Have you ever made a decision out of anger and not regretted it? I can think of only one or two. When I was in school, I was bullied like almost everyone else. One time a kid who had always rubbed me the wrong way made a crack about my appearance on what was already a bad day for me and I smacked him across the face. I got in trouble for that, a call home and everything. But I don’t regret it. That kid and I, we had never liked each other. And after I smacked him, he kept his distance from me. Maybe hitting him wasn’t the right thing to do, but I don’t think it was the worst thing I could have done either.
I was at the supermarket last weekend. It was broad daylight. Usually I expect weird shit to happen in dark alleys, but in this case, it happened while I was in line for the bathroom. There were two guys in front of me. One of them was in his 20s and the other was in his 50s, I think. The twentysomething guy turned around and widened his eyes at the fortysomething guy. He opened his mouth to say something but then the older guy slapped him. Hard. “Just turn around, Wes,” said the older guy. The younger guy put his hand to his face and did so. What was their relationship to each other?
I saw them again at the supermarket this weekend. This time, I went after work. They were shopping together, which told me that they did have some kind of a relationship. Without getting too close, I tried to follow them around the store with my shopping cart. It’s not that hard to follow somebody without being noticed if you just keep a little distance.
There was definitely something weird about them. The older guy never let go of the shopping cart. He pointed to stuff and the young guy fetched it for him. The young guy didn’t look the same as he did last week. Last week he looked like kind of a slacker, wearing pajama pants in public and having a generally unkempt appearance. This week he was clean-shaven, with his hair combed. He wore brand-new denim jeans and a button-down shirt that he had tucked in. Of course, none of that fit. He looked like his parents had made him dress up for a job interview. But he was doing everything the older guy said.
I knew these two must have some kind of history. No way did that brief interaction in front of the bathroom the previous week explain all of this. But I didn’t realize just how fucked up it was until I saw the younger guy up close. They were leaving the frozen food aisle. I was entering it. The older guy loudly said something about how the younger guy forgot to grab the frozen peas. “But it was you who forgot–” began the younger guy, and got slapped across the face.
“Just do what I tell you,” said the older guy.
That attracted people’s attention. Couples argue in public sometimes, but if these two were a couple, their relationship was abusive. Everyone in the aisle stopped what they were doing and stared as the young guy walked back up the aisle to where I was standing. I thought he was going to say something to me, but the instead he just reached down and grabbed a bag of organic frozen peas. His hand brushed mine as he did so. I always buy non-organics but they are right next to each other. Though we made eye contact for only a split second I could see something was wrong with his face. It sagged a little and had wrinkles that were not there last week. I think there were flecks of grey in his hair. He had aged five or six years in just seven days.
I sat there wondering if there was something I could do about this until somebody asked me to move so they could get the peas. With considerable difficulty focusing on what I was doing, I did the rest of my shopping and paid. I was about to leave the building when somebody put a hand on my arm.
“You saw that, right?” said an employee. “What that guy just did to the other guy?” The employee was a twentysomething Hispanic man who was built like a wrestler. He wore a nametag that said Reese. I don’t know Reese, unless you count being rung up by him a couple of times. It’s pretty unusual to touch somebody on the arm when your only connection to them is that they’re a customer at your workplace. But that made me think Reese was serious about whatever he wanted to talk about.
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t get it. Are they boyfriends or–”
“I get off in like two minutes,” said Reese. “Meet me at my car. Did you drive?” I shook my head. “I’ll drive you home. It’s a green Mazda Protégé right in front of the elevators, first floor of the parking garage. I have to get back to work.”
I usually take the bus home, so I was grateful to Reese for saving a me a few minutes. The wait was a little longer than two minutes, but not by that much. The elevator doors opened and Reese walked out, no longer wearing his work shirt.
“Where do you live?” asked Reese. He unlocked the doors and got into the driver’s seat, moving some things off of the passenger side door. He wore a wedding ring, and I noticed a car seat in the back. Family man. I told him where I lived and we set off. “I know that area,” he said as we drove. “It’s quiet.”
“So what do you know?” I asked. “About those two guys?”
“They’ve been kicked out of a bunch of stores in the shopping center,” said Reese. “The steakburger place, they were doing something in the bathroom together.”
“Sucking each other’s dicks?” I asked. Reese shook his head. “Drugs?”
Reese shook his head again. “Did you notice how Wes looked older today? And how Kyle looked younger?”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I said, assuming that Kyle was the older one. “But you didn’t answer my question.”
“That’s because I don’t know what they’re doing in the bathroom,” said Reese. “But every time they go into a place, they ask if there’s a bathroom. If there is no bathroom, they leave. This one time, Kyle started yelling at the lady, like it was her fault the place didn’t have a bathroom. So they’re not allowed in that store anymore.”
“But what about your store?” I asked. “Why are they allowed in there?”
“Because they buy stuff,” he said. “I’ve talked to my manager about it. He says as long as their money’s good, they can keep coming in.”
“That might cost you guys,” I said. “They make a scene like they did today, some people aren’t gonna feel comfortable coming in there.”
“You’re right,” said Reese. “I wanna try something. You drink?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why?”
“Wanna go for a beer?” he said. “It’s on me.”
“I have to drop off my food first,” I said. “Does your wife mind?”
