Chapter Text
This side of town's a wasteland after ten-thirty, even on a Saturday night; after one it's the pock-marked, demon-haunted surface of the moon. The Texaco on Crittenden doubly so. When you touch the Doritos bags they—scream a bit. Should probably be sold in pairs.
“Sorry,” Eddie murmurs. Somebody else in this same aisle seems to be giggling uncontrollably. “Sorry, sorry. Shh. It’ll be over soon.”
“Hell are you doing back there,” Hargrove mutters.
Now the word DORITOS has started crawling around spider-legged. Eddie’s thumb squishes the R but it crinkles right back to life. Not optimal. He’ll tell the… NASA? No, sweet fuck, they have enough problems. Reconsider the moon as cheese, though, and somewhat soft, and fecundly round. It reminds him of something. But what. “Buy something or leave,” Hargrove calls.
Eddie cranes his neck backwards. Chin up. Blinks.
“Invisible Hargrove,” he says. "That's some trick."
“What?”
“So fucking unfair,” Eddie mutters.
There's stomping.
Hargrove appears at the end of the aisle, looming in front of the stacked-up antifreeze jugs. He watches Eddie for a minute, eyes narrowed. His nametag, from here, looks like FILLY. Imagine.
“You're tripping balls,” Hargrove says.
“Am I?”
“Jesus Christ,” Hargrove says.
Gone again.
“Neigh,” Eddie says. He paws the ground a couple of times, tosses his mane insultingly. If Hargrove’s nametag isn't a lie he'll get the gist.
At the counter, Hargrove stares impassively while Eddie counts coins out for cigarettes. Several times. “Eighty-one, eighty-two, and not a penny less!” Eddie says, and slaps the last one down. “My good fellow. Barkeep. A pleasure doing—”
“Get out,” Hargrove says.
Eddie gets out.
An empty parking lot’s a great place to have a good long stare up, and up, and up. It’s free. He picks the plastic off the pack and picks one out and lets his eyes adjust. There are desiccated cornfields all around, bubbles in his lungs. Laughing again lets them slide up like a burp into the vertiginous cold October sky, with all its lickable little bejeweled silmarils. Eddie soaks in the black. Mother’s night. But then there’s something in the distance that’s suddenly pressing him flat. Like the R. He’s being—ensmallened. An unfunny sensation.
“Fuck,” Eddie mutters. “Quit it.”
The stars immediately get him for that. He hears a noise and jerks his head and he’s blinded completely, one white laser-cut flare of agony. Eddie staggers backwards several feet and sits down on top of a newspaper box. “Fuck!” he repeats, eyes over his hands. No, other way around. His heels kick the box and make startling gunshot noises.
The blinding solar frenzy pulls into a parking space, shuts the engine off.
“Eddie?” somebody says. Not Chrissy; his own imagination wouldn’t have to ask.
Eddie blinks.
It’s Harrington, surrounded by miniature floating cartoon halos, which—of course. Bastard. He’s half out of the driver’s side, elbow leaned on his hood. Handsome face crinkled up. Looking at it makes a spark of memory flicker, briefly, in Eddie’s internal combustion. Some kind of—nope, goodbye. “Doing alright?” Harrington says. “You look kinda…”
“He’s fucking tripping,” Hargrove says, standing in the doorway. He’s propped the glass door open with the toe of his boot.
Harrington looks between the two of them.
“Ed, you walking?” Harrington calls.
“I don’t think so,” Eddie says. He glances down to be sure.
“Told you,” Hargrove grunts.
“Come on,” Harrington says. His keys rattle. “I’ll take you home.”
“A fellow sits down abruptly out of necessity one time,” Eddie says, holding a finger up and a cigarette in his teeth, “once, and you leap to naive—assumptions. I could run a marathon right now.”
“Get in the car,” Harrington says, unmoved.
Eddie gets in the car. Harrington doesn’t, immediately; he stands in his open door for another little while, says something that Eddie doesn’t catch, and then Hargrove says something inane about cleaning out the slushie machine. “Okay,” Harrington says. “So… maybe later.”
“Whatever, yeah,” Hargrove says.
The door jingles shut.
Harrington starts the car, pulls them out a little faster than one might do, reasonably; Eddie’s eyes are half-lidded, but he can see FILLY standing at the window while the beamer pulls away. Like a dog watching a schoolbus steal its boy.
Crazy.
Eddie lies back in the passenger seat. Flicks his lighter. Cigarette’s getting mushy, stuck into his lips this long.
“Not in here,” Harrington says.
“What?” Eddie blinks. “Since when?”
“Since I said so,” Harrington shrugs. It hunches his shoulders up tensely. “It’s like, eight minutes. Just hold your horses.”
“Hold yours,” Eddie mutters. And whinnies again.
Harrington isn't fluent, clearly. He rolls his eyes and makes a jerk-off motion. Eddie ignores him. Sinks lower, watches branches and wires swim by in dark tangles of octopus limbs. Maybe it’d be better to shut his eyes, but it’s all red in there. So. Eddie taps his rings against the window. Harrington breaks the speed limit when the road flattens out, easy, like it’s a habit. Bummm, tat-ta-tat, bummm, tat-ta-tat. Running, scrambling, flyinggg—
“Are you trying to crack the glass?” Harrington says, bitchily.
