The Blade Itself

11

The cigarette tasted sweet as a stolen kiss.

A funny expression, Evan thought, Ma’s. She used to say it on good days, the ones when she’d sing, the ones when the bruises weren’t too bad. He hadn’t thought of her in a while, but now, strolling through Lincoln Park, watching families indulge in happy domestic bullshit, she came to mind. He couldn’t say for sure, but he’d bet she’d not had too many kisses stolen.

After he’d jimmied the lock on Danny’s window and let himself in, Evan had wandered from room to room. He wasn’t searching for anything in particular. Just looking. He lingered over a photo of Karen smiling in a bikini, shielding her eyes from the sun of a lost afternoon. Took a shit in the master bathroom, thought about leaving it floating there, a little gift, but decided against it. Then he’d sat and waited with a smile growing inside. It felt good to be playing again.

And the game had gotten better once Danny arrived.

He took another drag, smoking the cigarette to the filter, feeling the melting resistance as the heat fused it. His favorite part, the cigarette yielding. He knocked off the cherry and flicked the butt into the grass. One of the Lincoln Park mothers, about his age, figure still tight and her hair expensive, glared at him. He winked, then laughed as she gathered her boy off the swing set and hustled him away.

Look out for the bad man, kid. Your mommy, she’s still a nice piece of ass, and she’s got instincts strong enough to tell her to move away. Funny how it worked. The more you had – a job, a house, a lover, a kid – the more you had to lose. Soccer Mom may not have spelled it out that way, might have chosen to push a truth like that out of her well-decorated world, but some elemental part of her understood.

Evan pulled the smokes from his shirt pocket and tapped out another one. The sun fell warm on his back and the top of his head, though the wind was cool. A perfect afternoon.

Danny had said no. Or tried to, anyway. In the end, he’d agreed to think about it. With the old Danny, the one he’d known, it would have been different. But now he was just an angle to be played, and he cowed the same as a prison queer or a soccer mom.

But then, he had so much. So very much to lose.