Kick

  Reluctantly, I considered the laptop. I didn’t want to look in there. Whatever I found in his computer would remain in my head forever, and by now it should be clear I don’t mean that figuratively. Previous occasions like this, in other bodies, have littered my perfect memory with the broken, tortured images of countless children, and heaven help him if he added any more.

  Resolved to this, I pushed the power button.

  I’m not a particularly gifted or computer-savvy person. Most of my knowledge comes from cheating—skimming books about an operating system or software application on one trip and applying it on others. As a result, I can tell you how to download, compile and install a new CentOS kernel, provided nothing in the process deviates from the book. The problem is I can’t tell you why I would download, compile and install a new CentOS kernel. I’d like to take a class one day, but the classes I’ve looked at usually want you to sign up at least a month in advance.

  When the system came up, it didn’t prompt me for a password. There usually isn’t a password on the home computers I’ve seen, but there always is on the computers of child molesters. This gave me some hope, though faint.

  I opened Nathan’s browser and scrolled through his history. Most of it concerned sports-related activities, which went along with some of the gear he had in the basement. His default bookmarks contained places to shop and other crap that comes with a new computer. I closed the browser and opened his “My Documents” folder and then his “My Pictures” folder, and that’s when I found them. Kids. Lots of them. Playing soccer. Attending a school assembly. Receiving awards at the Science Fair. Posing with him in front of the school with other adults.

  “Elementary school, my dear Watson,” I said, playing to my favorite audience.

  The training whistle looped around his neck in every picture pegged him for a gym teacher. That’s what the Fairfax County checks were for. School these days seemed as normal as I remembered it, since none of the pictures looked remotely pornographic. Most looked to have been taken by the other teachers or parents, or maybe even the kids themselves.

  I started searching the laptop for any jpegs, gifs or movie files, looking for something that would confirm or deny my suspicions, but I didn’t find anything. This didn’t prove his innocence, I decided, just my incompetence.

  On a hunch, I began looking through the drawers of his desk in a hunt for external drives, CDs or other removable media. I did find a couple of CDs, but they were for video games or never-opened driver CDs.

  “God, I’m dumb,” I said, then double-clicked the email icon hiding in plain sight in the middle of the screen.

  Most of Nathan’s correspondence was with the other faculty at the school or a mailing list for the Northern Virginia Hiking Club. I didn’t find any correspondence with friends or family.

  “No biggy,” I said, quitting for now. I’d look more later.

  After an incredible experience in the enormous shower, with jets of water hitting me from what seemed a thousand different directions, I threw on some briefs, shorts, a black T-shirt I found in his walk-in closet, and the sneakers from earlier. Then I did a quick, successful search of the house for his wallet, car keys, and that all-important cell phone.

  After checking the date, I called the phone back, hoping for a personalized message. But unlike the last time I pulled this trick all I got was a computerized woman with a lot of bossy instructions. When I got around to it, I’d try the house phone or office number at the school.

  Squinting against the late-morning sunlight, I stepped out into a steadily warming Virginia in August.

  Centreville is about thirty miles outside Washington DC. I’d been there once before, on a previous ride, and despite being just outside the insta-death radius of a Cold War thermonuclear attack or dirty bomb, I have to tell you: Centreville’s pretty dull. It has two Giant Food stores, some serviceable restaurants, at least two McDonald’s, a movie theater and a handful of shopping centers. It’s unincorporated, so there’s no mayor or local government beneath the county. Nor is there any discernible history or special cultural quirkiness found only among Centrevillians. I imagined them as the real-world, taller equivalent of Hobbits.

  Nathan Cantrell’s sprawling, brick-faced monstrosity squatted diagonally across the corner of Obnoxious and Obnoxious 2, the Sequel. It had really green grass and really white sidewalks, and there weren’t any cars in the neighboring driveways. There were no kids playing anywhere, despite it being the middle of summer—a good thing, I figured, given my suspicions about Nathan. In fact, if not for a lonely car parked four houses down, the place looked deserted.

