I laughed.
He said, “Do you think I’m funny or are you still trying to establish rapport?”
“That was pretty funny.”
“That your mother was a liar?”
“That you see the world in an interesting way.”
“Thatsounds like rapport-building. I have a supposed therapist. She’s always pretending to be nice.”
I knew his therapist. Genuinely nice.
A few seconds passed. He said, “Don’t bother with what I think of you. I could think you were dog excrement and I’d tell you what I brought you here for.”
“Okay.”
“Aren’t you going to ask what that is?”
“You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
He half turned toward me. Regarding me with purplish eyes, narrowed and impermeable. Returning to the aquarium, he set about picking a zit. Drew blood and transferred the activity to a ring finger cuticle and raised a crimson thread that traced the bottom of his nail.
“I lied,” he said.
“About…”
“Complete the sentence. Add an object. About…?”
“You lied about what?”
“Good,” he said. “You’re being cooperative. People don’t like to cooperate with me. People don’t like me.”
I said nothing.
“Good,” he repeated. “You didn’t argue.” He uncrossed his legs, extended his feet straight out, wiggled the tips of the black shoes. “When you were here with Milo Bernard, I lied about what I saw. Ask me why.”
“Why did you lie?”
“I don’t know. That applies to much of what I do and think. I have trouble coming up with easy explanations. It makes me more interesting to me.”
I said, “You prefer questions that can’t be answered.”
“Are you ridiculing me?”
“Nope.”
He got to work on an index finger cuticle. Thicker blood trail. He licked it. “I sometimes drink myself. Recycling.”
I said, “Was your lie false information or incomplete information?”
Pick, pick, lick. He rubbed his eyes for a long time. “Tell me what I told you the first time.”
“You went over to the party house Saturday morning close to three a.m., heard two adults talking, heard them drive away.”
“I went over intending…”
“To shit on the property.”
