She took two brisk steps down the hall and heard it again, the growl of a dog, clearly, distinctly, right in front of her.
Low. Menacing.
Her head swung around, she looked quickly into the living room and by her feet, blocked by the bags. There was, of course, nothing there. Radio? Nothing else could be heard in the house.
“Hello?” she called out weakly. There was no answer. Then she moved.
The dog barked, loud, once. Becca dropped the bags of groceries, hearing something break (that would be the salad dressing, goddamn it) and, unable to stop herself, she let out a small scream, in reaction. Her hand flew to her mouth.
The door to the studio flew open. Dan appeared in the hall, hair disheveled, in the same T-shirt he’d had on when she’d left; the same T-shirt he’d slept in.
“What the hell happened?” Anger twisted his feminine features.
“I heard a dog bark. Did you buy a dog, now?” she said angrily back.
“What?”
Becca leaned down and poked through the bag. The dressing bottle was intact. “I heard a dog growl! And bark! And why are you yelling atme?”
He stared unbelievingly at her for a moment. Then shook his head, anger dissolving, but slowly. “Sorry,” he said crisply, “butobviously there’s no dog in here. I didn’t hear you come in.” He ran his hands through his hair and for a moment looked disoriented, like he’d just woken up, or didn’t quite know where he was. He looked around and low-whistled. “I was working. What time is it?”
“There was a dog in the yard the other day. It could have gotten in,” she said, not letting go.
Becca stood up, awkwardly with the two bags, her purse still over her shoulder. Reacting, finally, he rushed forward and took the bags from her. She muttered a sulkythank you . “What’s all this?” He peeked into the bags as he walked them into the kitchen.
Becca looked around the empty hall suspiciously. There was nowhere for anything to hide (unless it was in Dan’s studio). She shook her head. “This house has the strangest noises,” she said. “It’s after six and all that’s veal Parmesan. I thought I’d cook tonight,” she said, dropping her purse on the dining-room table and going into the kitchen.
“Oh, wow. Are we celebrating? Are youRebecca Mason, Girl Director?” He did not begin unpacking the groceries. His face still had the faraway look of earlier.
“Not yet,” she said evasively. He didn’t notice. He didn’t ask about work. She didn’t ask him, either.
Over dinner, two hours later, she mentioned that she was having lunch with Gordon Huff the next day. She kept her eyes on her plate and hoped he didn’t see the blush rise on her cheeks.
“Oh, yeah?” he said disinterestedly. He sipped wine, preoccupied.
“It must be going well,” she said, just a trace of sarcasm escaping.
He nodded, and looked at her, sheepish. “I think I’m going to get back at it after supper. You mind?”
She shook her head. “I’m going to move some things intomy office, I think,” she said. Transforming a bedroom into an office. There was just something about that room that seemed to mark it as an obvious bedroom and nothing else. She wondered if she should try the other room. Even with a desk in it, she had a feeling the yellow room was always going to look like a bedroom.
With the image of a bed in her mind, Becca imagined lying across one in a hotel room, listening to Gordon Huff brush his teeth in the bathroom. Waiting. She wondered if he went tanning after his workout, or if his skin would be pale from too much time spent indoors.
“Great.” And as an afterthought, he said, “Think you’ll be needing it soon?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said sharply.
He raised an eyebrow. “An office. You’re having lunch with the guy. I just thought—Christ.Never mind.”
She recovered quickly. “It’s just lunch,” she said, to him, and to herself.
It’s justlunch.
Becca noticed the mark on the wall when she was moving around the little antique desk her mother had given them one Christmas, trying to find just the right place for it.
It was a long mark on the interior wall of the room. She thought at first that it was a shadow, but there was nothing in the room that would cast such a shadow. It was too long, and too large. All that was in the room was a couple of boxes, the desk and the matching chair. It couldn’t be a shadow, anyway, because she could see her own shadow move over it, and there was nothing behind her.
She bent low for a closer look. The overhead light was dim, only a sixty-watt bulb under the frosted glass—which, although cleaned on Saturday, still did not let as much light through as she would have liked. She would have to get a desk lamp, if she expected to work in here. She was going to put the overstuffed chair from the bedroom in the corner, and move one of the small tables from the living room to go beside it, and get a floor lamp, for reading. That would leave a huge, empty space in the overlarge bedroom, but when she was director, she would buy something elegant for it, and bigger, like a chaise longue or a small love seat.
The mark ran from about six inches from the wall that faced the hall to about six inches from the opposite wall, the one with the south window. It was oblong, and solid, with a lip at both ends, the lip taller at the end by the window. She frowned and ran her fingers along it. She had washed the walls herself and hadn’t noticed anything. She hoped it wasn’t something under the paint. Wall stains were notoriously difficult to get out if they had bled through paint.
She stood and stepped back for a larger perspective, still frowning. Her own shadow cut the mark in half, and the two were indistinguishable, making her think again that it was a shadow of something. Behind her were two brown boxes about a foot apart. They were barely tall enough to reach her knee. The mark on the wall was higher than that. Past her knee, up to her thigh.
