Arcade

by Robert Maxxe

  During the winter Anne Pomfrey's exercise group met on Monday and Thursday afternoons at four o'clock. At three-thirty, Carrie left the store to dash home and change into a leotard.

  As she ran upstairs, she noticed that the door to Nick's room was closed and thought she heard scuffling noises from inside. She stopped in the hall and called through the door.

  "Nick?" It was wise to give notice, she'd learned, after hearing one mother at the PTA describe the embarrassment of walking in on her nude teenaged son making love to his pillow

  There was a pause, then his voice, a bit edgy. "Yeah, Mom?"

  Before she could call through again, he opened the door. He was wearing a T-shirt and undershorts. Carrie glanced past him into the room, all its disorder in order.

  "What were you doing?" she asked, failing to make it sound casual.

  "Nothing. Reading." The quaver of alibi came through.

  She surveyed the room once more. A paperback book lay open on the rumpled bed, spine split to show front and back. Carrie couldn't be positive over the distance, but she thought the cover pictured a woman in a diaphanous gown. The scuffling could have been Nick hurrying into some clothes, she thought.

  She didn't want him to feel guilty. Trying to sound natural, she observed, "You're home early."

  "Soccer practice was canceled. Coach has flu."

  The truth? How crippled trust could be by one lie. But at least he hadn't gone to the arcade.

  "Well, I just ducked in to get my exercise clothes," she said, retreating along the hall. "I'd better run or I'll be late."

  Leaving the house, she saw that his door was closed again.

  She had driven halfway to Anne Pomfrey's house before she was seized by the shocking recognition of her own blindness. She had considered only one possibility. But suppose Nick hadn't been alone . . .?

  She ran the film of memory through her mind. Had the closet door been open or closed? Normally he left it open, clothes spilling out; she was always after him about it. But of course if Dana had been hiding inside . . . She couldn't recall, however. Or the bed: how was it rumpled? More as if two bodies had been lying there?

  Christ, how would she ever know except to turn back?

  No no no. This was her own misguided obsession. A good kid . . very shy, reserved. She thought of Lon's plea not to condemn his daughter because of the way she looked.

  Carrie locked her hands on the wheel and kept going. She had to trust Lon completely. Nick, too.

  She drove faster. Exercise was just what she needed now. Sweat it all out.

  The door of the porch-fronted Victorian was unlatched. Carrie let herself in, dumped her parka on a pile in the hall, and went through an arched portal into the living room. All the furniture had been pushed back to the walls, the scatter rugs rolled up, and padded vinyl mats laid down over the polished wood floor. It wasn't yet four o'clock, but a large group was already involved in the breathing exercises Ann always did with the early arrivals.

  A petite woman with fine, straight brown hair worn in a short cut with bangs, Anne Pomfrey sat at the front of the room, cross-legged, her trim torso straight as a rod. Her green eyes flicked to Carrie and widened in greeting without losing a beat in her cadenced commands: "Deep breath . . . hold . . . hold . . . now slowly . . . out . . . out . . . down to the bottom of the well. . . ."

  Carrie admired Anne; like her, a woman alone. Anne's husband had walked out on her two years ago, leaving her with three children to care for, all boys. Unable to support herself and the boys on a meager alimony, she had gone the same route as Carrie, inventoried her abilities and turned the most salable to profit. In the summer she did well, running a full daily program at a local beach club; in the winter she taught tap dancing to children and ran the exercise groups. Her finances were more precarious then, and Carrie often helped by allowing her to shop at Treats and carry the account for months.

  Carrie took an open place on the mat and fell in with the breathing. The tension began ebbing away.

  By four there were sixteen women, and Anne launched into the physical workout, her own combination of Jane Fonda's, Bonnie Pruden's, the Alexander Method, and the Canadian Air Force regimen. Starting with the standard less strenuous positions, they worked up to scissor lifts, extended scissor kicks, and quad stretches.

