Housebreaking

by Dan Pope

  As he sipped, a waiter appeared next to him and ordered a draft beer. He stood watching the basketball game. After a few quick gulps, he hiccuped loudly. A moment later he hiccuped again, as if making a joke.

  Benjamin turned to him.

  “Sorry,” the waiter said. “I can’t get rid of them.”

  He was a young guy with curly blond hair. He reminded Benjamin of one of those guys back in college who could kick a Hacky Sack for five minutes without letting it fall. “How long have you had them?”

  “Three days.”

  “You’ve had the hiccups for three days?”

  The kid nodded. “I haven’t slept more than a couple hours the whole time.”

  “Have you tried chewing a lemon?”

  “I’ve tried everything you can think of. I even went to the hospital. The doctor yanked on my tongue and had me drink three seltzers—” A hiccup ripped through his body, causing him to wince. His voice was hoarse and dry. “Didn’t help.”

  “That’s all they did for you?”

  “Yep.”

  Benjamin noticed the bags under his eyes but still couldn’t help smiling when the kid burped and hiccuped at the same time. “That sounds awful.”

  “Everyone thinks it’s funny. It’s not. Feels like my chest is gonna bust open.” The kid finished his beer and placed the glass on the bar. “Take it easy,” he said, heading for the door.

  A few minutes later the bartender passed Benjamin his bill. “We’re closing soon,” he said.

  Benjamin finished his drink and left before they turned up the lights. Outside, Wintonbury Center was silent, the traffic lights flashing yellow, the streets deserted. He stood on the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette. He noticed the waiter, sitting at the bus stop near his car. The kid hiccuped, the loudest yet, like an otter’s mating call.

  “Good one,” said Benjamin.

  “Thanks, I guess. I just tried holding my breath for the hundredth time.”

  “How about getting high? You try that yet?”

  The kid smiled. “It’s funny you should mention that. I’ve been trying to get an angle on some weed ever since this started.”

  Benjamin dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. “I can help you out in that department.”

  “Seriously?”

  Benjamin unlocked his car and signaled the kid to join him. The kid opened the passenger door and stuck his head inside. “You’re not a narc, are you?”

  Benjamin laughed. “I’m a fucking car salesman.”

  The kid climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door behind him.

  Benjamin said, “Open the glove compartment. Look inside that yellow envelope.”

  The waiter reached in and produced the joint. “Dude.”

  “For medicinal purposes only.”

  “Seriously? You got a prescription?”

  “Nah. I get it from a mechanic in my shop. Fire it up.” Benjamin started the motor and turned on the heater. He fiddled with the radio, looking for music. The kid produced a Zippo and lit the joint, inhaling with a skilled ease, slow and deep.

  “Yo,” he said, passing it over. He hiccuped an enormous cloud of smoke.

  They both laughed. Benjamin brought the joint to his lips and sucked in. Just what the doctor ordered.

  They sat with the headlights off, passing the joint. A Motown song came on the radio. Benjamin felt high almost immediately, listening to Marvin Gaye—the old Marvin, before he got divorced and bitter, before he went celibate, before he beat his old man and shot him to death. Or did he have that mixed up? Did Marvin shoot his old man? Or had the old man shot Marvin?

  He passed the joint, and the kid dragged on it, and hiccuped.

  “That didn’t work,” said Benjamin.

  “But still,” said the kid. “A good try.”

  Benjamin took a final puff and stubbed the roach in the ashtray. “Good luck with those hiccups.”

  “Thanks, man,” the kid said, getting out. “You gotta be the coolest car salesman ever.”

  “Yeah, let me know when you’re in the market for a Cadillac.”

  What now? The thought of returning to the house brought on a rush of anxiety. He should tell Audrey about her daughter’s visit, he decided. If he didn’t, it meant he was guilty somehow. It meant he was hiding something. The girl might come back, break in, steal things, make accusations. He couldn’t let that happen. Let Audrey deal with her crazy daughter. If he warned Audrey now, she could confront her daughter before she told her father. Contain the situation, as they said in the movies.

  He reached for his cell phone—and realized he’d left it behind in his haste to get out of the house. What the heck, he figured, he’d go old school. He fished a few quarters out of the cup holder and walked to the pay phone on the corner.

  He dialed her number and the line rang and rang. He realized it was late—nearly midnight. She must be asleep. Her husband must be asleep next to her. He expected voice mail to kick in, but at last she answered and mumbled a groggy “Hello?”

  “Audrey?”

  “Benjamin? Is that you?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to call so late.”

  “What time is it? Why are you—”

  Before he could respond, he heard a clatter—and the line went dead. Had she hung up on him on purpose? Or a lost connection? He waited for a minute, giving her time to get out of bed, go into another room. He didn’t want to cause any trouble for her. But this was important. He couldn’t let it wait.

  He slid two more quarters in the slot and dialed again. This time, she answered almost instantly, sounding much more awake.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me again.”

