The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Annette Meyers You Don’t Know Me

From Flesh and Blood

“Hear them moving around?” She presses her ear to the door.

He doesn’t hear anything, and standing in the dark outside her parents’ bedroom scares him. What if they come out and catch him and her listening? And they don’t know him, don’t even know he’s in their place. He gets anxious, like he always does when he’s scared. He can’t help it.

“You’re afraid. What are you fuckin’ afraid about? They’re my parents, not yours.”

“I gotta go,” he says. The sweat is dripping off him, and his glasses slide down his nose. He has to pee.

She’s disgusted with him. “You gotta do better than this or you can’t hang out with me.” She drags him back down the hall to the other side of the apartment. It’s this huge place that goes a whole floor with their own elevator stop. She has her own bathroom.

He can’t pee while she stands in the doorway watching him, talking about them. It’s all she talks about. She hates them. “They’re always on my case.” She makes her voice whiny. “Why do you have to dress like that, Lila? Like you’re a boy. You’re such a pretty girl, Lila.” She changes her voice. “Do you like the way I dress, Anthony?” Raising her baggy sweatshirt, she flashes little apricot tits at him. “You think I look like a boy, Anthony? What do you say, Anthony? Do you think I’m a pretty girl?” She stands there and waits.

“Yeah,” he says. He can hardly hear himself. The piss comes gushing out of him. “You’re beautiful.” He feels like his feet are glued to the floor. His beeper starts going.

She lowers her T-shirt. “Forget it. Call your mama.”

She scares him, but everything scares him. He doesn’t want her to stop talking. He’s never met anyone like her before. She’s so free. She does whatever she wants to do, goes wherever she wants, says what she wants. He doesn’t understand why she complains all the time.

“... can’t imagine them having a conversation,” Lila says. “They never talk about anything real except when they’re talking about me, and even then they don’t relate to me.”

Hands shaking, he zips up. It’s after midnight and he’s skipped his last pill. Yeah, his mom’ll be on his back in a minute. Why isn’t he home? It’s a school night. And just like that his beeper goes off again. It’s going to wake her parents.

But she laughs and lies down on her bed, her arms behind her head, and stares at him. His and his mom’s whole place could fit in her bedroom. Her bed has this thing called a canopy over it. Her stupid mother’s stupid idea. He feels stupid.

She jumps up and goes, “Let’s get some beer and hang out.”

The apartment has a back door and back stairs. This is how they get out. She steers him to the lobby’s side entrance, the way they came in. The doorman is this tall jerk with no chin and a skinny mustache. Benny, she calls him. When Benny opens the door for them, he gives Anthony a wink, like he knows something.

“Go on, Anthony, what’re you waiting for?” She gives him a push. He stands on the sidewalk and looks back. She’s passing something to the jerk doorman.

It pisses him off, like she’s got something going with the asshole. Anthony wants her for himself. “You getting something on with him?” His beeper goes off. His mom gave him the beeper so she could keep track of him. No one keeps track of Lila. She wouldn’t let them.

Lila laughs at him. “Why don’t you call your mama, baby?”

Fuck, she makes him mad. He grabs her arm and she shakes him off, gives him a look like he’s a piece of shit. “Don’t you ever touch me like that,” she says, swiping him with the back of her hand. Her ring nicks him on the cheek. She goes off down the street toward the all-night grocery.

It’s only two weeks since he first saw her. He’d started hanging out in the park on his way home from school, where a lot of kids his age hung out with hippies and bikers, drinking beer and smoking weed. Sometimes he’d Rollerblade. He didn’t talk much, and pretty soon they were making fun of him because he didn’t do weed, and didn’t drink.

He was on these pills, two different ones, and he was not supposed to, not even beer, but Anthony didn’t tell them that. He didn’t go to regular public school because he got anxious attacks. But he was doing better at Harrison, where the classes were small and they didn’t keep telling him to do better.

He’d come into the park this one day and bladed up and down the trails. When he came to the bandstand, he didn’t see the usual crew, except for the two homeless men who were collecting the empty beer cans. They looked at him, then pointed down in the low valley near the lake. Getting closer, he heard the whistles and shouts. The fight was between two kids he knew who hung out. They were really smacking each other around, kicking and rolling in the grass.

