Uscite negli USA

Of course there are clouds . They take over the sky and hide that pulsing swollen moon that is clearing its throat above them. The slow trickle of its light is there—but any possible glimmer is hid den, invisible behind the clouds that have rolled in low , bloated and so very full. Soon the clouds will open up and pour down a heavy summer rain, so very soon, because they , too , are full of what they must do , full to the point of bursting, so very full that they, too, must work to hold back the flood that absolutely must come, and soon. And so the clouds glower and bunch and wait, letting the need build, and the tension grows with it. It will be soon; it has to be soon. In only a few moments these dark and silent clouds will shatter the silence of the night with the unbearable bright omnipotence of their might, and blast the darkness into ickering shards—and then, only then, the release will come. The clouds will open up and all the tension of holding in so much w eight will flow ou t in the pure bliss of letting go and the clean joy of it will pour out and flood the world with its oh-so happy gift of light and liberation. A shattering blast of lightning shreds the dark night and shows alarge and soft-looking man scuttling across the ground, as if he has felt thedark breath so close behind. Thunder booms and lightning ashes againand the figure is closer, juggling a laptop and a manila folder as he fumblesfor keys and disappears into darkness again as the lightning ends. One moreburst of lightning; the man is very close now, clutching his burden andholding a car key in the air. And he is gone again in black stillness. There issudden silence, a complete hush, as if nothing anywhere is breathing andeven the darkness is holding its breath— And then there comes a sudden rush of wind and a last hammer of thunder and the whole world cries out Now
Noo.ow.
And all that must happen in this dark summer night begins tohappen. The skies open up and let go of their burden, the world begins tobreathe again, and here in the newly wet darkness other tensions flex anduncoil so very slowly, carefully, reaching their soft sharp tendrils out towardthe fumbling, clownlike figure now scrabbling to unlock his car in thissudden rain. The car’s door swings open, the laptop and folder thump ontothe seat, and then the soft and doughy man slides in behind the wheel, slamsthe door, and takes a deep breath as he wipes the water from his face. And he smiles, a smile of small triumph, something he does a lot these days. Steve Valentine is a happy man; things have gone his way a lot lately and they havegone his way again tonight. For Steve Valentine, life is very good.It is also almost over.Steve Valentine is a clown. Not a buffoon, not a happy caricatureof inept normality. He is a real clown, who runs ads in the local papers andhires out for children’s parties. Unfortunately, it is not the bright laughterof childish innocence that he lives for, and his sleight of hand has gottensomewhat out of hand. He has been arrested and released twice whenparents pointed out to the police that you don’t really need to take a childinto a dark closet to show him balloon animals.
hey had to let him go both times for lack of evidence, but Valentinetook the hint; from that point on nobody has complained—how could they?But he has not stopped entertaining the children, certainly not. Leopards donot change their spots, and Valentine has not changed his. He just got wiser,darker, as wounded predators do. He has moved on into a more permanentgame, and he thinks he has found a way to play and never pay. He is wrong. Tonight the bill comes due. Valentine lives in a run-down apartment building just north of OpaLocka Airport. The building looks at least fifty years old. Abandoned carslitter the street in front, some of them burned out. The building shakes slightly when corporate jets fly low overhead, landing or taking off, andthat sound interrupts the constant white noise of traffic on the nearby expressway. Valentine’s apartment is on the second floor, number 11, and it has a very good view of a rotting playground, with a rusting jungle gym, a tilting slide, and a basketball hoop with no net. Valentine has put a battered lawnchair on the balcony of his apartment, placed so he has a perfect view of theplayground. He can sit and sip a beer and watch the children play and think his happy thoughts about playing with them. And he does. He has played with at least three young boys that weknow about and probably more. In the last year and a half small bodies havebeen pulled from a nearby canal on three occasions. They had been sexually abused and then strangled. The boys were all from this neighborhood, which means that their parents are poor and probably in this country illegally. Thatmeans that even when their children were killed they had very little to say tothe police—and that makes their children perfect targets for Valentine. Threetimes, at least, and the police have no leads.But we do. We have more than a lead. We know. Steve Valentine watched those little boys at their games on the playground, and then hefollowed them away into the dusk