  Nathan’s house may have looked nice on the inside, but outside? There were majestic bump-outs and shadowed recesses, soaring columns and giant semicircular or square or round or oval windows everywhere a person could possibly want one. The roof alone had six different elevations. It looked like someone had cut the appendages off twelve different houses and sewn them all together. All it needed were some angry villagers with torches to put the poor, sad monster out of its misery.

  I had to go back inside to get into the garage.

  He had two vehicles: a car and a black SUV. But I cared only about the car. Judging by the paper tags with the red lettering, it was a brand-new, red Ferrari F430. I almost had to take another shower and change my clothes all over again. I managed to stop myself from asking, “Who the hell is this guy?” because I figured it out. He was the Devil, gleefully tormenting me in boiling vats of envy and greed. I could almost hear the creepy music.

  It took me about half a second to decide I wouldn’t be driving the SUV. With mounting excitement, I found the switch to the garage back by the door and opened it. Then I made a short pilgrimage to the Ferrari, unlocked the door and climbed in. When no bolts from the sky struck me for my sacrilege, I relaxed and took a moment to appreciate the craftsmanship. The seats were firm yet comfortable, all leather, with care and precision oozing from every stitch. The dash looked like something from The Empire Strikes Back seen from the perspective of a San Bushman. There were buttons everywhere that I didn’t understand and levers just behind the steering wheel on each side, the left reading “DOWN” and the right, “UP”. Looking behind me and scooting up a bit, I blinked in awe at the engine resting with cool menace just beneath the glass-topped rear engine compartment, then turned back and tried to figure out how to turn it on. I didn’t see anywhere to fit a key. Instead, I found a red button reading, “Engine Start,” which seemed infinitely helpful. I also found a little dial on the right side of the steering column pointing ominously to the word, “Race.”

  I pushed the “Engine Start” button—and nearly jumped out of my skin as the car roared to life in a feral, malevolent fury that tickled the bones in my chest.

  “This can’t go well,” I said, biting my lip and keeping my foot pressed heavily on the brake while I faced out of the garage at the kidless, neighborless street.

  As a confirmed immortal, I promise my fear stemmed not from any worry of death, but rather from destroying so lovely a creation as the Ferrari. Mike’s motorcycle had been a little like a great white shark with me on its back, controlling it. I knew it was a bad sign that I thought the car had more control than I did. Bracing for impact, I pulled my foot from the brake and gingerly fed it some gas. The unexpected rev-roaring from the engine scared the Socrates out of me—but the car didn’t move. I probed around with my left foot, hunting for a clutch that wasn’t there, and then looked everywhere for a lever to throw it into drive. Soon, my eyes came to rest again on those weird UP/DOWN paddles.

  “Fine, I’ll bite.”

  I pressed the brake with my right foot, then pulled the right side lever toward me and released it. Then I took my foot from the brake and slid it over to the accelerator. Before I could apply any pressure, the car began idling along gently in first gear. I tapped the gas and yelped as the car sprang forward with a startling jerk, causing me to slam the brake. This herky-jerky rout
ine played itself out repeatedly as I made my way down the driveway. I fought a wave of panic. I had never driven anything this powerful before. If riding Mike’s Harley felt like riding a shark, driving a Ferrari seemed more like riding in the shark’s belly.

  With no one in sight, I let the car drift down the rest of the drive and onto the narrow street, then turned right. Then I gently—gently—pressed the accelerator. As a reward, the car responded with a little less power, allowing me to ease it along nicely at a comfortable twenty-five miles an hour.

  All the other houses in the area were just as large as you can imagine, all Frankenmansions like Nathan’s, most of them empty of cars, with nice clean driveways that hadn’t been leaked on by the faded clunkers of less fortunate neighborhoods. The street looped through the neighborhood in a circle back to the house, traffic free. I figured either the owners were all retired or they had to work weekends and holidays just to afford to live here. Either way, it gave me a wonderful laboratory in which to learn the Ferrari’s paddle system.