“I really wonder about people who can operate a motor vehicle in total silence,” Eddie muses. “What a unique type of psychosis.”
“Just ask for the radio, Christ,” Harrington mutters.
Eddie fucks around with the dials so much that Harrington slaps his hands a couple of times in frustration. But then he gives up anyway like a pushover, a marshmallow man. A man of sugar. Sweet-as-pie is Harrington, inside. Outside, too. It’s ludicrous. “Whatever you’re on,” Harrington snorts at that, somehow judgmentally reading his mind, hearing his thoughts, “next time, take a little less.”
“Where’s the fun in that,” Eddie sulks. He slides even lower in his seat. His knees become mountains in the sea, in bathwater. Rounded rises of a lagoon. Oh, he remembers again. “So, wow,” Eddie says. “You’re really knocked up.”
The beamer swerves.
“What?”
“Papa don’t preach,” Eddie hums, over the Dio on the stereo. “I've been losing sleep—”
“Shut up,” Harrington hisses.
“Come on,” Eddie says. “Like it’s a bad thing. The miracle of life, right? The reason for the season! Baby on board.” He rolls his heavy head sideways, looks at Harrington’s tensed jaw. The line of his nose in the dark. “I can… stop,” Eddie says, feeling like an asshole, and Harrington’s throat bobs up and down.
He’s silent for a long, long minute.
“Where’d you hear it,” Harrington says, finally.
Eddie gestures up. Around in a circle. Then just watches his hand travel in the air, distracted by his own rings. “Thanks man, yeah, that helps so much,” Harrington says, meanly, when the pause stretches on. “Great fucking talking to you.”
“Does it matter where?”
“Kind of why I asked,” Harrington says.
Eddie pushes himself upright.
“Your—young squire,” he says. “Has a lot of—biology homework. Of late.”
“Fuck,” Harrington says.
It’s soft and startled. He’s silent again for a whole tinny verse of The Last in Line. And then his hand suddenly pounds the steering wheel three times, four times, loud and hard enough to hurt. Eddie yelps and clings to the passenger door, loses his poor fucking uncooked cigarette somewhere, but the car doesn’t cross the yellow line again. Much. “God fucking damnit!” Harrington says, furiously.
“Harrington,” Eddie says.
“God fucking damnit,” Harrington’s repeating to himself, under his breath.
“Harrington.”
“Please, just—shut the fuck up,” Harrington says, “and let me fucking think.”
“Yessir,” Eddie says.
He salutes and slides back down. At this low angle you can see stars out of the car window, between the light poles and those denuded, black-spired trees. Without the golden leaves, they're too… it's Halloween tomorrow. So many ghosts. It’d be a gift to go to bed tonight and sleep all the way until spring.
Maybe Harrington would agree. He seems to be thinking hard all the way to Kerley, staring out the windshield like Eddie’s not there at all. Eddie has to nudge him, when the car turns left instead of right, towards the old, empty lot. Cleared by the county, on account of the... fucked up evil miasma, etcetera. Condemned. What a word! Funny to think of Harrington forgetting, when Eddie spent the whole summer bumming around his big house, waiting while the insurance dragged hooved corporate feet. Harrington had acted put-upon about it sometimes, hogged the remote and muttered, slammed the door on the fridge. But he didn't say get out. He’d carried furniture for Wayne when they got the new trailer. Given Eddie a boombox, since the old one got trashed. Rest in pieces. Eddie repaid the favor by jerking off about him in Casa Harrington’s delightful shower, in Casa Harrington’s fabric-softener-scented guest room, and then later in the presence of the boombox, many times. Probably where tonight’s headed.
“Shit,” Harrington says, slowing down and sighing, glancing back over the seat to make a K-turn and take them back the right way through the loop. “Sorry,” he adds, low-voiced. Tired.
“No worries,” Eddie says. “I do it, too.”
Hunched over, desperate, quaking in silence, collar of a borrowed sweatshirt between his teeth. Remembering the way Harrington spit blood, the hair on the arm that dragged Eddie out of a bat-pile twenty deep and then—held on. Eddie’s going dizzy just thinking about thinking about it.
Thankfully, Harrington’s pulling over.
“Can you,” he says, before Eddie gets out. “Do me a favor—”
Eddie puts two fingers up. Then reconsiders. Three.
“Scout’s honor,” he says, and mimes zipping his mouth. “I’m a steel vault with an adamantium lock. They couldn’t torture it out of me.”
Harrington makes a thin smile.
“You, maybe not,” he says, bizarrely. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it, dollface,” Eddie says. He slides out of the door, backs up, and takes a long, exceptionally gracious bow into a dried-out bush. Harrington’s smile looks like it’s on life support now, getting faintly oxygenated. “What’s some… light secrecy,” Eddie says, picking a leaf off. “Between—we happy few. We band of brothers.”
“Sure,” Harrington says.
