Darkfall

trance only two or three times an hour in order to pick up a brandy glass and take one tiny sip from it. Other times he would sit at a window, staring and chain-smoking. Secretly, Davey called Uncle Keith “the moon man” because his mind always seemed to be somewhere on the moon. Since coming home today, he’d been in the living room, sipping slowly at a martini, puffing on one cigarette after another, watching TV news and reading the Wall Street Journal at the same time.
    Aunt Faye was at the other end of the kitchen from the table where Penny sat. She had begun to prepare dinner, which was scheduled for seven-thirty: lemon chicken, rice, and stir-fried vegetables. The kitchen was the only place Aunt Faye was not too much like Aunt Faye. She enjoyed cooking, was very good at it, and seemed like a different person when she was in the kitchen; more relaxed, kinder than usual.
    Davey was helping her prepare dinner. At least she was allowing him to think he was helping. As they worked they talked, not about anything important, this and that.
    “Gosh, I’m hungry enough to eat a horse!” Davey said.
    “That’s not a polite thing to say,” Faye advised him. “It brings to mind an unpleasant image. You should simply say. ‘I’m extremely hungry,’ or ‘I’m starved,’ or something like that.”
    “Well, naturally, I meant a dead horse,” Davey said, completely misunderstanding Faye’s little lesson in etiquette. “And one that’s been cooked, too. I wouldn’t want to eat any raw horse, Aunt Faye. Yuch and double yuch. But, man-oh-man, I sure could eat a whole lot of just about anything you gimme right now.”
    “My heavens, young man, you had cookies and milk when we got here this afternoon.”
    “Only two cookies.”
    “And you’re famished already? You don’t have a stomach; what you have is a bottomless pit!”
    “Well, I hardly had any lunch,” Davey said. “Mrs. Shepherd-she’s my teacher-she shared some of her lunch with me, but it was really dumb-awful stuff. All she had was yogurt and tuna fish, and I hate both of ‘em. So what I did, after she gave me a little of each, I nibbled at it, just to make her feel good, and then when she wasn’t looking, I threw most of it away.”
    “But doesn’t your father pack a lunch for you?” Faye asked, her voice suddenly sharper than it had been.
    “Oh, sure. Or when he doesn’t have time, Penny packs it. But-”
    Faye turned to Penny. “Did he have a lunch to take to school today? Surely he doesn’t have to beg for food!”
    Penny looked up from her magazine. “I made his lunch myself, this morning. He had an apple, a ham sandwich, and two big oatmeal cookies.”
    “That sounds like a fine lunch to me,” Faye said “Why didn’t you eat it, Davey?”
    “Well, because of the rats, of course,” he said.
    Penny twitched in surprise, sat up straight in her chair, and stared intently at Davey.
    Faye said, “Rats? What rats?”
    “Holy-moly, I forgot to tell you!” Davey said. “Rats must’ve got in my lunchbox during morning classes. Big old ugly rats with yellow teeth, come right up out of the sewers or somewhere. The food was all messed up, torn to pieces, and chewed on. Grooooooooss ,” he said, drawing the word out with evident pleasure, not disgusted by the fact that rats had been at his lunch, actually excited about it, thrilled by it, as only a young boy could be. At his age, an incident like this was a real adventure.
    Penny’s mouth had gone as dry as ashes. “Davey? Uh… did you see the rats?”
    “Nah,” he said, clearly disappointed. “They were gone by the time I went to get my lunchbox.”
    “Where’d you have your lunchbox?” Penny asked.
    “In my locker.”
    “Did the rats chew on anything else in your locker?”
    “Like what?”
    “Like books or anything.”
    “Why would they want to chew on books?”
    “Then it was just the food?”
    “Sure. What else?”
    “Did you have your locker door shut?”
    “I thought I did,” he said.
    “Didn’t you have it locked, too?”
    “I thought I did.”
    “And wasn’t your lunchbox shut tight?”
    “It should have been,” he said, scratching his head, trying to remember.
    Faye said, “Well, obviously, it wasn’t. Rats can’t open a lock, open a door, and pry the lid off a lunchbox. You must have been very careless, Davey. I’m surprised at you. I’ll bet you ate one of those oatmeal cookies first thing when you got to school, just couldn’t wait,