Side Life

by Steve Toutonghi

  “Are you drunk?” Laughlin demanded from behind them.

  “Only a few,” the man said.

  “What are you doing?” Laughlin, who was larger than Vin and built like a boxer, was leaning on Vin’s shoulder, trying to step in front of him.

  “Someone drove my car here,” said the man, “and someone’s driving me here.”

  “Why? How would someone drive you?” asked Laughlin, his voice reasonable and engaged as he finally pushed between Vin and Kim and onto the concrete pad in front of the door, forcing the man to take another step backward.

  Laughlin’s mildly positioned question seemed to disarm the man. His brows came together and he suddenly looked confused. He mumbled something, a long phrase Vin couldn’t hear.

  “Well, you need help,” Laughlin said in response.

  “Yes,” said the man. “Please.”

  “Come down here,” Laughlin said gently, and led the man to the concrete stairs beyond the path. “You can sit on the wall here. Can we call somebody?”

  The man walked down a few stairs and then sat on the stone wall.

  “Who should I call?” asked Laughlin, pulling his phone from the front of his jeans.

  “Don’t call anyone I know,” the man said loudly, his anger turning to fear.

  Kim stepped outside and Vin followed. The other four guests had filled the small foyer. Vin, seeing them, turned and went back into the entry. He took Trina out of Hanna’s arms and said quietly to the others, “We should give them space.”

  He carried Trina up the stairs and into the dining room and called 911 while she sat on his forearm and leaned against his chest, her arms around his neck. Soon she’d be too big for him to carry like this.

  John Grassler had gone outside, closer to where Kim and Laughlin were talking with the man. The rest watched quietly from the foyer.

  Vin told the 911 operator that a man who appeared to be wearing a gun had pounded on their door and sounded aggressive and altered. Trina was starting to squirm so Vin carried her to the sofa and sat down as he talked to the operator.

  “Why is everyone over there?” Trina asked. “Who is that?”

  “We don’t know him,” Vin said after he finished the call. “He’s just a man who came to our house.”

  “Why?”

  “Loop, you know that sometimes there’s no answer to that question.”

  A few minutes later, Kim came up the stairs. “Everyone’s okay up here?” she asked, looking at Vin, the question clearly intended as a check on Trina. Vin nodded.

  “Laugh’s calling the police. The guy’s walking away.”

  “I called 911,” Vin said.

  John came up to the dining area. “He’s gone,” he said. “You really don’t know him?”

  “No idea,” said Vin.

  “Well, I’m going back out to check on our magnificent grill.” As John passed through the dining room toward the deck, Vin and Kim watched each other, Vin’s arms around Trina.

  “That man talked about a war cabinet,” Kim said quietly.

  “Yeah,” said Vin. “What did he want?”

  “No one knows,” John said, just before he stepped back out on the deck. “He was a confused man.”

  “He kept saying he wanted to talk with you, Vin.” Kim’s face was flat, emotionless. “He said, ‘I need to talk to that man who was here.’”

  “Kimmy, everything okay?” Laughlin yelled up from the door.

  “Yes, thanks, Laugh,” Kim called back.

  “He’s gone,” Laughlin said a moment later, as he walked into the room. “That was a bit of excitement.”

  “What did he want? What was that he mumbled at you, at the door?” Vin asked.

  Laughlin laughed, “I think he said, ‘I’m a buried man, clawing at the dark.’”

  “That’s creepy,” Brant Spence said.

  “What did he want?” Vin asked again.

  “If anything, maybe just to talk. He said there was a ship in this house that he needed to get on, and that you were the captain. But then he started whistling and he staggered away.”

  WHEN THE POLICE ARRIVED, KIM and Laughlin had a brief talk with them. The strange visitor had given the evening a shot of adrenaline and energized conversation. After dinner, Vin spent about twenty minutes putting Trina to bed. Vin and Kim could both use their phones to listen in or watch her room, and their baby monitor would call them automatically if the volume in her room rose above a preset level. A couple of hours later, Laughlin was the last of their friends to leave, smiling as they thanked him for handling “the gunfighter” so diplomatically.