“What the hell, man!” Dustin yells on Tuesday, about oh, eight hasty minutes after the last bell. He must've treated it like a starting pistol. He whips his bookbag down against the picnic table like he’s trying to club one or both of those things to death. Eddie would love to say that he doesn’t startle at the impact, but, well. Coward’s reflexes are good for lots of things. “What the hell!”
“Jesus, indoor voice,” Max snorts, trailing him.
“We’re outside!” Dustin hollers.
“He’s been like this all day,” Max says, jerking her thumb. She props herself up on the table, dangles one foot. “Did you like, threaten to banish his dumbass bard?”
“Moi?” Eddie says, blinking, hand to heart.
“He knows what he did,” Dustin fumes.
“No, you’re going to have to enlighten me, Henderson,” Eddie says. “I’ve been a very bad boy for a very long time, it’s hard to keep track of it all.”
“About the—thing, you know what,” Dustin huffs. He lowers his voice about half a notch and says, “The thing! I didn’t—why would you do that? You told him I told you? Are you trying to get me—”
Max jolts.
“Hey, shut up,” she says, alarmed.
Eddie glances between them. Dustin’s face has started turning colors, maybe with the effort of keeping his mouth closed.
“Welllll, well, well,” Eddie says.
“You fucking TOLD him?” Max hisses.
“I very absolutely did not!” Dustin explodes, and points. “But for some crazy reason, he lied and told Steve I did! And now I’m in all kinds of shit for no—”
“Wait, this is about Steve?” Eddie says, solely to be a dick. They make it too fucking easy.
Max’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline.
“Oh my fucking god!” she yells, and smacks Dustin in the arm. “He didn’t know anything, and you just ran your—”
“Kidding,” Eddie cuts in. “I did.”
“Fuck you both!” Max says, and throws herself down on a bench seat. Glares daggers at them. “It’s not funny!”
“Am I missing something?” Eddie says. He cocks his head, and Max glares even harder. Christ, it’s crazy that she’s not a Hargrove by blood. Make that make sense. “You two trade brains?” he says, gesturing left and right. “Since when are you Harrington’s little watchdog?”
“I’m not,” Max blusters. “You guys are just acting like dickbags. It’s not your business.”
“Steve is my best friend,” Dustin says, so earnestly that it actually makes Eddie’s stomach hurt with sympathetic embarrassment for a second. “It is so my business. I’m just trying to help!”
“By telling the whole town?!”
“I didn’t tell ANYONE!” Dustin hollers. “Literally not even one person! Not even my mom! Not Lucas, not Will, not Mike, not El, not any—”
Dustin pauses.
Max’s jaw twitches.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Eddie muses.
“How,” Dustin says, “did—”
“He drops me off,” Max says, in a rush. “Sometimes. In the morning. If my mom’s—when I don’t have a ride.”
“He drops you off?” Dustin says. He sounds affronted. “Like at school?”
“No, on Jupiter, keep up,” Max snaps. “It’s—only sometimes. If Billy's worked a double, and my mom can’t—it’s just once in a while.”
“Steve told me if I ever called before eight am, and nobody was dying, he’d come to school and tape my baby pictures to my locker and ruin my life,” Dustin says, wretchedly. “And he picks you up in the morning?”
Max bites her cheek.
“So what gave it away?” Eddie says. He drums his fingers, considers the options. Harrington’s not a blabbermouth, actually. Much less of one than he looks. “He blow chunks in front of you?”
Max makes a startled face again. And then nods, tightly.
“Shit,” Dustin breathes.
“He was all… weird and pale,” Max says. Her hands are coiled to fists in her jacket pockets. “I tried to make him go to the hospital and he wouldn’t. He promised he was fine, and then he, like—pulled over and puked some more. And… cried. But just for like a second,” she adds, defensively.
“Poor Steve,” Dustin says, watery-voiced, like he’s about to do the same thing. Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose. How Harrington manages this, why Harrington fucking manages this, is anyone’s guess.
“Okay, so,” he says. “Crisis over? Peace returns to the land? Nobody’s mad at Eddie the Innocent anymore, correct? May I please be excused from… whatever this is?”
“But what are we going to do?” Dustin says. “He needs our help.”
“Help with what?” Max says, dubiously.
“With, you know, all the… stuff that’s—happening,” Dustin says.
“Oh my god, dorkus, you can’t even say it.”
“I can so! I’m taking advanced human biology right now,” Dustin says, hands on hips. Monkey see, etcetera. Looks like a home-court advantage to nurture. “I just got a ninety-nine on my secondary sexes anatomy quiz. Ask me anything.”
“Yeah, perfect, I bet that’s what he really needs, you to draw him a diagram,” Max snorts.
“He might,” Dustin huffs.
“He say what he's going to do?” Eddie says, wondering why his mouth would open, why that would come out of it.
“Do?” Dustin says.
“Like, if he's going to get an abortion?” Max says, brows furrowed.
“MAX,” Dustin gasps.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Max says. “It’s normal, lots of people have them. And he's like, nineteen. Why would he want a baby?” She scrunches her nose up. “Why would anyone?”
“Excellent question,” Eddie says.
