"There's a lot of guys around who are better for you than I am."
"Well, that's good to know," said Cindy. "Maybe I'll get lucky and meet one of those." She smiled. She even laughed. "In a pig's eye!" she said. Then she got into her car, gave him one last little wave, and drove away.
He watched her out of sight. As he did, he could feel a kind of tingling in his hands, in his legs. Not like a tickle or an itch or a trembling, not even the prickly feeling when your leg's gone to sleep and it's waking up again. This was deeper, right to the bone, just a hunger to do something. It was maybe his rage at the owner of the house and his pet lawyer. Or rage at Bagatti. Or rage at the death of his daughter and all the things that had gone wrong and the people who had screwed up. He needed to kill somebody, to tear them apart, only there wasn't anybody to kill.
So he charged back into the house, picked up his skillsaw and his two longest extension cords, and ran a powerline up to the room he was working on. Then he went back down and got a sledgehammer and brought it up, too. Time for this added-in wall to go. He set to work with the wrecking bar, peeling back the drywall on both sides, hacking it away, exposing the studs and the lousy wiring job that had been done to hook up the fridge and the stove. Should've been a fire years ago.
With the studs exposed, it was time for the skillsaw. He plugged it in, turned it on, and it began to roar. Then he bit it into one of the studs at about chest height, and the roar became a whine, the sound of wood being killed.
Down in the parlor, Sylvie was sitting on his cot when the skillsaw started up. She often sat there, leaping up and hiding in the other room when she heard him coming, so he wouldn't find her there, wouldn't accuse her of snooping. Because she wasn't a snoop. She just liked to be here. It was as if some of his warmth, some of his life clung to the cot after he slept there and lingered all day, fading slowly until he returned and replenished it with another night of his dark, hot sleep. He was a strange sleeper, this Don Lark. Not that she'd seen many men sleep in her life, but Sylvie Delaney had never felt such intensity in anybody who was sleeping. She'd stand there sometimes at night and watch him from the doorway, careful not to make any noise and waken him.
It was so confusing since he came to the house, because sometimes she could walk around as soundlessly as ever, and other times it seemed like every move she made echoed through the house. But watching him sleep, she was silent then. She could hear how he sort of panted and gasped in his sleep. Bad dreams. She knew about bad dreams. She had had a few of those herself. Lived in one for a long time, come to think of it. But she couldn't sleep like this man. It was like he attacked sleep, a frontal assault, took it by the throat and forced it to yield him the rest he needed. Rest, but no peace.
So there she was soaking up his warmth like some people soaked up a suntan, when that roaring began from upstairs, and then a second later a high-pitched whine like a scream, like the house was screaming, and she could feel the house around her suddenly flinch. It didn't understand. How could it? It was like surgery without anesthetic. All that tearing down Don had been doing, ripping out cabinets, extra studs, lath and plaster, the house was writhing with the pain of it like having its teeth pulled, and now this, whatever he was doing, this new sound, the house was in pain.
Don's toolbox slid across the floor, then stopped abruptly; his favorite hammer toppled out of it onto the floor.
"Stop it," she said.
The hammer trembled and rattled and danced. She knew what the house was telling her to do. After all, she'd done it before, hadn't she?
"He's making everything right again, don't you see? You've just got to trust him."
The hammer bounced upward, then clattered back to the floor. Behind her the workbench slid slowly, then rapidly toward her, stopping right at the edge of the cot. "Cut it out!" she demanded. "I'll see what he's doing, I'll make sure he isn't doing anything bad."
The hammer leapt into her hand. She gripped it, then deliberately dropped it back into the toolbox. "And stay there," she said. Then she ran for the stairs.
Don had cut through most of the studs when he saw Sylvie burst into the room, looking as agitated as if the house were on fire. He took his finger off the trigger of the skillsaw. The blade howled and moaned on down to nothing.
"What are you doing?" Sylvie demanded.
Was he supposed to clear his day's assignments with her? "Working," he said.
"It feels like you're tearing the house down," she said.
He wanted to blow her off, but she looked really upset. "Look," he said, "this isn't even part of the house. The real walls are timber-framed with lath and plaster. This is a modern wall, it was just added in by some landlord trying to squeeze a few more bucks out of the house by splitting this room in two. See? It just butts up against the ceiling. A real wall would be joined to the joists above, but this one is just tucked in under the plaster of the ceiling."
"Oh," she said.
"So I'm putting the house back the way it ought to be."
"I've never seen anyone do this kind of thing before," she said. "Please can't I watch?"
"Not if you're going to go on some save-the-two-by-fours kick."
"I'll be quiet. I just want to see."
But he didn't want her to see. He was using this destruction as therapy. With her watching, he'd have to act professional and cool. But what could he say? Sure, he could tell her, Get out, I work alone. But they were already past that. He'd given her a key. And it's not like this job took any concentration. "Watch if you want," he said.
He turned on the skillsaw again and polished off all but the two end studs. With them there was the danger of biting too deep and damaging the structural timber behind them. When the studs were reduced to a row of stalactites dangling from the ceiling and a row of stalagmites rising up from the floor, Don set down the skillsaw and picked up the sledgehammer. Positioning himself like a golfer, standing between studs, he took aim and swung, striking a stud low, near the floor. The nails gave way and the stud flew, clattering against the kitchen wall. He struck again, again, again, ducking and dodging the dangling studs as he went. To get the last few, though, he had to face the other way. "You got to move now," he said, "or one of these suckers is going to hit you."
"I'm quick," she said. "I can dodge."
"Nobody's that quick and just humor me, OK?" He felt the anger building back up inside him.
Maybe she felt it too, because she ducked back into the doorway. That was enough for a margin of safety. He knocked out the last two stalagmites. Then he started in on the dangling studs, swinging high like a lousy Little Leaguer who hasn't learned not to try for obvious over-the-head balls. Each stud clattered across the floor until they were all gone. Now what remained were two long strips of wood screwed to the floor and spiked to the ceiling, with bent nails sticking out of them where the two-by-fours had been attached. Don pried them away from the house with his wrecking bar, then peeled the two end studs away from the walls, and the room was one big space again.
Don stood there, panting a little, sweating. He looked over at Sylvie. She smiled at him and said, "The superhero saves the room."
"Just call me Hammer Man," he said.
She walked into the room and turned around, arms wide as if reaching for the walls. "It's so big."
"This is the room that Bellamy built." Don looked around at the timbers, denuded of lath and plaster. "Of course he meant it to look a little more finished, but the size is right."
"So from now on," she said, "you'll be putting things back in this room instead of tearing it apart."