“Kill him, slice him!”

Anthony looked to see where the shout came from and he saw a girl in baggy pants and a T-shirt on the path going up the hill. She lifted a can to her lips, drained it, and threw it at the fighters. It bounced off the head of the one standing over the other, who was lying on the ground.

The standing kid yelled at the girl, “Fuck you, bitch,” distracted just long enough to get an up-punch in the balls from the kid on the ground.

The girl laughed and bladed off.

“Who’s that?” Anthony asked Robert Paredes, one of the boys watching the fight.

“That’s Lila. She’s crazy, man, but she can fight. I seen her hurt another bitch bad.”

Anthony followed her hut not too close. After a while she began to look over her shoulder at him. She was crazy. She’d pass people and clip them hard, then go fast so by the time they began to yell at her she was gone. One time she stuck her foot into the spokes of a bike as the biker rode by and the bike jerked and threw the rider into the road in front of a cab. The cab stopped just in time.

Anthony heard her laughing, but he couldn’t see her. He kept going on the path, but he’d lost her. He was tired. He sat down on a bench next to a backpack someone had left. He looked around, prodded the backpack, looked around again. He stood, reached for the backpack, and started to go.

“Where you think you’re goin’ with my backpack, asshole?” She was standing in front of him, holding a can of beer. She took a long drink, then snatched her backpack from him, unzipped it, and offered him a can of beer. He stared at it, then popped it, and drank. This wild, crazy feeling came over him.

After that, he was with her. They bladed along the park paths with her yelling at people, like, “Outta my way, fuckhead,” and “When they let you out, crazy ass?” He liked to see the look on people’s faces when she did that. She had the power.

They ended up on the steps near the lake with some other kids and some old fart hippie bums with beards and long hair, and bikers, all smoking weed and drinking beer. Everyone knew Lila and looked at him differently because he was with her.

“Pass the beer,” she said. “I got weed.” She took a couple of Baggies from her backpack and flashed them. Two bags full of joints.

“We’re out,” one of the hippies said. “But how about some grass?”

She flung one Baggie up in the air and they all jumped for it, scrambling over each other.

His beeper went off.

She stashed the other Baggie in her backpack. “What’re you, a dealer or somethin’?”

He said the truth. “My mom.”

“His mom wants her baby to come home,” Lila yelled. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

He felt his face get all hot.

She laughed. “How’d you get those?”

He looked down at the scars on his wrists and back at her.

“Come on, let’s get some beer,” she said.

He followed her out of the park to a deli, where he watched her pick up two six-packs and lay down the bills. She had a lot of twenties all wadded up in her backpack.

“You been drinking?” the clerk asked.

“You talkin’ to me?” she said.

Out on the street she said to Anthony, “So I’m a drunk, so what?”

They went back to the lake and sat around smoking and drinking till he didn’t know what time it was, but it was real dark and the cops kept coming and waving their flashlights and telling them to clear out.

His mom went after him when he got home. “Whatsa matter with you? You missed your medication. Where’d you go? Why didn’t you answer your beeper?”

He wanted to say to her what Lila would say, something free, but he couldn’t get the words straight in his head, so he didn’t say anything. But he knew Lila now and he would do what he wanted like her, and there was nothing his mom could say to him anymore that would change that.

So now he watches Lila walk away from him, like he’s nothing, and he doesn’t know if she means it or not. He touches where her ring nicked him and it’s wet. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.

“What the fuck you waitin’ for?” He hears her screaming from all the way down the street.

He puts on his glasses. He can barely see her in the light of the street lamp. People turn around and look at her. Like she’s a celebrity. She’s like no one he knows in his whole life. He catches up with her and waits while she buys two six-packs. She hands one to him and they head out to the park.

The sky is full of dark, rolling clouds, hiding the moon. The park has this wet feel though it hasn’t rained, and the air lies heavy over them. It’s very dark and after closing time, and the cops are making their rounds. Lila sees better than he does and she hisses when she spots them.

The real night people are settled on the steps leading to the bandstand, talking, drinking. He knows most of them by sight now. They’re all different ages. Mostly guys. Some have regular jobs, but like to hang out and drink and do drugs. Anthony’s seen some do hard drugs and pass out. The drunks always end up puking by the lake.

