Read Last Night at the Circle Cinema for Free Online Page A

style of urinating?” I had asked him once the other guy near us left without washing his hands.
    â€œDid I say anything?” Bertucci had said as he flushed and went to lather his hands. He washed his hands many, many times a day but I never commented on that.
    â€œWell, don’t,” I’d warned him. “How a guy pisses is his own business.”
    â€œAnd other misheard rap lyrics,” Bertucci said and left.
    In the deserted bathroom, I unzipped and had let loose only a few drops when the scream came. From nowhere, the human voice wailed out and I jumped, splattering urine on my hands, my jeans, the wall. My heart and stomach lurched toward my throat, fear crackled the hairs on my arms. “What the hell!”
    At that point my eyes were open and, with my fly still down, I followed the scream as it pitched and yelled, a disembodied soul crying into the echoing bathroom stall.
    The wall of urinals revealed nothing, but in the stall, at the bottom of the toilet, was a small skull.
    Not human. Just plastic, blue. The screams were louder up close and I needed—desperately—to find a way to silence them but as I stood there for what felt like way too long, I knew I had to pick the thing up. I zipped myself and then took a breath. Clenching my fist, I reached forward and—paused. If Bertucci was involved with the skull—and how could he not be—I figured there’d be wires to cut or switches to find to shut the screams off.
    But as soon as I held the skull in my hand, it stopped. Mid-scream, the bathroom went from dimly lit horror factory to mellow palace of defecation. I put the skull back down and the scream came back—louder, it seemed. I held it, the skull was quiet. I put it down, same thing.
    I held it under the faucet. It still screamed, this time like a drowning man, caught in the rapids. I tried flushing it, and it popped back up, scaring me again.
    â€œGo to hell,” I told the skull and it screamed back at me from the toilet bowl.
    I stood, hands on my hips, staring at the skull as it bobbed and screamed up at me.
    â€œYou win,” I said aloud and picked the skull up, not tentative this time. I brought it over to the sink and gave it a quick bath, dried it best I could with my shirt, and held it with me as I went back out into the Circle’s dark underbelly.
    Freud said that the way our minds react to a trauma is by repeating it, even though that’s a paradox because who the hell wants to repeat something frightening? But it’s kind of a defense mechanism. And there I was, repeating myself, going back into the dark and heading nowhere.
    Only instead of feeling worse and more alone than ever, I had the bizarre skull in my hand, and it was quiet. And I wasn’t exactly alone.
    â€œYou win, Bertucci.”

9
    Bertucci
    I’d never told anyone about my chess-playing past until the first snow last winter. Livvy trekked to my house only to ask me to drive her home. “I just needed a break from my parents,” she’d said, and I’d gotten the keys to my parents’ Camry, digging them out from the back of the bread box where my mother had taken to hiding them once my father had “gone to the basement” where he kept his stash of Kilbeggan. My mom didn’t know that my dad had another set of keys locked in his rusty cash box. My dad didn’t know that I knew the code to that cash box, 1757, the same year displayed on every bottle of Kilbeggan. So we were all semi-delusional about how safe everyone was from themselves.
    â€œSo, where to?” I’d asked Livvy once she was buckled in safely.
    â€œAnywhere. Home, I guess.” Her breath came out in cotton ball gasps, and she wasn’t wearing enough clothing. I shed my jacket, took off the sweater I had underneath, and handed it to her. Without protesting, she accepted it and pulled it over her head while I wriggled back into my