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must’ve been beating on the door too hard. That’s what it was. The man forced a smile, nodded his head. Had to be careful. He balled his hand into a fist and bit hard on the knuckles, bit until he bled, the pain clearing his mind.
    Back to business; he couldn’t allow himself to blow up like this. If there were a mistake, a chance encounter, a random cop—he shuddered at the thought. They’d lock him in a cage like a rat. He’d driven over here at ninety miles an hour: if he’d been stopped, it all would have ended before he had her.
    Couldn’t allow that.
    He tried again with the door, knocking sedately, as though he were sane. Light flooded into the interior of the store, through the door at the back. The man knocked again. Noticed the blood trickling down the back of his hand. When did that happen? How did he . . . ?
    The door opened. ‘‘Yeah?’’
    The boy’s eyes were dulled with dope. But not so dulled, not so far gone that they didn’t drop to his shirt, to the deep red patina that crusted the shirt from neckline to navel, not so far gone that the doper couldn’t say, ‘‘Jesus Christ, what happened to you?’’
    The two-faced man didn’t answer. He was already swinging the wrench: the box end caught the boy on the bridge of the nose, and he went down as though he’d been struck by lightning.
    The two-faced man turned and looked up the pier toward the street, then down toward the ocean end. Nobody around. Good. He stepped inside, closed the door. The boy had rolled to his knees, was trying to get up. The man grabbed him by the hair and dragged him into the back. Jason was wrecked. As in train wreck. As in broken. As in dying.
    Even through the layers of acid and speed, he could feel the pain. But he wasn’t sure about it. He might wake up. He might still say, ‘‘Fuck me; what a trip.’’ He had done that in the past.
    This stuff he’d peeled off the slick white paper, this was some bad shit. A bad batch of chemicals, must’ve got some glue in there, or something.
    He wasn’t sure if the pain was the real thing, or just another artifact of his own imagination, an imagination that had grown up behind the counter in a video store, renting horror stories. The horror stories had planted snakes in his mind, dream-memories of bitten-off heads, chainsaw massacres, cut throats, women bricked into walls.
    So Jason suffered and groaned and tried to cover himself, and frothed, and somewhere in the remnant of his working brain he wondered: Is this real? It was real, all right.
    The two-faced man kicked him in the chest, and ribs broke away from Jason’s breastbone. Jason choked on a scream, made bubbles instead. The man was sweating and unbelieving: Jason sat on the floor of the shack, his eyes open, blood running from his mouth and ears, and still he said nothing but, ‘‘Aw, man.’’
    The man had been hoping for more: he’d hoped that the doper would plead with him, beg, whimper. That would excite him, would give him the taste of victory. That hadn’t happened, and the heavy work—kicking the boy to death— had grown boring. The boy didn’t plead, didn’t argue: he just groaned and said, ‘‘Aw, man,’’ or sometimes, ‘‘Dude.’’
    ‘‘Tell me what it’s like when you fuck her,’’ the man crooned. ‘‘Tell me about her tits again. C’mon, tell me. Tell me again what it’s like when you do the thing .’’ He kicked him again, and Jason groaned, rocked with the blow, and one arm jerked spasmodically. ‘‘Tell me what it’s like to fuck her . . .’’
    No response: maybe a moan.
    ‘‘Tell me about Creek: he looks like a monster. He looks like Bigfoot. Tell me about Creek. Was he with you two? Were all three of you fucking her? All three at once?’’
    But the doper wasn’t talking. He was in never-never land.
    ‘‘Fuck you,’’ the two-faced man said, finally. He was tired of this. He could hear the ocean pounding against the pilings below them, a rhythmic