He put the key back in his pocket and looked inside before stepping in.
He wasn’t sure why he was being so cautious. If it was just Brian, so be it. He didn’t like the thought of someone, even one of them, breaking into the house without a neighbor being alerted or something, but the house did face a park that, at the present moment, seemed mostly empty. As for the other houses on the street, there were only two, and Mike didn’t know if they were occupied. He’d never bothered to look.
“Brian,” he called into the house. “What’s up, where you at?”
He heard a rustle from somewhere inside and he moved into the living room, looking around. He heard it again and thought it was coming from the bedroom.
He went inside, through the dining room, and stopped at the bedroom door. Brian was on the floor, fully dressed and still mostly asleep, but rousing.
“What’s up, man? That can’t be comfortable.”
Brian rolled over and peered through a crusted eye, then wiped both eyes and sat up.
“What? What time is it?”
“It’s almost noon. How’d you get inside?”
“What?”
“Man, you are not ready to get up, are you?’
For a second, he thought Brian was going to lay down and go back to sleep, which he couldn’t have blamed him for. He looked like he’d had a rough night.
“You rest up, man, I’ll be out here waiting for the others. I’ll come get you when they show up.” He decided he’d hold off on measuring the rooms until later.
“What?” Brian asked for the third time. “No, I’m up. Almost noon? Fuck, man.”
He looked around, obviously confused, Mike thought, like he hadn’t expected to wake up here and wasn’t really sure where “here” even was.
Brian climbed unsteadily to his feet, reaching for support from the wall. He groaned as he straightened up and Mike took the opportunity to head back to the living room to wait.
He stood at the bay windows and stared out at the park. The sun was out and it looked like today would be a beautiful day. He heard Brian shuffle across the dining room floor to the bathroom, heard the door close. The roar of the flushing toilet came a second later, followed by water running in the sink, then the opening of the door, and Brian joined him by the window.
“What are you doing here so early?” Brian asked.
Mike gave him a confused look and said, “We’re supposed to meet here to talk about plans for the house. Everyone’s coming at noon, remember?”
Brian shook his head.
“One of the guys didn’t get hold of you last night?”
Brian shook his head again, then said, “I lost my phone.”
“Oh,” Mike said. “Then what are you doing here so early?”
“I …” Brian looked around, not sure why he was here. “I stopped by last night. I saw the light was on and I thought you were here, so I came up and found the door unlocked.”
“What?” Mike asked, shocked. “Was someone here?”
Brian gave the head shake again and said, “Not when I was here.”
“You said the light was on? Which one?”
“Living room,” Brian said, pointing up to the bulb above them. It was off.
“I was here last night,” Mike said, “trying to take some pictures, but none of the lights were working, I figured they were burned out or something. I wonder if I left the switch up when I left. Maybe there’s a short in the wire somewhere.”
Brian shrugged.
“I know I locked that door, though,” Mike said.
“I don’t know, man,” Brian said. “It was unlocked when I got here, but, like I said, there was nobody here. And nothing to steal.”
“Did you look in the basement?”
Brian shook his head.
“So, you were here last night, you said?”
Brian nodded.
“And you went to work and just left the door unlocked all night? Why didn’t you just come get the key or at least let me know?”
Brian looked out the window, trying to remember why he hadn’t gone to Mike’s. That had been his plan, hadn’t it? He remembered going into the bathroom, and not wanting to come out because of something about his mother? He couldn’t remember it all now. In fact, the entire night seemed like a blur. He didn’t remember leaving, or driving to St. Joe, he didn’t remember anything he did at work.
Had he even made it to work?
Of course he had, he must have. He wouldn’t have just spent the night sleeping on the cold floor. He didn’t sleep nights, anyway, even when he was off work. And right now he felt like he’d been working himself overtime all night, so, yes, he made it to work.
It was the stress, he told himself. Everything that’s happened, all the days run into each other and he’d been finding himself zoning out more and more frequently, thinking about his parents, then trying to force his mind onto some other topic so he didn’t wind up on anti-depressants for the next five years.
And it wasn’t uncommon to get off work and not remember much of anything that had happened. With the noise from the machines, he often found himself moving on instinct but not really paying attention to anything, having taken off mentally to somewhere else until he got out of there in the morning.
Really, it was one of the dangers of such a monotonous job with that kind of drone going on. It was almost hypnotic sometimes.
He shrugged in reply and said, “Yeah, sorry, I was just distracted and stuff like that.”
“Well, at least there was nothing to steal here. But there was this guy outside when I was here last night. He kept watching the house. I don’t want him breaking in, so we’re gonna get new locks first thing, and we’ll have four keys made.”
“Cool. Man, I’m starving. You have breakfast?”
“Yeah. It’s almost noon.”
“Right. Okay, I’m gonna run and get something while we’re waiting on them.”
Mike nodded and said, “Okay, they should be here pretty soon.”
“Cool, I’ll be right back.”
Mike watched him walk down the sidewalk, get in his car, then pull away.
