As he stood there, his feelings changed. The fear faded. Anger took its place. How dare somebody break into his house while he was sleeping there? And then hide in an obvious, stupid place like this? It was outrageous. He didn't have to put up with it.
This is how guys get themselves killed, he thought. Losing their fear and getting mad enough to act.
But he couldn't stand there all night waiting for the shower curtain to open by itself. So he finally took action. In four quick strides he was at the tub, reaching up, flinging aside the curtain, all the time holding the hammer at the ready in case he needed it to defend himself.
The intruder was there, all right, a woman in a scruffy dress, huddled in the far corner of the tub, staring up at him with wide, terrified eyes as she screamed, thus answering the question of who was more frightened. She screamed again, and Don stepped back, letting the hammer drop to his side.
"For Pete's sake, shut up. Nobody's going to hurt you," he said.
Her eyes followed the hammer as he lowered it. Her screaming subsided to a whimper, then to heavy breathing. But she still stared at him in wide-eyed fear. Immediately, male guilt settled in: I made a woman scream in fear of me, I've done something wrong. He tried to stifle the feeling—after all, she was the intruder here. Or was she? From the look of her she was a street person, homeless. Maybe she'd found some way in through a window somewhere, and had been using this house as a safe place to hide out. She wouldn't know that someone was finally buying the place. His voice must have come as more of a shock to her than her creaking footsteps on the attic stairs had been to him. And then he appears, throwing back the curtain, standing there with a hammer upraised in his hand.
"How did you get in here?" Don asked.
She looked at him in puzzlement. "I live here," she finally said.
So he was right. She was a squatter. "Maybe you did, but you don't now," he said. "How did you get past my locks?"
"I was already inside, of course," she said. She looked at him as if he were stupid.
"Then you had to have heard me working down there. Why didn't you just leave out the front while I was working in back? Or while I was cutting down the weeds in the yard? You could have gotten out any time."
She thought about this. "I don't have anywhere else to go."
"Come on, there are homeless shelters, lady. But this isn't one of them."
"I can't go there," she said.
He and his wife had gone with a church group to help serve dinner at a homeless shelter in Greensboro, back when his wife was still pretending to lead a normal life. Everybody at the shelter was on their best behavior—his wife included—but it still looked like a rough crowd to him, so he couldn't argue with this woman, couldn't assure her that she'd fit right in. The more he thought about it, he couldn't remember seeing any women at the shelter. Maybe it was just a shelter for men and there was another place for women. It should be easy to find out.
"I'll help you get there," said Don. "I'll give you a ride."
"No," she said, shaking her head adamantly.
Her stubbornness annoyed him. "What do you think, I'm going to let you stay here or something? How long would that last? I can see it now, I've got the house all finished, I'm showing it to people, I tell them, 'And here you have your own homeless woman who sleeps in the bathtub on the second floor.'"
The young woman laughed, but there was a hysterical edge to it. Don didn't want to be harsh with her, but he couldn't just leave her in the tub, either. "Come on, don't make me call the cops."
"Don't make me go," she said. "Not tonight."
That was the most terrible thing a woman could do to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector. Fortunately, Don understood this—he'd better, after all the books about women and men that he read back when he was trying to salvage his marriage. So he wasn't going to act on his natural impulses, he was going to do the sensible, rational thing. Though she really didn't look dangerous; it wasn't as if he had anything to fear from her. "Do you realize what you're asking?"
"Don't make me go tonight, that's what I'm asking."
That was disingenuous of her, and the way she looked away from him showed that she knew it. She wasn't asking for just one night. How would anything be different in the morning?
"I don't need a roommate," he said.
"You won't even notice I'm here."
"I already did. That's why we're having this conversation."
She stood up warily, still hanging back, virtually sliding up the wall till she was standing. "I used to room here," she said. "Paid rent, the regular thing. In college. But nothing's gone right since then. The place was standing empty, I had nowhere else to go. This is my home. Please."
Her neediness almost hurt, it was so deep and real. But she was asking him to give up his privacy. For a total stranger, for the kind of person who hides out in abandoned houses. Though, come to think of it, wasn't he that kind of person, too? The difference was that he paid for the houses he hid out in. "Look, I'm sorry your life's been hard, but so's mine, and this is my house and I'm going to..."
Going to what? What could he tell her? I'm going to hang out here alone and wallow in self-pity while you go out and live on the street again without a roof over your head because I can't find room in a mansion this size to...
"What is this, anyway? Is every woman in the world determined to stop me from..." And then he realized that he wasn't arguing with her, or even with his ex-wife. He was arguing with himself. And he'd already lost. He couldn't bear the idea of letting someone share a space with him like this, but at the same time he couldn't bear the idea of throwing her out on the street. Certainly not tonight. What was it, two, three A.M.? He was tired, he just wanted to go back to bed.
"Listen, you can stay tonight. OK? One night. Got that? Say it after me. One—"
She took two steps toward him—all the bathtub would allow—and spoke angrily right in his face. "Don't talk to me like that!"
"Like what?"
"Like I was your daughter!"
The words stung him. His daughter, his little girl. She would never have grown up to be someone like this, homeless, derelict, squatting in someone's filthy bathtub. He would have raised her to be strong and free and able to stand on her own two feet.
But maybe she got taken away from her father. Maybe she got taken away and raised by an incompetent, negligent...
No. He would not let her become his daughter in some dark place in his psyche. "If you don't like the way I talk to you, you're free to leave."
"Talk however you like then." The implication, from her words and from her defiant manner, was that she wasn't going, no matter what. And at whatever ungodly hour of the morning this was, Don wasn't going to ruin his own night by trying to throw her out. Either he'd have to use force, which he hated and which could lead to complications, or he'd have to leave the house to go get help from the police, and that would be even more galling, for her to stay and him to leave, however briefly.
"You can stay the rest of the night," Don said. "In the morning, get out. And make sure you don't touch any of my tools. If anything's missing, I'll call the cops and you'll have a new home in jail. Got it?"
His tough talking didn't impress her any more than it did him.
"You want me to say it after you?" she asked.
"This is where I live and work now," he said. "And I live and work alone."
That was the simple truth, and she seemed to realize that this wasn't bluster or anger or fear or waking up in the middle of the night. This was how he felt in his heart. There was no room for anyone in his life, and his house was his life, and that was that. She seemed to realize he meant it, because she said nothing.