and taught them his own very final gamesand then he put them into the murky trash-filled water of the canal. And he went satisfied back to his decrepit lawn chair, opened a beer, and watched theplayground for a new little friend. Valentine thought he was very clever. He thought he had learned hislesson and found a better way to live out his dreams and make a home forhis alternative lifestyle and there was nobody smart enough to catch him andmake him stop. Until now he has been right.Until tonight. Valentine had not been in his apartment when the cops came toinvestigate the three dead boys, and that was not luck. That was part of hispredator’s cleverness; he has a scanner for listening to police radio traffic. He knew when they were in the area. It would not be often. The police didnot like to come to neighborhoods like this one, where the best they could hope for was hostile indifference. That is one reason Valentine lives here. But when the cops do come, he knows about it. The cops come if they have to, and they have to if somebody calls911 to report a couple fighting in apartment 11 on the second floor, and if that somebody says the fight ended suddenly with the sound of screaming terror followed by silence, they come quickly. And when Valentine hears them on his scanner, coming to hisaddress, to his apartment, he will naturally want to be sure he is somewhereelse before they get here. He will take any material he has that hints at his hobby—and he will have some material, they always do—and he will hurry downstairs and out into the darkness to his car, thinking that he can driveaway until the radio tells him that things have calmed down again.He will not think that someone would bother to look up his car’sregistration and know that he drove a light blue twelve-year-old Chevrolet Blazer with
choose life! plates on it and a magnetic sign on the door thatsays puffalump the clown.
And he will not think that Something might be waiting for him in the backseat of this car, hunched down carefully into theshadows while Valentine nishes wiping his face and smiling his secret smileof small triumph and finally—finally—puts the key in the ignition and startsthe engine. And as the car sputters to life, the moment comes, suddenly, finally,and Something roars up and out of the darkness and snakes a blindingly fast loop of fifty-pound test nylon fishing line around Valentine’s doughy neck and pulls it tight before he can say anything more than “Guck—!” and he begins to flail his arms in a stupid, weak, pitiful way that makes the coldcontemptuous power flow up the nylon line and deep into the heartless coreof the Dark Passenger who has taken the wheel for this wonderful, necessary night. And now the smile has melted from Valentine’s face and flowedinstead onto ours, and we are there so close behind him that we can smell hisfear and hear the terrified thumping of his heart and feel his lack of breathand this is good.
“You belong to us now,” we tell him, and our Command Voice hitshim like a jolt of the lightning that crackles outside now to punctuate thedarkness. “You will do just what we say and you will do it only when we say it.” And Valentine thinks he has something to say about that and makes asmall wet sound and so we pull the noose tight, very tight, just for a moment,so he will know that even his breath belongs to us. His face goes dark andhis eyes bulge out and he raises his hands to his neck and his fingers scrabblemadly at the noose for a few seconds until everything goes dark for him andhis hands slide down into his lap and he slumps forward and begins to fadeaway and so we ease up on the noose because it is still too soon. Much toosoon for him. His shoulders move and he makes a sound like a rusty ratchet ashe takes in one more breath, one more in the quickly dwindling numberof breaths he has left to him, and because he does not yet know that thenumber is so very small he takes another quickly, a little easier, and he straightens up and wastes his precious air by croaking, “What the fuck!” Astring of nasty mucus drips from his nose and his voice sounds cramped andraspy and very irritating and so we pull once more on the noose, a little moregently this time, just enough so he will know that we own him now, and he very obediently gapes and clutches at his throat and then goes silent. “Notalking,” we say. “Drive.”

We steer him carefully along side streets and into an area of empty,foreclosed houses, down a quiet street and under a broken streetlight andinto an old-fashioned carport at a certain house, and we make him park thecar at the back of the carport and turn off the engine.For a long moment we do nothing except hold the noose andlisten to the lash of the rain and the wind, and the splash of water fromthe carport’s roof and the rattle of the trees as the summer storm movesthrough them, and there is nothing else. And then Valentine clears his throat, trying so very hard to do itsoftly, and the sound of it grates on our ears like all the awful clatter of athousand cracking teeth and we pull hard on the noose and get out of the carand pull him out onto his knees on the shadowed pavement of the carport.