“But Steve would be a great dad,” Dustin protests. “Maybe the best!”
“Yeah, but,” Max says. “It’s just him. He wouldn't have…”
And then she abruptly stops talking. Fists still wadded in her pockets, leg bouncing, Max looks out at the woods. “Whatever,” she says, distantly. “It's not up to us.”
Eddie watches her for a minute. And then gets up.
“Alright,” he says, and slaps his hands together. “Fun as this wasn't, you're in my place of business, and it's opening time. Scram.”
“Eddie,” Dustin pleads. “You're his friend, too.”
“Vile rumors,” Eddie says.
“Give it up, Dustin,” Max says. She yanks her bag off the table. “He doesn't give a shit.”
“Sure he does!” Dustin says, loyally.
“No, I don't,” Eddie says. “Beat it, freshmeats.”
“Come on, man!” Dustin says. “We're sophomores!”
“Then beat it, sophmorons!” Eddie roars. “Begone!”
Dustin gives him a betrayed look as he's dragged away. Eddie gives him a jaunty little wave. When they're gone Eddie sits still for a second, and then collapses back on top of the table, exhales. Contemplates the gap above in the trees of the clearing. The sky's a thin, anemically cloudless blue. Indiana winter slinks in early and then lasts forever, wringing all the life out of the days like see-through dishrags. Lately Wayne’s talking longingly about Florida. Wakulla County, freshwater springs, an old buddy’s fishing boat. Wayne’s getting old, been getting old, waiting. Eddie’s fault. Are there gators in the upside-down, one wonders. One wonders how they could be any worse than the usual kind. Florida’s a shithole, too, and a trailer park’s a trailer park, but you could grow a mango tree, couldn’t you? Mango, orange, pineapple. Something round and bright. “Harrington, Harrington, Harrington,” Eddie murmurs, drumming fingers on his stomach. “What were you thinking.”
“No, no, it's terrific,” Harrington's saying, three aisles over. “Like, the… performances.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Harrington says. “Oscar-worthy.”
“Did it get an Oscar?”
“Uh, no. But—”
“It looks kind of silly to me. I’m not in the mood for silly.”
“It’s, uh, look,” Harrington says. “Says right here. Feel-good hit of the summer. Can't go wrong with that.”
“It’s November third, young man.”
“Right,” Harrington says. “Yeah, of course. Right. How about—”
Fucking unbelievable.
“Might I have a little help in comedies, dearrrr boy?” Eddie calls, in what Lucas has shudderingly titled cronevoice. Harrington’s head bobs up like a cork and cranes over the shelves. He makes a sour face, and then a different, more hilarious face.
“Excuse me,” Harrington says, quickly, “I have to help another customer. So sorry. I’m—really sure this is the one for you, ma’am. Give it a try.” He scoots into Eddie’s row. Slumps down in relief, presses his forehead to the edge of a shelf. “Forty fucking minutes,” he mutters, under his breath. “Just pick something. Anything. Practically be done watching it by now.”
“Tough day at the mines?” Eddie says.
“Eat me,” Harrington sighs.
“Anytime, anyplace,” Eddie mutters. Harrington snorts, out of lamentable ignorance. He lifts his head, cracks his neck out side-to-side.
“You… good?” he says.
“Why,” Eddie says, warily, turning in a circle. “What am I giving off?”
“It’s before noon, man,” Harrington says. “I thought you had, like, a feud going. With the sun.”
“What sun, look outside,” Eddie scoffs. “Maybe I simply require a feel-good hit.”
“I bet,” Harrington says. He scans the shelf for a second, nods, picks up Meatballs Part II and smacks the case into Eddie’s chest. “There you go.”
“I look like a PG-13 guy to you?”
“Wouldn't want to shock you,” Harrington grins. “That's PG.”
“Says here,” Eddie says, and flips it around, smacks it back against Harrington, “rated D for dogshit.”
Harrington laughs.
He takes it back. Looks across the opposite row.
“You ever see this?” he says, tapping Metropolis. “It’s old, but not, like, bad. Kind of trippy."
“Foundational mythology,” Eddie nods. “Flesh and machine, baby. Without it there’s no Blade Runner.”
“Huh,” Harrington says, studying the cover. Eddie blinks.
“Sorry, rewind. You’ve seen it?”
“I watch a lot of movies,” Harrington says, defensively.
“Buckley made you,” Eddie guesses.
“So?”
“Young man!”
“Fuck,” Harrington mutters. “Coming in just one second, ma’am!” He runs a hand roughly through his hair, presumably unconsciously; if it’s not unconscious, he ought to be more fucking careful with that thing. “Hey, I’m—taking lunch in like, fifteen,” Harrington says, awkwardly, the way a lonely person might. Don’t ask Eddie how he knows. “If you want—”
“I’m not in a hurry,” Eddie says. “It’s the lord’s day, is it not?”
“Cool,” Harrington says. “I’ll—”
The lady at the counter rings the bell. For one second there’s genuine murder in Harrington’s eyes, and then it’s gone again. Submerged in resignation. He ducks his head while he walks like he’s jogging onto a basketball court. Eddie pretends not to watch him go.