“She owes me,” he said. “I’ll tell her I’ll be home 30 minutes late. It’s fine.”
Reese dropped me off at my house and waited in the car while I put my food away. My housemate sat in our living room watching some TV show with aliens and spaceships. That’s his thing. He reminded me that we needed to thaw out our freezer soon because it was leaking and something inside had gotten backed up, and I told him I would have to borrow a big cooler from our neighbors so we could store our food. We agreed to do it this weekend. Roommate stuff.
Reese sat vaping with his window open when I returned. He drove us to a bar a few minutes from my house. Parking wasn’t too bad. We sat at the bar sipping draft beers and he told me what he suspected.
“I think Wes did something really bad and Kyle knows about it. That’s why he’s going along with everything Kyle says.”
“It’s blackmail,” I said.
“Right,” said Reese. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Kyle’s got something on him. He’s making Wes do everything he says or he’ll go to the police or something.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I took out the trash one time,” said Reese. “They were out by the dumpster. They heard me walking up but I still heard some of what they said. Wes said, ‘Please just let me go’ and Kyle was like, ‘If you try to leave, everyone finds out’. That was all I got before they saw me.”
“So what are we gonna do about it?” I asked.
“We?” said Reese. “Are you sure you wanna get into this? It could be fucking dangerous, man.”
“What about you?” I said. “You got a wife and kid at home. You sure you don’t wanna just stay out?”
“I asked first.”
I didn’t answer at first. I’ve grown less cautious over time. You can’t trust everyone who approaches you offering something or asking for help, but in my experience, dangerous people usually make you let your guard down by promising something that seems too good to be true. Reese wasn’t promising anything. He seemed like an honest fellow to me. Liars are good at disguising themselves, but they’re rarely as clever as they think they are.
“You know,” I began. “I think if somebody’s really bad, it’s everyone’s problem. Let Kyle do it to Wes, he’ll do it to you if he gets the chance. They’re never satisfied, people like him.”
“I agree.” Reese held out his half-empty glass of beer. I touched my glass to his with a clink. We both drank at the same time. I’ve met my fair share of toxic people. Sometimes they come find me. Sometimes I just happen across them. This time, it felt as if I were almost going out of my way to find somebody dangerous. Except not quite. I had seen Kyle and Wes at the market before. Only recently had Kyle started assaulting Wes in public. If he continued to drain the life from him or whatever he was doing, there might not be any of Wes left. Whatever he had done, he didn’t deserve that.
“Can you meet me in front of the steakburger place?” asked Reese. “Wednesday night at 9. That’s when they close. My friend is manager there. She’s gonna help us figure something out so Wes and Kyle don’t come back.”
“That’s it?” I said. “Are we gonna, like, free Wes or something?”
Reese nodded. “Yeah, probably. But first I want them out of the store. My manager is such a fucking dipshit. He’d let Putin shop there.”
“What are we gonna do with your friend?” I asked. “Cast a spell or something?”
“Not exactly,” said Reese. “Just make sure you wear something you can move in. I talked to her when you were putting your food away. She’s got something in mind. Everyone at the center will thank us.”
“You’re assuming it’s gonna work,” I said.
“It’ll work,” said Reese. He drove me home after that. We talked a little about our lives and our jobs. He had worked at a warehouse for a little while, but switched to retail because he actually likes talking to customers. It takes all types to make a world, I suppose.
My housemate was finished with his show by the time I got back. But he had not gone back to his room. Instead, Harrison sat on the couch staring at the wall. The TV was off. He didn’t have his phone. “What is it?” I asked.
“I just saw something,” he said. “I don’t know what…you know the Filipino family two doors down?”
“Yes,” I said. “With the two boys. Ferdinand and Ariel.”
“You know the mom?”
“No,” I said. “She’s never around.”
“When I went to take out the trash,” he said. “She was having an argument with the older kid. Ferdinand, right? She said he forgot to do his chores. He said she never told him about any chores. So she slapped him and said, ‘Just do what I tell you’. Right on the doorstep. I know she could see me. She knew I saw it. But she didn’t care.”
I froze. That sounded eerily similar to the incident between Kyle and Wes. I have no idea how it’s possible, but I think the two cases are connected. Is there some kind of psychic link between the two weirdos at my supermarket and my neighbors? I’ve always gotten the impression that the mother of the Filipino family doesn’t like her family all that much. Ferdinand Sr. is a good guy and a good dad, but whenever I ask him about his wife, he just changes the subject. His kids are pretty cool, too. But two innocent people who were in my orbit had just gotten abused in the same way, and for basically the same reason, in the same day. As far as I know, Kyle doesn’t know anyone in my neighborhood. What is going on here?
Before I wrote this, I texted Reese asking if everything was alright with him and his wife and daughter. He said yes, and asked why. I told him that I think whatever is going on between Wes and Kyle might not be limited to them. It might be infecting other people somehow. Like a virus that causes you to abuse people or something. He told me that he would be careful, and asked how everything was going at my place. I said everything was fine for now.
I’m going to meet Reese in front of that steakburger place in a few days. It sounds like my suspicions are correct, and that Kyle’s evil will infect other people if we don’t stop him. Whether or not we stop Kyle, I will need to have a long talk Ferdinand Sr. Because he needs to do something about his wife.