by Alex Smith
The morning’s fear was dissolving into a mild discomfort. The mark on the door then the stranger in his office had been weird, yes, but Julia was right, it wasn’t that weird. Weird would have been the man stark naked and dancing a rhumba on his desk.
The mark was probably just some kids being dicks. The street was full of families, teenagers. It was probably a dare.
Go on, do it, or are you chicken?
He’d done some stupid stuff when he was a kid too, nothing like that but plenty of knock-and-runs. Same thing, just a different generation, right?
And the man, the way he’d known about Julia and Connor? Blake had photos on his desk, and on the backs of those photos were lines of text—“Me and Julia in Hyde Park” or something like that. “Connor’s first cot.” It didn’t take a genius to work out that while he’d been driving across town trying to get to work the guy had opened them up and taken a look. It was strange behaviour, sure, but totally explainable.
A truck barrelled past, sluicing his windscreen with water. He slowed until he could see again. When he got back to work tomorrow he’d ring psych, see if the guy checked in there. From the way he’d smelled he had to have been an addict, or maybe homeless. He’d just found himself in the wrong room, that was all.
And you called security on him, you dick.
“Hey,” he told his brain. “Better safe than sorry.”
Julia was right. He was a drama queen. He had a bad habit of blowing everything out of proportion. The thing with the neighbours had become an obsession—pizza boxes in the wheelie bins, bags of leaves, things that definitely hadn’t belonged to him or Julia. It wasn’t even like they needed all the space in their bin. If the neighbours had asked then he happily would have let them put anything in it, bar radioactive waste or a dead body. It was that they’d flatly denied doing it.
He’d taken to spying on them, even in the middle of the night—stakeouts in the kitchen, a logbook of activity. Yeah, that was him in a nutshell. He worried and stressed and concealed and did everything possible except confronting the situation.
He’d kept it to himself, too, refusing to confide in Julia even when she knew something was up. She’d found him one night hiding behind the garage at two in the morning and called time on the whole thing, telling him that if he didn’t sort himself out then she’d be out the door with a suitcase in one hand and the baby in the other.
She’d also tossed a bag of dirty nappies onto the neighbour’s lawn, which had promptly ended the whole episode.
Blake blamed the cancer. He’d dealt with it by himself, refusing to tell anyone, right up until the point it was almost too late. Because better to handle it alone, right? Better not to involve anyone else because then it became real. Then you had to do something about it. And even now nothing had changed. It was tough thinking that your universe was ending. It tended to make you a pessimist. Which was ridiculous, really, because he’d survived it. How many people got to say that? He’d left the battlefield with a bit less hair and one less bollock but with everything else still intact. If anything, he should have been a raging, grinning, praise-the-lord-my-life-is-awesome optimist. He just couldn’t seem to do it, not even ten years later.
Connor whined in the back seat, talking to somebody in his dreams. It was the noise he made before he started to stir, and they’d pretty much looped the city, so Blake took the next exit and thumped back through traffic, heading towards home. It didn’t take as long as he’d predicted, despite the rain, which was just as well because Connor’s kettle squeal was on full boil before they’d even reached their street. He parked on the driveway, scrabbling out and pulling the bag of noise from his seat. The smell hit him like an uppercut.
“Jesus Christ, Conn,” he said, gagging.
He trotted past the garage to the house, eyeing that unpleasant scar in the wood. He’d half-hoped he’d imagined the whole thing. The door stuck again, and he almost dropped the baby while trying to barge it open. Then Doof charged him like a rugby player and there was almost a three-vehicle pile-up in the hallway. Connor was screeching, pointing at the doorbell.
“Not now, mate,” Blake said, trying to shoo the dog back into the kitchen. He could have sworn he’d shut the stairgate when he’d left that morning, but he’d been a little rattled and he was forgetful at the best of times. Doof jumped and clawed and barked his head off, so excited that he flipped over on the smooth linoleum, legs paddling the air.
