Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  Of those cold qualms, and bitter pangs,

  That shortly I am like to find…

  —Robert Southwell, 1561—1595

  For Richard Matheson

  It began on the morning a girl with no hands asked if she could take pictures of the house.

  Eric was in the kitchen, lecturing the appliances until the refrigerator got bored, so he then turned his wrath on the pots and pans but they were having none of it; since he’d now lost two-thirds of his captive audience, he resorted to scolding the dishes but their conspiracy of silence continued.

  “Ingrates!” he shouted at the lot of them.

  No reactions.

  Talking to kitchens was not uncommon behavior for Eric; as co-owner and manager of one of Cedar Hill’s few genuine upscale restaurants/bistros, he’d found it helped channel his daily frustrations (and God knew, he had so many daily frustrations) if he yelled at inanimate objects rather than other people, so it wasn’t unusual to find him in the restaurant’s kitchen after closing time, screaming at the stove or dishwashing machine. He often joked that as long as he directed his anger at things that could not respond, then everyone around him remained safe.

  There is nothing more irritating than recalcitrant cutlery, which he discovered after jerking open the drawer in which the little bastards lay all smug and safe in their proper compartments; arrogant, shiny, disinterested.

  “I could switch to an all-sushi diet,” he said to them. “Chopsticks are very cooperative fellows. Then where would you be?”

  He sensed they knew it was an empty threat.

  This behavior was the result of a breakfast accident; Eric had been too buzzed on his first few drinks of the day (he was more than a little drunk, so it was a good thing Val was out running errands) to pay much attention to what he was doing, and in the process of using one of the large chopping knives to dice tomatoes for the omelet that was to never be accidentally made a nice slice up the side of one of his fingers.

  He jerked back his hand and watched as two large drops of his blood dripped onto the table, his face reflected in both of them.

  In one, he looked just like himself; but the drop that spattered against the side of the saucer reflected a man who might have looked something like him, but—

  —he grabbed some paper towels and started to clean up the mess, decided it could wait, then went into the downstairs bathroom and fixed up his hand: peroxide, two gauze pads, some medical tape, and half a Vicodin tablet from the prescription leftover from his root canal surgery a few weeks back.

  Good thing he had two whole days before having to be back at the restaurant; the Health Department would never allow someone with a bandaged hand to get anywhere near the kitchen, and Eric liked to make sure that his kitchen ran smoothly. Also, it was necessary from time to time to check and make sure his chef hadn’t killed anyone. The staff tended to give better service when they weren’t dead.

  The front doorbell chimed.

  Eric’s initial reaction was not to answer it and hope whoever it was would just go away, but the pragmatic part of him whispered: It might be important.

  Thankful that he’d decided to get dressed before coming downstairs (he usually spent his days off in his bathrobe), Eric tucked in his shirt, patted down his hair, and answered the door.

  The woman who stood before him looked to be in her early twenties. She carried a medium-sized leather shoulder bag. She was dressed in a very business-like blouse and blazer, with a matching skirt and sensible shoes. She wore a plastic name tag on her left breast pocket, but Eric couldn’t read her name because her long, dark hair was swept over her left shoulder.

  She was so beautiful that, for a moment, he couldn’t find his voice.

  She was that stunning...and yet somehow familiar. Eric felt as if he’d seen her somewhere before. Maybe at the restaurant? Was she one of the semi-regulars whose name he hadn’t bothered learning yet? But if that were the case, what was she doing here? How had she gotten his address?

  And that’s when he noticed that she had no hands; instead there were two curved, shiny steel prostheses which Eric immediately thought of as “hooks”.

  “Yes?” he managed to say at last.

  “Eric Barker?” She said in a bright, chiming voice.

  “Yes?” The blood was rushing through his temples with such force that he didn’t hear her name when she said it.

  She offered him a business card. Eric glanced at it, saw the words Modoc Realtors, A Subsidiary of Bright Hand, Inc. and realized that Valerie must have made this appointment without discussing it with him first. They’d been talking for a while about getting a bigger house, had even looked at a couple of places—even finding one that they both fell instantly in love with—but until this moment Eric had no idea that his wife had gone and signed with realtor to sell this place.

  And it pissed him off. Sure, the restaurant kept him busy, but not so busy that he couldn’t be included in making decisions—like, for instance, when to put the house on the market, and with whom.

  He was so surprised that he didn’t realize he’d invited the girl inside until he found himself closing the door and turning toward her.

  “I’m sorry to be early,” she said, “but I’ve got a last-minute showing in about an hour. I hope you don’t mind?”

  “Uh...uh, no, no, of course not.” He slipped her business card into his pocket without bothering to read her name, then asked, “Did my wife make this appointment?”