Alone in the house, he did what he’d wanted to do last night, made a circuit of the place and took pictures of the rooms for his before and after page on the website he wanted to build.
He wanted to check the basement. That guy could have been watching the place because he was a squatter and this was his warm place at night. For all Mike--or Brian--knew, he’d been here the whole time Brian was here last night. He said he hadn’t checked the basement.
Mike wanted to catch him trespassing so badly, he almost prayed the guy was here.
Only almost. He was here alone, after all, and confronting the man by surprise on the street was one thing. Who knew what, or who else, he could have laying in wait in the basement.
Maybe he’d just hold off on that until someone else showed up, he thought. Maybe when everyone got here. For now, he busied himself with snapping pictures with his phone.
Keith showed up a few minutes after Brian left, knocked on the door, and Mike said, when he opened it, “You don’t have to knock, you own it, too.”
“Yeah,” Keith said. “I guess. Where’s everybody else?”
“Brian went to get some food. Steven’s not here yet.”
“Cool. Hey, I banged the shit outta Ugly Julie again last night. Man, that girl’s got a body you wouldn’t believe.”
“I can’t believe it. You never let us meet her. She’s probably not even ugly, if she’s real at all.”
“Oh yeah,” Keith assured him, “she’s ugly. From the neck down, though, wow.”
“Anyway,” Mike said, moving into the kitchen, “we need to start by taking out this bathroom, extending the kitchen to open it up, then turn this back bedroom over here into the bathroom.”
“Then we lose a bedroom, though. Is that gonna hurt us later?”
“No,” Mike said. “Brian and I talked about this whe
n he and I were here that first time. See, there’s a basement. A big one, too. Steven and I went through it yesterday. We can make that into the master suite. Put a bathroom and everything down there, we’ve just upped the value of the house by who knows how many thousands.”
“Sweet.”
“This kitchen needs a total gut job, though.”
“Man, I gave Ugly Julie a gut job last night. All the way down her throat. It was coming out her nose. She was all choked out.”
Mike was trying to stay focused but couldn’t help but crack up at that. Like the old line, it’s funny because it’s true.
“And she has no idea you call her Ugly Julie?”
“I don’t call her that to her face,” Keith said. “They’re all Princess in bed.”
“So you don’t call them by the wrong name?”
“That’s right.”
“Anyway,” Mike said, fighting back the chuckles. “Gut job in here. Cabinets, countertops, all of it has to go. I’m thinking granite for the countertop. We can get one at Lowe’s. They’re not cheap, but they’re worth it if you want to add value to the house, and that’s exactly what we’re doing here.”
“I’m just following your lead.”
“You have input too, though. Partners, remember. You have just as much say as any of us, I’m just giving my thoughts upfront. If there’s anything here we all four don’t agree on, then we discuss and vote.”
“Speaking of, where the fuck they at?”
Mike shrugged and went into the living room to watch out the bay windows. Partly to watch. Also he wanted to see the park, see if the guy was over there watching the house.
He wasn’t there.
Probably in the basement still, Mike thought.
As soon as they were all here, he would take them into the basement on the pretense of planning out what to do down there. Then they’d find either empty rooms or the bum.
First, he realized, he needed light down there.
“Hey, I just remembered I forgot to grab some light bulbs. I was here last night and none of them were working. I want to put some in the basement. You can hold the fort for a minute while I run to the Dollar Store?”
“Sure,” Keith said.
Mike said, “I’ll be back in sec,” then was out the door.
Keith had never been in the house before. He’d driven past it once, but never got out to look, and when they signed the papers yesterday, he hadn’t bothered to come inside. He’d trusted Mike knew what he was talking about.
Now that he’d gotten a chance to see it, he thought they had a pretty good deal on their hands. He could see the place had potential. Not that he knew about design and that kind of thing, but Keith had lived alone long enough, had furnished his home, cleaned it, maintained it, he could envision the finished product here.
It was chilly, though. Even with the sun shining outside, the interior of the house felt like a cold winter morning. He shivered and looked around for a thermostat. He might not be a design expert, but he’d dealt enough times with his own furnace to know if this one wasn’t working, they were in for a huge expense.
He located the thermostat and turned it on, listening for the telltale click somewhere in the house that said the heat was kicking on. Chances were, if the place had sat empty for so long, the pilot light just needed to be lit. Then again, he hadn’t thought to ask if the gas had been turned on, he just assumed if the electricity, then the gas, too.
Nothing was happening, so he decided to go into the basement and check the furnace himself. He could at least make sure the guys came back to a warmer house, and that would certainly ease the process they were about to undertake.
He went out to his car and got a flashlight from the glove compartment, along with a lighter left in his car, who knew when by which girl.
Back inside, he found the basement door in the kitchen, flipped the switch inside the door, and saw lights come to life at the bottom of the stairs. He slipped the flashlight into the back pocket of his jeans, then went down to find the furnace.
He located it, and took the cover off, finding, as he’d expected, the pilot light was out. He turned the nozzle for the gas, heard it hissing out, then pressed and held the button as the instructions directed, and in a minute had the pilot light going and heat beginning to blast throughout the house.