Blake popped Connor into his highchair, the kid whimpering gently as he prodded the empty tray. Then he placed both hands on the counter and closed his eyes to centre himself.
“Okay, cool, one thing at a time.”
Something tickled his ear, almost a breath, warm enough to make him snap his head around.
Just a breeze, carried in through the window above the sink. But that was weird too, right? Because no matter how rattled he’d been earlier there was no way he would have left the house without checking the windows. Julia would have shut them too, because she hated the cold and she did everything she could to keep the place sealed.
He walked around the island, pulling it shut, the room feeling instantly warmer. It wasn’t a big window, certainly not big enough for anyone to climb through. So why did he look over his shoulder, scanning the too-quiet kitchen? Why was the silence in the house suddenly like a weight on his shoulders? He reached up again and flicked the lock, just to be sure, then he walked back to Connor.
“Come on, little dude,” he said, doing his best to smile. “Let’s get you changed.”
And he did, but not before checking every room in the house. Twice.
Yeah, he was a drama queen all right.
Six
“Did you mean it?”
Blake lounged on the sofa, Julia next to him with her legs resting on his. She’d cracked open a bottle of Pinot Grigio and was halfway through her second glass. Blake was officially teetotal—doctor’s orders from a decade ago—but the rule was it didn’t count if somebody else had bought it, or opened the bottle, or poured it, so his glass was half empty too. The TV was on, some Irish comedy about kids in high school, but neither of them were really watching it. This was quiet time, no need to talk, no need to do anything other than sit here and enjoy the fact that somebody was sitting beside you.
“Huh?” Blake said. “Mean what?”
“About having another kid.”
Julia smiled, taking a sip then running her finger around the edge of the glass. Blake just laughed and shook his head.
“Julia, I spent a good hour today trying to change one nappy.”
“An hour?”
“Yeah,” he swigged from the glass, the wine so dry it made his cheeks pucker. “It was like Chernobyl in there. It had gone up his back and reached his ankles.”
Julia laughed hard enough to dribble wine. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“And then the bastard dog got hold of it.” Doof looked up from the floor, licking his chops and sighing loudly. “I put it down on the coffee table for a second.”
“The coffee table? Jesus Blake, that’s gross.”
“Just for a second, it was either let go of that or the baby. Anyway, Doof came out of nowhere, like a streak of lightning, and he had it before I could stop him. And he ran everywhere with it. Into the kitchen, up the stairs, on the bed. I kid you not, it looked like somebody had… I don’t know, like somebody had a chocolate mousse-throwing contest. And god, the smell. Jules, I thought the gates of hell had opened in the living room.”
She was almost choking now, one hand on her stomach, wine slopping out of her glass onto the sofa. Blake reached out and took it from her until she got herself under control.
“That’s what I’ve been doing all afternoon. Mopping up shit. Peeling bits of dried baby crap from the carpet, from our bedding.”
“Please tell me you put the duvet in the wash.”
“Yeah. Well no, I rubbed it down, it’s clean.”
“You disgust me,” she said
, reclaiming her glass. “So that’s a no, then?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “No, I’d jump at the chance. Seriously, I’d love to.”
He met her gaze, held it, and they smiled at each other. It was true, nothing would make him happier than another baby. Back when they’d told him he had testicular cancer he’d assumed that was it, that his chances of having a family had been blown out of the water by a handful of bastard mutating cells. But he’d been one of the lucky ones, and his remaining ball had wholeheartedly taken up the challenge of producing healthy sperm. Connor had been conceived a mere three weeks after Julia had come off the pill. The kid had been meant to be.
“What about you?”
Julia stared at her glass for a while, and he could almost see her thoughts in those big, green eyes.
“In theory, yeah,” she said after a moment. He didn’t press, just let her find the words. “I mean, it would be cool for the grotbag to have somebody to hang around with.”
“Other than his awesomely cool dad,” Blake said.
