Tenderness Read Online Free PDF Page B

to the edge of the worktable, he wondered how he could use it to facilitate breaking his arm. Might be better than using just the hammer.

    Lieutenant Proctor said, “You’re a menace to society, Eric. Because you are incapable of feeling. Have you ever really felt anything? Sad? Or sorry? Sorry for what you did to your mother, your stepfather? Sorry for anything at all? In fact, have you ever even felt happy? That’s what makes you a psychopath, Eric. You are incapable of connecting with other people. Emotion, that’s what connects us all. Without emotion, without feeling, we’re animals.”
    “I read somewhere that swans mate for life, Lieutenant. Must be some kind of feeling involved there, some kind of emotion. Maybe animals know more about emotions than we give them credit for.…”
    Eric liked these verbal games with the old lieutenant. He knew he could talk circles around him. His gift of gab was actually for the lieutenant’s benefit. Ordinarily he didn’t have much to say to anyone, especially in this place. Talking to the old man, baiting him now and then, broke the monotony of the facility.
    “Stop playing games, Eric. You know very well what I mean about lack of feeling.…”
    Ah, but he had felt bad about the girl at the mall. Holding her limp body in his arms afterward, cradlingher gently, he had seen that her makeup was too heavy. His fingers stroked her long black hair. He opened her mouth and counted five fillings. But he had no time for further inspection because footfalls reached his ears, along with the crackling of bushes being pushed aside. Someone was nearby and coming closer. He crouched down, the girl beneath him, stilling himself, listening to the crunch of footsteps passing by and then receding, growing faint. Then silence again, except for the distant sounds of cars on the highway. He sighed with relief and vowed to be more careful in the future.
    It had been so easy to lure the girl away from the mall. First of all, he had dropped the limping act once he followed her out the door. Outside, in the chilled twilight air, he had spotted her waiting at the bus stop. No one else was in sight. He approached her and turned on The Charm. Ever since he was a little kid, The Charm had worked wonders. That smile, along with his blond hair and blue eyes. When he smiled, something happened to his eyes. His eyes seemed to smile, too, sort of glowed. Irresistible. He had watched The Charm happen when he studied himself in a mirror.
What a sweet little boy
, he heard people say when he was just a child. And later:
a great-looking boy you’ve got there, Mrs. Poole
. Eric was tall and slender. At fifteen, he was almost six feet tall. Girlsflirted with him at school but he didn’t respond. Boys stayed away from him and he didn’t mind. He preferred to be alone. He found himself reflected in other people’s attitudes. Basked in their admiration. Or seemed to. Yet not everyone was affected by The Charm. Some people were indifferent. Some people he could not win over. A teacher now and then. People who regarded him with indifference or simply turned away, unimpressed, even suspicious. Maybe a store clerk or a bus driver. Specifically, Ginger Rowell, whom he’d asked to the Spring Dance in the eighth grade. He’d had no inclination to go to the Spring Dance, but his mother kept hounding him about it. “Everybody wants to go to the Spring Dance,” his mother insisted. “Everybody normal, that is.” Which stung him. Normal? So he asked Ginger Rowell. Who was nothing special although pretty and energetic and a cheerleader. She looked at him with cool appraising eyes and said: “No thanks.” Humiliating him, leaving him staring in disbelief as she walked away. So he had learned early on that there were people who did not respond properly to The Charm and he stayed away from them, ignored them, set them apart from his life, as if they did not exist.
    His mother was a puzzle to him. She usually looked at