The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

The Basement

Previously: "A Pain in the Acheson" 

"Just fucking wait here," you tell this asshole. "Just wait. Ten minutes. 'Cos I can do better than stealing some goddamn chalk from this place. I've done better!"

You feel the froth in your mouth as you snarl at Russ. He only smirks back and shoots his friend Ryan an amused glance.

* * * * *

You start by checking the key ring in your pocket, but you've only house keys and truck keys there. So you have to go home. Because you're looking for a special key.

You bought it last year, it came with a padlock, and you bought the padlock to put on a door. The door to the community center basement.

It was almost exactly a year ago. You were in a peevish, destructive mood and were wandering the neighborhood looking for trouble. (But not capital-T trouble.) You were skulking around the community center when you noticed an outside door in one of the wings. It was at the bottom of a short staircase dug out of the ground, and after you noticed it you noticed the windows in the wall next to it, peeping out just above ground level from behind the weeds. The door was heavy and padlocked. You went home, got some bolt-cutters, and sliced the padlock off.

Inside was another short staircase leading down into a dim, dusty, and very dirty basement that stank of old wood, old oil, and grime. It was stacked—packed—with discarded furniture of every conceivable kind. Office desks and conference tables; school desks built for ten-year-olds, stacked into teetering towers. Bookshelves and work shelves, cabinets and storage cases. Old gym equipment. And even, in a far corner, tucked against a wall, a large floor-to-ceiling mirror, so caked in dust that your own reflection, in the fading light of late afternoon, was only a shadow. Every surface was covered in a thick layer of dust, and over the concrete floor itself was spread a thin layer of something like sand.

You spent a little time rearranging the furniture there: pushing over the school desks and jerking the tables into new arrangements; shoving the bookshelves back to widen the narrow corridors between them. You even made a little fort in the back corner by stacking up a few desks atop some others.

Then, when you were bored, you left. But you came back shortly afterward, with a padlock you'd made a special trip to the hardware store to get, and you put it on the basement door, both to conceal the fact that someone had busted into the basement, and to stymie the maintenance staff should they try to get back in.

A few days later you went back out to check, and found your padlock still on the door. So you called Caleb and Keith and brought them out to show them what you'd found and what you'd done. After they got used to being inside a place they weren't supposed to be, they'd agreed that it would make a fine clubhouse. Over the next few weeks you were constantly in and out, hanging out and talking about girls, school, classes, girls, parents, girls, the assholes at school, homework, girls, and girls. Mostly, though, you talked about girls: the ones you'd like to fuck and how you'd like to fuck them. Caleb brought in some whiskey and cigarettes to make the place even more relaxing; and on Halloween you hung out there and told ghost stories to each other.

Your interest in the place gradually petered out, though, and it's been months, at least, since you've been out there. But a glance at the padlock before you race off the old school grounds is enough to confirm that it is still your padlock on the door. So if you can find the key again, you'll be able to show that fuck-twat with the crew cut something a lot more impressive than some chalk furtively stolen from inside the main building.

* * * * *

The guys are out front of the old cafeteria, loitering near one of the basketball hoops, when you get back. From around the corner of the building you gesture them to come join you. Even at a distance, you can see Russ rolling his eyes.

That gets you mad all over again—you had calmed down a little on the ride to and from your house—so that you have no words to choke out when he smirks and asks, "So what's up?" when he and the others reach you. You just motion them to follow you.

At the top of the basement stairs you whirl and shove the key at Russ's face. Now he looks annoyed, and he slaps your hand away.

"Take it," you snarl as you shove it back into his face. "Take it and use it. Down there!" You point at the door.

Now he glowers at you, then looks between you, the key, and the door. He snatches the key from your fingers with a small scowl and trudges down the steps to the door. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Patrick and Ryan exchange gleeful grins.

Russ puts the key in the padlock, fiddles with it, turns it, and pulls the padlock off the door. But he doesn't turn the knob. Instead he squints back up at you and says, "So fucking what?"