Getting closer again, she bent low to it, eye level. The outline of her head stuck up through the middle of it, and no edge that separated the mark on the wall from her shadow could be seen. She licked her finger and rubbed. Nothing changed. Her finger was clean.
She stood up and backed away, surveying the whole thing again. It was coming through the wall. It was a mark under the yellow paint, and it had bled through. She would have to have the whole thing painted. Glancing up and around at the room, the decision to paint lifted her spirits. It was not undue hardship. She hated the yellow. Rose. She would paint it a nice rose.
The mark reminded her of something, but she couldn’t think what. After a minute, she let it go, and decided to put the desk almost at the corner between the two windows. She would deal with the wall later.
They lay in bed that night, not touching. Becca had fallen into sleep only with difficulty, her mind raging over the next day. Her clothes (the green suit, to be worn with her white DKNY matching undies, no pantyhose) were hanging off the door of their armoire. Shoes. Mr. Huff was at least two inches taller than her; she was safe in higher heels.
She fell asleep to her cocktail party. She had on her pink suit. Everyone else was in dark colors, subdued tones. She was explaining to someone aboutit’s only lunch and realized her dress was actually red. She wasn’t wearing the pink suit at all. Gordon Huff approached her and cupped her breast.I enjoyed our lunch, he said.
Dan did not have trouble falling asleep the first time. By the time he gave up for the night and crawled into bed, it was after one and Becca was lightly snoring, the sheet tangled around her body as though she was restless. He untangled her with the greatest care, so as not to wake her. Then he fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.
When he woke, stumbling out of sleep much the way people fall into it, it was after three. Dan opened his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow. Saw the lighted numbers on the clock, moved to the table on Becca’s side of the bed. His brain registered it, distantly:after three . He groaned and flopped back down onto the pillow and closed his eyes. A second later they popped back open. He flexed t
he fingers of his right hand. They were stiff. He hadn’t done so much work in a day for years. It was a good feeling. He felt productive, alive, thick with possibilities and meaning; he smiled into the dark,truth, justice and the Masonway.
Outside the house, on the street, a car pulled up and stopped. The door opened and slammed shut, echoing off the pavement, making it sound very close. Dan stiffened.
Déjà vu.
He listened, slowing his breathing down, making it shallow. The front door opened.
Someone’s in the house!He did not panic. The door closed quietly, but not silently, the way a burglar would try to close a door. Just normal. He sat up in bed, carefully. The sheet tugged where it was tucked under Becca and he relented to it, easing it out, careful not to wake her.
Sound is funny on concrete, street is lined with trees, sound bounces.It was warm out, maybe the first really warm night after spring, people had their windows open. This occurred to him in a surface sort of way, the lines preaching to him in his head, while he listened intently to the sounds downstairs, under the pumping of his heart.Some drunk. Mistaken house. Could be anything.
Heels clicked briefly down the hall, not mincing, TV-tiptoe burglar steps, but just steps. He listened, fascinated, as they went from the door to the end of the hall.Tick tick tick tick.
Sound carries this time of year.Dan felt every nerve ending light up, go on alert.
The door to the studio opened and closed. He heard the smallsnick of the tongue into the latch. A rational part of him screamed after that,Someone is in the house! His mouth felt dry. He couldn’t move. His heartboom-boomed in his chest. He could smell himself, his underarms. Fear sweat.Sound carries. Some drunk mistook the house. Kids, fooling around.
Muffled, tinny, low, up the stairs drifted the sound of music. A woman’s voice thinned through ancient recording, sad and simple at the same time, filtered up through floor, walls. He didn’t know the song, didn’t think he’d ever heard it in his lifetime. But the words came to him.
You’ll feel blue, you’ll feel bad
You’ve lost the sweetest thing you ever haaaad—
The music faded out. He listened intently. The silence of the house fell down around him seductively. A minute passed. Then several. In listening, his mind wandered: the possibilities ofsomeone downstairs! became the possibilities of the utter hush—a palpable thing, a thing that surrounded him like a blanket. The sounds came from outside then, the burr of distant traffic, the bark of a dog far up the street, the electrical hum, always present. Ten minutes passed. His eyes glanced over at the clock. It was nearly three-thirty by then.
Nothing from downstairs. The press of silence was all he could hear.
Sleep came back, his muscles lost their tension, as though he was unable to fend off what he couldn’t coax over before. Now, sleep wanted him.
Dream. It was a dream.He’d been dreaming(sitting up?). His conscious mind told him it was a dream. He hadn’t really been awake at all. There were lots of names for it. Sleep paralysis. Sleep psychosis. Daydream.
Just falling down the rabbit hole, his first real dream of the night was about to take place on the roof of an abandoned building in the heart of the city and when it started, he thought he knewoh yes absolutely that if he went down the stairs the light in his studio would be on. The door would not be closed, but open a crack, just enough to invite you to push it open(come in).
The door would open with a yawn.
Come in.
Sleep took him.
Four
Whatever fascination had kept Dan in his studio for all hours of the day and night, he managed to avoid it for most of the next morning.
Becca left early for the office, not having said much at all. She told him that she’d called the painters and they would be in on Friday.
“What painters?” he said.
