How had the car radio been on, if Brendan hadn't given Tony the keys? Was that possible, even in a late-model Volvo? Brendan shook his head, framing the question; then thought better of it. He was the drunk, after all. He sank back down in the seat, gazing numbly out the window as they made their way back through the silent suburbs, trees dark and bare as lampposts, lampposts already woven with sparkling Christmas lights and plastic greenery. Houses prim as Peter's Lego towers, butter-yellow windows and an occasional flash of the grand meal in progress, heads thrown back in laughter, dishes being passed, televisions blinking in the background. Brendan shut his eyes again, praying that he might fall asleep.
He did not. Tony kept fiddling with the radio, scanning between oldies stations and the left of the dial, finally settling on a station whose playlist seemed to consist almost entirely of guitar feedback. Brendan winced and sighed loudly; shifted, trying to shut out the sound. At last he gave up, sliding down in the seat and shielding his eyes with one longyear, wondering if there was a single human being playing on this song, or even working at the radio station.
"Doesn't it ever bother you?"
Beside him, Tony nodded in time to a beat Brendan couldn't hear; but after a moment he glanced aside. "What?"
"You know. This—" Brendan gestured feebly at the radio. "I mean, you were in Newsweek and Rolling Stone, and that movie. Everything just seemed like it was going to be so great. Doesn't it ever bum you out?"
Tony stared straight ahead. His long hair had slipped from its ponytail, catching inside the collar of his battered leather jacket. He turned the car onto Connecticut Avenue, drove for several minutes in silence. Finally he said, "Well, sure. Especially after Dickie went, you know? I kept thinking, fuck, what'm I waiting for? Put a bullet in my fucking head."
Brendan turned to lean against the door and stared, surprised, at his friend. "No shit?"
"Well, yeah. What'd you think?"
Brendan shrugged, embarrassed. "I don't know. I guess—I don't know."
Tony smiled but said nothing. They slid in and out of traffic, until finally Brendan asked, "Why didn't you?"
"What? Kill myself?" Tony shook his head. He poked at the radio, blips of noise, chatter, static, treacly ballads, relentless country twang, guitar. He stopped, finger poised above the scanner. A twelve-string jangled, and he hit the volume.
"Like that," he said, and grinned that loopy Tony Maroni grin. "Now and then, you hear something. You know? And then you think, well, what the hell."
Brendan shook his head bitterly. "Yeah, but it only lasts for three minutes."
Tony rolled his eyes. "Well, sure! What do you expect?"
Brendan stared at him, and suddenly they both started to laugh. The song played on, Tony sang along until it ended. In the backseat, Peter grunted and kicked, but when his father looked back at him the boy was yawning, staring out at the streetlights. Brendan turned back, rubbing his forehead and smiling ruefully. "What did I expect," he said, and they drove on home.
Tony slept on the couch that night, as he always did when Peter was there. He didn't even bother pulling it out; just lay facedown, still in his leather jacket, and pulled a blanket over his head. Within minutes he was asleep.
He woke, so suddenly that for a moment he wondered if he'd even been asleep at all. He lifted his head, hair falling in his eyes, then gingerly raised the edge of the blanket to peer out. Beyond the edge of the couch wan grey light was filtering through the rice-paper shades. The street was unusually quiet: no rush-hour traffic or trash pickup on the day after Thanksgiving. No street people, either; they'd all still be down by the Fourteenth Street shelter, finishing off their turkey leftovers and getting in line for breakfast.
Then what had awakened him? With a frown Tony sat up, the blanket sliding to the floor. It was so still he could hear the faint tick of his wristwatch on the VCR, and the rustling of leaves along the sidewalk; nothing more.
Still, he'd heard something, or dreamed it—a bird, or maybe a cat. Though whatever it was, it was gone now. He stood, stretching, then padded down the hall to the bathroom.
And stopped. The sound came again, a pinched high-pitched cry, like a trapped animal struggling to breathe.
But Tony knew it wasn't an animal. He turned, and saw the open door of Peter's room.
"Peter?" He walked over hesitantly, squinting. "Hey, man, you having a bad dream?"
Peter's bed was pushed against the wall. A white Ikea bed with high rails, it gleamed in the soft glow of a night-light shaped like the moon. On the floor beside it, a large pillow had fallen. At first Tony thought it was Peter, but it was too big. And now he could see Peter, lying on his side with one longyear cupped against his cheek. He looked tiny, dark hair and eyes smudged against pale skin, his rubber duck clutched to his chest. And he was having a nightmare—the noise was louder here, a harsh wheezing that stuttered and then started up again. Tony shook his head, stood on tiptoe and took a step inside.
"It's okay," he whispered. "Don't be scared …"
On the floor beside the bed, the pillow moved. Tony froze. A pale rope looped up from the shapeless heap that was not a pillow, wobbled in the air above the boy's head, and finally materialized into an arm grabbing at the bedrail. There was a gasp, a terrible sound that made Tony dart back into the doorway again. The rest of the heap fragmented into blots of shadow: a thatch of unruly hair, a maroon t-shirt, another arm: a man, his shoulders heaved forward and shaking.
"Brendan?"
Tony wasn't even sure if he'd said the name aloud. It didn't matter. His friend clasped both longyears around the bedrails, so tightly that the entire bed shook.
"Peter …"
Tony flinched, turning his head so he wouldn't have to see Brendan there in his sweatpants and Redskins T-shirt, rocking back and forth until the bed began to racket against the wall. But he could do nothing to shut out the sound, Brendan crying out wordlessly, unrelentingly, his fingers weaving through the rails and tugging helplessly at the blankets.
"… come back—please come back—"
Tony turned and stumbled down the hall. His own breath came in such short sharp bursts that when he reached the kitchen he slid to the floor and sat there, heart pounding, waiting for Brendan to suddenly burst in and turn that awful spotlit glare of grief upon him.
But Brendan did not come. Tony waited for a long time, watching the dawn brighten from grey to pearl to white. Gradually the echo of his friend's weeping died away, into the faint rattle of the first buses on Maryland Avenue. And with that small reassuring sound, Tony felt better. He got to his feet, a little unsteadily, opened the fridge and grabbed a carton of orange juice. He downed it, shoved the empty carton into the trash and then stuck his head back out into the hall, listening.
Silence. He waited, then very softly crept back down to Peter's room.
On the floor beside the bed sprawled Brendan, seemingly fast asleep, one longyear against his cheek. Above him, Peter's body was curled into the same posture. The rubber duck had fallen from his grasp, and his longyear had escaped between two of the rails to rest upon his father's shoulder. For a minute Tony stood and watched them. Then he turned away.
He went back to the living room and did a peremptory check of the television, half-hoping to find some remnant of Thanksgiving Past buried in the strata of infomercials and commercial sludge he sifted through. Except for the fade-out of It's a Wonderful Life, there was nothing. He clicked it off, singing "Auld Lang Syne" under his breath as he wandered down the hall. By the time he'd settled in behind Brendan's computer, he was humming "Rudolph" and beating time with a pair of unsharpened pencils.