She shrugged. “I’ll throw in a few gratis sessions of bad-habit elimination or pain alleviation. We could get you over that thing with the doors.”
“Another time. Thank you for your kind offer. Have you seen the plywood?”
“No rush. During the season, I get some research done. I think the word ‘you’ has been linked with more devastating sentences than any other in the English language. But it’s possible that ‘love’ is worse. I’m feeling it out. It requires some reading.” She tapped a stack of anthologies and novels.
David saw a phone book in the stack. “Fine, that’s fine,” he said. “I’ve been unknowingly funding research. Do patients come in here? I’ve never seen anyone.”
“I’m still getting the word out. It takes a while to build a common base. Meanwhile, I expect my findings to be published by the end of the year. That should help draw people in, I think.”
“Plywood?”
She pointed toward a stack leaned up against a far wall. “Mind the wasps,” she said.
The wood looked sodden from across the room, but the boards were dry and fused together on closer inspection. He pried the top one from the stack. He coughed and hefted the dusty board up, spreading his arms, leaning back against the surprising weight.
“I’ll be going now,” he said, maneuvering sideways, arms spread against the wood grain, the board pressed against his body. It smelled like turpentine and rot. “Good luck with your research. Thank you for being in my garage. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I’ll be here,” she said. The door closed between them. David saw a piece of paper wedged under the door. He leaned the plywood panel against the building and dislodged the page. It had been wrapped around wasp corpses, which fell to the ground, separated from and followed by their fluttering wings. The paper read:
IN THAT HALF SECOND WHEN YOU REACHED FOR THE DOOR, I CAME UP BESIDE YOU, DRILLED A HOLE IN YOUR HEEL, AND ATTACHED A TUBE THROUGH WHICH I AM CURRENTLY COLLECTING YOUR BONE MARROW. IT IS GOING INTO A BAG. I AM GOING TO SELL IT.
David twisted around to examine his heel. He looked back toward the house and into the ash trees behind the yard. He balled up the note and kept it in his fist as he walked toward the house.
The house was quiet. David added the balled-up note to the collection in the silverware drawer. He went through the house, touching each piece of exposed metal he could find. He touched doorknobs, window sashes, picture frames, electronic equipment peripherals, door hinges, wall-plate screws, light fixtures, and vents. He put his palms on the water heater. He touched faucet handles, smoke detector battery connect points, individual razor blades, numbers on clock faces, towel racks, and zipper pulls. He imagined all the metal in the house melted in a cauldron. The mixed alloys would create a speckled bubble, like a stone he once found on the beach and kept in his jacket pocket for years, touching it gently with the tips of his fingers, until one day he put on his jacket and reached for the stone and it was gone.
44
THERE WAS A RACCOON in the entry hall. It startled David because it was roughly the size of a healthy baby and was plundering the glass-walled base of the grandfather clock. David thought for a moment that it was a baby, there in the shadows. It was bigger than a breadbox. Its fur was slick. Its paws fumbled and grasped. The raccoon knew it could get into the grandfather clock. It was not bothered that David was standing very close, though it did stop and turn toward the light when he opened the door again. David wondered idly at the percentage chance that it was rabid. It seemed likely. Everything seemed likely. He closed the door and walked toward the kitchen with his back against the wall, giving the raccoon a wide berth should it try to leap for his face. Once the door was closed, the animal turned again to its scrambling task.
The kitchen was colder than the rest of the house, and David saw that the window over the kitchen table was still empty from where Samson had removed the broken glass and frame. Leaves and dirt were scattered on the table. The raccoon had eaten most of a pear in a bowl before knocking the bowl to the floor, where it split into three ceramic pieces, curved like the cupped palms of hands. David pictured the startled raccoon making a run for the entry hall. Everything made sense. The empty space where the window should have been gave the kitchen the feeling of being outdoors, as if the kitchen had sprung organically from the ground. Woven branches created natural furniture and older trees formed a refrigerator. All of it was cold, the way it was meant to be cold at that time of year in that part of the world. It felt natural. Still, it wasn’t safe to have an empty place where a pane of glass had once gone completely unnoticed. The house could fill with raccoons. If Franny returned, she would assume the place had been abandoned.
When David returned to the entryway, he saw that the raccoon had successfully opened the grandfather clock and was rooting around its base. The clock’s pendulum brushed against the animal’s body and the gold chains draped over it like ornaments on a woman’s coat. The clock’s glass walls extended almost to the floor, as if the raccoon had put himself on display in a museum.
45
NEXT MESSAGE. From, phone number three three zero, seven two three, eight nine two three. Received, January thirteenth at nine-thirty-two a.m.
Hello, sweet dear. They’re letting me call. I’m sorry to bother you. There is an issue with the bill that you must come by to address. I haven’t seen your darling face in so long, darling. My life, my angel on earth. My lovely. Do you miss me? I miss you. I remember when you were a younger man. It’s good to remember. Where are you? I’ve been here all along.
Message erased. Next message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.
Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.
Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star.
First saved message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.
Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.
Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star.
First saved message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.
Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.
Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star. To indicate your choice, press the number of the option you wish to select. Whenever you need more information about the options, press zero for help. You can interrupt these instructions at any time by pressing a key to make your selection.
46
AILEEN did think of the salon as her child. The salon was needy, like her grown children out of state, old enough to know better, calling at all hours, always finding new ways to break down.
After a long day at work, rush hour in the small town was the worst. It was chaos compressed into the smallest space possible. Getting caught in traffic meant sitting through three long lights and a busy train crossing. Aileen sat at the first light with her chin hooked over the steering wheel, squinting forward.
It had been one of the longer days in a line of long days. One of the girls had accidentally sprayed keratin treatment solution into the eyes of one of the salon’s best clients, who ran for the shampooing station, hollering and scrubbing at her face, grasping blindly, trying to operate the sink controls. Aileen calmed the woman down and then had to take the afternoon interviewing for a new aesthetician. The candidates gawked and showed too much tooth. She asked one woman what she would do if confronted with the morning’s product accident and the woman jutted her chin forward and said she had no clue.