their smiles, their empty hands

Patrick Jr. has a flip phone and a therapist and hates being called Patrick Jr., or PJ, or Pat. He’s got some kind of esoteric complex and every time Hayley goes to see him they end up lying side by side in the dark with one headphone each, listening to Oingo Boingo. He’s a kid. Patrick Jr. is thinking about faking his own death. He thinks it’ll make his father notice him. Hayley thinks it’s an excellent idea.

(He, him, them. Last night, the night before. Why don’t you spend more time with boys your own age, they sometimes ask, fishing for a compliment: boys are immature, boys are stupid, not like you, blah blah blah. Maybe if it had been boys her own age she wouldn’t be where she is now, doing what she does, but she probably would be.)

It’s not a crime to be bored. Uncle Patrick has a second house in the suburbs and a fast car and he is very bored himself.

It’s only a couple hours, but that’s a couple hours of time that could be better-served doing almost anything else. She’s used to being left to her own devices. She likes being left to her own devices, not surrounded by a gang of shiny paper people who compensate for their lack of an internal life with chemical good cheer and half-hearted opinions about the Iraq War. Something inside them shrank up and died a long time ago and now all they want to talk about is restaurants and workplaces.

PJ’s dad hasn’t had to work a day in his life, probably, but he hasn’t been in the office for almost a year and a half; medical leave. Everybody knows what that means. He isn’t looking any better as a result of getting away from the rat race. He looks thin.

Holiday parties are always so declassé anyway. At least the way her dad’s family does them. A whole bunch of dead-eyed people who stick to their own out of fear. Cashmere and brushed denim and stuffed antlers .

“So what are you doing in school these days?” Uncle Patrick says, very graciously. “Are you in school? Modeling?” There’s a tiny wire wreath hooked around the stem of his wine glass. He looks like he might cry from boredom at any moment, like his big smooth face might crack and split.

“We’re doing The Crucible this year. I’m kind of the assistant stage manager. Which basically means I double-check all the props are where they’re supposed to be, but it’s still pretty exciting.”

“Very exciting.” Uncle Patrick has a face like a wax sculpture, or a carving on the tip of a pencil lead, or a mannequin. He’s too doped up these days to remember a single shitty thing about her. He doesn’t even know what grade she’s in, or what her name is half the time at these little family shindigs. He doesn’t even pretend.

“I’m giving a presentation on internet censorship on Monday.”

“Topical.”

He’s wearing a priceless wristwatch and bespoke shoes but his socks don’t match. He’s wearing two totally different equally-expensive socks. His expensive shirt clashes with his expensive blazer. Who dressed this man?

Hayley swirls a chocolate-dipped pretzel in her cup of coffee. “I wiped out on my mountain bike last week.” It’s true; the scabs made it harder to hold the rope.

“That’s nice.” Uncle Patrick is looking for something at the bottom of his glass, probably a Valium. Her backpack is still full of prescription pills from the last time they visited. The look on his face isn’t boredom, but pained intensity. He can’t find the pill. Or he can’t make his eyes focus. He can’t understand what’s real and what’s fake.

“I killed a guy. He tried to put something in my drink. He put his hand under my shirt, and I just lost it, you know? I just went ape, and I think I must’ve hit him with a big rock.” That part’s not true, it just sounds charmingly spontaneous. She shot him with a gun. Uncle Patrick blinks, slowly and asynchronously, like a lizard. Hayley takes that as her cue. “Did you know I do that now? I kill men now. Men who hurt girls.”

“I’m not condoning that. I don’t play video games,” Uncle Patrick says, dredging up some disgust from deep below the layer of permanent narcotic calm he’s braced with. There’s something in his eyes, not lust, not hunger, but fathomless darkness with nothing at the bottom of it.

“Me neither. I’m going to go play cards with PJ now. Bye, Uncle Pat.”

PJ has his dad’s eyes and his mom’s deep-seated psychological damage and he should be thanking his lucky stars that it’s not the other way around.