He returned the cover and stood up, stretched, then looked around the basement.
It smelled like perfume down here, but he couldn’t place what kind.
“Bedroom and bathroom down here, huh?” he muttered to himself. He looked though all of the rooms, getting a feel for what could be done down here, then went back up to wait on the others.
He found the heat coming from the kitchen vent the warmest and stood over it, warming his hands, when Brian came in the door, carrying a sack of half-eaten food.
“What’s up?” Keith said when he saw Brian poking around the living room.
“Shit!” Brian cried, “you scared the piss out of me. I didn’t know you were here.”
“Sorry. You didn’t see my truck outside?”
“Wasn’t looking for it, just saw Mike was gone. Where’d he go?”
“Dollar store, light bulbs.”
“Steven here yet?”
“Not yet.”
“What are you doing?”
“Warming up,” Keith said. “It’s colder’n a gravedigger’s ass in here.”
Brian nodded and set his crumpled Hardee’s sack on the living room floor.
“You ready to do this?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“The house. It’s gonna be a lot of work.”
“Like I have anything better to do,” Keith said, shrugging. “No, I’m looking forward to it, I been getting bored just banging whores all day.”
“Yeah, rough life,” Brian said.
“It’s gonna be fun, though. I haven’t done a lot with my hands since I left Fett.”
“You ever do anything like this before?”
“Not this big,” Keith said. “I’ve done stuff around my own house, you know. But not a whole house, no. I think we’re hiring a lot of it out, though. Isn’t that what Mike wanted to do?”
“If we can afford it,” Brian said. “I’m sure the labor alone is expensive.”
“Better believe it. We can cut that down, though, and do some ourselves. But when he’s talking taking out the bathroom, moving it over there, all the work he wants to do in the basement…”
“Yeah, we’ll probably get professionals for that.”
“You ain’t kidding.”
“What if we can’t sell it?”
“Don’t know,” Keith said. “I’m just counting on being able to. Everybody’s gotta have a place to live, right?”
Brian nodded and they both looked toward the front of the house when they heard a car door slam outside. Mike came back in a second later, carrying a yellow Dollar General sack full of light bulbs.
“What the fuck, man?” he said.
“What?” Brian asked.
“It’s like twenty degrees colder in here. It’s noon and the sun is shining.”
“Yeah,” Keith said. “I got the furnace going right now.”
He unloaded the bulbs and handed the guys a bundle each.
“Let’s just go ahead and replace every one in the house while we’re thinking about it. I’ll get the basement.”
Brian went to the bedroom and said, “I’ve got these rooms.”
Keith said, “I’ll do out here, then.”
Mike opened the basement door and disappeared into the darkness.
He crept down the stairs, hoping not to alert anyone who was hiding out down here. He listened for the sound of anyone moving or breathing, maybe the bum snoring away in the dark.
At the bottom of the stairs he replaced the first bulb, then went slowly back up the stairs, hoping not to make any noise, and flipped the switch just inside the door.
Below him pale yellow light
flooded the room. If the bum was down there, and if he hadn’t known Mike was here, he would now. Unless he was still passed out. Mike thought this would be a good time to make his presence known so he stomped down the stairs as hard and fast as he could, barreling down to the floor and hoping to startle the guy enough to shake him up.
He got to the bottom and stopped, listening. Nothing.
He went from room to room, easily finding his way this time, in the light, and replaced light bulbs, turning them each on to make sure they worked. Soon he was in the middle of the basement, looking at the three lit branches of the rooms. He detected a faint lemony scent, like someone had been dusting. Except there was nothing to dust here. The walls were plaster, the floor was cement.
Maybe some cleaning product had spilled in the laundry room. He peeked inside, but didn’t see anything.
Also, there was no bum sleeping one off, which, he realized, sort of upset him. He had really been looking forward to having that guy run off.
Now that he was here, with the lights on, he took the opportunity to get his pictures, and he wanted to familiarize himself with these rooms because he’d really let himself get freaked out yesterday, and he’d spent the evening feeling like an idiot.
It was just a basement. Basements are spooky, he’d accept that, but if anything had happened in this house, Lynette would have told them. She was required to by law. So the house must be clean. He wasn’t beyond believing in ghosts; but he didn’t believe this place had any.
He’d just been freaked out. He’d heard a noise, which had probably been outside anyway, and in the dark he’d panicked. He’d thought it came from inside, from behind him somewhere because he was disoriented. But this brought another question, because he was down here now, he had the lights on and could see just fine, including out the windows, which were clean and clear of debris, meaning he could see the sky, the yard, everything within his line of sight from his present location.
So why hadn’t he seen them last night? It wasn’t that dark yet, so even with the lights out, he should have been able to see just fine, at least well enough to tell where he was.
He took his pictures and got his mind off last night, because last night was last night and this was today and the lights were working, so all was fine. He checked the time and was just about to go ask if anyone had heard from Steven when the basement door opened and Keith called down, “Steven’s here.”
The Flip (An Angel Hill novel) Page 10