  Halfway through the hour, they were all doing "the bicycle," dutifully strengthening the obliques and abdominals, when Carrie saw Alan Pomfrey, Anne's middle son, dart a look around the portal. A glimpse was all she got because the exercise called for shifting from side to side and, just after the boy appeared, Anne gave the command and Carrie rolled over.

  Thirty seconds later when she turned back toward the archway, the boy's face was still there, hovering right at the edge of the frame. In the past, Carrie remembered, he had glanced into the room now and then, venting a fifteen-year-old's mild lust to see women in their body stockings. But he'd never been furtive on those occasions; he'd openly pass by the portal, and vanish willingly the moment Anne shooed him away.

  Today was very different. He had obviously positioned himself so that his mother, at the front of the room, wouldn't be able to see him. Nor was the look in his eyes the same harmless mischievous glint. There was a burning intensity, a flame of urgent need.

  Most disturbing to Carrie, he was staring directly at her. She thought she saw him mouthing something, too. But lying sideways, head bobbing unsteadily as she pedaled the air, it was impossible to focus. Was he trying to convey an innocent message—a phone call, her car's motor left running?

  No, it wasn't a samaritan's mission that went with the stark desperation Carrie saw in his eyes.

  "Shift!" Anne called out.

  Carrie turned to face into the room. Why would Alan Pomfrey have any frenzied desire to communicate with her? There was nothing that linked them, nothing that would give him a reason to seek her out. Except that she had seen him at the arcade.

  Without the least increase in her exertion, Carrie's heart quickened, began to thud heavily in her chest. It was terrifying somehow, all the more because she was in the middle of this organized attempt to relax.

  "Shift!"

  He was still there. This time the movements of his mouth were more exaggerated, and accompanied by rapid hand signals. But with her whole view of the world tilted, the message was still indecipherable. Carrie stopped to prop herself up. The boy leaned forward and raised his voice in a whisper.

  "Please . . . after . . ."

  "Alan!" The whisper had caught his mother's attention. Her reproach was not loud or sharp, yet the tone carried a history of warnings.

  The boy darted away from the door. Immediately, Anne Pomfrey led the group into a new exercise. She appeared not to notice that Carrie had been the reason for her son's intrusion.

  Carrie lay back and joined in doing slow crossovers. She tried to relax into the movement, concentrate on Anne's directions placidly intoned: "Lift . . . slow . . . sweep to the side. . . ." But her heart wouldn't stop pounding. Why was he turning to her?

  The shadow that loomed up suddenly at a window startled her as much as if some hairy beast had appeared. But it was merely Alan again. Still desperate to get through to her, he'd run straight around to the side of the house. The window he'd picked was cut off from Anne's view by the large flue rising from the living room fireplace.

  The crossovers didn't jiggle her vision so much. This time she could read the boy's mime. Finger jabbed vigorously into his chest, then pointed toward the rear of the house, finally tapped on the wrist as though indicating a watch. Meet him back there when the class was over.

  She couldn't mime a reply. One of the other women was sure to see. How would it look, this covert communication with her friend's son? But more than embarrassment stopped her. At the back of the house, Carrie recalled, there was a separate garage shed. Was that where Alan wanted her to come? Alone, isolated?

  Suppose it wasn't help he wanted.

  He was a spacie
. Suppose he had been told (by whoever had found and returned the bag) that she was an enemy of the arcade.

  Jab, point, tap. He was waiting for her response.

  She stared back, only faintly aware of Anne calling for a new position.

  The boy's eyes darted sideways suddenly. A second later he disappeared from the window. Glancing over beside her, Carrie saw that Margaret Harchuck was also looking toward the window. When the other woman turned back to Carrie with a questioning expression, Carrie gave a mystified boys-will-be-boys shrug, and quickly joined the group in doing the hip release and stretch.

  "Never seen you have such a workout before," Anne Pomfrey said as Carrie passed into the hall to retrieve her coat. Carrie was drenched with sweat, dark splotches showing through her leotard all across chest and abdomen.

