Watchers

he?”
    “You don’t know anything, do you?” he said. “Except how to make babies, huh? You know about that, huh?”
    The hard taunting note in his voice was not merely sexually suggestive: it Was darker, stranger, and more terrifying than that. She was so frightened
    of the fierce tension that she sensed in him each time he approached the subject of sex that she did not dare reply to him.
    She turned on the headlights as they encountered thin fog. She kept her attention on the rain-washed highway, squinting through the smeary windshield.
    He said, “You’re very pretty. If I was going to stick it into anyone, I’d stick it into you.”
    Nora bit her lip.
    “But even as pretty as you are,” he said, “you’re like all the others, I’ll bet. If I stuck it into you, then it’d rot and fall off because you’re diseased like all the others—aren’t you? Yeah. You are. Sex is death. I’m one of the few who seem to know it, even though proof is everywhere. Sex is death. But you’re very pretty . .
    As she listened to him, her throat got tight. She was having difficulty drawing a deep breath.
    Suddenly his taciturnity was gone. He talked fast, still soft-voiced and unnervingly calm, considering the crazy things he was saying, but very fast:
    “I’m going to be bigger than Tetragna, more important. I’ve got scores of lives in me. I’ve absorbed energies from more than you’d believe, experienced The Moment, felt The Snap. It’s my Gift. When Tetragna’s dead and gone, I’ll be here. When everyone now alive is dead, I’ll be here because I’m immortal.”
    She didn’t know what to say. He had come out of nowhere, somehow knowing about Einstein, and he was a lunatic, and there seemed to be nothing she could do. She was as angry about the unfairness of it as she was afraid. They had made careful preparations for The Outsider, and they had taken elaborate steps to elude the government—but how were they supposed to have prepared for this? It wasn’t fair.
    Silent again, he stared at her intently for a minute or more, another eternity. She could feel his icy green gaze on her as surely as she would have felt a cold, fondling hand.
    “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he said.
    “No.”
    Perhaps because he found her pretty, he chose to explain. “I’ve only ever told one person before, and he made fun of me. His name was Danny Slowicz, and we both worked for the Carramazza Family in New York, biggest of the five Mafia Families. Little muscle work, once in a while killing people who needed killed.”
    Nora felt sick because he was not merely crazy and not merely a killer but a crazy professional killer.
    Unaware of her reaction, switching his gaze from the rain-swept road to her face, he continued. “See, we were having dinner in this restaurant, Danny and me, washing down clams with Valpolicella, and I explained to him that I was destined to lead a long life because of my ability to acquire the vital energies of people I wasted. I told him, ‘See, Danny, people are like batteries,
    walking batteries, filled with this mysterious energy we call life. When I off someone, his energy becomes my energy, and I get stronger. I’m a bull, Danny,’ I says. ‘Look at me—am I a bull or what? And I got to be a bull ‘cause I have this Gift of being able to take the energy from a guy.’ And you know what Danny says?”
    “What?” she asked numbly.
    “Well, Danny was a serious eater, so he kept his attention on his plate, face in his food, until he scarfs a few more clams. Then he looks up, his lips and chin dripping clam sauce, and he says, ‘Yeah, Vince, so where’d you learn this trick, huh? Where’d you learn how to absorb these life energies?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s my Gift,’ and he said, ‘You mean like from God?’ So I had to think about that, and I said, ‘Who knows where from? It’s my Gift like Mantle’s hitting was a gift, like Sinatra’s voice was a gift.’ And Danny says, ‘Tell me this—suppose you waste a guy who’s an electrician. After you absorb his energy, would you all of a sudden know how to rewire a house?’ I didn’t realize he was putting me on. I thought it was a serious question, so I explained how I absorb life energy, not personality, not all the stuff the guy knows, just his energy. And then Danny says, ‘So if you blew away a carnival geek, you wouldn’t all of a sudden get the urge to bite the heads off chickens.’ Right