  “Benjamin?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m calling about your daughter. It’s kind of an emergency.”

  “An emergency?”

  “Maybe that’s not the right word.”

  “Should I get her? She’s packing for school. She’s driving back first thing tomorrow morning.”

  What did she mean? Didn’t the girl go to high school in town, a mile down the road?

  He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how to tell you this—”

  “What’s going on, Benjamin? You sound strange.”

  Something wasn’t right. Her voice wasn’t hers. In his stoned condition it took him a while to figure it out.

  “Benjamin? What’s wrong? What’s the emergency?”

  He had called the wrong number. By habit, he’d dialed his wife. He found himself laughing at his predicament. “There’s no emergency. I just wanted to remind Sarah to check the oil. She always forgets.”

  Judy was silent for a while. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “Well, not really. I don’t know.”

  “Are you having an anxiety attack?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Listen to me. There’s nothing to worry about. Sarah’s fine. David is too. He called and told me what you said to him. He said you creeped him out.”

  He sighed. “I tell him I love him and it creeps him out. That’s priceless.”

  “Not like that,” she said gently. “It was your tone. He said he never heard your voice like that before. He was worried.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine. What’s that noise? Is that the TV?”

  “I’m at a pay phone in Wintonbury Center.”

  “A pay phone? Do those things still exist?”

  “It’s one of the last of its kind. Like a snow leopard.” He took a deep breath. “I called because I was thinking how terrible it would be to lose him. Or Sarah. Or you.”

  She paused for a few moments. “I think you should come over,” she said.

&
nbsp; Her voice, so familiar. He felt some of the paranoia recede. He could picture her, sitting up in bed, wearing her blue sweatpants and his old Red Sox T-shirt. “Aren’t you sleepy?”

  “Not at all. I had a lousy night.”

  “Trouble with your divorce lawyer?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Things went downhill that fast?”

  “Crazy, isn’t it? This dating thing. I don’t know how people do it.” She sighed. The Judy sigh. It had been her main manner of communication during the past few, difficult years. Once she started, nothing could change her mood. She would just get more and more irritated. But for once, he wasn’t the cause of her discontent.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “God, no. Thanks for asking. But no. I’d rather not waste any more breath on him.”

  “Do you really want me—”

  He stopped himself. He was stoned. She hated when he got stoned, or when he came home drunk and reeking of cigarettes. A bad time to make any sort of overture. At the intersection, the light changed. A police car cruised by slowly, the cop studying him.

  “What?” said Judy.

  “Nothing.”

  “No,” she insisted. “Tell me.”

  There was something different in her voice, a tone he hadn’t heard in a long time. A softness. The impartiality gone. The voice of his old friend, his partner. She had been on his side all those years, waiting for him.

  “Something’s bothering you,” she said. “What is it?”

  He thought of Audrey Martin. What could he say to her anyway? What could he tell her about her daughter that she didn’t already know?

  He glanced at his watch. Late, but not too late. “Are you sure it’s a good idea for me to come over?”

  “What about you?” she asked. “What about your love life?”

  “I have no love life.”

  “What about Aubrey?”

  He emitted a dry laugh, almost against his will. “There is no Aubrey. I made the whole thing up.”

  “I knew it!” she screeched. “I knew you were lying.”

  “You were right.”

  “Why would you lie?”

  “To make you jealous.” Here we go again, he thought. Lie upon lie, rising like a layer cake.

  “Well, it worked. Aubrey. That name drove me nuts. Leave it to you to come up with a name like that. I tried to find her on Google. How many Aubreys could there be in Wintonbury?”

  “None,” he said.

  “I even downloaded the song. Which came out in 1972, by the way.”

  “Oops.”

  “You’re a terrible liar. You just make it up as you go along.”

  A motorcycle went by, racing through its gears, drowning out all other sounds. “Wait a minute,” he said. He lit up a cigarette and took a drag. The motorcycle finally faded into the distance.

  He said, “I was pissed off about your divorce lawyer. I couldn’t stop picturing him humping you with his hairy back.”

  “Your back is hairy too.”

  “Not like his. I pictured him like a baboon, thrusting and grinning.”

  “Gross. You see? This is what you do to me. You turn me into a crazy person. You get my head spinning, trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not, until I just about lose my mind.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Isn’t it easier to just tell me the truth?”

  “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “Don’t do it anymore.”

  “What?”

  “Lie to me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “No,” she insisted. “Promise me. I want you to think about it. I want you to understand the implications.”

  He pondered this for a moment. Could he simply tell Judy the truth? About everything? Always?

  “I’m high,” he blurted.

  “I know. I knew that immediately. Your voice gets heavy.”

  What about Audrey Martin? Should he come clean about that too? If he and Judy were to get back together—and he suddenly found himself hoping they might—then somewhere down the line, today, tomorrow, a year from now, he would slip and it would come out, and Judy would know that he had lied to her two seconds after promising never to lie to her again. Here goes, he thought. “You were right the first time. It was her.”

