Particularly that house on the corner. When the new people moved in six months ago, they looked like a regular family. But Eddie knew they weren’t regular at all. They were only playing a family. They’d found him and staked out his house, and Eddie had been careful not to go outside during the day ever since. Once their fake kids went to school, the watchers would show up like clockwork. Men dressed like construction workers carrying toolboxes. Trucks delivering construction supplies in containers with the words Home Depot printed in big letters so that Eddie could read them from across the street. In spite of the banging sounds the men made, Eddie Trisco wasn’t fooled. They were fake sounds made by fake workmen. Eddie knew what was really in all those boxes. He knew what they were up to. It was all about eavesdropping. They were setting up their equipment-state-of-the-art equipment-so that they could keep an eye on him and listen in.
When a satellite dish went up on their roof last week, Eddie began to really worry. The device was pointed just over his house. He’d read a magazine article a few months back about mind reading and the government’s secret experiments with dolphins. The article indicated that there had been some sort of technological breakthrough, and IBM was involved. According to the writer, you could point the device at someone’s head and what they were thinking would appear as text on the FBI’s computer screen. If the subject they were following was Chinese, you could click a button and the words would be translated into English in an instant. If they were dolphins, you were still out of luck because no one could speak dolphin yet. The article said the government was hopeful that someday they’d have a button you could click for dolphin, too. It read like a joke, but Eddie wasn’t sure. He didn’t like jokes. He didn’t like the sound of people laughing.
Still, that dish on the roof changed everything for Eddie because the kitchen was upstairs, and so was his bedroom. For the past week he couldn’t just run up and grab something to eat. He had to prepare himself, write a scenario and play it in his head just in case the watchers were reading his mind on their computer screen. Sometimes he would make lunch thinking the thoughts he guessed a chef would ponder. I slice onions like this. I grate cheese like that. Other times he played the scenario of a mathematician or professional athlete whipping up dinner on the run. Two plus two equals four. Jesus, man, God bless Jesus. I want more money. Look at my fucking box score! When Eddie got tired, he turned on the TV letting his mind wash out in the rinse cycle and just go blank.
Eddie heard a noise and surfaced. She was moving around in the bathroom. Grabbing a stool, he sat down at the large worktable and waited. After a moment, she became quiet again. Not yet, he thought.
He looked at the newspapers spread out before him, the contents of her purse, and her driver’s license. Rosemary Gibb, twenty years old, five-feet-seven, from the art museum district. The picture didn’t do her justice. He’d spent enough time sipping caffe lattes and watching her work out from the window table at Benny’s Cafe Blue to know the snapshot wasn’t even close. He tossed the license aside and took another look at the newspapers he’d picked up last night on his way home from the suburbs and that errand. Her disappearance wasn’t even mentioned. Just the story about that mailman. He’d been a butcher, and now he was a serial killer. The world could be a dark place.
He heard the noise again. The bathroom door cracked open an inch or two, and he could see Rosemary staring at him from the darkness. She was squinting at the light, her body shaking from head to toe.
“I’m thirsty,” she said in a hoarse voice.
“I’ll get you something in a minute,” he said. “Close the door.”
“But my mouth’s dry.”
“Close the door,” he repeated.
She looked at him for a moment, then shut the door. She was in the dark again, and Eddie smiled. It was a good plan because it always worked. Be a hard ass, then come to her rescue by becoming nice. On TV they called it the good cop, bad cop scene. Eddie liked the idea, and realized he had the talent and gift to play both parts.
He walked out of the room, climbing the steps and pausing a moment before he entered the kitchen. He calculated it would take less than a minute to get everything he needed. The curtains were drawn, the view of the corner house concealed. The watchers would never even know he was there. He started counting. Rushing into the room, he grabbed two glasses, a container of orange juice, his mortar and pestle, and the stash of pills he kept hidden in the drawer behind his Sterling silver flatware. Before he even got to twenty-six-Mississippi in his head, he was safely in the basement again. Twenty-six seconds. No harm done at all.
Eddie set the glasses on the table, realizing he’d forgotten a spoon when he hit the drawer for his stash. The idea of going upstairs again didn’t appeal to him. He was tired of counting numbers and too exhausted to play the role of a chef. He’d have to make do, he decided, and use his finger to stir the brew. He twisted off the cap on the spice jar marked Hot Chili Peppers and dropped two pills into the mortar. MDMA. Ecstasy. The magic potion had more than one name, but Eddie liked Love Drug best. Treats for the trainee and her trainer, he thought. They had to want to come out of the bathroom. They had to want to be with him before they could see his genius and fall in love.
Crushing the pills with the pestle, he poured one hit into each glass careful not spill any of the powder. Then he added the orange juice and gave both glasses a good stir. He licked his finger, tapping on the bathroom door and hoping he wouldn’t startle Rosemary. After a moment, the door opened slightly. She still looked frightened, but that would go away soon.
“Something to drink,” he said.
Her eyes were on the glass. “Why are you doing this?”
“It’s orange juice,” he said. “I thought you were thirsty.”
She took the glass and closed the door. Eddie returned to the table, picked up his own glass and gulped it down. It would take the better part of an hour before either one of them began to feel anything. After that, they’d be in love and could let go. Eddie believed in group therapy. He believed in the magic of the Love Drug.
He passed the time sitting in the greenhouse with a Tootsie Pop in his mouth. Although he couldn’t be bothered with keeping plants, he liked the humid air and bright light passing through the milky glass. It was almost like sitting in the backyard without having to take the risk of being seen. At the thirty-minute mark, he began to feel the rush. Glimpses of the first wave.
The doorbell rang.
Eddie wondered if it wasn’t his imagination. When the bell rang a second time, he checked the bathroom door and raced upstairs. He kept his back to the walls, sidestepping his way through the rooms quickly and avoiding the windows until he reached the den. Kneeling down, he scurried across the carpet and peeked through the curtain.
It was Mrs. Yap, his landlady, standing on the front porch wondering why he wasn’t answering the door. He looked at his car in the drive and saw her Mercedes. She rang the bell again, cupping her hands around her eyes and peering through the foyer window.
Eddie had grown tired of her frequent visits. If he answered the door, she’d undoubtedly want to come in. Mrs. Yap may have been older than him, but was within range, and he knew she liked him. She owned several rental properties, some of them large buildings. When she was in the neighborhood, she often stopped by for a cup of coffee. She talked about her business, but spent just as much time asking questions about his. Eddie endured the interrogations because he knew he had to. Still, he hated her curiosity. She always wanted to look at his things and often asked how much they cost. The price of his silver and where he picked up the oriental rugs or bought his antiques.