IDLE HOUR PARK WAS QUITE A PLACE IN THE SUMMERTIME after school let out. You could take a boat ride down at Moon Lake or swim in this big pool – nicknamed the Polio Hole – and there was an arcade and a bowling alley and a roller-skating rink. Idle Hour even had a two-bit zoo, where they had a skinny, mangy lion and a half-dead bear that slept almost all day on a concrete slab unless you nailed him on the head with a pebble. They had a big iron cage full of monkeys that chattered and swung from old tires, and on the real hot days they’d jump and yell, and the males would get close to the bars and would look you in the eye while they masturbated like they were trying to pull the damn thing off.

But at fourteen, Billy had grown bored with the zoo and preferred watching girls out on the bandstand along with his buddy Mario. The boys didn’t have to say much, they’d just see a girl walk by in a nice summer dress and one of them would look to the other and raise his eyebrows. If she was really cute, Mario would pretend he’d just burned his hand on a stove. And if she beat that, Billy would act like someone had punched him in the stomach and roll to the ground.

They did this for a long time that night, until the conversation shifted pretty quickly to monsters from Mars, and Mario said there was absolutely scientific proof that other planets held horrors the government didn’t want the public to know about. Billy said that was a goddamn fool thing to say, but Mario held his ground until a cute little blonde with an upturned nose and tanned legs walked by and then it was his time to get punched in the stomach and roll to the ground.

When he returned to the bench where they sat, Billy said: “That don’t make no sense.”

“Sure it does,” Mario said. “I saw it on Tales of Tomorrow. We just bought us a TV. You can watch it if you like.”