  “Right about what?”

  “Audrey Martin. The woman I dated.”

  “Audrey Martin!” she screeched. “Of course! How could I forget that name? Audrey Martin had the finest ass in high school. You said that same fucking thing for years. I can’t believe you tracked her down as soon as you left me.”

  “I didn’t leave. You kicked me out.”

  “You cheated on me. I still have that Holiday Inn receipt to remind me, in case I ever considered taking you back.”

  “Judy, I didn’t cheat. I got drunk across the street and checked in to sober up.”

  “You’re lying again.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  He could hear Judy pausing on the other end of the line, weighing his words, the tone of his voice. Then she sighed, like she’d made a decision. “Well, that is a surprise.”

  “You always think the worst of me.”

  “With good reason. And I’m supposed to believe that she called you. This Audrey Martin with the fine ass.”

  “I didn’t have to call her. She moved onto Leonard’s street. She and her husband bought the farmhouse on the corner.”

  “That old firetrap?”

  “Yeah. And I . . . I kidnapped her dog.”

  “You did what?”

  “Kidnapped her dog so I could meet her.”

  Judy snorted. “You broke into her house and took her dog? Are you insane?”

  “No, the thing got out by itself. But I saw it and lured it onto my lawn with a turkey leg. And then she came to retrieve the dog.”

  “And one thing led to another.”

  “Yes.”

  She paused, then laughed. “Thank you. For telling the truth. Isn’t that easier?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “It is.”

  “Are you still seeing her?”

  “No. That’s over.” As he said it, he realized it was true.

  “Did you have sex with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times?”

  He thought back over the past month—

  “Just answer the question,” she said.

  “I’m trying to remember.”

  “How could you not remember?”

  “There were multiple occasions.”

  “Now you sound like my divorce lawyer.”

  “How many times did you have sex with him?”

  “Don’t change the subject. Tell me. Five times?”

  “More than that.”

  “Ten?”

  “Closer to twenty, I’d say.”

  “Jesus, Benjamin. Twenty times in a month or so? You’re such a pig.”

  “You asked!”

  “Was it good?”

  “It was good, yes. But different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I felt—I don’t know—distanced. Like a spectator.”

  “That means you didn’t care about her. You were just fucking her for the fun of it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Don’t sound so proud of it. But maybe you finally got her out of your system, Audrey with the fine ass, and all the others too.”

  “Anyway, it’s over. It sort of ended tonight, in fact. I haven’t talked to her yet, but . . .” He hesitated. How much of this truth thing could he do? Judy had been his adviser all those years, she and Leonard. She had always known what to do whenever he got himself into a jam. “Her daughter—she has a sevente
en-year-old daughter—”

  “You didn’t—”

  “No. Of course not. Shut up and listen, will you? The daughter showed up at my front door tonight with Myra’s sapphire and confessed to robbing me.”

  “She was the one?”

  “She says she did it, but I don’t believe her.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Benjamin. Come over. I want to hear this.”

  “Are you sure it’s not too late?”

  “It’s not too late. I’ll put on the porch light.”

  He hung up. He checked his watch:

  11:58 P.M.

  Monday

  November 26, 2007

  Part Two

  THE MARTIN-MURRAYS

  Audrey Martin

  The third Saturday of October 2007

  IT BEGAN on a Saturday, she recalled later, the day the electrician showed up at eight in the morning.

  Audrey answered the door in her pajamas and slippers, barely out of bed. “Is this a bad time?” he said. He was alone, unannounced, and it seemed, hungover. He had a ponytail, a dented green toolbox, and he reeked of cigarettes. Audrey nearly said, Of course it’s a bad time. But she needed him. Contractors were like blackmailers; they showed up when they pleased and they demanded however much they wanted. He was the last of the long line of workmen they’d hired that autumn to fix up the farmhouse, and she wanted to be done with them.

  She let him in and showed him to the fuse box in the basement. The rest of that morning, she worked in the kitchen, trying to stay out of the man’s way. The space was cramped, with only two short rows of cabinets. She unpacked box after box, trying to find a place for everything. A challenge, squeezing their possessions into this smaller house. What to do with all this crap? She’d been tossing out stuff for several weeks, ever since they started the move to Wintonbury, but it looked like she would have to do more. More plastic for the landfills, to float across the ocean, to fill the bellies of sharks. How had they gathered so many things in the first place?

  Simplify, the self-help books said.

  There was pleasure in divesting; they were right about that. But what would be left after she lugged the boxes of unneeded kitchenware to Goodwill, after she’d tossed away the moth-eaten and unworn clothes, after she’d dragged the old furniture and unused exercise equipment to the curb? And when to stop once you started? Why not give it all away, like the old men in India who one day opened the front door and simply walked down the road to nowhere, leaving it all behind—their homes, everything they owned—with only the clothes on their backs?