“For the bed—my office upstairs. I told you last night.” Had she? She didn’t meet his glance, but it seemed only that she was lost in thought rather than avoiding him. The rest of breakfast—just coffee for both of them—was quiet: they seemed to have other things on their minds. Becca had said she might be late coming home, not to wait on her for dinner. He said okay. She kissed him lightly on the cheek without making eye contact and he smiled a good-bye. It had the formal feel of mornings after a fight. Except, as far as he remembered, there had been no fight.
There had just been doors opening and closing and footsteps and things that gohum in the night. (Not hum, exactly. But something aboutleaving orgoing away orleaving me lonely.)
Dream.
He drank a cup of coffee in the living room and called Max on the portable phone. Max wasn’t in, and he left a message. He called his mother and told her about the new house; he gave her the new address. He thought about calling the employment agency that Becca had mentioned, but didn’t. She hadn’t brought it up; he wouldn’t either.
Around ten he wanted a toke. His pipe was in the studio. He went upstairs and had a shower.
Under the pelting water, he found himself listening for something.
* * *
The mattress for the Murphy bed was delivered just after his shower.
Dan directed two disinterested delivery men down the hall ahead of him.
“Door’s shut,” the guy in front said. He was large, and red-faced, the kind of guy who looked pissed off most of the time. It would probably kill him. That and the belly that Doritos built, hanging over his belt.
“Just give it a push open,” Dan said. He peered around the large man’s shoulders as he shoved the door open. Without hesitation—wait!—the guy in front dragged the mattress on its side through the door and into the middle of the room, forcing the skinny guy in back to go along with it. The light popped on with a snap of tungsten.
(Come in.)
“Pretty small space,” the little guy said, his hand on the switch. The big guy breathed heavily with irritation.
“Where’s this going?”
Dan peeked into the room. It was(of course ) empty. He gestured to the wall.
“In there,” he said. Two sets of eyes looked surprised at the blank wall of the studio while Dan found the depression near the ceiling and pulled the frame down. The clank of the feet on the floor made the big guy snort. “I haven’t seen one of these in years,” he said, and the two of them tossed the mattress on top. When they settled it in the center of the bed, the big man sent it back up into the wall. It closed with a solid, woodythunk .
The three of them stood, staring at the wall for a moment, where the bed had disappeared. It fitted snugly, as it had before the mattress had been added. The room was thick with inspired awe.
Then the fat guy turned his head slightly, as though listening, hearing something. He got closer to the wall, a serious expression on his face.
“Gee-zus!”he said, alarmed. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” Dan said, eyes widening.
He raised a hand for quiet and pressed his ear to the false wall. Dan and the other fellow leaned in toward it, listening also. Then the big guy dragged his hands down the wall. “Help me! Help me!” he said, his voice raised in falsetto. Then he turned to them and said, with exaggerated concern, “Somebody wants out.”
Very funny.
They laughed, none harder than the big guy, who insisted on pulling the bed out again, and then sending it back up, as though it were a toy.
Max called at one, excited. He wanted to know how far Dan had gotten on the first scene. “Are you sitting down, buddy?”
Dan had grabbed his pipe off the table in the studio and was sitting on the back step, having a toke. He told Max hewas sitting and then drew deeply on the pipe.
“I got a meeting withApex on Friday. Fuck! Friday afternoon. You too, right? They’ll want to see characters and at least a scene of story with an outline and a bible. This could be it—”
“Who’s Apex?” Dan said, exhaling at the same time.
“Who’s Apex! They’r
e a publisher, boyo! A small one,” he conceded. “They publishBrat Boy andTunnel of Time. Not bad company.” He waited for Dan to comment.
“How small?” Dan asked. “They got any money?”
“Fuck off, dickbrain! You’re sucking the life outta this.They are a publisher who wants to see our book. So shut the fuck up, draw some pretty pictures and phone me when you’re done. Like tonight.”
“Tonight!Fuck you,” he said, alarmed.
“I’m a married man,” Max said, with mock primness. “I’m bangin’ ya. But Friday bring something. It doesn’t have to be anything more than the story pages roughed for the first scene. Atmospheric, original and…I dunno, haunting or some kind of shit. Meeting’s at three at Jester’s on Oak. I can’t believe it! Apex! I am sopumped! Phone me—” His voice rose and fell with a few moreApex, shit! and then he hung up.
Dan clicked the phone off with his thumb and took another hit off the pipe. He sat for a moment more, taking in the sun shining on the tangled back garden, which looked less appealing, somehow, than it had.
Then the idea of a publisher and something to offer Becca(gee, a couple of months out of work and I’m a working artist and how was yourday, you director yet?) and he smiled, not without a little cruelty, and then felt bad enough and pumped enough to pull his ass off the back stoop and put himself into the studio to work. Stoned, he hardly paused at the door. But he thought, however briefly,Bring it on, if you’re gonna—
All was quiet (empty) in there. But, just to be sure, Dan put Aerosmith on the stereo, and cranked it. Loud.
Becca was back at her desk by three. It had been a long lunch.
She tried to get back to work but the two glasses of wine, combined with her nervousness, had made her quite light-headed. She had no idea if it had gone well or not.
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