"I should hope so," she said. "And it will go very hard for you indeed if you don't tell me what I want to know." He grabbed her wrist and dug his strong fingers into the thin tendons on their insides, twisting his fingertips for maximal effect. Abruptly, she released his ear and clenched her wrist hard, sticking it between her thighs. "Owwww! That bloody hurt, you bastard. What did you do that for?" "My secrets," Alan said, "are secret." She held her wrist up and examined it. "Heaven help you if you've left a bruise, Alvin," she said. "I'll kill you." She turned her wrist from side to side. "All right," she said. "All right. Kiss it better, and you can come to my place for supper on Saturday at six p.m.." She shoved her arm into his face and he kissed the soft skin on the inside of her wrist, putting a little tongue in it. She giggled and punched him in the arm. "Saturday, then!" she called as she ran off. # Edward-Felix-Gerald were too young to give him shit about his schoolyard romance, and Brian was too sensitive, but Dave had taken to lurking about the schoolyard, spying on the children, and he'd seen Marci break off from a clench with Alan, take his hand, and plant it firmly on her tiny breast, an act that had shocked Danny to the core. "Hi, pervert," David said, as he stepped into the cool of the cave. "Pervert" was Davey's new nickname for him, and he had a finely honed way of delivering it so that it dripped with contempt. "Did you have sex with your *girlfriend* today, *pervert*?" Allan turned away from him and helped E-F-G take off his shoes and roll up the cuffs of his pants so that he could go down to the lake in the middle of their father and wade in the shallows, listening to Father's winds soughing through the great cavern. "Did you touch her boobies? Did she suck your pee-pee? Did you put your finger in her?" The litany would continue until Davey went to bed, and even then he wasn't safe. One night, Allen had woken up to see Darren standing over him, hands planted on his hips, face twisted into an elaborate sneer. "Did you put your penis inside of her?" he'd hissed, then gone back to bed. Alby went out again, climbing the rockface faster than Doug could keep up with him, so that by the time he'd found his perch high over the woodlands, where he could see the pines dance in the wind and the ant-sized cars zooming along the highways, Doug was far behind, likely sat atop their mother, sucking his thumb and sulking and thinking up new perversions to accuse Alan of. # Saturday night arrived faster than Alan could have imagined. He spent Saturday morning in the woods, picking mushrooms and checking his snares, then headed down to town on Saturday afternoon to get a haircut and to haunt the library.