  With growing confidence, I brought the car up to second gear, then to third along a straight section, then quickly popped it back down to first while applying the brake. Then I did some experimenting and figured out how to put it neutral (both paddles at once).

  For the next ten minutes, I drove around in circles, bringing it up to third and then back down, again and again, until I felt sure I could do it in traffic. That would be the real test, with my attention divided between the car and fleets of gas trucks and buses packed with crying orphans or screaming pregnant women rushed to the hospital by terrified—yet hilarious—taxi drivers.

  Through practice, I soon replaced my worry with a sense of growing admiration. All cars should have these paddles.

  I pulled left onto a two-lane road that bisected a small wood before opening up to more McMansions on either side. I didn’t remember so many of them on my last visit. That was in the summer of 1996, in the body of a serial arsonist who liked to save newspaper clippings of his exploits. He’d managed to tally eight deaths before writing a full confession and leaping from a seventeen story building yelling, “Sitting Bull!” But only after a three-week tour of D.C., roller coasters and carny games at King’s Dominion and a chartered fishing trip out of Point Lookout, Maryland.

  I popped the speed up quickly, accelerating like a rocket ship and yelling “Woo!” a lot. Very cool, but being on small roads with red lights was nothing like the fun I could have on an interstate. So I pulled onto I-66 and did my best to break the boundaries of time, space and dimension.

  I easily hit 120 miles an hour, which I deemed a nice cruising speed, grinning madly at the battle raging in the engine behind me between the monster from Aliens and an ancient red dragon named Legion. Cops be damned—they wouldn’t ruin my fun. Besides, it was Saturday morning and the roads were clear of commuters.

  After about a half hour zooming in and out of occasional pockets of light traffic, followed by roaring bursts to hyperspace, I decided to turn around and head back to crummy-old Centreville—this time, conscientiously observing the speed limit.

  When I got back to the house, she was there.

  Chapter 20

  I spotted her from a block away with my freakishly healthy eyesight. She stood by the front door, one foot in the rock garden peeking through one of the side glass panes. Her hands cupped the space between her head and the glass to block out the glare. Intrigued, I slowed to a crawl and crept forward to the corner for a better look. She had on fruffly yellow skirt-shorts and an airy short sleeve blouse. Her hair hung medium length, blond like California sunshine, and her skin gleamed smooth and radiant. She looked a little like a real life Malibu Barbie peeking in to see if Ken were home. Trying not to rev the car too much, I started forward.

  When she heard me pull up, she turned to look. Just her head and shoulders, twisting toward me, as if unashamed to be peeking into someone’s house. I stepped out of the $200,000 Ferrari and waved, feeling self-conscious. I hoped she’d say something first.

  “Hun Bun, I’m back!” she shouted, then ran over and flung herself into my arms. I would have said “oof,” but she delivered a kiss so sensual that I swear I lost the feeling in my feet. I felt like a man, drowning for years but still alive and starving for oxygen. Warm, sweet, and terrifically naughty oxygen.

  When she finally broke off I realized I’d broken one of my rules: don’t take liberties with someone’s wife or girlfriend. But that didn’t matter because I kissed her again, deeply, and it meant everything just to kiss her, being loved or something like it.

  I hadn’t gotten a good look at her up close, but when she finally pulled away (I couldn’t), my first impression paled in comparison. She was a knockout. She was so pretty it hurt to look at her. From a distance I’d called her Barbie pretty, but that notion evaporated up close. She was slender without being skinny. Tall for a girl, about five-nine. She had a smile that was more attitude than geometry, and her boobs were nice too. And I was going to remember all this forever with even more clarity than the original experience. How great was that?

  Laughing suddenly, she said, “Wow, I guess I stayed away too long—but after the wedding I’ll never leave again.”

  ***

  Catastrophe.

  The house, the car, Nathan’s body with its superhuman strength and animal magnetism, and all that glorious money. Everything had been going great, but now it felt like someone poured orange juice in my Captain Crunch and stolen the prize.

