Tyrannia by Alan Deniro Page A

whatever angels are made of. Angels are meant to do things—guard borders, build cars, safecrack waterfalls, operate cash registers. The guns, on the other hand, do what they love. They love the waterfall, and love to control it, to control who comes through.
    Even now I’m not sure whose side I’m on. I only want to do the right thing, to live with what the world will give me. The question is, which world? Did I cross? That green hillside of music that I saw for just a few seconds—is it impossibly close or impossibly far away?
    I want to know.

Dancing in a House

    We want to go dancing, so we approach a nice Cape Cod. The house has indigo aluminum siding and an imitation oak door with a gargoyle knocker. The gargoyle is sticking out its tongue. It’s nice. Once we’re inside we see that the living room has plenty of floor space for what we are going to do. The floors are hardwood, a rich dark cherry, and the rugs are only throws, so it doesn’t take any time at all to move them out of the way.
    The beauty is, none of us have to ever bring our own stereo. It’s a perk that comes with most houses: the voice of a house. We do however bring our own knapsack of CDs, because you can never trust peoples’ tastes. The stereo is one of those upper middle class jobs—large but not ostentatious. There are a few boring family pictures on the wall, cluttering the future path of the sound, as well as a magazine rack, a coffee table—easily disposed of. After that happens, * goes to the kitchen to make sandwiches and ** warms up the stereo. I root through the backpack to begin things.
    Enjoyment of music depends a lot—maybe entirely—on environmental conditions. Because this is a clean house, and because twilight creeps through the bay windows like ivy, I decide we should dance to Steely Dan. We all have our own tastes, and that’s fine, but we all really like Steely Dan. The thing we like about Dan most is how the Eagles sing about him in ______. It’s during the part when the Eagles are talking about steely knives being unable to kill animals. A heartbreaking moment in code, especially if you’ve danced to Steely Dan lots of times in houses, listening to dogs barking in the basement.
    Everything is running smoothly, when just as * comes back from the kitchen with a plate full of peanut butter sandwiches, and ** has cued up ______, someone comes down the stairs. It’s a girl, still pretty young. She must have been sleeping because she’s rubbing her eyes. Her red hair is in a scrunchie, and she’s wearing the sweatshirt of this band I’d never heard of. I reason that maybe she’s woken from a nightmare, so seeing us in her house’s living room might not be all that bad. Who knows, maybe it’s an improvement.
    The thing is, she looks exactly like my mother did at that age.
    I’m about to say something to her when ***, who’s been really quiet until now, just kind of skulking by the door, starts screaming at her that she’s ruining everything, and why doesn’t she just die. *** has always been a little bit unhinged, but I have to admit that at that moment I couldn’t have agreed with him more, except maybe the dying part. I don’t want anyone to die, especially when there’s dancing about to start. But it’s hard to tell that to *** when he gets going. It’s hard to stop. Everything else more or less freezes. We’re not used to interruptions once we’re in a house. **’s hand hovers over the play button, and * is looking for a place to set down the sandwiches, as if the plate is hot.
    The girl takes one good look at us and runs back up the stairs. I grab a sandwich and stand at the foot of those stairs, telling *** as he’s running up to be cautious, that he shouldn’t do anything he’d regret later. *** does a good job of ignoring me. Doors slam above us on the second floor. They open, they shut. I don’t even hear ***’s heavy breathing anymore.
    ** starts the Steely Dan anyway, but it’s not