Tick Tock

Chapter 48

NAKED IN THE DARK, Berger kicked back on the leather recliner in his massive, magnificent library and hit the play button on his remote control.

There was a chirp and hum from the Blu-ray player and then the 103-inch Plasma blazed with a midday shot of the New York Public Library.

The camera shook a little from the first-person shot, but the picture and colors and sounds of the street were amazingly vivid. You could almost smell the hot pretzels and summer sweat.

It was the film of the first crime, the library decoy bombing that had been shot with a hidden fiber-optic camera. All of his work, of course, had been filmed.

Now it was time to edit it, clean it up, and polish, polish, polish.

As the images fast-forwarded and rewound, he thought of his school years at Lawrenceville, the premier boarding school near Princeton.

A pudgy and slow child, he had been enrolled by his father at the uber-preppy institution in order to make a gentleman out of him. But it didn't work out. Quite the contrary. By the time Berger entered ninth grade, his physique, unique artistic sensibilities, and uncommon interests had actually earned him an alliterative nickname that had caught on famously: Big Bellied Bizarro Berger.

He was seriously considering suicide for his fifteenth birthday, when he unexpectedly made a friend. His new roommate, Javier Souza, a diminutive boy from a wealthy Brazilian family, not only called him by his Christian name, but he turned out to share some of his strange, dark interests.

It was actually Javier who dared him to burn down the school library during the freshman class movie night the week before Christmas break. Wanting to prove his mettle, Berger had purchased a case of lighter fluid as well as some lengths of chain and padlocks to bar the building's exits.

If the suspicious owner of the Ace Hardware store in town hadn't contacted the headmaster, he would have gone through with his plan of wiping out the entire Lawrenceville class of '68. Instead, he was expelled, and if it hadn't been for a hasty and hefty donation by his father to the school, there might have been criminal charges.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda, Berger thought wistfully. He'd had such passion then. If it hadn't been for the hand of fate, he would become famous then. He would have instantly transformed from Big Bellied Bizarro Berger to The Boy Who Killed the Class of '68!

It was, of course, that singular near brush with greatness that drove him on his little project now. After all the failure and misery and confusion that had clouded his life, he'd finally, miraculously, gotten his gumption back.

In the light of the TV screen, he dabbed at a joyful tear as he watched the bomb get glued to the library desk.

What he had done already, the sheer wondrousness of it, no one could ever take away. No matter what happened next, he had triumphed.

Berger had finally done something that was truly his.