“That’s exactly the reason he needs a brother or sister. You know, somebody to grow up with, somebody who isn’t his dreadfully uncool father.”
“Hey!”
“But I’d need to work it around the hospital, B,” she said, turning to the TV, looking at it without really watching it. “They’re still mad at me for having one child, and I couldn’t go on maternity again so soon. It’s what’s paying for this house.”
“Um, aren’t you forgetting my salary?” he said, only slightly put out by her comment. “I definitely earn enough to pay for one room. A small one.”
“The cupboard under the stairs.”
That was probably about right. Blake chewed his words before spitting them out.
“We don’t want to leave it too long, though, right?” he said.
“Not too long,” she echoed. She turned back to him, taking another sip of wine and licking her lips. It was all he could do to hold himself back, to stop from leaping on her right here and now. And he would have done, if he hadn’t been so tired. That was the other thing, of course. Sleep. They still hadn’t managed to get Connor to spend a full night in his cot. Could he go through all that again?
Yeah, of course he could.
“So, in theory,” he said, and they nodded together. “That’s okay, theory is good with me.”
She reached out with her spare hand and grabbed his. Her fingers were cold from where they’d been resting on the glass, and he held them tight.
“It has to be a girl this time, though,” she said.
“Sure, no problem, I’ll make sure I tell my boys to put on their pink hats.”
“Which isn’t sexist at all.”
“Nope.” He smiled at her and she sent one right back, and the sudden, explosive rush of love he felt for her was like jumping into cool water, enough to take his breath away, to make the room spin. “Anyway, we should probably get practising, you know, if we’re going to do this.”
“Okay, cool, you go practice upstairs, I’ll finish the wine.”
“You’re a cruel, cruel woman, Julia Barton,” he said.
She started to reply, but Doof cut her off with one of his low, rumbling barks. The dog’s head was up, his ears back, his eyes big and dark. He was looking towards the living room door and the hall beyond. A deep, throbbing growl began to pulse from his throat and he almost choked on it, foamy drool pattering onto the carpet.
“What’s up, boy?” Blake said, his stomach suddenly a black hole. The dog did this every now and again, usually when he heard another dog barking down the street, or somebody walking up the path, sometimes even when Connor made noises in his sleep. For an old fart, the dog’s hearing was exceptional.
But after everything that had happened today, Blake didn’t like it. He half expected to see the young man from his office run into the room, knives in his hands, his eyes blazing like headlamps.
“Hey,” Blake said. Doof didn’t look round, just kept growling at the door. The hall light was on, nothing out there worth getting spooked over.
“He’s just a drama queen, like you,” Julia said, reaching down and tickling the dog’s head. He looked up, licked his chops, then he struggled to his feet and waddled out of the room.
“I’ll go make sure he doesn’t need a poo,” Blake said, waiting for Julia to curl her legs off his before pushing himself up. The room wobbled and he rested a hand on the arm of the sofa until everything settled.
“Lightweight,” Julia said.
“Getting old.”
He followed Doof through the hall and into the kitchen, flicking on the light and watching the dog as he sniffed the linoleum. He barked again, but there was no anger in it. Blake shushed him and the dog performed a skittering tap dance, not sure what to do with himself. Then he trotted to his empty food bowl and began licking it, pushing it across the floor with his pork-chop tongue.
“You’ll take the paint off it,” Blake muttered. He flicked off the light, paused for a moment, unsure if his brain was playing tricks on him, then flicked it back on.
No tricks.
Somebody had opened the kitchen window again.
Blake walked to it, seeing nothing in the glass but his reflection. But the night was out there, big and dark, and the longer he stared at himself the more it seemed to creep over his pale skin, polluting it like oil in water, until his face wasn’t his anymore. He blinked, hard, shook his head, saw himself staring back. He might have been on stage again, that perverse feeling of being watched, of somebody out there in the invisible dark staring and staring and smiling too. All he wanted to do was go to bed and put this day behind him, but he held his ground a moment more, something deep inside his gut telling him not to back down, not to show fear.