They eat lunch at the Pizza Barn, which used to be a Red Barn; only so many things you can name a business when your location’s shaped like that. Maybe that’s all predestination is. Eddie gets two hot and greasy slices of pepperoni, but Harrington hems and haws at the menu for maybe three straight minutes and then gets a limp-lettuced roast beef sub that he eats less than half of.
“Not hungry?”
“Starving,” Harrington says. He sighs and puts one of the stray sweet peppers in his mouth, chews it like he’s angry. “I was. I’ll just,” he says, and lowers his voice. “Probably yak, if I push it.”
“Oh,” Eddie says.
He sticks the end of his crust into a grease stain; extra flavor. Chews and thinks. “Everything going pretty… normal, otherwise?” Eddie says, gesturing vaguely. Harrington blinks those huge doll’s eyes for a second, and then turns them down to the tabletop. “No… chanting at night? No chalky taste in your chocolate mousse?”
“Are those serious questions?”
“Buckley’s never made you watch Rosemary’s Baby?”
“No,” Harrington says, the perfect innocent. Eddie shivers. “I’ve been… fine, I guess.”
“You guess,” Eddie repeats. “Is that a medical opinion?”
“No?” Harrington says.
I, Eddie thinks, for once with certainty, should drop it. Thank god for clear and rational thinking.
“A doctor, man,” Eddie whispers, leaning closer. “Have you seen a doctor? And, no,” he says, pointing a finger at Harrington’s opening mouth, “if you dare say you are getting advice from Henderson and his textbooks, I will scream bloody murder right here in this barn. Hand to god.” Harrington looks cornered. “You are a lunatic,” Eddie hisses. “How are you alive?”
“Great, yeah, thanks, you and Robin can start a club,” Harrington snarls back, wadding his sandwich up. “I don’t need any more—”
Jesus, the whole town does know.
“What if it’s… what if it’s, I don’t know, stomach cancer!” Eddie says. “Or a tapeworm.”
“It’s not a tapeworm,” Harrington says, clearly offended. “I’m not a complete moron. Do you know how many fucking tests I’ve—”
He glances around. It’s still pretty empty for a Sunday; the bible-thumpers must be lingering in the pews or skipping. Great day for hypocrisy, really. The weather’s grey as shit, threatening sleet. Give thanks and praise. “Not here,” Harrington grits out, anyway, like he’s gone paranoid. He stuffs the rest of his sub into his puffer-jacket pocket, grabs his empty cup and chucks it into the trash bin by the door. Eddie follows him while he stalks to a dilapidated picnic bench back on the Family Video side of the lot. “I’ve got vitamins, I’m hitting all the food groups,” Harrington busts out, when they get there. It’s cold enough that his breath huffs away in a cloud. He’s ticking off the list on his fingers. “I’ve been taking fucking naps, I would kill somebody for a fucking cigarette, like seriously, to death! I don’t know what you guys want from me. I’m—it’s fucking—natural, it’s normal, people go through this without—”
“Chill, chill, chill, whoa,” Eddie says, hands up. “Fucking—alright. Don’t kill the—nonmessenger. The innocent bystander. Mercy, prithee. I yield.”
“My dad cannot find out,” Harrington snaps.
He sits down on the bench, looking winded. And then, slowly, Harrington folds over in half. Digs his hands into his hair and keeps them there. The pepperoni in Eddie’s stomach does a nauseous little backflip.
“Your old man’s not a… raging tyrant, right?” Eddie hedges.
“I’m starting school at the end of January,” Harrington says, muffled in his own arms.
“Hooray?”
“Yeah, hooray,” Harrington echoes. He sits up pale-cheeked, like the blood’s drained somewhere. “It’s just—community college. It’s no big. But he’s—he’ll pay for it, everything, even gas and groceries, as long as I, you know. Perform. Prove it’s—worth it. The investment.”
“Okay,” Eddie says. Harrington looks at him. His leg is doing the same thing as Max’s, bouncing like a rubber ball. Eddie does some quick math. “Harrington,” he says, slowly. “When are you due?”
“Um,” Harrington says. “Early… June? I think?” he says. He winces visibly when Eddie does. “I fucking know,” he says, miserably.
“Do a paternity deferral,” Eddie says. “School can’t punish you, right? That's illegal as shit.” He nudges Harrington’s foot with his own, then swings a mock punch in midair. “Your folks could get a fancy lawyer, feed them their teeth.”
“My folks will go crazy and fucking disown me,” Harrington snaps.
“A…h,” Eddie says.
And sits down.
Harrington rubs his hands across his knees a few times, absently, like his body can’t think of anything better to do. Or maybe he’s cold. Maybe growing something takes up all your blood. Eddie’s taken human biology three times, but didn’t retain a thing. Nothing important. Non-carrier’s privilege, to think wrap it is all you’d ever need to know. Strange. That the ignorance would feel suddenly—painful.
Something’s happening, isn’t it.
