'He's not my boyfriend. Creek's a friend.'

'Yeah? But you can trust him?'

'With my life.'

Harper bobbed his head, and said, Then you might think about it, even if he drives you nuts. I'll tell you what: This guy isn't gonna go away. This nut. He's thinking about you all the time. Sooner or laterhe'll turn up.'

Chapter 9

The two-faced man sat in the dirt, a hedge brushing his right ear, a fender a foot from his left. The spot was guarded, out of sight, and had the feel of a den. He was comfortable in it; he put the pistol barrel beside his nose, drew a breath 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. Return. 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 worlda 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, dark-haired 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 of his bed. His father took it out every once in a while, to look at it, hold it, aim it at the TV, dry-fire it. Then he'd go into the bedroom, reload it and hide it.

In the sixth grade, two-face dreamed of killing his parents with the.45. The dream had become part of his daily reality, the inner face pleading with the outer. The outer face prevailed, with logic: if he killed his parents, they'd lock him in a room somewhere, and that would be all for him. Even the inner face recognized the unacceptability of that outcome.

Still, the power of the killing mood was so strong that he took the shells out of the.45 and threw them down a sewer. Not because he didn't want to kill them; but because neither face wanted to go to jail.

But he would kill them, sooner or later; that was inevitable. He'd build an elaborate alibibuilding the mechanisms of the alibi was one of his favourite fantasiesand then he'd do it. He'd kill his father outright. He thought about a shotgun, aiming it at the old man's chest, pulling the trigger. He'd do his mother with a knife. Very slowly.

He got a hard-on thinking about it.

Life with his parents turned him, twisted him. He knew too much from the very start, and the girls sensed it. They shied away from him. And when the hormones hit, everything got worse: he had the fire inside, but no outlet.

And with adolescence, the inner face grew stronger, to dominate the outer, although the outer continued to shield his real nature. And the inner face needed to be fed.

For years, the inner face was content with cruelties to animals and smaller children.

In eighth grade, he'd killed a cat he found crossing their back yard, beat it to death with a dowel rod. The first blow broke the cat's back, and a dozen more killed it. He buried it along their back fence line, carefully shoveling dirt over the body, smoothing the spot, even transplanting a chunk of sod to conceal the fresh dirt.

Nobody had suspected him: and in the next week, a half-dozen cardboard signs were nailed to phone poles, asking for help finding a red-black-gray tabby named Jimbo.

A small thrill; which the inner face contemplated, patiently, turning it over and over.

The next time he killed a cat, he killed it only after a protracted hunt. He had to know where it came from: so when he killed it, he could carry it up to the neighbor's porch, ring a doorbell, and with a real tear in his eye, say, 'A car hit your cat.'

The neighbor lady had broken down in tears, her daughter had been distraught and the outer face had cried with them, real agony. So much so, that the neighbor lady walked him home, to thank his parents for his concern.

In the eleventh grade, he took a major step, when the inner face noticed that Mrs Garner was never without her coffee.