Then he turned and walked away as slowly as he was able, unable to shake the feeling that his reflection was watching him go.
FRIDAY
Seven
Blake’s dreams were of crazy men, and him trying to fight them with a chair that kept falling to pieces in his hands, but he woke to a hand on his chest and warm lips on his cheek.
He groaned as Julia kissed him, doing his best to ignore the last few fragments of nightmare. He could feel the sweat that soaked his pyjamas—only partly to do with the fact that Julia always kept the heating on overnight—and his gut churned like a washing machine in full spin. It took him a second to realise that his head was throbbing too, the wine demons still partying inside his skull.
But Julia was kissing him, so it was all good. Her hand moved up to his neck, another pressing on his stomach. Pressing hard. Her kisses were hot and sticky, a little too passionate for this time of the morning. A third hand pressed into his armpit, pinching the skin, and he opened his eyes to see Doof. The mutt was standing on him, that big, pink tongue squirming between his lips, saltier than pork crackling.
“Jesus no!” Blake grunted, twisting hard until the dog rolled awkwardly onto the bed. He scrubbed his lips with the back of his hand, gagging at the meaty stench of dog food. He heard laughter and looked to see Julia standing in the door, already washed and dressed. Connor was in her arms, the kid’s chubby fingers playing with her damp hair.
Blake swung his legs off the bed and glowered at his wife.
“Seriously?”
“You needed waking up,” Julia said. “Doof needed some loving. Two birds.”
The dog was trying to burrow into the duvet, his fat arse poking out, his short tail whipping the quilt like he was trying to beat the dust out of it.
“His tongue was in my mouth,” he said. “Like, actually inside it.”
“No need to rub it in,” she said. “We both know he fancies you more. And it looked like you were enjoying it.”
She grinned as she walked away. Blake slapped the dog’s wagging butt to shoo him off the bed, then followed her down the stairs. It was just after half seven, a weak, sickly light dribbling through the rain-drenched windows. It was still showering
outside, although not as heavily as it had been yesterday. The kitchen lights were on, the smell of toast heavy and welcome in the air.
Blake checked to make sure the window was shut, a wave of relief halfway over him before he said, “That was closed when you came down this morning, right?”
“The window? Yeah, sure, why?”
“No reason,” he said, taking a seat on one of the barstools at the counter. Doof traipsed in after him, collapsing into a heap beneath his feet.
“Worried Bilbo’s gonna sneak in and steal your treasure?”
“Hoping he was going to sneak in and steal you,” he said. “Take you to Mount Doom. You’d fit in well there, you’re so mean.”
“Oh boo hoo,” she said, giving him a peck on the forehead as she passed Connor to him. “You have dog drool all over your face, B. It’s not a fetching look.”
Blake wiped his face on Connor’s onesie, the kid giggling. Julia shot him a look but she didn’t comment, just popped the toaster and yelped as she pulled out a bagel.
“Literally the hottest thing in the universe,” she said, spreading butter. “You okay to take Conn?”
“I’m not sure, babe,” he said. “I’ve got a busy day today. Surgery in the morning, a tumour in the lung, somebody’s life is depending on it, I… Oh wait, that’s you. Yeah, sure, I’ll drop him off.”
“No surgery today,” she said through a full mouth. “Just rounds. But thank you.”
“And remember what we talked about,” he said. “Babies. Practice. Soon.”
“You were drunk, Blake. I don’t remember any such conversation. But judging from this morning I think you and Doof might have made plans.”
“Ha ha,” he said, shifting Connor from one knee to the other so the kid couldn’t grab the ceramic coasters on the counter. “But seriously.”
Julia walked to him and placed a finger on his lips. It tasted of butter, and he kissed it.
“I’ll see you for lunch,” she said. “Be good.”
“I don’t know how to be anything else.”