Play Time
For the next few months, Junior and Lucky were extra careful about not being seen together. They met up a lot in secret, however, always in small, out-of-the-way restaurants and malls, usually down in Oceanside or out in Santa Clarita. Sometimes they hooked up in luxury hotels in downtown L.A., usually reserving a large suite under an assumed name, playing video games all night and ordering pizza and beer and women and anything else they wanted. Lucky was turning out to be a great guy, a really good friend, even if he had screwed Junior’s mother in Junior’s house. That fact was sickening to think about, and sometimes Junior did dwell on it. But he decided to let it be.
Truthfully, however, Junior liked Lucky even more than he wanted to admit. They thought alike. They both had dark, creepy thoughts that they wanted to pursue for real. They had killed together for the first time, had done it well and gotten away with it. As time went on, they craved doing it again. They wanted that lovely adrenaline rush and final burst of pure ecstasy when their target finally bit it. Both of them were interested in having beautiful women around, too, but neither had a real girlfriend. Girls liked to talk too much. Girls loved to gossip with other girls and share all their secrets, and that could be a dangerous proposition so soon after their first kill. Not a good idea. Girls got jealous and caused trouble and made scenes. Girls listened to them when they got drunk, and they might slip and mention the murder. Besides, there were prostitutes galore in L.A., good-looking ones for when they wanted sex, call girls, and they liked to use them together. It was all great fun and they were so happy to be alive and such good friends.
After his mom had been rotting in her grave for six months, they started hanging out in public together. They’d already graduated from high school and didn’t have to go to class anymore or worry about graduation. At first they went out to trendy clubs together, a one-toe-in-the-water kind of thing, after all his mother’s phony, slutty friends had stopped checking on Junior and bringing all those disgusting casseroles made by their cooks and left by their butlers outside his front door. They finally lost interest and returned to their shallow, self-involved lives and forgot all about poor young Junior who no longer had his plastic-coated mom around. He had told everyone he was thinking about going to St. Andrew’s College in Edinburgh because that’s where Prince William had gone. They all believed that ridiculous lie, too. They believed all his lies. He had turned out to be an exceptional liar, and that was a good thing. But he’d always been, really. He was getting even better at it as time went by.
The more he hung around with Lucky, the better he liked him. He especially loved the fact that Lucky liked to play board games. The basement game room was a veritable arcade, with just about every video game and board game and pinball machine known to man. They spent hours down there together, trying their level best to beat each other at everything. They found out that they were both highly competitive in their own ways and neither took prisoners because winning was the most important thing. Both of them loved to best the other more than anything else in the world, and neither of them lost graciously. In fact, they often came to physical blows over close scores and accused each other of cheating, but that usually happened when they were halfway drunk. Especially Lucky, and he got drunk a lot. That’s when they pretty much attacked each other and wrestled on the floor, scratching and punching and ending up all bruised up with black eyes and bloody noses. But they didn’t care. They always got up and shook hands afterward, and then had a beer as their red fits of anger dwindled and their hazes of rage slowly faded away.
Junior was finding out that Lucky was a lot smarter than he had first thought. Not brilliant like Junior, of course―nobody could be as smart as he was. But Lucky had proven to be very bright and often came up with great ideas. Even though Lucky had concentrated on sports in school, he knew lots of other interesting things about different subjects and areas, but that only meant that they could teach each other new stuff. They just clicked. They snapped into place like Lego blocks, as if they should have been born twins. It was so great to have another guy that Junior could trust. Somebody like a real brother, like family. Somebody who truly liked him and treated him with respect. This was the best time in Junior’s life, bar none.
Another thing they found out they shared was an intense love of horror movies. There was a home movie theater in Junior’s basement, and they’d relax in two big, leather recliners, eating cheeseburgers and fries from In-N-Out Burger and drinking beer all night long while they watched one film after another. They liked to watch flicks with lots of blood and gore and strangling and maiming and butchering, and then they’d discuss how they could have committed the murders better and without getting caught. They loved the cruelty and the mind games and the screaming of victims, and the more they saw, the better they liked it. It was exciting and horrible and mind-blowing. Soon those kinds of films became their obsession. That dark basement room filled with endless depictions of murder and death and destruction was what they lived for.