The far-off look that would dominate Charles’s face as an adult appeared for the first time for Richard to see. It was as if that deeper thing within Charles had swum to the top after all, and had taken charge of things.

Charles stepped into the hall first. Richard followed.

Their eyes adjusted quickly and the red exit sign illuminated just enough footing to lead them deeper. They crept silently, their shoes soft on the carpet, holding their breath. They both paused at the sound of slapping. A palm against a skin.

“This is weird,” Richard whispered. “Maybe we should scram.”

But that deeper Charles, the dark formless swimmer, remained.

“I wanna see this,” he said. “And so do you.”

When they reached the end of the hall (the moaning now as loud as the tanks in the war movies), Richard saw that they had been walking along the other side of the wall where the movie was projected. Peeking around the corner he saw it glowed, but the light of the projector blinded him for all else.

“We’re going to have to crawl in,” Charles whispered. “Or they’ll see us.”

“They?”

“The men in here.”

Crouched now, they could see the faces seated in the dark, smoky theater. Half a dozen men, well spaced out, stared intently at the screen.

Richard spotted a woman out there, too.

Charles crawled deeper into the room and Richard followed. The screen was behind them now. And it wasn’t until they reached the curtains at the theater’s entrance that they turned to see what all the sound was about.

They sat, cross-legged, and watched. Two new friends, strangers only hours ago.

A woman lay on her stomach on a bed while a man did what looked like push-ups above her.

“Oh,” Charles said. “I know what this is.”

“What is it?”

“This is love. My mother told me that when a man attaches himself to a woman it’s called ‘love.’ ”

Richard considered this. “It looks more like exercise to me.”

Charles laughed and, years later, standing before a Wayne Sherman topiary of Charles himself, as a Goblin rain soaked him to his marrow, Richard couldn’t remember another time Charles had laughed again.

You seemed so normal to me then. I know we were young, but…should I have been able to see it then? Would a different boy…a different guide to Goblin…have noticed and maybe known what to do with you? Did I fail you as a friend? That’s impossible…right? I was the only friend you had. We both know that.