An old black man lies snoring on the steps blocking their way. He’s giving off a big stink. “Move it, nigger,” Lila yells. She kicks at him. He groans and clutches the air, but can’t keep himself from tumbling down the rest of the steps. He lies at the bottom of the stone steps, then picks himself up and stumbles away.

Anthony and Lila sit at the top of the stairs, and she begins passing out the cans of beer. His beeper goes off. He shuts it down.

“Get the weed,” she tells Anthony, who takes some joints from her backpack and gives them to her.

This big middle-aged guy stands up from a few stairs below. He lifts his beer can to Lila.

“Hey!” Lila looks at him like she knows him.

He gives her another look and comes up the stairs to them. He’s wearing this shirt with the sleeves rolled up, half in and half out of his pants. He’s carrying a jacket.

“Hey,” he says. He sits down on the other side of Lila.

“Remember me?” she says, “I’m Lila from rehab.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Lila from rehab.” He slurs his words and keeps nodding his head.

It’s like they’re in some kind of private club together that won’t let Anthony in. Anthony moves in closer to her. Lila gives him a mean look, like who the fuck does Anthony think he is, and Anthony inches away.

“Danny Boy,” she says.

“Yeah,” the drunk says, and like he passes out.

Not long afterward a three-wheel cop car comes along with a searchlight that swirls all over. A loudspeaker goes on and the cop tells them to disperse, get out of the park, the park is closed for the night.

Danny Boy twitches and gets up. He gives Lila a drooly smile and goes off on one of the bike trails.

Anthony doesn’t go right home. He circles around and follows Lila. If she knows, she doesn’t let on. She’s put the hood of her gray sweatshirt up over her head. He follows her right to her apartment building, to the side entrance, where the jerk with the mustache is standing at the door. They don’t see Anthony.

“Jeez,” the jerk says, “you got trouble again. He called nine-one-one and the cops just got here.”

“Fuck,” she says, and she goes inside and Anthony doesn’t see her anymore.

Late the next afternoon, after he does the grocery shopping for his grandmother and carries the bags up the stairs to the fourth floor for her, Anthony blades to Lila’s building. He waits for her, smoking a joint out of sight of the doorman.

A lot of people pass him, heading for the park across the street, loggers and hikers especially, and bladers. It’s spring and everyone’s out. Across the way the bushes all have yellow flowers.

A taxi stops and the doorman runs over to open the door. Lila jumps out and walks in Anthony’s direction. The doorman helps a tall, thin lady in a fitted suit and high heels get out. Lila’s mother, though Lila is small and wears baggy clothes so you can’t tell she’s not thin.

“Lila,” the tall lady says, “where are you going?”

“None of your business.” Under her breath Lila adds, “Bitch.”

“What do you want for dinner?” the tall lady asks, like Lila hasn’t talked back fresh to her.

“Leave me alone,” Lila shouts. “Don’t you see I’m talking to my friend?”

“Ask your friend if he wants to stay for dinner,” her mother says.

“He says he would rather die,” Lila says real loud. “Don’t you, Anthony?”

Her mother ducks her head like she’s embarrassed and goes into the building.

Anthony can’t imagine talking like that to his mother.

Lila makes him excited, like he’s on the edge, going to jump. He touches his cock, feels the swell. It feels good. He’s stopped taking his pills. He heard at the clinic they keep you from getting hard. He wants to be with her all the time.

Apricot tits. Little knobs of nipple that connect his tongue to his cock.

“Come on,” Lila says, grabbing his arm. “I gotta get my blades.”

She takes him into her building past the doorman and another man in a uniform.

“No Rollerblades,” the doorman calls to Anthony.

Anthony stops moving.

“Forget it,” Lila says. She shoves Anthony forward and he takes off on the smooth marble floor, barely able to stop himself from crashing into her mother and another woman in a hat waiting for the elevator. He bumps into a bench.

The woman in the hat makes a little noise. She stares at Lila.

“See something you like?” Lila says.

“You kids are out of control,” the woman says.

Lila comes up and barks like a dog right in the woman’s face. The woman backs off and doesn’t get on the elevator when the doors open.

“What is your friend’s name, Lila?”

“Puff Daddy,” Lila says.

“I thought you said Anthony,” her mother says.