Eddie stares out across the parking lot in a brief daze, watching old people put shopping bags in their cars. It’s not that he felt like—it’s not that he’s felt like a child in a long time. Maybe not ever, that he can remember. But there’s a difference between not feeling like a child and suddenly realizing you can't be one anymore, that any sweet oblivion’s passed by forever. Maybe that’s the spot Harrington’s in. It’s not pleasant. The unceremonious, cold-water birth of… just another unprepared adult. Maybe that’s all Eddie’s dad was, when he left Eddie's little suitcase and his school bag on Wayne’s sofa and fucked back off to Kentucky.
Well, this is cheerful. Eddie’s fingers are itching.
“You can smoke,” Harrington says, like teen pregnancy’s making him psychic. “It’s just—in the car.”
Eddie would love to be the kind of guy who’d say, no, I won’t if you can’t, darling, we’re in this together, but he’s not, he’s a twitching weak-willed nicotine junkie, so he lights up, slides down to the other end of the bench, and sucks his Winston like a pacifier.
“Thanks,” Eddie says, eventually.
Harrington nods. Hangdog, like his head weighs a ton. “So,” Eddie says. “You have some kind of… plan?”
Harrington nods again.
“Deposit’s due November thirtieth,” he says, grimly. “If I can… get through the spring, keep my grades up—”
“You’ll be gourd-sized by April,” Eddie says.
“No shit,” Harrington says. “I’m going to move out before then. I gave them some bullshit already, managing a household, learning responsibility, whatever. They’re always up at the lake by May, anyway.”
“You're going to hide a baby?”
“Just until midterm grades are out,” Harrington says. “Hopefully.”
Buckley's right, he is insane.
“And what about… after,” Eddie says.
“I’ll have the summer, and then I’ll—push hard, you know?” Harrington says. “They’ll be pissed, but if I still pass everything, keep up my end, they’ll have to keep—”
“I don’t mean—I mean with the, you’re—cooking up a whole entire human being, man!” Eddie says. “On your own! What’s your big plan for that?”
Something kind of—devastatingly empty passes across Harrington’s face, even though he's visibly trying not to let it. Maybe it’s happened before, but Eddie hasn’t seen it. Not when they were getting ripped bloody in a dry lake, not later when they really faced the devil. Not even that horrible moment in between, when Wheeler’s eyes rolled back in her head and the pigs busted in, bullishly incompetent, to try and handcuff them and shove their faces into that wrecked mattress. Sometimes it’s hard to square it: this Harrington, in his polyester uniform vest, and that Harrington, shirtless and bloodied, screaming to get to her, wrestling a cop so Eddie and Buckley could run.
Maybe Eddie’s gut is wrong, and it’s Wheeler’s baby, after all. She has come home for a couple of holiday weekends. This universe has got a fucked-up sense of humor.
“I don’t know,” Harrington says. It’s a real answer, the way he says it; not a plea for anything.
Eddie leans back against the table. Blows smoke straight up.
“Christ alive,” he says.
And then, with doom curdling in his stomach, Eddie says, “You, uh—need a roommate?”
“Huh?”
“Split the rent,” Eddie says. His mouth tastes like heartburn. May Bahamut, lord of the north wind, smite the Pizza Barn. “Would that—help?”
“Ed,” Harrington frowns. “I don’t—”
“Yes or no,” Eddie says, more quickly than he should. And at a higher pitch. This is a casual question. Meant to be.
“Well, yeah,” Harrington says. “But you—got the new place, you guys’ve barely—”
“Wayne retired in September,” Eddie says. “And he’s tired of the fucking cold. He’s going to move to Florida. He keeps saying he’s going to stick around, you know, wait until I get that god-damned GED, but that’s—I made him wait an extra year already. So. He’ll probably sell the trailer, rent it out. Maybe rent it to me, if you’d—”
“Seriously?” Harrington gapes.
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “It’d be cheap. Just gotta cover the lot fees. And, you know. He’s a sucker, thinks you're the second coming. Assuming you're, uh, not too good for—good ol’ Forest Hills.”
“You’d be saving my fucking life,” Harrington says, breathlessly, instead of the other dozen more likely things he might’ve said. Maybe this is a dream.
“I play—loud,” Eddie says, like he’s pulling a grenade pin on himself. “Real loud. And I don’t—sleep great. Can’t keep a job, absolute shit for brains in the kitchen. Just so you know. And there’s the, uh—demon worshipping, odd blood rite now and again. Animal mutilation, mostly full moons, I'm traditional like that. You might’ve heard.”
“How do you feel about screaming babies?” Harrington says, raising his eyebrows.
“Sounds metal,” Eddie says, and Harrington laughs for real. Some of the color’s come back into his cheeks. “I can—talk to him,” Eddie says.
“Shit,” Harrington says, with feeling. “Yeah. Great. Let me know—”
“I’ll let you know,” Eddie says. “I should probably—”
“Okay, yeah,” Harrington nods.
They both stand up. Eddie stubs his cigarette out.
“I’ll… see you,” he says, pathetically.
Harrington nods.
Eddie turns his back, tries hard not to break into a skittering run.
“Ed,” Harrington calls, behind him. When Eddie turns, Harrington’s mouth makes a weird hound-doggish wrinkle, like it doesn’t want to open up, but then it does, and Harrington says, “You haven’t—um. Ever asked who.”