  As they shut the door behind Laughlin, Vin said, half-jokingly, “And why so Kimmy? Is plain Kim not a good enough name for him to use?”

  “Alright,” Kim said, losing all trace of the jokiness with which she had seen off Laughlin, “that guy was one of them.”

  “One of who? What do you mean?” Vin was caught slightly off guard.

  “He said someone was in his head, telling him to come here.” Kim was almost accusing him.

  “Okay, but there could be other reasons for that.” Vin was remembering how difficult it was to influence people when he was in the crèche.

  Kim said, “No,” and when Vin hesitated, she said, “Remember, Mona said she could make people do things. You said you made that guy ignore the woman he had a crush on.”

  “I don’t think it’s the same. Bringing him all the way here—it doesn’t work like that.” Vin wanted to talk about Laughlin and didn’t want Kim to use the crèche to avoid it. “That guy just seemed like a crazy person. Didn’t he?”

  “To show up at our door? Our door?”

  “Well, we’re near the base of the staircase to Marshall Park. There are all kinds of people up there. To be honest, I’m surprised more people don’t randomly come to our door. Aren’t you?”

  “Random people with voices in their heads who come to our house looking for you? And a ship to ride?”

  “I don’t know—he wasn’t necessarily looking for me. He saw me and decided, maybe for no reason, that I was the solution to his problems.” Vin had committed to his interpretation.

  But Kim saw his doubts. “Is there something I should know?”

  “What?” he said, “What?”

  “You know what I mean. Is there anything that I should know?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What are you doing? What are you doing here all day? Are you going down there?”

  “No. I work.”

  “No? You’re not trying to go down there when it’s not on the schedule?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t try to go into that thing, today for example? You haven’t gone in, or gone somewhere? You don’t know that man?”

  “No. No. No,” Vin said, keeping his voice calm though he felt the fumes of his anger igniting. And then, suddenly, he was shouting. “Of course not. That was a crazy person. And now you’re accusing me of something?”

  Both their phones began ringing. The baby monitor was alerting them to noise from Trina’s room, but they didn’t need the monitor. They could hear her yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!”

  HE RAN TO TRINA’S ROOM and Kim watched him go. After he calmed her, he and Trina talked for a while. She was only reacting to the excitement of the evening, and then to their fight. As Trina lay back down, he sat at the end of her bed and rested a hand on the orange sheet above one of her ankles.

  The room was dark and smelled of fabric softener and Trina’s own warm scent. The stuffed elephant Trina slept beside was a bulky shadow above her large head. Trina said that Hanna liked pictures of the stars, and then they talked about the things Trina liked to draw, and at some point Kim appeared at the threshold of the room, looking wrung out. She didn’t say anything, just watched them. After a bit more conversation, Vin and Trina agreed that Trina would go back to sleep and her dark eyes quickly closed. He kissed her and rose to leave. Kim had already gone.<
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  Kim and Vin spent time wordlessly cleaning and then Kim went upstairs as he finished in the kitchen. When he reached the master bedroom, Kim was sitting cross-legged on their bed in underwear and a thin tank top, elbows on her knees.

  “This place isn’t right for us,” she said as he walked past her into their bathroom.

  Green tile on the floor, yellow and white stonework on the walls. A double soaking tub and a separate double shower. Just the taxes on this house could almost pay the mortgage on a home in a less expensive part of the country. He’d tried to puzzle out why Nerdean didn’t keep the house if she expected to return. The best explanation he had come up with was that she figured the “house sitter”—whoever it ended up being—might not stay under other circumstances. He might want to get on with his own life, maybe take a job in another city. Which might mean a new house sitter, and another person who might learn about the crèche. But that still didn’t make a lot of sense. Unless you also allowed for petulance, a knock on Joaquin for trying to undermine the contract.