“Anthony Puff Daddy.” Lila laughs, pokes Anthony so he laughs, too.

In daylight, the apartment looks like a museum.

“Would you like a Coke?” her mother asks.

“Puff Daddy and I are goin’ bladin’,” Lila says. She takes her blades from her backpack and puts them on.

“Lila, please don’t upset everyone in the building.”

“Why would I do that?” Lila says.

“Come home early,” her mother says. And while her mother continues with, “You know your father doesn’t like you to stay out late,” Lila mouths the same words, making monkey faces.

Anthony can’t get over it. She’s so free. If he could only be like her.

When they get to her bedroom, she pulls off her sweatshirt and grabs a fresh one just like it from a drawer. Her apricots are stiff. She stops. “You lookin’ at me?”

He cringes. “No.”

“What’s the matter? Aren’t they worth lookin’ at?”

He’s sweating. “Sure.”

She pulls the sweatshirt over her head. “Come here.”

He crosses to her, trying to conceal the lump in his pants.

“Closer.” He’s standing right up against her. His cock shivers. She lifts her baggy sweatshirt and pulls it over his head, her tits in his face. He grabs her ass. He’s in a dark place, her sweat salty on his tongue. Her knee nuzzles his cock. “Suck them,” she says.

He comes, goes limp.

“Schmuck!” She pushes him away.

They blade through the park, drinking beer, and Lila says, “They’re always on my case, come home early, don’t do this, don’t do that.” She stops and yells at no one in particular, “We’re big trouble!” A middle-aged black woman pushing a white child in a stroller gives her a look, and Lila screams, “What you lookin’ at, nigger?”

The woman sits down on a bench. The child begins wailing.

Lila races off, Anthony follows. “My father called the cops on me once,” Lila says. “Didn’t think I was respectful enough.”

“So he called the cops?” Anthony’s shocked. “And the cops came?”

“I punched the stupid asshole out. That’s when they put me in rehab. A lotta good it did.”

It’s getting dark by the time they stop at the bandstand. The usual group is there. A couple of the guys are slap boxing, but like they’re loaded and they’re not moving too fast and not hitting hard.

“Got any grass, Lila?” one of the old hippies yells.

“Yeah,” she says. “Got any beer?”

“Not much.”

Anthony’s beeper goes off. He ignores it.

“Pass it around.” Lila gives Anthony the plastic bag from her backpack. He sees her backpack is full of money, tens and twenties.

“Hey, girl.” Danny Boy sits down next to Lila and throws his arm across her shoulder, offers her what’s left of his Colt .45 malt.

She tilts her head, but there’s hardly anything. She shoves the empty can at Danny Boy and takes out two twenties. “Anthony, get some beer.”

“I don’t have I.D.”

“What a nerd,” she says real loud to Danny Boy.

Anthony feels hot, dizzy, like he’s going to pass out.

Everyone is looking at him.

“Here.” She pushes the twenties at him. “Just do it. You know where. Give him the whole thing. Tell him it’s for me.”

Danny Boy laughs and raises his empty can at Anthony. “We’ll be right here when you get back.” Anthony wants to push it in his face.

His beeper goes off when he is leaving the park, and again at the deli.

The clerk at the deli gives him the eye. “Made you her slave I see.”

Anthony smacks the twenties down on the counter. The clerk hands over two six-packs. “Well, watch out for her. She’s a nut job.”

Lila’s not there when he gets back, and it’s real dark already. He thinks he’s going crazy. He goes from one to another, “Where is she? Where’d she go?”

“Get outta here, asshole,” one of the hippies says, giving him a push. “She’s been taking turns humping everybody.”

His beeper goes off, and they all start laughing.

“Try the lake,” one of the bikers tells him. “Saw her go that way with Danny Boy. But leave the beer.”

Anthony maneuvers his way down the stairs to the grassy slope leading to the lake. There are dim lights around the lake, but he can’t see anything. It’s like she disappeared. And with that old drunk. He’s not watching where he’s going and hits a stump and goes flying, lands on his back, wind knocked out.

“Where’s the beer?” Lila stands over him swinging her jeans. She’s wearing her baggy shirt, and that’s all. She sways and the moonlight makes her eyes glow.

“Left it back there.”