  Her heart hadn't stopped hammering through the rest of the hour. Even as she slipped into her parka and smiled with pretended interest at the friendly chatter of the other women, all she could think about was the boy. Should she meet him? Was he pleading for help, or was there a threat? Either way it scared her.

  She moved out to the porch and dawdled over buttoning up. It was dark now. Other women rushed by, racing off to pick up kids or get home to make dinner. At the first gap in the stream, Carrie went down the steps and drifted to the corner of the house. There she hesitated again, still undecided.

  Above her on the porch the outer screen door slapped shut, the sound like a pistol report. Someone else coming out. She ducked quickly into the shadows at the side of the house. Pressed back against the ridged clapboard, she breathed deeply trying to calm herself. If she was going to present herself to this kid—if—she couldn't appear to be frazzled and out of control.

  The other women got into their cars and drove away.

  Carrie looked along the side of the house toward the garage shed at the head of a driveway. It had double doors on swing hinges. One door stood ajar.

  Slowly, she started toward the shed. Dead leaves piled in drifts against the side of the house crunched loudly with each step. Passing a window of the living room, she saw Anne shoving furniture back into place. Carrie hunched down to move under the window, then skirted around the chimney.

  A hand shot out suddenly, and she felt something tighten around her neck, constricting her breath. A frightened whimper leaped into her throat.

  "Don't, Mrs. Foster! Please . . . it's just me."

  The hand on her shoulder was instantly retracted. The collar that had been accidentally pulled tight fell away loose.

  Carrie spun around and saw Alan Pomfrey cowering in the angle between the wall and the brick chimney.

  "Thanks for coming," he said. "I wasn't sure you would." No hint of threat in the anxious squeaky voice.

  She summoned a tone of command. "What's all this about, Alan?"

  He looked at the ground. "I just . . . well, since I knew you'd be here today . . ." He paused, and chewed nervously on his lip. "See, I just didn't know anyone else to ask."

  Carrie could hear the boy was near tears. "Ask what?" she said gently.

  "To help get me back."

  "I don't understand, Alan. Back . . .? Where? To what?"

  His bowed head came up quickly, and the words tumbled out. "I was torped, see, last night. Thought I had it made—went all the way to fifth el, past it, even. But I got caught on a red shift and couldn't get past it to the kor." His voice broke on a rising inflection. He was crying as he clutched at Carrie's sleeve and went on. "I was so close, see, going with them all the way. If I could just have one more shot . . . but Nick says I can't, wouldn't matter even if he'd let me. But Mrs. Foster, if I could, if I only could, I'd get through. And I didn't know any way to get the chance unless maybe you'd get Nick to let me. Because I know—"

  She'd been waiting for a clue to understanding, a key to unlock the big black box. But finally she had to interrupt, get him on the track. Had she heard him say "core" or "corps"? And what made Nick the one to decide if second chances were given?

  "Alan," she broke in softly. "Calm down. I'd like to help, but I can't unless I know exactly what you want. And why?"

  Staring earnestly at her, he took his hand from her coat, straightened up slightly and worked to compose himself.

  "Go on," Carrie prompted.

  Still he hesitated. And then she saw a different light creeping into his eyes. With the need to explain—and Carrie's hunger to hear—it seemed to dawn on him that he had gone too far, shouldn't have talked to someone outside the circle, someone who wasn't a spacie. He shook his head and took a small step backward.

  Now it was Carrie who reached out to snare him, grabbing a fistful of his collar. His resistance was tentative; he wasn't quite ready to give up on her help.

  "I'll talk to Nick," she said, and took a chance to win his confidence. "Ask him to take you back in the zal, is that it?"

  He nodded, and stopped trying to tug loose.

  "Nick's the only one who can give you another chance?"

  "The only one in our zal," he mumbled, "if anyone can . . ."

  Carrie released her grip on the boy's windbreaker. He stayed. "Why is Nick the one who decides?"

  "He is, that's all."

  "Because you chose him? Sort of like . . . captain of the team?"

  Alan Pomfrey gave the slightest shrug, avoiding an answer.