  “Yes, about a week ago. Now, we realize that you’re not firm in your decision to sell yet, but the agency wanted me to do a quick walk-through and take some pictures so we can give you a good appraisal on probable market value.” She leaned toward him and lowered her voice to a whisper as if he were her co-conspirator. “You’d be surprised how many couples decide to sell after our agency gives them a potential sales figure.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  She turned away from him and walked through the downstairs rooms, finishing up in the kitchen. “Oh, Mr. Barker, this is a wonderful house! There’s so much open space—and in all the right places.” She set her bag on the kitchen table and opened it, removing an old Polaroid Instamatic camera. “Is it all right if I take some quick pictures of the house? If you later decide you are going to sell, then I’ll come back with a much better camera and take some professional-quality photos for our brochure and website.”

  “Have we met?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Eric rubbed his eyes and smiled. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean for that to sound like some kind of middle-aged lecher come-on, but ever since I answered the door I can’t shake the feeling that I know you from somewhere. Have you ever been to my restaurant?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’m a little...new to this area.”

  He continued to stare at her for several moments as she readied the camera.

  I know I recognize you, he thought.

  And then something occurred to him.

  Over the course of his marriage to Valerie, Eric had encountered many beautiful women and had been attracted to many of them—a few had even hinted that, even though he was married, they wouldn’t mind a few quickies in hotel rooms—but he’d never once cheated on Valerie. Not that he didn’t indulge in the occasional fantasy about sex with another women, but that was always as far as it went.

  Looking at this stunning young woman who stood here in his kitchen, Eric realized that she was prime fantasy material for him, yet—

  —and damn if this wasn’t one for the books—

  —he wasn’t attracted to her, not in the way he usually found himself attracted to beautiful women, anyway. No; what he felt toward this woman—who should have had him so hard he could barely stand—was much more tender, beyond sexual attraction. He felt somehow… protective of her, in the way that an older brother was protective of a younger sister who’d grown up into a true beauty.

  Think about something else, he commanded himself.

  I
t was rapidly becoming his new mantra: Think about something else.

  So he looked at her hooks.

  Okay, they weren’t exactly hooks, he could see that now; they didn’t curve but rather stuck straight out, and when she worked them, each prosthesis opened into three separate…rods, he guessed you’d call them, two of them the same length, the middle rod a bit longer.

  Just like the three fingers in the middle of your hand, Eric thought.

  He’d seen people with hook prostheses before, but never anything like these; these were like something from a science fiction movie.

  The girl looked up, saw him staring, so Eric cleared his throat and said, “I used to have a camera almost exactly like that.”

  “Oh?” she replied, doing her best to sound as if she believed he’d been staring at the camera.

  “Yes,” he continued. “I lost it about a year ago, but until then I’d had it for the better part of twenty years. Worked as well on the day I lost it as it did the day I bought it. It was the same color as yours, as well. Those scratches on the side? I had the same kind of scratches in almost the same place on mine.”

  “The old carrying cases weren’t as well-constructed as today,” she replied, inserting, with amazing dexterity, the eight-track tape-sized film cartridge into the bottom of the camera. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve scraped this thing on the side of that old carrying case.”

  Eric grinned. “I remember that I had one of those old label-makers, the kind where you had to punch the words in one letter at a time on those plastic strips? I put my name on the label—I misspelled it, by the way—and stuck it to the bottom of the camera. Don’t know why.”

  “Huh,” said the young woman. Snapping closed the bottom film compartment, she pulled out the piece of blank film that slid out with a loud whirrrr after the new cartridge had been loaded, then held up the camera and said, “All set. Any particular place you’d like me to start?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me.” Why didn’t he just tell her it wasn’t a good time, that he and Valerie needed to discuss it further, thank you for coming, Miss Modoc or whatever in the hell your name is, but things at the restaurant haven’t been great lately, and neither has my marriage, and I’m pissed off and angry most of the time and have no idea why (which may be one of the reasons my wife and have been acting more like housemates than a married couple), and because of all this I’ve got a busy day of moping planned and you’re bringing too much activity into my life.

  He couldn’t bring himself to ask her to leave...but why?

  “I’ll start right here in the kitchen, then take a couple of pictures of the living room, the master bedroom and master bath, then the guest room and office area upstairs.”

  “Ah, so my wife gave you an idea of the layout, then?”

  The young woman stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “I think so. To tell you the truth, I talk to so many people about so many houses, some days it all gets a little blurry. Is there an office upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh.” She seemed both surprised and puzzled. “Lucky guess.”

  Eric sighed. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but there seemed to be something just the least bit forced about her reaction.

  She took four pictures of the kitchen from different vantage points, then placed the photos on the counter so they could develop.

  The young woman excused herself and went into the living room. Eric poured himself another cup of coffee and sat on a stool at the counter, watching as the Polaroids slowly developed.

  He’d always been fascinated by the way these old instant cameras worked; snap a picture and out slides this smelly blank square of white, but as you watched it, like magic this image slowly began to appear. A ghost emerging from the mist.

  He took a sip of his coffee.

  The girl appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Is it all right if I go upstairs and take some pictures?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “Would you care to accompany me, Mr. Barker? I know it must seem strange, letting a stranger walk through your house and—”

  He waved his hand. “No, you seem trustworthy.”