“Quickly now,” we say. And we lead him into the kitchen and we stay close behind him with a taut hand on his noose and he clenches his fists andthen wiggles his fingers and then he clears his throat again.“Why,” he croaks. “Just—why?” We pull the line very tight around his throat and watch as his breathstops and his face goes dark and he drops once more to his knees and justbefore he goes off into unconsciousness we tell him all of it, with full andjoyful truth. “Because,” we say. And then we pull the noose tight again,tighter, very tight, and he slides down the long slope into sleep and flops over onto his now dark purple face. Very soon Valentine is taped in place on the counter with his clothing cut away and his mouth sealed shut and around him we have arranged thepretty photos we found in his folder; lovely shots of small boys at play,laughing at a clown in a few of them, in others simply holding a ball or riding a swing. And three of them are placed oh-so carefully in just the right placeso he has to see them, three simple portrait shots taken from the newspaperstories of three small boys who had been found dead in a canal. And as we finish making everything just right, just the way it has tobe, Valentine’s eyelids flutter. For a moment he lays still, perhaps feeling the warm air on his naked skin and the tight unyielding duct tape holding himmotionless and perhaps wondering why. Then he remembers and his eyesslam open and he tries impossible things, like breaking the duct tape or taking large breaths or screaming out of a carefully sealed mouth loud enough foranyone else in his receding world to hear. None of this can happen, not everagain, not for him. For Valentine, only one small thing is possible at all, only one unimportant, meaningless, wonderful, necessary thing, and now it willstart to happen; now, whatever futile flopping struggles he might try.“Relax,” we say, and we put a gloved hand onto his bare and heaving chest. “Soon it will all be over.” And we mean all of it, everything, every breath and blink, every leer and chuckle, every birthday party and balloon animal, every hungry trip into the dusk in the wake of a small and helplessboy—all over, forever, and soon. We pat his chest. “But not too soon,” we say, and the cold happinessof that simple truth floods up through us and into our eyes and he sees itand perhaps he knows for sure and perhaps he still feels stupid impossiblehope. But as he melts back onto the counter in the tight unbreakable gripof the tape and the stronger need of this delirious night, the beautiful musicof the Dark Dance begins to rise around us and we go to work, and for Valentine all hope washes away forever as that one essential thing begins to happen. It starts slowly—not tentative, not out of uncertainty, not at all, butslowly so it will last. Slowly to draw out and relish each well-planned well-rehearsed often-practiced stroke and bring the clown slowly to the pointof nal understanding; a clear and simple insight into how it ends for him,here, now, tonight. Slowly we paint for him a true portrait of how it must be,stroking strong dark lines to show that this is all there will ever be. This is his very last trick, and now, here, tonight, he will slowly, carefully, meticulously,slice-by-slice and piece-by-piece, pay the toll to the happy bridge-keeper withthe bright blade, and slowly cross that nal span into an unending darknessthat he will soon be very willing, even very anxious to join, because by thenhe will know that it is the only way out of the pain.
And so we go to work, with the music rising around us and themoon peeking in through a rift in the clouds and chuckling happily at whatit sees, and Valentine is very cooperative. He pitches and hisses and hurlsout muffled squeals as he sees that what is happening can never be undone,and it is happening so very thoroughly to rapidly disappearing him, Steve Valentine, Puffalump the clown, the funny happy man in white face whoreally and truly loves kids, loves them so much and so often and in such a very unpleasant way. He is Steve Valentine, party clown, who can take a childthrough the whole magic rainbow of life in one dark hour, all the way fromhappiness and wonder into the final agony of hopelessly fading sight andthe dirty water of a handy canal. Steve Valentine, who was far too clever foranyone ever to make him stop or prove what he has done in a court of law.But he is not in a court of law now, and he never will be. Tonight he laysupon the bench in the Court of Dexter, and the final verdict gleams in ourhand, and there is no access to court-appointed lawyers where he is going and no appeal will ever be possible.