  He squeezed natural toothpaste onto the end of Kim’s electric brush and the brand he’d been using since childhood onto his own and ran both brushes under hot water and started brushing as he carried Kim’s to her. They went back to the bathroom and stood together in front of the mirror until they each dropped foamy spit into the tap water.

  Kim said thickly, “There’s a half-dead woman down there. This house is haunted. I can’t keep working as hard as I do and come home to worry about this too. I don’t feel healthy here. I’m going to dark places. Nothing feels right.”

  “Maybe you could work less?”

  “My work is one place I know I’m doing things right.”

  “If you were to cut your hours . . .”

  “We need to leave.”

  He walked into the bedroom and started unbuttoning his shirt. The deceptive cluster of electronics was long gone. A single corner of the bedroom hosted an office large enough for both of them, with expensive desks that had special cutouts and weighted springs to easily adjust their angles and heights for sitting or standing. But Kim rarely worked at home, and he’d gotten used to working downstairs where he could keep track of Trina.

  “I don’t want to fight anymore,” he said.

  Kim leaned against the bathroom door. “I have nightmares. I see her floating down there, under our house. How do we know that she can’t choose whose head she goes into? What if she can get inside one of us? What if she can change our thoughts or what we want?”

  “Do you feel like someone’s doing that?”

  When Kim didn’t answer, he said, “She hasn’t done anything. Mona is just a sad, lost person. She’s more lost—she’s possibly the most lost person who ever lived. She’s not trying to hurt anyone and she doesn’t care about us. I mean, she cares whether we keep the power on, but that’s it. And why can’t we do that? Keep the power on?”

  “The most lost person who ever lived?” Kim said. “That’s what you think she is? We shouldn’t have anything to do with anything that rare. That’s not who we are.”

  “We don’t get to choose that kind of thing,” he said. “Life chooses that.”

  “Life? What? Are you answering me with a cliché? Are you saying that life has chosen for us to live on top of that horror movie science experiment?”

  Vin plugged his phone into its charger on his side of the bed. “I’m sorry you’re scared. That guy was a real crazy, and I agree, it did sound like he might somehow have been referring to it. I’m sorry about how we—how I—kind of lost it. Look, it’s Friday. Let’s let it go for the weekend and think about it. If you still want to move on Monday, how about we talk about it then?”

  “I’m going out of town Monday, to Chicago, remember?”

  “Well, just let me know what you think before you go.”

  Kim sighed. “Yeah, I guess.” She lay down and turned away from him. “I’m sorry too. I don’t feel stable right now, though. This place can’t be good for Trina. I just want—I know I want to leave. It’s time.” He peeled back the sheet on his side and lay on his back and then pulled the sheet across his legs.

  Kim, with her back to him, said, “You’re going to restock the fridge down there, and check on the systems tomorrow, right? You still do that just once a week, right?”

  “Yeah.” Vin turned out the lamp on his side of the bed and the room went dark.

  “I want to come with you this time. I want to see it again,” she said.

  Kim had only been to Nerdean’s office maybe three times in the last two years. “Sure. Okay,” he said. “It’ll be nice to have company. So, are you ready for the trip? Are you going to jump while you’re in Chicago?”

  “There’s a site. It’s going to be hectic but I may have time. If I do, I’ll text you.”

  He said, “Let’s both just clear our heads, and try to think of some way to improve things.”

  THE NEXT DAY, THEY MADE an effort to be more appreciative of each other. They decided to do extra housecleaning after breakfast and attacked it energetically, but a short disagreement over their plans for Sunday set them on edge. That afternoon, with Trina at a playdate, they went together to Nerdean’s office. Mona hadn’t left any sign that she’d been active. The robe might have moved from the back of one chair to another, but Vin wasn’t sure, and the robe was dry.