  She gave him a radiant smile. “Why, thank you.” And with that, she bounced up the stairs.

  Eric examined the developing photos. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like they weren’t going to turn out properly.

  The phone rang. He continued looking at the photos for a moment, then turned away and answered the wall-mounted kitchen phone.

  “Hey, partner,” said Carl. “Enjoying your day off?”

  “That depends on why you’re calling.”

  “A man of lesser ego would take that as a personal insult.”

  “I apologize if I’ve dampened your splendid mood, Carl.” He looked back at the photographs. “What’s going on?”

  “I got a call from Marciano’s a few minutes ago about that special order you placed for the imported Merlot.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Seems old man Marciano wants you to sign for it personally. From the sounds of it, he flew over to Italy, picked the grapes, made the wine himself, then had to bribe about a thousand Customs officials to get it into the country.”

  Eric grinned. “He tends to embellish things. I hope you were gracious and thanked him about a dozen times.”

  “Of course. He’s the best wine merchant in the state. Wouldn’t do to piss him off.”

  “The Merlot’s for that wedding rehearsal dinner next Tuesday. Can’t think of the family’s name right now—”

  “Parr.”

  “Right. The stuff was hard to locate and expensive as hell. I promised Marciano that I’d sign for it myself. Is the check ready?”

  “Just needs your John Hancock.”

  Eric looked at the wall clock. “When’s the delivery?”

  “It should be here in about an hour-and-a-half.”

  “I’ll be there. Just make sure—” The rest of the words died in his throat when he looked back down at the now-fully developed photographs.

  “Eric, you still there?”

  “Uh...yeah, sorry. I was distracted by...by...okay, I’ll see you around noon, Carl. I gotta go.”

  “Is everything okay there? You sound a little weird.”

  “Everything’s fine. I’ll see you in a little while.”

  “Word of warning: Chef’s in one of his moods again. No bloodshed, but he might take hostages.”

  “Oh, joy.” Eric hung up without saying good-bye.

  He picked up one of the photographs, then another one, examining each of them until he’d gone through all four of them at least three times.

  He looked up at the kitchen, the back at the photos to make sure this wasn’t some trick of the light.

  It wasn’t.

  The kitchen shown in these photographs was not the same kitchen in which he was currently sitting. This kitchen, his kitchen, was neat and clean and uncluttered, your typical, nice suburban kitchen.

  But the kitchen in the photographs was magnificent.

  It was the same kitchen, as far as the structure of the room itself went; all of the windows and counters were in the same place, as were the appliances, every wall was where it was supposed to be and all the angles were in their proper place, but that’s where the similarities ended.

  The magnificent kitchen in the photographs could have been in the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. Impressive copper pots hung on the walls. The kitchen table had been replaced by a marvelous marble island, above which hung a metal, scaffold-like series of shelves that were attached to the ceiling by bright silver chains. The shelves held all manner of baking utensils and pieces of small equipment—electric dicing machines, an expensive food processor, a vegetable steamer, and several other contraptions that Eric had seen only in a professional kitchen. In the center of the marble island was a large square of polished wood that served as a knife holder.

  He couldn’t take his eyes from the photogr
aphs.

  The shelves were painted a different color. A wall rack held chubby yellow and orange soup mugs. The kitchen table was set over by the window (it was the same kitchen table that was now in the kitchen, he noticed), but instead of the two old wooden chairs, there were three exquisite, hand-polished teak chairs placed around it.

  He put the photos back down on the counter.

  Good Lord.

  Valerie had always wanted a kitchen like that shown in the photos. They had even begun pricing some of the items and once had an architect look the place over to see if some of the additions—like the scaffold-like structure of shelves hanging from the ceiling—would be possible.

  There was no doubt about it; the kitchen in the photographs was the one he and Valerie had always planned on having, some day.

  Some day.

  He picked up one of the photographs and squinted his eyes, trying to get a clear look at the calendar that, in the picture, hung not by the pantry door but where the telephone now resided.

  Climbing off the stool, photograph still in hand, Eric went into the living room to retrieve his reading glasses from the table next to his recliner. Grabbing up the glasses, he noticed that the young woman had left four photos of the living room on the large coffee table in front of the sofa.

  He put on his glasses and held the kitchen photo close to his face, but at a slight angle so that the light coming in through the bay window didn’t cause too much glare.

  He couldn’t be one hundred percent certain—okay, close enough to one hundred to call it, but still not all the way—but he could swear that the calendar, though it displayed the correct month, claimed that the year was 2025.

  “This has got to be some kind of joke,” he whispered under his breath.

  The young woman had used some kind of trick photography. It was a gag camera or something like that.

  “Miss?” he called out.

  When there was no answer, he yanked the glasses from his face and called her again, only this time about five times as loud.

  He wanted answers.

  He grabbed up a couple of the living room photographs.