Marci reached out a hand ahead of her into the weak light, looked at the crazy shadows it cast on the distant walls. “How can you live here? It’s a cave, Alan. How can you live in a cave?”
“You get used to it,” Alan said. “I can’t explain it all, and the parts that I can explain, you wouldn’t believe. But you’ve been to my home now, Marci. I’ve shown you where I live.”
Davey approached them, a beatific smile on his angelic face.
“This is my brother, Daniel,” Alan said. “The one I told you about.”
“You’re his slut,” Davey said. He was still smiling. “Do you touch his peter?”
Alan flinched, suppressing a desire to smack Davey, but Marci just knelt down and looked him in the eye. “Nope,” she said. “Are you always this horrible to strangers?”
“Yes!” Davey said, cheerfully. “I hate you, and I hate him,” he cocked his head Alanward. “And you’re all motherfuckers.”
“But we’re not wee horrible shits, Danny,” she said. “We’re not filthy-mouthed brats who can’t keep a civil tongue.”
Davey snapped his head back and then forward, trying to get her in the bridge of the nose, a favorite tactic of his, but she was too fast for him and ducked it, so that he stumbled and fell to his knees.
“Your mother’s going to be very cross when she finds out how you’ve been acting. You’ll be lucky if you get any Christmas pressies,” she said as he struggled to his feet.