She drops her jeans on his face, puts a bare foot on his chest, and moves it around slowly. Then she straddles him. He touches her tentatively, her ass hard and soft at the same time. Just as he is, though he hasn’t taken his medication at all in the past week.

“Well, that’s the last we’ll ever see of it.”

She squeezes her thighs against him like she’s riding and he’s the horse. Her cunt wets through his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

She gets off him. “Let’s get some movies. We’ll drink my father’s shit.” She pulls her pants from his face, sits on him like he’s a bench, takes her blades out of her backpack, holds them out to him. “Do it.”

She has soft feet, like a baby, and short toes. He takes her toes in his mouth and sucks.

“I knew you were a perv,” she says, taking her feet from him. She puts on her blades herself, and starts off not too steady, calling back, “Well, you coming or not?”

At Blockbuster she picks out a couple of kung fu flicks and they go into her building by the side entrance, where the jerk is on the door. “Use the stairs,” he says.

Anthony takes off his blades, while Lila can’t make her fingers work right and tears at hers in a fury, can’t undo them, and gets angrier and angrier. “You got a knife? Cut them off me.” She claws at him. “You hear? Cut them off.”

He takes his knife, pops open the blade. She pulls it from his hands and hacks at the leather.

“You’re ruining them,” he says.

“Who cares?” Tearing the wrecked blades off, she drops them into the trash can near the back stairs and hands him his knife.

They climb twelve flights and at the back door she tells him to take off his high-tops. “Otherwise,” she says, “they’ll come out and tell me I can’t do this and I can’t do that, like I’m a prisoner.” She uses her key to get in. It’s a kitchen. The cleanest kitchen Anthony’s ever seen. Like no one eats in it.

She’s jumpy, throws the videos on her bed, starts going through her drawers, searching the floor of her closet. “You got any acid?”

Anthony shakes his head. He watches her acting crazy. She leaves the room and he waits. She’s making him jumpy, too. She comes back with a bottle of dark booze and takes a long swallow, then offers it to him. He takes a swallow, chokes, coughs, hands it back to her. Tastes terrible. He’s never had more than a beer.

“I gotta have acid,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”

They’re back in the park near the bandstand, and there’s a big full moon giving off light and a crowd of the night people, many who work regular day jobs and have money for weed and booze and other stuff. He recognizes them now and they know him, because of Lila. He feels powerful because she’s singled him out to be with. They accept him now.

Someone passes them a sweet-smelling joint and they drink Zima and do acid, and he lies back on the steps and looks up at the moon, watching it expand and shrink and turn into a leering, snot-dripping face.

“Where’d you go. Lulu?” Danny Boy sits down next to Lila and throws his arm around her, like he owns her or something. “How about a little sugar?” He makes smacking sounds with his lips. He’s so drunk he can’t keep his head up, and he stinks of vomit.

Anthony feels Lila stiffen up next to him. She gives Danny Boy one of her bad looks. “That’s it,” she says. “We’re goin’ to the lake.” Anthony follows her, but can hardly feel his feet anymore, and she’s swinging and swaying like she feels the same as him.

Danny Boy gets up like she’s invited him to go along.

Nobody’s at the lake yet, but they will be because the cops will start coming around with the searchlights and drive everyone away from the bandstand. The surface of the lake is like one big dark mirror. Anthony stands at the edge and looks into it and it goes red and yellow and purple and ends up making him lose his balance.

“Watch out there, son.” Danny Boy grabs Anthony’s shirt. He’s so drunk, he leans into Anthony, slobbering, and Anthony pushes him away. There’s a ripping sound.

“You tore it,” Anthony says, looking at his shirt. Everything explodes in his head. His mom’ll kill him. He punches at Danny Boy, but the man is already on his knees.

“Slice him,” Lila yells. “Where’s your knife?”

Anthony takes his knife out, pops the blade. Danny Boy looks up at him, blinking in the moonlight. He tries to get to his feet, but falls down again.

“What’re you waitin’ for?” Lila screams.

Anthony has his arm low. He underhands the knife. The blade catches Danny Boy as the man comes up. Catches him in the gut. Danny Boy grabs hold of the knife and struggles with Anthony, like he wants to keep it in his gut and Anthony’s trying to get it out. There’s blood flying, like it’s raining, and Danny Boy howls like a jungle animal. Magic music, is what it is, and when Anthony gets the knife out, he plunges it back in, and out, and in, keeping time to the music. It’s so good... so good. So good...

