The Night Crew

scented with gunpowder and oil.
    He waited; and as he waited, he lapsed into a fantasy. He was invisible, drifting through Anna’s house, hanging a few inches above the floor, like a wisp, or a genie. She was in the bathroom, naked, doing her face, bending over a counter, looking in the mirror.
    Could she feel him there, so close, coming up behind? He reached out to touch the smooth bumps made by her vertebrae.
    Mmm . . . no. She had to be totally unknowing. Unknowing, he’d be witness to her most intimate moments. Perfect moments.
    But it’d be kind of neat if he could materialize, too. Not just an ethereal eye, watching, but somebody who had the power to materialize right behind her.
    He edited: now he could materialize. And she’d be naked, there, bending over the bathroom counter, putting on lipstick.
    No. Edit again.
    She’d be wearing nylons, with a garter belt, but that’s all, nylons and a garter belt, no underwear, putting on lipstick, and he’d come up behind her and the first thing she’d feel would be his fingers trailing down her spine like a cold draft.
    All right, he liked that. Rerun. He drifted in the door, set down beside her. She was leaning over the sink, her breasts free, nipples pink, a dark shadow where her legs joined; he put out a hand, touched her spine. When he was a child, years before, he’d been captured by the image of Humpty Dumpty. Not the fall, but the shell. Because that’s how he knew himself to be.
    He had two faces, not one. The outer face looked to the world—a somber face, even when he was a child, but pretty, and forthright. The inner face was something else: dark, moody, fetid, closed. The inner face contemplated only himself. He might have been whole, once. But the wholeness had been beaten out of him, shattered like Humpty Dumpty.
    His father had sold cars. Thousands of cars.
    His father had been on television every night, prime time, with his fake nose and white painted face, his oversized shoes and Raggedy-Ann hair.
    He was the most famous clown in the world, reeling across the sales floor with a gallon-sized jug marked XXX: ‘‘Hey, you think Big Bandy is jes’ being funny when he sez you can get this like-new Camaro for the low-low price of $6,240? What’d I say? Did I say $5,740? Another Bandy slip-o-the-tongue, that’s old Bandy getting into the old brandy again, makin’ mistakes like saying this like-new Camaro only $5,240. Whoops. There I go again. Get down here quick and you could get this Camaro for . . . Whoo, that’s good stuff. Old Bandy may be into the old brandy again, but I’m as good as my word, so whatever ridiculous price I just said, that’s all you’ll pay . . .’’
    He could take the ridicule at school, Old Bandy being his father, because everybody knew that Old Bandy was making millions. What he couldn’t take was when Old Bandy got into the old brandy at home, and beat the shit out of him.
    His mother was worse. His mother was a small, darkhaired devil who drank more old brandy than Old Bandy did, and she’d turn him in—‘‘You know what your son did today?’’—as though he wasn’t also her son.
    And the things he did, that every kid did, would somehow boil in his father’s brain, and he’d open the bedroom door in fear and find the old man standing there with a stick in his hands and a darkness around his eyes. His parents’ sex life was as bad as the beatings: they’d get drunk and screw on the couch, or the floor, or the stairs, and if everything wasn’t going just right, his father might hit her with an open hand, bat her around. She seemed to approve of it, taunt him until he hit her. Their ravings were impossible to escape: a shattering scream would drag him into the hallway, and there they’d be, sweating, bleeding, drunk, naked.
    Whatever happened at home, the family had an outer face for the world: Mom gave money to the symphony and the art museum and was something in the Junior League and every other goddamn silly group willing to ignore her character in return for her money.
    The young boy created the two faces as a means of survival: the outer face was bland, careful, somber and never raised its voice to his parents; never commented on the sex or the beatings; not after the first few times with the stick.
    But the inner face raged against them.
    The inner face wanted to kill them.
    His father had a .45 automatic, a big blue Colt. He kept it hidden in a leather holster fastened behind the headboard