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ever seen.
    “
‘ You let him die, you little bastard. Why couldn’t
it have been you?!’ he raged at me. Then he began to weep, his
massive shoulders shaking with his sobs as he stroked my dead
brother’s wet hair.”
    Roberts
smiled as he looked Elgin in the eye. He thought he might see a
glimmer of humanity, but he was met with the same blank expression.
    “ And
that, Mr. Elgin, is how it began. Hell of a story, huh?”
    “ Did
they ever suspect you had anything to do with it?”
    “ If
they did, they never said anything. After that day, my father barely
spoke to me again. He died two years after Alessio. He was never the
same after that day at the well.”
    Elgin
looked at him with raised eyebrows, and Roberts knew what he was
thinking. He snorted roughly and offered a wry smile.
    “ I
didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re thinking.
Although I would have, if I had found a way to. I grew to hate him as
much as he hated me.”
    “ What
happened?”
    “ Cancer.
They gave him a year, but he only lasted five months. That stuff
don’t fuck around, Mr. Elgin. Even when he was a flesh-covered
skull on his deathbed, he still couldn’t look me in the eye. I
think on some level he suspected what I had done to Alessio, and felt
partly responsible. I wasn’t sorry when he died. It was like a
weight lifting off my shoulders.
    “ I
thought that by satisfying the urge to kill with my brother, the
desire would fade away, and I would become the same as everyone else.
But it didn’t. Instead, it grew, festered, and swelled—
my own cancer, if you will. I fought against it for a while, but
things at the vineyard took a turn for the worse. Without my father
to run things, the place began to fall apart. The family unit, of
which I was barely a part of anyway, started to crumble, and when I
was thirteen, my mother sold the vineyard to the Picenzis. My oldest
brother, Marco, moved away to northern Italy with his girlfriend. My
two sisters stayed in Italy with my uncle, and as far as I know are
still there, married with families of their own. My mother took me
with her to America, where we settled in New York, in a shitty
apartment above a filthy dry cleaners. It was very different from the
open fields and clean air of the vineyard, but I didn’t care. I
had half hoped that with my mother to myself, she would finally give
me the attention I felt I deserved. But with a son and husband
buried, and the vineyard lost, she found her own comfort—the
southern kind—and she was knocking back at least a bottle a
day. The place may have changed, but the situation hadn’t. I
was left to my own devices. I felt like that dog, Mr. Elgin—the
one with its teeth around the neck of its prey. I didn’t want
to kill because of some bizarre need or means of atoning for my
shitty childhood. I wanted to kill because I knew I would enjoy it.”
    Roberts
felt good saying it aloud. His back had begun to ache from sitting on
the edge of the bed, and he stood and stretched. He watched Elgin
carefully and saw that he was smiling. Not quite the wide mouthed
lizard grin from before, but more of an I know
something you don’t know kind of smile.
His stomach felt bloated, and without excusing himself, he crossed to
the toilet and began to urinate loudly. He couldn’t see Elgin
from where he was, but he would bet on him having that same blank but
interested look on his face. He finished his business and returned to
his bunk, and sure enough, Elgin was waiting and as hard to read as
ever.
    “ Just
over half an hour left. We should continue.”
    Roberts
nodded grimly. He suddenly wasn’t so indifferent about dying as
he was earlier that morning.
    “ What
do you want to know?”
    “ That’s
up to you. Whatever feels right to talk about.”
    He
thought for a moment, then lowered his head and spoke to the bare
white floor.
    “ Those
first years in New York were lonely ones. I thought I’d known
isolation back at the vineyard, but that was a picnic