  While Vin was inspecting the apartment, he called Kim Kimmy, and that immediately revived the disagreement over moving. Kim fortified her earlier complaints by insisting the house was too big for only three of them.

  The tension bled into Sunday, a subdued mutual resentment simmering through temperate, late-summer hours. On Monday morning they worked on logistics for the rest of the week, but with a baiting antagonism that left them both relieved when Kim finally set off for the airport.

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, AFTER TRINA had gone to daycare, Vin received the email he’d been waiting for from the server operating system’s support group. They weren’t going to work on his problem. He called his manager to say he had an urgent errand and needed to take the afternoon off. Then he went outside and around the house to the apartment door.

  He unlocked the second deadbolt and the lock on the knob, but the door wouldn’t budge. The top deadbolt was locked again. He knew it had been unlocked on Saturday, when he and Kim had been down there. That meant Mona had come out of the crèche again.

  He decided that he wanted to talk with her. If they were approaching a decision on whether to move, this was a chance to let her know. He didn’t want to barge in, so he tried the walkie-talkie but she didn’t pick up. He used the app on his phone to unlock the top deadbolt.

  He called Mona’s name as he opened the door, but she didn’t answer. The living room light was on. He hadn’t noticed it through the curtains. In the large bedroom, he stepped on the floor switch and after the slight hesitation the chute opened and light spilled up from below. Even though the chute was narrow he had a moment of vertigo when he looked down. He saw and heard nothing below. He called Mona’s name again.

  He was feeling even more uneasy than he usually did in the apartment. He walked into rooms and checked closets, turning on all the lights, but the apartment was empty. He went back to the chute and leaned over it, calling down one more time before he put his feet on the rungs.

  As he descended, lowering one foot after the next, he called out a few times, “Anyone? Hello?” It was a mild relief to finally hear the whisper of the air conditioner. When he stepped off the ladder he saw that two of the crèches were activated. The first and the third.

  He stood listening until he could hear his own heartbeat. He took a hesitant step toward the first crèche, took a breath, shook his arms. He walked up to it and put his hand on the transparent pane. The mist cleared immediately to reveal Mona floating in the blue fluid. He watched her for a few moments. Maybe she’d lost a little weight. Her skin had an odd, loose quality but he thought he might be imagining that. Maybe it was just b
ecause he was seeing her through the blue liquid, but he hadn’t noticed it before.

  He lifted his hand. The pane misted over and he walked to the third crèche. He didn’t want to touch the transparent pane. He stood beside it, staring.

  When, at last, he stretched out his hand and touched the pane and the mist cleared, he saw Kim floating within, naked, her body buoyed in the blue fluid, her beautiful black hair swept back from her face.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Bonfire

  He carried a chair into the empty basement bedroom, tipped the hatch to close it, and sat down near the door. He waited in the dark and watched the floor.

  After a while, the warm closeness of the room overcame him and he drowsed, filling the darkness with dreamy, elongated shapes. He imagined that any action was a possibility—that was what the crèche meant—there was no limit on behavior, absolutely everything was happening all of the time and he was simply a line of awareness trickling through the densely packed matrix of probability, his life an infinitesimal silvery trace, all but invisible within the morbid certainty of endless variation.

  At the noise of carpet slipping against carpet he came alert. The square of floor, lit from below, lifted and then turned on one end, lighting the room. Kim’s hand appeared first, flat on the carpet, the edge of the white robe sliding back from her wrist, and then her head rose out of the light.

  She saw him and her mouth opened—an O of surprise. Her face hardened and she stared at him with open hostility as she climbed the rest of the way out of the floor.

  “You lied to me. You said you didn’t come down here more than once a week,” she said.

  “You remember that.”

  Her mouth tightened and she walked calmly past him. He rose and followed her into the small bedroom where she had flicked on the light and was pulling her black travel bag out from under the bed. He hadn’t looked under the bed.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened in there?” he asked, as she began laying her clothes out on the bed.