A lot of boys played at war, but the next-door neighbor pretended with disturbing passion. “Bang, bang, you’re dead! Say Sayonara!” the boy would say, trying to make his voice deeper, louder. In a cold flash Ben sees the neighbor boy’s face as it appeared in the window of the boy’s mother’s car the last time he saw him. It was a lost, bloated face, a face that had soaked up the atmosphere in a family that was infamous for being rowdy and broken. They’d moved suddenly, running from the father, there had been violence in the home that leaked out onto the street the night before. From his bedroom window Ben had seen the mother crouching in a nightgown like an animal, and nobody running to help her, though Ben’s mother had shouted to his father, “Do something!” The woman sprang up and ran back into her house, and her husband told everyone to mind their own goddamn business, and everyone did. And now, even though this man in his office tonight has a real gun, a Dracula mask, a deeper voice, and is saying, “Don’t say a word”