“Yes,” Lila sings. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

Anthony shudders, his body jerks like he’s a spastic. The come collects in his pants.

Danny Boy goes over backward and doesn’t move. Anthony holds up the knife to the moon. The blade runs soft and red.

“Don’t stop, Anthony,” Lila says. “If we throw him in the lake, he’ll just float up and they’ll find him. We have to cut him up, take his insides out, then he’ll sink. I read it somewhere.”

Anthony’s confused. What’s she saying? His beeper goes off.

“Here.” She grabs the knife from him. “I’ll do it.” She’s going through Danny Boy’s pockets, pulling out wallet and papers. She empties the wallet, throws it and the papers into a trash basket, and follows it with a lit match. The trash basket bursts into flames.

Danny Boy’s insides are hanging out of him, all slimy. “Come on, move it,” she says. They throw everything in the lake, but the stuff is slippery and maybe they miss some. Then they each take an arm and drag Danny Boy farther into the lake.

“Everyone out of the park,” comes over a loudspeaker.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lila says, taking off.

The footpaths are pitch black and everything gets very quiet, except for Danny Boy’s howling, which rings in Anthony’s ears. He catches up to Lila and they leave the park together, heading for the side door of her building, where the asshole doorman lets them in.

“Jesus H. Christ!” He’s staring at them in the dim light. “You been in a fight?”

“We were attacked by a crazy bum,” Lila says. “We’ll wash up in the laundry room.”

“I don’t want nothing to do with this,” the doorman says. He turns and leaves them.

Anthony and Lila go to the laundry room and begin to wash the blood and slime off them. “Give me the knife,” she says. “I’ll take care of it.”

He gives her the knife. They put their wet clothes in one of the dryers, drop the coins in, and while everything dries, they wait around wrapped in someone’s clean towels Lila pulled from another dryer. And all the time Lila doesn’t stand still, but paces the room up and down. He gets tired following her and sits on the floor and starts to go to sleep.

“Wake up.” She’s hitting his head like she’s crazy. They get dressed and go up to her apartment the back way, and she tells him, “Take a shower.”

The hot water feels good. He’ll just get dressed and go home. He can hardly hold his head up.

Lila pulls back the shower curtain and steps in, takes the soap and lathers her hands. She grabs his cock with her soapy hands. “You come too soon, dickhead, and I’ll kill you, I swear.”

“I won’t,” he moans.

She jumps him like a monkey, her left hand around his neck, her right hand guiding him inside her. He holds her slippery ass while she puts both arms around his neck and starts banging. He’s going to pass out, for sure.

She digs her nails into his back. “Don’t just stand there, asshole.”

His feet go out from under him and he goes over backward, pulling her down on top of him.

Lila’s screams get drowned out by the water that’s coming down on them. “Think we made an idiot baby?” She laughs, turns the water on freezing cold, and jumps out of the shower.

After Anthony turns the shower off, he just lies there. He can’t move. He hears her talking. Who’s she talking to? He gets out of the shower and wraps one of her towels around him. She’s on the telephone.

“... none of your business,” she says. “I’m just tellin’ you we were attacked by some homeless and I ran and they caught my friend.” She hangs up the phone, when she sees Anthony.

“Why’d you do that?” Anthony asks.

“We should’ve cut his hands off,” she says. “I’m gonna go wash my hair.”

Anthony lies down on her bed and falls asleep. The pounding on the door wakes him. Some man is yelling, “Lila! Come out of there.”

He sees her standing near the bed. She is wearing pajamas. “What do you want? I’m sleepin’,” she says. Her hair hangs in her face.

“Come out at once. The police want to talk to you.”

“Stay here,” she whispers to Anthony. She leaves the room, but the door is half open.

Anthony gets into his clothes, pulls on his Nikes. He wants to leave, but he’s trapped. He looks around the room. There’s no blood that he sees. He goes into the bathroom. No blood. Maybe he can leave by the back way. They wouldn’t be talking in the kitchen. He pushes the door open a crack, and someone grabs his arm and pulls him out.

