“Your huevos, amigo. Your balls are getting too big for your britches. You’re busting out. Never in a million years did I think you’d actually want to learn how to shoot a gun.”

“I don’t. That’s not why I’m here. I was just...in the neighborhood. . . .”

Why is it so hard to talk to another human being? It’s almost as hard as silence.

“Oh, come on. You came here for a reason, compadre. And that reason is to learn how to kill the Rat Burglar. You know I’m right.”

“I’m not killing anybody. We’ve been over this.”

“You can change the channel with a remote, right? Same thing.” Herk gives no indication he has heard anything I’ve said and starts demonstrating the stance for me. “See? Just point and squeeze. Put the Rat Burglar on mute forever.”

“You might not have noticed this but the last time I held a gun it didn’t go so well.”

“That’s because you didn’t know how to shoot. But now you’re here, and you can learn from the master.”

“Thanks no thanks.”

“Watch this.” With a fat Sharpie Herkimer makes a childlike drawing of a face on a piece of paper. The lines are grotesque, with cursive eyelashes to indicate femaleness and an eroticized, gap-toothed, Wife-of-Bathian mouth.

“Who’s that?”

“Mrs. Chudan, my fifth grade teacher. Social studies, she was, always talking shit about textiles. Gave me an F. Said I had ‘rude, crude, and obnoxious school behavior.’ ” Herk tapes Mrs. Chudan to the target, puts it out to distance, fires off a dozen deafening rounds, then holds down a button and retracts the target.

Mrs. Chudan’s face is now perforated with bullet holes that delineate, connect-the-dots style, a nearly perfectly formed capital F.

“Bang! Who’s failing now, Chudan?” Herk rips off the target and sticks a finger into the deep casing behind it that houses an oozing pink substance. “And check this shit out. Ballistic gelatin. It mimics human tissue, so you can see what the damage would be in real life. Check out Chudan’s mush. It’s fucked from here to Cleveland, right?”

My stomach is still reverberating from the gunshots. I am terrified but also awed; the profile of Mrs. Chudan’s face through the Plexiglas container is shredded with shrapnel from the spreading hollow-point bullets. She didn’t stand a chance.

“Cool shit, right?” Herk sticks a fingerpoint crowned by an icinglike dollop of pink ballistic gelatin into his mouth. “And it tastes great.”

“Disgusting.”

“Disgusting? No, it’s fun! Go on. Smell my fingers. You smell that? That’s fun juice, my man. I just fingerfucked fun.”

I wave his hand away.

“And now it’s your turn.”