The Waiting Room
By John O'Toole

(continued)

And suddenly, with a click and strangled squeal of the fateful half-door, there he was, hadn't changed. Beady eyes, one monocled, lazy as August flies circling the room. And David recalled, in a flash as sudden as the primal inspiration, that if he kept perfectly quiet and sat deathly-still, physically drawing his entire body inward, taking up less and less space toward the hoped-for point of complete invisibility, then maybe, just maybe, the man would not pick him.

The bespectacled boy went uncomplaining, expressionless. Must have been a veteran. No point resisting. They'd have pout the black mask on him. Rubbery and evil, a featureless death mask. With these people you had no features, no personality, no soul. Still, the little guy's cooperative aplomb left a sick pain in David's gut, the living-death feeling he used to get when some older boy would kick him in the balls to bleed his fight.

Well aware that he was violating the moment's protocol, David rose from the sofa and shuffled in a sort of post-terror stupor to the trio of angel-curtained windows. The fear seemed to drain through his appendages, knees buckling, feet like ice, left hand trembling as he pulled aside one white curtain and watched the bearish man ushering the boy into the car. The rounded old mid-forties Buick, behind the wheel of which the bearish man, ditching his cigar, now stuffed himself. And off they went. Up Greenview to Devon Avenue, pause at the red light, turning west, gone.

The others waited a discreet five minutes or so before exiting. The pudgy young girl, green beret on her boyish, blonde cut. The black man, a feathered hand comforting his salt and pepper hair. David the laggard, staring out the window. The auburn-haired woman with the slit skirt behind him now, asking if he'd like a ride home.

"No thanks," said David. "I'll walk."