"So fucking that's my key and that's my lock, that's so fuck what! Used to be a different lock on that door, until last year, when I busted it off and busted in there. That's my fucking space down there now, you little bitch, 'cos it's my fucking lock I put back on it!"

Russ blinks at you, and stands frozen for a moment. Then he turns, twists the knob, and pushes the door open. Again, he hesitates. Then he steps in over the threshold.

When neither Patrick nor Ryan move, you shove past them and jump down the stairs to join Russ inside.

He is standing on the landing just inside the door, where the stairs twist at a ninety-degree angle to fall the rest of the way to the floor below. He glances at you, then slowly, one step at a time, with hands in pockets, he descends the rest of the way. At the bottom, he leans this way and that, bending at the waist, to scope out what he can of the basement.

You snort, and push past him.

Winding between the desks, you force your way back to the little area that you and your friends cleared out. You had arranged a conference table there, with old, creaky wooden office chairs around it, and in a nearby desk you had stored the liquor and cigarettes. They are still there, and with a satisfying bang you set the bottle on the table, and toss the cigarettes out beside them.

Russ has followed you more slowly, and Ryan and Patrick have appeared at the top of the stairs as well.

"Me and my friends used to come out here all the time last year," you tell Russ as he studies the bottle from a small distance. "Hung out, talked, got a little wasted." You tilt your chin at him. "Still need me to go sneaking up into some fucking old classroom and steal a little chalk?"

His expression has lost both the glower and the smirk. But his eyes are still hooded as he holds your eye. But he's the first to blink.

He twists on his feet to glance back at Patrick and Ryan as they shuffle up to join him. Then he turns back to you.

But he's not looking you in the face when he says, "Well, I guess I've been fucking showed."

* * * * *

Your mood toward Russ doesn't soften, and you don't feel like his has softened toward you. But you do stop yelling at him; and for his part, he stops smirking at you. Now he's just chilly, though you have the feeling that he is biting down on his anger at having been humiliated. He listens without comment as you explain, at greater length and more detail, to him and his friends how you came to break into the basement, and made it your clubhouse.

Patrick is gleeful about it all, of course, and Ryan also looks impressed with you. But they seem to take their cue from Russ, and his coolness toward you, and when you mount the stairs and lock the door afterward, there's no offer of you to follow or meet up with them anyplace when they say they have to go.

So imagine your surprise when you get a text from Russ himself later that evening, after sunset:

Hey Patrick gave me your number meet me at comm center in 15? Want to talk a little.

You are wary, but send back a reply saying you'll be there. This time you drive.

But he must have already been at the center, because he's waiting at the corner of the school when you get there.

"Hey," he says when join him. His tone is mild. "Sorry we got off wrong this afternoon. I didn't mean anything by it." He holds him his palm for a slap.

You're still not happy about it all. But he did apologize. So you slap his hand back and mumble something about being sorry too.

"Yeah, so, about this place you got here," he says, and twists around to look at the dark shadow where the basement stairs and door are. "You still using it? You were a little unclear."

"It's been awhile," you reply.

"Well, if you're not, I wanna buy that key off you."

The offer causes you to start a little. As you recover yourself, he bends over to dig inside the backpack that, you notice just now, is at his feet. He pulls out a bottle, which gurgles as he lifts it out.

"Here's part one of my offer," he says as he pushes it into your hand. "From my dad's private stock. It's good stuff, only the best. Better than that rock-gut stuff you had down there.

"And that's just to rent the place," he continues. "Lemme have the key when I want, and I'll return it when I'm done with it. And I'll bring you a new bottle each time you use up an old one. But you sell me the key, and I'll give you a thousand dollars."

* To sell him the key: "A Thousand Reasons" 
* To rent him the key: "Courage Comes in a Bottle" 
* To reject both offers: "Prudence's Reward" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"