Object of Desire. William J. Mann

call me, you understand? Make sure she does.”

      “Okay. I will.” I was backing away now.

      “Make sure she calls me!”

      “Okay, okay, I will.”

      I turned and ran.

      Back home, Dad was on the phone to the police.

      The sun setting had made everything worse.

      Aunt Patsy had returned from taking my friends home. As darkness filled the house, she went around turning on lights. She finished cleaning the kitchen of the remnants of my party, though she left the HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign clinging to the wall. Since her surgery, she couldn’t lift her arms easily, and so the sign remained, absurdly, a reminder that I’d never again have a birthday like this one.

      Nana was getting restless, and her frequent inquiries about just whom Mom and Dad were waiting for made everyone agitated, so finally Aunt Patsy suggested they leave. Mom was obviously relieved. She was far too concerned with running to the front door every time headlights came sweeping down the street to tolerate the mutterings of her forgetful old mother-in-law.

      The police car pulled into the driveway just as Aunt Patsy and Nana were backing out. The officer sauntered in, tall and genial, and Mom immediately launched into a physical description of Becky: tall, pretty, brown hair, blue eyes, and a birthmark like a crescent moon on the inside of her upper arm. “Just like mine, see?” Mom offered her arm up for inspection. The officer leaned forward, squinted, but made no comment.

      In truth, Mom’s birthmark bore only a superficial resemblance to Becky’s, less of a crescent moon than a squiggly line. But both were the same purplish brown color, and I’d always felt a little cheated that I didn’t get a birthmark, too. It was one more connection between Mom and Becky that I didn’t have, and even though Dad had tried to make me feel better by pointing out that he didn’t have a birthmark, either, I still wished I’d been born with one.

      The cop just smiled, taking none of the information down. He assured Mom and Dad that it was too early to file a missing person report, that Becky was certain to be home soon, that she was probably just acting like a typical teenager, staying out late and getting her parents all upset. “I’m going to throttle her when she gets home,” Mom kept saying over and over, and I was beginning to understand that she repeated it so often because it allowed her to cling to the belief that Becky was, indeed, coming home.

      For the first time, I wondered where she was.

      Becky and I weren’t exactly friendly. Oh, we had been, as kids, when we’d play house in the backyard with her dolls, or climb the giant maple tree to build a fort out of cardboard. We’d used a green Magic Marker to write BECKY’S AND DANNY’S FORT—DO NOT ENTER on the outside. But ever since she’d started getting breasts and having her period, I’d rarely spoken to her. She was Chipper Paguni’s girlfriend. I was just a kid at St. John’s School.

      Yet it was definitely creepy wondering where she was out there in the night.

      Sitting on my bed, my back against the wall, I clamped on my earphones and listened to my new tape. “Now don’t be sad, ’cause two out of three ain’t bad…”

      Juniors aren’t friends with freshmen.

      “Danny.” Dad had poked his head in through the door. I slipped off my earphones. “Look,” he said, “your mother’s too upset to make supper right now….”

      “It’s okay. I’m not hungry.”

      Dad seemed at a loss for words. “Well, you should eat something…There’s some bologna and cheese in the refrigerator.”

      “I’m really not hungry.”

      He closed his eyes tightly, then opened them again. “Danny, did Becky say anything to you? Do you have any idea where your sister might have gone?”

      Juniors aren’t friends with freshmen.

      “No,” I said.

      “None at all?”

      “No.”

      Dad sighed. “Well, make yourself a sandwich if you want.” I just nodded as my father closed the door.

      Juniors aren’t friends with freshmen.

      I stared out the window into the darkness, where a light now burned from Chipper’s room across the street.

      I didn’t want to think about Chipper’s underpants. I still didn’t know why I’d stolen them. What was I going to do with them? What had I been thinking?

      The night went on. I turned off my boom box, put on my pajamas, switched off the light, and got into bed. I doubted I would sleep much. Downstairs, I heard the clock on the mantel chime nine times. Mom let out a long wail of anger, terror, despair. It was among the worst things I had ever heard in my life.

      I got up to pee. Man, was Becky ever going to be in deep, deep shit when she got home.

      After peeing, I stepped out into the hallway and peered down the stairs into the living room. My father was sitting in a chair, with a cigarette lighter in his hands. He kept flicking it on and off, a little flame popping to life in the darkness. He did this over and over, staring straight ahead, the little flame darting in and out like an animal’s tongue. I couldn’t see my mother, but I could hear her, her voice rising shrilly, then dropping to a whisper, not forming words, just making sounds. Her footsteps came in a steady rhythm—three thumps, then silence; three thumps, then silence—as she paced across the wooden floor.

      I turned, heading back to bed, but paused at my dresser. Pulling open my drawer, I lifted out the stolen underpants, setting them down on my dresser and turning on the light to get a closer look. Clean. Probably taken from the dryer and put on for the first time this morning. But that was still enough time for one tiny pubic hair to have found its way into the fabric of the crotch. I stared at that hair lodged there. I dared not touch it, fearful that it might become loose and disappear into the air. Instead, I gently smoothed out the creases of the soft cotton, finding the material curiously exciting against my fingers. In my pajamas, my cock stiffened. My hands trembled, and my throat felt tight. I didn’t understand the floaty feeling rising from my belly up to my ears. My cheeks burned as I touched the fly of the underwear, knowing that right there, that very morning, Chipper’s boner had grown hard, straining against the cotton, as he and Becky had headed to the pond.

      Danny, do you have any idea where your sister might have gone?

      Why hadn’t I told my father that I’d seen Becky and Chipper at the pond? Because she wasn’t supposed to go there. Because she wasn’t supposed to be doing what she was doing with Chipper. Because Chipper obviously wasn’t telling, and if I did tell, then Chipper wouldn’t be my friend.

      Suddenly all I wanted to do was to lift Chipper’s underpants and press them to my face. But I steeled myself, fighting off the urge, and instead thrust them back into my drawer, hiding them among my own underwear and socks.

      Then I got back into bed. I willed the morning not to come too quickly. Maybe the gods still had time to take pity on me, and I’d wake up to find the high school had burned to the ground, after all.

      But sleep would not come easily. I had to cover my head with my pillow to block out the sound of my mother’s sobs.

      PALM SPRINGS

      The second time I saw him, he was again behind a bar, focused on his work, withholding his eyes from the crowd. For a moment, I could neither speak nor move.

      The night was golden, an appropriate hue for this house of affluence set into the mountains, its moveable glass walls obscuring distinctions between interior and exterior. The soft golden glow came from carefully concealed floor lights and artfully recessed ceiling lamps and a crystal chandelier that hung grandly in the marble foyer. From the terraces came the illumination of torches. Everywhere, the night was gold.

      And as my beautiful bartender