  She was ready with another guess. "Or is it the game? The game chooses . . ."

  His eyes locked with hers. There was a cold pause, and of course she knew that was it, and he saw that she did. He seemed possessed then by a desire to boast there was more of a phenomenon than she could realize.

  "It isn't even that—not as if there was a choice." His voice sank to an urgent whisper. "He just is, see? Nick's an ult. He knew, we all knew, even before it told us. We knew from the way he played. Soon as there was a zal, we knew he was the ult."

  An ult She repeated it to herself, committing it to memory, already planning her campaign. Nick was an ult. It—the machine—had told them so.

  "So, being the ult," she said calmly, "he leads the zal. What else does he do?"

  "That's it. He's the one who takes us through."

  "Through?" she echoed. "Through what?"

  "Through to—" He halted abruptly, then finished it differently. "Through the game."

  He took another step. Sideways, edging around her. He wanted to escape now. Carrie reached to grab him again, but he evaded her, darting back another foot.

  "To what?" She said. "To where?" Not merely asking. There was a pleading tone, she heard it herself.

  The boy kept sidling away. "Look, I . . . I didn't know what to do, so I . . . but it was wrong. I shouldn't have tried—"

  Her control crumbling, she cried out harshly. "Alan! Tell me! It's the only way I can help. And you need it, you all need it. What's happening here is bad—"

  "No, it's good. Good!" he screamed intensely, the veins standing out on his neck. Then, glancing at the house, afraid he'd been heard, he brought the volume down to a choked rumble. "You can't understand, though, none of you. They knew you wouldn't, and that's why they need us."

  "Who needs you, Alan?" she called across the gap widening between them. "Needs you for what?"

  He went mute and backpedaled faster. He'd reminded himself now: she was the enemy.

  Carrie tried a darting grab, but that caused him to bolt. Spinning around, he ran at first for the rear yard; then, realizing it was fenced, he swerved sharply and headed back toward the entrance to the drive and the street.

  Carrie lunged to cut him off, but he was too swift and easily got past her.

  Pursuing, her desperation matching his, she almost kept pace. Christ, what kind of harridan had she become? she thought as she pounded after him, and almost pulled up. But the chance to unlock the box was too tempting.

  The boy had already reached the corner of the house. His speed and stamina had to outdistance her, Carrie realized.

  "Alan . . ." she p
anted out. "If you don't explain . . . how it's good . . . I'll have to get it all stopped . . . say it's because you told—"

  Beautiful, Carrie. Threatening the weak and helpless. She felt sick with herself, actually nauseous, though some of it could be from the running. She gave up, and stood puffing to recover her breath.

  Then she saw that he had stopped, too, roped in by her mean warning.

  "You wouldn't. . . ." he cried. "Please . . ."

  Since it had worked: "Not if you tell me what the hell is going on."

  "I can't."

  Closing in on him, she persisted. "Who are they, the people behind the game? What do they need you to do?"

  He gazed at her, a look of stark confusion. "I . . . I don't know. Just get there, that's all . . . they need us to get through."

  Of course he knew. But how did she wangle it out?

  "Very well," she said sternly—another number from the old repertoire of parental bluffs. "If that's your decision . . ."

  He gaped as she walked straight past him toward the street. She kept moving steadily across the lawn, hoping he would crack before she reached her car.

  Then, behind her, she heard him howl. "We don't know! Believe me!"

  She paused to look back, saw him standing resolute and motionless, and continued ahead.

  "NO!" he shrieked.

  A moment later she heard the footsteps, pounding up behind, a rapid, angry patter. He was going to attack! She whirled to fend him off, but halfway around there was the sound of a shot and he stopped in his tracks, straightening up as if he'd been hit in the back.

  "Alan! What's going on out here?"

  No, not a shot. The screen door again—he'd recognized the sound. Anne stood on the porch, silhouetted in the open doorway.

  "Carrie . . . is that you?" she called, moving down the steps as the boy turned mutely.