Page 323 of Untouchable

The three of them have been together for almost a hour now, and the only mean things Gil has said were directed at his brother, not Parker. When Parker makes a joke that Gil actually laughs at, Parker can see Harp uncoiling, relaxing. He smiles to himself. Maybe they can actually enjoy this trip.

A few more patrons have wandered into the pub, making the place feel more alive.

Parker judiciously doles out what's left of the beer, and suddenly Gil stands.

"Come play 'Zombies, Die!' with me," Gil insists, taking a gulp of his beer and then looking expectantly at Harp.

* * *

"Good lord—wheredid this place find a 'Zombies, Die!' machine?" Harp asks. He hasn't thought about the shoot 'em up arcade game since he was in his twenties, when movie theaters still had arcades and before video game graphics had gotten anywhere near realistic.

Gil shows them to the back room—which Harp hadn't even realized existed until now—where there are a few arcade games lighting up the corners with their bright teaser sequences.

"Shit, do you have any quarters?" Gil asks, turning on his heel.

Harp checks his pockets and produces a single bill. "Nope, and the only cash I have is a twenty."

"Perfect," Gil says, snatching the bill out of his hand and marching towards a change machine.

"Oh my God that's gonna be like a million quarters," Parker says, laughing.

"Or, y'know, eighty of them," Harp teases.

"Harp, don't be pedantic," Gil says over his shoulder.

"It's not pedantic, it's just basic math—"

"Okay professor," Gil says, sounding like Harp is the most insufferable person on earth.

It takes the change machine a moment to actually spit out the 80 quarters. Gil fills two plastic cups with them and returns to the tall table where Harp and Parker have set up.

"It only takes, like, an hour to beat this thing," Gil says.

"You've beaten it before?" Parker asks, sounding awed.

"Yeah, a few times. You need two people who can actually, y'know, play video games but it's not so hard."

"Not so hard is exactly my speed," Harp says, standing up and taking the second player position. The game console is tall with a big screen and neon pink 'shotguns' that control the action instead of buttons and a joystick.

"Exactly," Gil says, taking his place and grabbing his own ridiculous controller.

* * *

Parker grinsand drapes himself over the pinball machine next to them, watching the two brothers make an extended show of “preparing” for the game—stretching absurdly and pretending to polish the shotguns and trash talking each other.

Parker is having fun, he realizes. At some point along the line, he’d forgotten all about being nervous or on his guard. Gil is the same as he was last time—deadpan, witty in the most unpredictable ways—but he’s different, too. None of Gil’s biting “humor” is directed at Parker, this time. He’s not relentlessly negative. He’s not watching Parker like a hawk, on the hunt for ammunition to use against him.

But Parker is different too, this time, he realizes. He’s relaxed now. Every sentence is no longer underlined in panic, and the first time Parker told a joke Gil laughed at, the look on Harp’s face was pure joy.

Why couldn’t Christmas have been like this?he thinks idly, but then shoos the thought away. Christmas wasn’t like this. But if Christmas hadn’t played out the way it had, Parker might not be in this exact spot at this exact moment. And he wouldn’t trade this for anything.

He pulls out his phone and snaps a picture just as Gil and Harp raise their “shotguns” as the game begins, their faces both comically serious as they turn their focus to it.

* * *

Harp can only vaguely rememberhow the game works. He's seen people play it more often than he's tried to play it himself—and then it was only for one or two rounds, when everybody's quarters ran out.

He'd never even considered that you could beat arcade games.

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