  What could I do? I couldn’t just yell a bunch and chase her off because I still didn’t know what this guy had done. I’d been half hoping the Great Whomever had set me up in a sort of vacation body—a specially sanctioned destination to come and relax after years of doing his vengeful, often-violent bidding. Granted, this had never happened before. It was another fantasy of mine, right up there with waking in the body of a suicide survivor and getting to stay. In the unprecedented event that Nathan was innocent, then running off his blushing bride-to-be would be one of the worst things a guy could do to another guy, and doubly so for her. I mean, she had a chance to marry Apollo himself, with his Ferrari chariot and mansion on Mt. Olympus. With all that money, she wouldn’t need to work again for the rest of her life. Their kids would grow up rich, attend the finest schools, wear the coolest sneakers and have amazing Christmases with ten speeds and dirt bikes—even go-carts. Who wouldn’t want a childhood like that? Until I could prove his guilt, I had to tread lightly and not screw it up.

  And if I could prove he was guilty of hurting kids, I’d drop his sorry ass in a black pit with no end to it.

  ***

  First impressions are tricky, especially when the other person thinks they know you. If I got Nathan’s mannerisms too wrong, I’d find myself defending every little change in his behavior. Eventually, when she realized I had no intention of quitting “the act,” she’d become repulsed by my suddenly obnoxious behavior. From that point on, her alert level would remain so high I could never bring the mood back to normal.

  She stood looking at me, breathing heavy from the kiss and waiting for me to say something. Rather than pretend to be someone I wasn’t, I did exactly the opposite. They weren’t married yet, so I took a gamble their lives hadn’t gotten too predictable for a little clowning around.

  “Excuse me Miss, do I know you?” I said, with mocking formality.

  “Oh you’re in trouble now, Mister,” she said, kissing me again. It was like Cupid firing twin machine guns, these kisses. “Now do you know me?”

  “Well Miss,” I said, “do you have a name?”

  Her eyes sparkled. Stepping back, she gave me a formal bow at the waist, then said in a bloody bad, bloody fake English accent, “You may call me Lady Erika. And you are?”

  Dropping into a bloody low curtsey, I replied, “Nathan Cantrell the Third, Duke of Ellington, Partridge of the Pear tree, at your service m’lady.” My own English accent sounded vaguely reminiscent of the Lucky Charms
leprechaun. Bloodily so.

  Erika laughed.

  “Wow, did you rehearse that or something? I thought you hated ‘Nathan.’”

  Nat? Nate?

  “I’m trying to be less sensitive about it these days. You know, more open-minded.”

  If I hadn’t been staring at her like a letch I would have missed it, but I could have sworn her expression took on a sudden hardness, though her smile never wavered.

  “Nothing wrong with that,” she said, but knew I’d said something wrong. Really, I was just counting down the time until I did something I couldn’t recover from.

  Erika stepped away and headed for the Ferrari—and not her silver Passat, I noticed.

  “Where did you want to eat?” she said. “I haven’t had anything since I left Chicago and I’m eating for two now.”

  Two? Oh…

  “Yeah, I could eat something,” I said, as if I felt like eating anything after that bombshell. “How about the Sweetwater Tavern?”

  “Ugh, I suppose you want steak…I wish you’d listen to me and go vegan. You’ll thank me when you’re a hundred and five and everyone around you is dead from heart disease or colon cancer.”

  “Don’t forget diabetes,” I said.

  When Erika got in, my senses became overwhelmed by the intoxicating smell of hot chick—a kind of raspberry hairspray and bubblegum freshness. I found it incredibly distracting, and that’s why I turned right out of the neighborhood instead of left, where I needed to go. Meanwhile, Erika started caressing my arm. Then she sent her hand wandering. Nothing X-rated, mind you, but still suggestive and soft enough to send my pulse caterwauling in my ears. Also, much to my embarrassment, someone decided to send up the periscope to see what all the fuss was about.

  “Hey, I feel like some music,” I blurted, fumbling blindly with the radio and pushing about seven buttons before hitting the right one.