Sway by Zachary Lazar

bandages and tape. He wore work clothes: chinos and thin cotton shirts and black
     engineer’s boots. A few weeks after school had started, he stole a car and forged some checks and tried to run away from home,
     after which they sent him to a juvenile detention facility outside Sacramento.
    According to
The Sephiroth,
there was a difference between the “self” and the “soul.” The self was a set of conventions, an outer garment that the soul
     was forced to weave out of its various encounters with the world. It was in the delinquent Ted Drake that Kenneth saw his
     real soul, the true essence hidden inside him. He saw that to be true to that soul — to escape the fraud of his self — he
     had to somehow find a way to live inside Ted Drake’s skin.
    He had something like this in mind when he entered the small rotunda at Palisades Park where they housed the camera obscura,
     a dark box fixed with a lens that took in images of the park outside. It was a concrete room with a white table at its center.
     On this table, the camera projected a surprisingly sharp rendering of the palm trees and the pathways and the beach beyond
     its walls, an image you could rotate by means of a large metal wheel. It was the kind of place (like the pier, or certain
     bars downtown) that you knew about if you were someone like Kenneth.
    He waited for nearly an hour that afternoon, moving back and forth from the rotunda to the bright sidewalk outside. Finally
     the right kind of man approached, a middle-aged man with the last bits of an ice cream sandwich pinched in his fingers. He
     wore a faded gray work shirt and dark trousers with loose, fallen cuffs. When he took the last bite of his ice cream sandwich,
     he threw the wrapper to the ground behind his heel and wiped his hand on his hip. He eyed Kenneth indifferently as he stepped
     inside the building, then stood for a moment at the metal wheel, his back turned, one hand in the back pocket of his pants.
    On the nape of the man’s neck, above the collar, were thick creases that looked almost like scars. Kenneth stood watching
     while the man casually spun the wheel, watching the rotating images, then moved farther back into the rotunda. It was only
     when he had reached the far wall that he looked over his shoulder at Kenneth, then turned again, his hands crossed in front
     of his waist so that his elbows could be seen beneath his rolled-up sleeves. He said nothing, which was the only clue Kenneth
     had to go on.
    To the right, against the back wall, there was a small alcove that led to the toilets. That was where the man went next. Kenneth
     stood outside the beige door for a moment, no longer knowing what he expected. His mouth was dry and he put his hand flat
     on the dimpled surface of the door and stared for a moment at the shifting cloud of red light behind his closed eyelids.
    Inside, the man was leaning with his back against the sink, his ankles crossed. He was examining his curled fingertips, then
     he looked up at Kenneth, his image flattened by the dim brownish light.
    His hair was a reddish gray bristle. He had a narrow face with close-set eyes, two arched dimples between the brows. He started
     nodding his head, his tongue poking at the side of his mouth. Then he stood away from the sink and moved back toward the stalls,
     and Kenneth followed him, his face unconsciously mimicking the clipped purposefulness of the man’s.
    “I thought so,” the man said, turning.
    Kenneth raised his chin, his nostrils flaring.
    “Right away, I thought so,” said the man.
    In one sudden motion, he grabbed Kenneth by the shoulder and with his other hand gripped his waist. Kenneth couldn’t see his
     face now, could only smell the tang of his perspiration. The man held him upright and pressed his body against his own. He
     held him with a kind of paternal restraint, breathing a little heavily through his nose, as if carefully choosing his moment.
     Kenneth’s eyes were closed. All he