Archie reached into the box, pulled out a marble, tossed it carelessly into the air. The black marble caught the light. The marble like a streak of black lightning sizzling through the air.
Startled, Archie failed to catch the marble as it fell. It bounced off the tips of his fingers and clattered to the floor, rolling crazily across the concrete surface, lost somewhere in the shadows.
"Jesus," someone murmured.
Not a prayer or a curse but an expression of awe and wonder. As if a world had just been destroyed. And that's exactly what had happened. Archie's world, shattered, annihilated by a rolling black marble.
The Vigil members looked at each other in bewilderment. Archie was not supposed to choose the black marble, just as the sun was not supposed to rise in the west. Logical, a fact of life. But logic had been demolished. And all eyes turned to Archie as if he could do something, anything, to show them that what they had seen had not really happened.
Archie smiled at the gathering. But Obie had never seen such a smile. Without mirth or joy or warmth, an arrangement of lips, as if an undertaker had fashioned flesh into a grotesque parody of a smile. But Archie's eyes did not smile. The eyes pinned Obie as if Obie were an insect struggling to be free. Held and caught, Obie stared helplessly at Archie. Then the spell broke. The smile on Archie's lips was suddenly the smile of someone who had just lost a bet or a fortune, gracious enough to accept defeat without whimpering.
"See you at the fair," Archie said, looking directly at Obie.
He turned back to the assembly of Vigils.
"Dismissed," Archie called.
For a split second, nobody moved, nobody dared move, and then there was the thunder of sound and action as everybody tried to get out of there at the same time.
See you at the fair.
As Obie joined the throng rushing toward the single doorway, he wondered whether those words were a statement of fact, a promise, or a threat.
They picked up Janza's trail at the Sweet Shoppe where he was operating, business as usual. Which meant that he was going from booth to booth and table to table, intimidating, threatening, and extorting, not always in that order. Intimidating by merely standing at the edge of a booth and glaring at the occupants, inspecting them up and down.
Janza's presence was always a threat. Violent vibrations emanated from him. He seemed liable to explode into violence without warning or any reason at all, and that's why animated conversations stopped when he came into view, why kids turned half away from him or refused to meet his little pig eyes.
Now as he strolled around the Sweet Shoppe, pausing here and there, "borrowing" a dollar from a nervous sophomore whose name he had forgotten, a dollar the sophomore would never see again, Janza was in his element. Swaggering, strutting, knowing the effect his presence had on other people, and enjoying it all.
Jerry and the Goober watched from outside the store, standing in the shadows. The Goober stood on one foot, then the other, whistling softly, impatient, uneasy. Jerry merely stood there, watching Janza's every move, craning his neck now and then to keep Janza in sight.
After a while Jerry said: "Here he comes."
"I hope you know what you're doing," Goober said.
"Don't worry," Jerry replied.
Actually, Jerry did not know what course he would pursue with Janza, what steps he would take. It was all too hazy in his mind to explain to the Goober. All he knew was that he must confront the animal, had known this from the moment he had spotted Janza across the street from his apartment.
When Janza left the Sweet Shoppe, slamming the door and rattling the window, a typical Emile Janza exit, he began walking south toward the downtown district. Jerry and the Goober fell in behind him, keeping a distance of about thirty yards between them.
"If he turns around, he'll see us," the Goober whispered.
"Good," Jerry said.
They followed Janza down West Street across Park to Elm and into the area of the Apples, a new development, so called because all the streets were named for apples. McIntosh Street, Baldwin, Delicious. Imagine telling people you live at 20 Delicious Street, Jerry thought, half giggling, knowing the giggle came from nervousness.
"I wonder where he's going," the Goober said. "He doesn't live around here."
Another neighborhood now: decayed buildings, sagging apartment houses, littered streets, ashcans at the curb. Sudden yawning alleys, like dark forbidding caves.
Janza turned a corner and they quickened their steps, anxious not to lose him. Old-fashioned streetlights threw feeble light on the street, emphasizing the many shadowed areas. Janza was not in sight.
Jerry and the Goober stood there, puzzled. The Goober was anxious to get away. He felt somehow responsible for Jerry's safety. Jerry kicked at a telephone pole.
"Hi, fellas."
Janza's voice came out of the shadows of a nearby alley.
"You think I didn't know you were following me?" he asked, leaning against a wall, enjoying himself as usual. "Jesus, Renault, you're a glutton for punishment, know that?"
"You're the glutton, Janza," Jerry said, pleasantly surprised at how calm he was, heartbeat normal, everything normal.
Emile stepped out of the shadows. Anger glinted in his eyes. Mouth turned down. Nobody talked to Emile Janza that way, least of all this scrawny freshman.
"You always were a wise guy, Renault. That's why I had to beat you up last year. That's why I've got to beat you up again." He scratched his crotch. "Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly," he added, half bowing, indicating the alley behind him. "See? I know poetry, too."
Poetry? "The Spider and the Fly"? If the situation hadn't been so dangerous, the Goober might have laughed. Instead, he urged: "Let's go, Jerry. . "
Jerry shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Hit the road, kid," Janza said to the Goober. "I got no gripe with you. Your buddy here. He's the one—"
"I'm not leaving," the Goober said, hoping the quaver in his voice wasn't discernible.
Janza stepped forward threateningly. "Yes you are."
"Go ahead, Goob," Jerry said. "Wait around the corner."
The Goober stood his ground, stubbornly, shaking his head.
Emile Janza's foot shot out, caught Goober in the groin, the pain excruciating as it spread through his lower body, nausea developing in his stomach. He felt himself capsizing, legs buckling.
As Jerry turned to help his friend in distress, Janza struck him from his blind side, a blow to the cheek that touched off an explosion of lights in Jerry's eyes. He raised his hands to his face and knew immediately that he had made a mistake. Two mistakes. The first mistake was not expecting Janza to strike without warning. The second mistake was to leave his stomach unguarded. The blow to the stomach was soft. Janza's fist sank into Jerry's flesh almost tenderly, but an extra thrust made Jerry cave almost in two. He heard the Goober retching beside him where he was kneeling on the ground.
Janza stepped back, smiling, fists up and ready. "Come on, Renault," he said, retreating, beckoning Jerry into the alley. "Your friend's not interested anymore, is he?"
And Jerry saw now what he must do. Cheek still dancing with pain, his intestines twisted sickeningly inside him, he stalked toward Janza, determined now, not unsure or uncertain anymore. Arms at his sides, looking defenseless but knowing where his strength was, where it had to be, he advanced toward Janza.
Two or three lights flashed on in windows facing the alley, spraying the narrow passage with light. A window went up. Jerry had a sense now of spectators, people watching the scene, elbows on sills. Nobody said anything. Nobody cheered or booed.