The Animal Hour by Andrew Klavan Page B

averted his eyes from the building as he passed it. He had been meaning to go in there tonight, but not to write. Just to get a good view of the Halloween parade. The marchers would go right past the place. Transvestites and monsters and Dixieland bands under the windows. The sidewalks below jammed with spectators. The music bouncing off the Village sky …
    It made him think of Zach again. Zach was going to be in the parade. He had been all geared up for it the last time Oliver had seen him. That was Friday. Ollie had gone over to Zach’s place to return his copy of Schillebeckxx, a philosophical enquiry into Jesus Christ that Zach had forced on him. He’d lugged the 800-page doorstop all the way up the brownstone’s narrow stairway. Pounded at Zach’s peeling door with his fist. The door had just swung in. Pure Zach: it was unlocked—just open in that crackhead-infested hellhole. Anyway, in the door swung and there they were. Sitting opposite each other on the bed by the window. Tiffany was at the foot. Venus-faced but rail-thin. Black T-shirt, black jeans. Long black hair streaked with shiny silver. Her back was propped against the bedrail, her legs stretched out before her. She was smiling with her rich lips and absently shuffling a deck of Tarot cards. And, at the head of the bed: It was like her reflection. Black T-shirt, black jeans, and just as rail-thin because of that stupid macro-whatever vegetarian diet she had them on. Except the face on him was the face of Death. It was Zachie in a pullover latex skull mask.
    â€œJesus, Zach,” Oliver said. “You look like Death.”
    Zach’s happy, boyish laughter sounded hollow inside the mask. He was practically bubbling over with the news. “I’m gonna be in the parade, Ollie. Downtowner’s gonna have a contingent and I get to play King Death. Isn’t it great?”
    Oliver had to smile. Even through the skull’s eyeholes, he could see Zach’s bright, black eyes. The awestruck excitement in them. Isn’t it great? The same as when he was seven years old. Shaking his head, Oliver tossed the Schillebeckxx down on the bed between the two of them. Thunk.
    â€œHere’s your book back, kid. There’s still no God.”
    Zach let fly with that boy’s laugh again. “Oh, Ollie!” The death’s head tilted back.
    Tiffany, though, smiled her voluptuous smile, cast her eyes heavenward. Launched into her sweet contralto. “Oh, Ollie. If you just kept a more open mind, you wouldn’t be so stuck with your poetry in those retro paternalistic modes of yours.”
    Oliver gave her a long look. Retro paternalistic modes. God, he disliked the woman. A simpering Scarsdale debutante gone mystical fem. He hated the lot of them: mystics; fems. Debutantes. He wasn’t too fond of Scarsdale either. Or maybe it was just Tiffany.
    He finally simpered back at her. Held his tongue. Zach hated it when the two of them argued. He wanted them to like each other. Zach wanted everyone to like each other under the tender eyes of a loving God. Too bad he lived on Earth …
    With these thoughts, Perkins was carried away from the library. Down Sixth to the corner of West Eighth Street. He turned there. A broad street lined with shoe stores, T-shirt shops, poster stores. Lots of heavy metal pictures of death in the windows: flaming Death on a motorcycle, drooling Death playing the guitar … It was only about 10:35 now, and most of the stores were still closed. The sidewalks were quiet. A line of children in costumes—devils, turtles, ballerinas—trooped toward Sixth, their teacher leading. Perkins went past them, chin down, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets. His mouth was working angrily.
    Tiffany. She shouldn’t have called Nana. Face of a Botticelli, brain of a midge. She shouldn’t have called Nana about Zach. It was stupid. The old woman was sick, for Christ’s sake. She wasn’t