Eddie swallows.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Eddie says. “Should it?”
Harrington looks at him for a long second. He’s still not smiling, but he seems close again. Like it's a close thing.
“See you,” Harrington says.
He strides off towards the Family Video with almost a spring in his step. Eddie strides off, too, to go have the largest imaginable nervous breakdown. He should pick somewhere quiet and appropriate, like the inside of a dumpster. A padded room. He’ll probably have to make do with the woods out behind Melvald’s, again.
Doesn’t matter to me, Christ. Ha ha! It’s going to matter. It’s going to matter a lot when Hargrove finds out, and smashes his only face in.
Eddie is not an idiot. A fool, but not an idiot. He's aware that someday soon Hargrove is going to use Eddie’s own arms and legs like clubs, to beat his poor limbless body to death. There'll be separate half-size coffins for each piece of him. This awareness doesn't change the fact that the Texaco is the only retailer remotely within walking distance that’s still open in the witching hours.
“Eighty-two cents,” Hargrove says. Eddie digs in his pockets. “Swear to god, you pay in pennies,” Hargrove warns.
“You’ll what, accept it?” Eddie says. “It’s legal tender, my good man.”
Hargrove’s eyebrows go up, like he’s unused to backtalk. That is probably true. At least he doesn’t threaten mutilation. Maybe just implies it, in the way his neck muscles bunch. There are maybe fewer of those than Eddie remembers, from the halcyon days when he still participated in an occasional ritual gym humiliation, long before Hargrove’s six-month stint being institutionalized. But still far more than Eddie’s ever going to intentionally cultivate. And they're very... firm.
Eddie averts his eyes. Gives him a crumpled dollar.
Hargrove gives him back… all pennies. Slowly, like he may in fact have a sense of humor. When it's over Eddie sits on the curb outside, smokes the first cigarette nervously in about two minutes flat. Hargrove comes out in time to watch the last fifteen awful seconds.
“Jesus,” he says, disdainfully.
Eddie squints up. Hargrove’s right in front of the beer sign; the froth on top of the mug makes him a sudsy false halo. Hargrove lights his own cigarette, leaning against the brick, and blows a slow mist out of his nose like a showboater.
“You know, I could do that,” Eddie says, “but I choose not to.”
Hargrove’s mouth twitches.
“That so,” he says.
A truck pulls up to the far pump, and a guy gets out; Hargrove douses the end of his cigarette carefully against the wall and leaves it sitting on the edge of the brick. Goes inside to the register. He’s gone a little while, and then the guy leaves, and Hargrove comes back, and picks up where he left off.
“You smoke like a peasant,” Eddie says.
“Oh, do I,” Hargrove says, tersely.
“Harrington just… throws the whole thing away, if another thought occurs to him,” Eddie says, walking the ledge. Testing, testing. Anybody home. “He’ll waste like half a fucking Red for no reason.”
Hargrove’s exceptionally silent for a moment.
“Rich boy,” he agrees, after a while. He sucks the end of his cigarette, blows it from his mouth with less patience than before. He looks down at Eddie again. “So what’s below a peasant,” he says, not very pleasantly.
Eddie pretends to experience rapid-onset rigor mortis. Getting some practice in.
“Plague victim,” he croaks.
Hargrove actually laughs. It’s unfairly cute, how much it changes his face. Eddie could—pinch it. If that wouldn't result in an ambulance ride.
“Quick answer,” Hargrove says, oblivious, grinning and pointing with the end of his cigarette. “You've given it some thought.”
“The food chain will do that to you,” Eddie says.
“For fucking sure,” Hargrove nods.
Eddie tries not to bristle at his tone. Feels a bit like hearing a shark complain. But then, pollution exists. Commercial fishing. Eddie's dad at least had the courtesy not to obviously beat his face in before leaving town. Hargrove doesn't appear to clock any irony in commiserating with the likes of Eddie; he's just staring off, watching the star flicker in the Texaco sign. Maybe not graduating on account of murder accusations is a unique social equalizer.
“I remember you, you know,” Eddie says, stupidly.
Now Hargrove stares at him. “Not just… the summer,” Eddie says, picturing himself with a little shovel, digging and digging and digging. Because Hargrove had indeed mysteriously appeared a few times at Casa Harrington, back in July, while Eddie was taking advantage of the hospitality; he’d drunk through some 30-racks with them and floated companionably if fairly silently in the pool, and then he’d just as mysteriously stopped doing that, ever. “From before then,” Eddie says. “At the Hideout. Thursdays, once in a while. You played darts. If Dougie was behind the bar, it’d be Iron Maiden back-to-back—”
“I don’t have amnesia,” Hargrove says, slow and somewhat dangerously. “You have amnesia, Munson?”
“No?”
“Then why are we talking about this,” Hargrove says.
“I don’t know,” Eddie says, like he's becoming Harrington. Just… flying in the wind. Following a feeling.
