking into a leer that spoke volumes.

“Give me that,” Marvis demanded.

Derwin tossed the book to Griz. Marvis grabbed for it, but Griz dodged sloppily and stumbled into the hallway.

Reading. Laughing.

“Showtime!” Griz yelled, slapping the dusty blue covers closed. “Let’s roll. It’s showtime!”

Marvis made another grab for the yearbook, but Griz flipped a blind toss over his head and the book landed in the hands of Bat Bautista, who charged past Marvis and didn’t stop until he hit the front lawn.

Marvis hurried after him.

A pair of headlights bloomed across the street.

“Shit!” Squinting, Bat shielded his bloodshot eyes with the yearbook. Harsh white light played over the glossy pages. The car didn’t move. Marvis did. As he walked toward Bat Bautista, the headlights washed his black face, his white, coke-smeared nose.

The car sat in Joe Hamner’s driveway, but it didn’t belong to Joe. It rolled slowly across the sidewalk, onto the street, and passed under a streetlight. One person sat behind the wheel. Small shoulders, long hair. A woman. Had to be. Marvis could see that, but that was all he could see.

The car paused. The window on the passenger side was down. A single sound broke the night. Each man heard it, but only Marvis recognized it as the rasping percussion of a speed-winder, the device used by professional photographers to take a quick sequence of photos.

The car spit exhaust and disappeared around the comer.

And Bat Bautista’s words filled Marvis’s ears: “Click. Click. Click. You missed the best shot, Shutterbug. But that’s okay. I’m still waiting for you, and this time…I’m ready!”

The words danced in Shutterbug’s head. He was still thinking about the car and the sound of the speed-winder. It was difficult to split his concentration after the beer and the coke. A minute passed before Bat’s statement coalesced in his brain.

Bautista slapped the yearbook against Shutterbug’s Nautilus-constructed chest. “It’s what she wrote in your yearbook, numbnuts,” he said.

Shutterbug stared at a glowing streetlight. In his mind it was a big flashbulb that was taking an inordinate amount of time to die. And suddenly the words April had written were with him in that strange afterglow between unforgiving brightness and complete darkness, forcing every other thought from his head, and he could almost hear her whisper riding the warm April breeze.