“Look what we have here, Pierce. Come on out and talk to us.” Anthony can tell he’s a cop, though he’s not in uniform. The cop brings him into a big room where Lila’s parents are sitting on a couch, in bathrobes, both looking at the same time angry and scared. Lila is in a chair near the fireplace and another cop, also not in uniform, is leaning against the fireplace. Lila gives Anthony a terrible look, like she wants to kill him. Anthony can’t stop shivering.

They sit him on a chair next to Lila, and take out notepads and pencils.

“So where were we?” the cop named Pierce says. “Oh, yeah, you made an anonymous phone call to nine-one-one to tell us a friend of yours was attacked in the park.”

Lila doesn’t say anything.

“Is this the friend?” Pierce looks at Anthony.

She gives Anthony another look. “I’ve only known him a couple of weeks.”

Anthony has to pee. He can’t concentrate. What did she do with his knife?

“Your doorman said you both came in the side entrance a couple of hours ago, covered with blood.”

Lila’s mother gasps, her hand over her mouth. Her father, a small guy with thin hair, puts his arm around his wife. They both look sick. Lila glows with a kind of light like Anthony’s seen around the Virgin Mary at St. Anne’s.

“Nice ring,” Pierce says.

Lila looks at her ring.

Pierce takes Lila’s hand. “How’d you get blood on it?”

Anthony can’t believe it, but she starts crying. Her parents rush to her. She’s screaming and throwing herself on the floor.

“We were drinkin’ and he got jealous and did it.” Lila points at Anthony. “I tried to give him mouth to mouth, but it was too late.”

“Stop talking, Lila,” her father says. “You’re incriminating yourself.”

Anthony can’t move. Did she say he did it?

Lila turns on her father, smacking him. “Get away from me, asshole. You think I don’t know they’re writin’ down what I say? I don’t give a fuck.”

“I know my daughter couldn’t—”

Lila shrieks at him, “You don’t know me.”

“Hold up your foot, Anthony,” Hernandez says. Anthony holds up his foot. Hernandez nods at Pierce. “Blood in the grooves.”

“Let’s take a walk, kids,” Pierce says.

“I don’t think—” Lila’s father stops.

“You can come along with us, sir,” Pierce says. “We’re just going to see where the kids got attacked and what happened to their friend.”

“You got a backpack or something?” Hernandez asks Anthony. Anthony nods. “Come along, then, and we’ll get it.” He’s putting on latex gloves.

Lila’s room looks the same only the bed is rumpled where he slept and there are wet towels on the floor. His backpack is next to the bed. He picks it up and Hernandez takes it from him. “Let me help you,” he says, and then he opens it. “Nice blades.” And then, “Your knife?”

Anthony stares at the knife. Hernandez says, “Get up against the wall, Anthony, spread eagle.” Hernandez pats him down. “Good boy.” They go back to the living room, Hernandez holding the backpack. He nods at Pierce.

“Come on, kids,” Pierce says.

“You can’t take her away,” Lila’s mother cries. “It’s not safe in the park at night.”

“We’ll be back,” Hernandez says. “We’re just going for a little walk. And she’ll be plenty safe with us.” Hernandez takes Anthony by the arm and Lila goes with Pierce.

In the elevator. Pierce tells Lila to stand still, and he frisks her. “Hate to do it in front of your parents,” he said, “but it’s got to be done.”

“What’re you searchin’ me for? Search him,” Lila says.

They leave the apartment building by the main entrance. It must be three or four in the morning because it’s quiet on the street, and in the park the moonlight makes Anthony think he’s in a movie. Lila’s parents stayed in the apartment. Anthony heard her father on the telephone as they were leaving.

Lila leads the way, like she’s a dog on a trail, right down to the lake. The moon is so bright it’s like daylight, or maybe it’s all the searchlights and the cop cars. Anthony sees yellow tape around a place on the edge of the lake, where a dark lump lies half in and half out of the water. And the shadows of the night people beyond the tape, with the cops on loudspeakers yelling for everybody to get out of the park.

Lila is shrieking and crying. “I was afraid of him. I thought he was gonna kill me, too.” She looks down at Danny Boy, blubbering and choking. “I tried to help you.”

Hernandez puts his hands on Anthony’s shoulders. “You have the right to remain silent...”