The Many Deaths of Anthony Petrano - Part Two

"It was okay," Jenny said from the back seat.

“Only okay? Are you crazy?” Mark turned around in shotgun so he could argue more effectively. “You dumb bitch: it was amazing!”

Jenny punched Mark's seatback. “I told you not to call me that.”

“Well what am I supposed to do?” Mark said. “We go see what's probably going to be the movie of the year, if not the decade, and you give me that review? 'It was okay,' Jenny Zambrowski, Dumb Bitch Quarterly. I mean, come on – were you even in the same theater?” He turned to the boy driving next to him who was grinning, but trying not to laugh. “Doug, you sat next to her. Was she there? Did she leave after the trailers or something?”

“Dude, calm down,” Doug said. “Not everybody wants to suck Christian Bale's dick the way you do.”

“Thank you,” Jenny said. “I just didn't buy the British accent.”

“Listen,” Mark said, calmer, more composed. “First of all, you two seriously need to have your libidos checked if you don't want to play a couple rounds of SexMatch 2000 with Christian Bale. And second,” Mark's voice rose to a yell again, “the man is British, you stupid, stupid bitch! Christ!”

Jenny whacked Mark's seat again, harder this time, and Doug's laughter finally broke.

“I mean, how can you not buy the British accent? It's his normal, fucking voice.”

“It did sound a little weird,” Doug said. “Just because he's usually doing an American accent, I mean. And besides, the whole thing with the baby at the end? Really? Don't tell me you bought into that shit.”

The car's interior went silent momentarily while Mark held his fist to his mouth. Outside, the world was dark. A car with one headlight passed going the opposite direction. “Okay,” Mark said. “I'll give you the thing with the baby.”

“Ha!” Jenny punched the seat again.

“But I will fight anyone who criticizes Christian Bale's acting ability. To the death. The man is a giant among Vern Troyers.”

Silence again, save the sound of thick rubber on wet asphalt.

“Really?” Jenny said. “Mini Me?”

“To the death,” said Mark. There was a pause, and another, and then, without warning, he unhooked his seatbelt and launched himself headfirst into the back seat. Doug watched his own eyes roll in the rearview mirror as a mix of muffled shrieks and growls emerged from the scrambled pair behind him. The sounds of combat changed to giggles first, belly-laughs next, and Doug felt his heart sink a little deeper into his chest. He could feel it happening; again, it was happening. The same thing that had happened with Laura. The same thing that had happened with Katie. The same thing that always happened. They always found their way to Mark; he always managed to pull them away.

“Hey,” Doug yelled, straining to get a better view in the mirror of where Mark's hands were, what expression was on Jenny's face. “Come on, guys. Knock it off.”

He thought he'd been doing alright. He'd gotten the seat next to her in the theater. He'd gotten the handbrush on three separate occasions while grabbing for popcorn. And she'd smiled. All the time, she'd smiled. At him – Doug – and once she'd smiled while doing a category five hair-behind-the-ear-tuck at the same time. But give Mark two minutes on the soapbox and it's over. He'd lost another one.

"Ow, hey!" Doug said as Mark's foot clipped his ear. "Seriously, I'm gonna get pulled over. Quit it." In the mirror, their movements were a blur.

“To the death!” Mark yelled, and Jenny accompanied him with an exuberant squeal.

“I said quit it,” Doug said, but quietly this time, so no one else would hear. He batted Mark's foot with his right hand. He turned around for a second and saw Mark's teeth flash in the light of a streetlamp; he saw the glint in Jenny's eye. Doug reached behind him and slapped his hand on Mark's back, grabbed a handful of sweatshirt, and tried to heave him back up to the front seat.

He only took his eyes off the road for a second.

Just one second.

There was a terrible noise – a thump, but the kind of a thump like dynamite thumps; the kind of a thump that thumps you from skull to coccyx and back again – and the car lurched sideways and up. Mark flew in the air and crushed Doug's hand between his back and the ceiling. He landed on Jenny and they all heard the breath go out of her in one, amazed expulsion of air. And they all heard the tires squeal along the blacktop, and they heard the leaves crackle under the tires. But most of all they heard the thump. It echoed in every one of their heartbeats and made sure they knew what they had done. It made sure they knew that whatever they had hit – whatever it had been before – it was dead now. It made sure of that.

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