Hargrove’s vibrating with something for a second. His hand twitches, and little bits of the ash fly off; the bigger bits fall, and the smaller bits float. Eddie has to blink a tingly shiver away. Fear, maybe. Not of Hargrove, per se. Just a general, ambient sensation, familiar as an old coat. Why is it, exactly, that he keeps fucking walking out here in the middle of the night. He could ration a pack like a normal jackass, couldn't he?
“Did—Steve—put you up to this,” Hargrove says, suddenly, tight as a wire.
“Huh?” Eddie says, blankly.
“Did he say, to fucking… come talk to me?”
“No,” Eddie says, baffled.
“I know you—hang out,” Hargrove says, like someone’s using pliers to force him to. Like they're still practically strangers. Like he didn't carry a crowbar to battle with the rest of them in March, bloodshot-eyed and still barely verbal, snapping like a dog if anybody besides Lucas offered to watch Max for him for even a minute. Amnesia would be a gentler explanation for what's wrong with him. “If he’s got some fucking—head, idea, in his head,” Hargrove fumes, almost stuttering it, “he can come and say it to—”
“No, man, no,” Eddie says. “No, non, nyet, uh-uh. Hello, nobody told me anything. Why the hell would he?”
Hargrove’s jaw grinds.
“Fuck should I know,” he says, and stomps off. The door jingles, undercutting the menace a little. Glutton for punishment? Eddie wonders about himself, sometimes. Other times there's no question.
He follows Hargrove in.
Even Hargrove seems shocked by this. “Take a hike,” Hargrove says, once he's recovered.
“You worry me,” Eddie says, and hops onto the counter. “Haven’t we been in the trenches together, comrade? What's all this tough talk?”
“Fuck off,” Hargrove says.
“Perfect example,” Eddie says. “Let me offer a suggestion. You could say, for example, dear Munson, old boy, how glad I am for the pleasure of your sparkling company, here at nowhere o’clock in the ass end of Fuckstickville—”
“Sure sounds like me,” Hargrove muses, instead of killing him.
Eddie points an outraged finger.
“How dare you be fucking funny, too,” Eddie scowls. Hargrove sits on the stool behind the counter. Props his boot on a box.
“What do you really want, Munson,” he says, but in a surprisingly reasonable tone of voice, like it's a real question.
“Nothing,” Eddie says. “Thought we'd hang out someday.”
“Hang out,” Hargrove repeats.
“Yeah, obviously,” Eddie says. “What am I supposed to do, find new buddies who aren't fucked in the head in our very specific Rod Serling way? Harrington’s munchkins are alright, but only in contained doses.”
“Amen,” Hargrove murmurs.
“And I am never,” Eddie says, “going to get along with Wheeler.”
Hargrove snorts.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he says. He stretches his arms over his head, leans back. And then he hesitates, chewing on a sentence inside his cheek just the way his sister does. “You can… send a postcard, I guess. If you're that hard up.”
“Oh?” Eddie says.
“Don’t expect anything,” Hargrove says. “I'm not a pen pal guy.”
“You're…”
Eek! Does not compute. Eddie can't quite get any intelligible words out for a second. Something's crowding up his throat that feels suspiciously like his traitor's heart.
“Leaving,” Hargrove says. “Yeah. Way past time. Always… planned on it.”
Then he drops his arms awkwardly and picks at the outer seam of his jeans and glances away, like he's distracted. Like there's anything in here he won’t have already stared at for hours.
“When?”
“Max’s birthday is in a few weeks,” Hargrove says. “I’ll stick around for that. She'll finally get her permit, so. Whenever that's… done.”
“Where you headed?”
“Maybe San Diego,” Hargrove shrugs. “Somewhere on the coast. Figure it out when I get—”
“You selfish son of a bitch,” Eddie blurts, in amazement, before he can stop himself. Hargrove stares at him. Eddie's hands grip themselves so hard it's incredible his fingers don't crack right off. Cool it, cool it, cool it. “That's—it, huh?” he tries, and fumbles and feigns blowing his nose into an invisible hankie. “Just going to… break my heart and swan into the sunset? How dare you, sir.”
Hargrove's giving him a funny look. An unfooled look.
“I do something to you?” he says.
“Just dropped me like a hot potato, right when things were getting good,” Eddie says, and slides down. Away. Hargrove's eyes are like glue, like nailguns. Lasers. Like a pair of fucking bluebird-colored palantir. Eddie can actually taste the hot coppery possibility of death in the back of his throat. “Guess I'll see you around, huh Slim?” Eddie says, desperately. “Happy trails!”
Eddie escapes.
He chain-smokes all the way home. Then lies awake in his bed, drumming Hit the Lights like machine-gun fire on his tummy.
Wondering if—
Okay, two possibilities.
Alright, three. One, Hargrove's in denial. Head in the sand, panicking. Who wouldn't. Two, Hargrove's decided to go the deadbeat piece of shit route; maybe he's already told Harrington as much. Have a nice life, smell you later.
Number three’s—Jesus fuck, number three's a doozy.
Eddie groans. Kicks his feet in helpless rage. “Urrrrggghhhhggggg,” he moans, and rolls over to smother himself. “I fucking hate you sometimes," he mutters. Really could apply to anybody.