And just before the gavel falls for the very last time we pause. A smalland nagging bird has perched on our shoulder and chirped its troubled song:Cher-wee, cher-woo, it must be true. We know the song and we know itsmeaning. It is the song of the Code of Harry, and it says that we have to besure, have to be certain that we have done the right thing to the right person,so the pattern will be complete and we can finish with pride and joy and feel the satisfied rush of fulfillment. And so at the place where breath comes slow and very hard for allthat is left of Valentine and the final light of understanding is in his red andswollen eyes, we pause, lean over, and turn his head to face the pictures wehave placed around him. We rip up one corner of the tape on his mouth andit must hurt, but it is such a very small pain compared to what he has beenfeeling for so long now that he makes no sound at all beyond a slow hiss of air.“See them?” we say, shaking his wet slack chin and turning his headto make sure he sees the pictures. “See what you have done?” He looks, and he sees them, and a tired smile twitches onto theuncovered part of his face. “Yes,” he says, in a voice that is half mufed by the tape and shattered by the noose but still sounds clear when he sees. Heis drained of hope now, and every taste of life has faded from his tongue,but a small and warm memory tiptoes across his taste buds as he looks at thepictures of the boys he has taken away. “They were . . . beautiful. . . .” Hiseyes wander over the pictures and stay there for a long moment and then hey close. “Beautiful,” he says, and it is enough; and we feel so very close tohim now.“So are you,” we say, and we push the tape back into place over hismouth and go back to work, winding up into well-earned bliss as the climax of our sharp symphony blares up out of the cheerful growing moonlight,and the music takes us higher and higher until nally, slowly, carefully,joyfully, it comes to its nal triumphant chord and releases everything intothe warm wet night; everything. All the anger, unhappiness and tension, allthe cramped confusion and frustration of the everyday pointless life we areforced to trudge through just to make this happen, all the petty meaninglessblather of trying to blend with bovine humanity—it is all gone, all of itshooting up and out and away into the welcoming darkness—and with it,trailing along like a battered and beaten puppy, all that might have been leftinside the wicked, tattered husk of Steve Valentine.
Bye-bye, Puffalump.

# We were cleaning up and feeling the slow and tired contentmentcreeping into our bones as we always did, a smug and satisfied laziness at being done and done well with our very happy night of need. The clouds hadrolled away and left a cheery afterglow of moonlight and we felt much betternow; we always feel better afterward. And it may be that we were not paying quite as much attention as weshould to the night around us, wrapped as we were in our satisfied cocoon— but we heard a noise; a soft and startled breath, and then the whispered rushof feet, and before we could do any more than turn toward it, the feet ran toward the back door of the darkened house, and we heard that door bumpshut. And we could only follow and stare through the door’s glass jalousiesin silent all-consuming dismay as a car parked at the curb leaped into life andsprinted away into the night. The taillights flare—the left one hangs at anodd angle—and we can only see that it is an old Honda, some uncertain dark color, and then the car races out of sight and a cold and acid knot tightensin the pit of our stomach as the impossible, dreadful truth burns up insideus and pours out panic like the bright and awful blood from a newly opened wound— We have been seen..
For a long appalling minute we just stare out the door, rocked by the endless echoes of that unthinkable thought. We have been seen. Someone had come in, unheard, unnoticed, and they had seen us as we really were,standing drained and contented over the half-wrapped leftovers. And they had very clearly seen enough to recognize the odd-shaped pieces of Valentine for what they were, because whoever it was had left in a lightning-fast panicked gallop and vanished into the night before we could do more than take a breath. They had seen—they might even have seen our face;in any case they had seen enough to know what they were looking at,and they had raced away to safety—and probably to call the police. They would be calling right now, sending patrol cars to scoop us up and put us away—but here we stood, frozen into dumb astonished inaction, gaping and drooling at the place where the taillights had disappeared, stuck in stupidincomprehension like a child watching a familiar cartoon dubbed into aforeign language. Seen—and at long last, the thought gave us the jolt of fear we needed to galvanize us into action, kick us into high gear, and send usracing through the last stages of cleanup and out the door with the still-warmbundles of all we had done this once-ne night.Miraculously, we made it away from the house and off into the nightand there were no sounds of pursuit. No sirens wailed their warning; nosquealing tires or crackling radios ripped the darkness with their threats of Descending Doom for Dexter. And as I nally, tensely, vigilantly made my way out of the area, theblather-headed numbness of that single shattering thought came back androiled through me like the never-ending rattle of waves on a rocky beach.
We had been seen.