The Dwelling: A Novel (13 page)

It was just a tiny dishonesty, and just business. A wall, thin but there, dropped between them and she felt a little as if the hand that had been pressing on her chest all week had let up the pressure just a bit.

“Okay: the scene opens in the Headhunter’s ‘cave’—it’s not really a cave, I’m just calling it that until Max gives me a name for it. Ah, man, fuck! Max thinks of stuff at the last second and then calls me with changes, unbelievable. I
love
working with the guy, Becca. So Headhunter’s in his cave, sitting at the computer. The screen is illuminating his face…”

Dan told the story of Headhunter to Becca, in detail. Somewhere in the course of the evening she dropped in the information that she had a supper meeting on Monday. Somewhere in the course of the night he mentioned he was going to be working in the other bedroom upstairs for the duration. Neither of them asked for further explanation. Dinner was lively and full of the unsaid.

*  *  *

The door to the Murphy bedroom did not stay closed long. Some time after Dan Mason pulled the front door to the house on Belisle shut and locked the deadbolt with his key, the pretty porcelain knob on the door to the little room under the stairs turned and freed itself from the restraint of the latch. The door was pulled open by invisible hands. From inside came the regular
skritch
of a needle on vinyl, the echoing, tinny sound of music recorded long ago.

Elsewhere also, the house awoke.

In the attic, an old resident of the house paced uneasily, sometimes dragging a heavy bundle from one end of the room to the other. In the bathroom, water ran into the tub, over the despondent form of a Mr. Reimer who appeared and disappeared, and even when apparent, seemed not to be whole, and the swirling eddies of the water as it filled the tub could be seen through him.

Behind the small door in the blue room came the distinct and pleasant scent of sweet grass and hay, just cut.

The yellow room was cold. The shadow on the wall, a permanent part of the decor, could not be seen in the dark.

The music faded in and out of one dimension to another from the room with the quaint, old-fashioned Murphy bed. Reenacted again and again, over and under the voice of a generation, was someone’s lonely and horrible end.

The room veritably spun with heated anger.

Under the stairs, the high, sweet voice of the Sweetheart of Columbia Records,
circa
1929, Ruth Etting sang her plaintive song. Jazz feeds the soul.

Dan helped Becca move the few pieces of furniture in the yellow room to the blue room. He set up the desk midway, in line with the window. When she asked him why he was giving up the studio, he mumbled something about needing the light. It was accepted without question. He put his sketchbooks and supplies on the little desk. It was too small, but it would do. He felt a tremendous relief at not having to be back in that room again. Whatever had happened to him in there, he was willing to let it go in exchange for it not happening again.

While his wife ran water into the tub for a soak before bed, Dan opened his sketchbook to the last sketch he’d done in the afternoon. Headhunter scanned the crowd at the subway station for Hanus and Malicia, without success. They could be seen just in the background, through the crowd of midtown commuters. They could not find Headhunter, either. He was in his Supersuit. The scene was full of movement and drama. It was pretty good. Considering.

He’d read a book once by a therapeutic hypnotist who practiced in a city large enough to provide him with plenty of clients. Over the years, he began to notice a group of people suffering for the most part from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Other than the obvious symptoms, there seemed no other connection between them. They were from wildly varying walks of life, differing age groups, socioeco status, and mixed fairly evenly between the sexes. They matched society on sexual orientation, as well, about ten percent.

Clearly, that was what had happened to him. A bizarre and more twisted version of the same story. Stress, the eternal catchall.

Somehow between moving, losing his job, embarking on a new avenue in his career, the insecurity of revisiting a world that he hadn’t even hoped to be able to rejoin with
The Headhunter,
the tension between him and Becca, her disappointment in him and withdrawal, all of it had combined somehow and, without his knowing it, had tossed him on his ass.

Post-traumatic stress syndrome. That was all it had been. Hallucinations and daydreams, sleep paralysis inventing a wild but more acceptable story than the truth for him to deal with in order to express his feelings.
Which were what?
Unimportant.

Why not?

Dan pulled a chair under the small desk in the blue room and flicked on the light. He flipped through the sketches in the book and played around with ideas lazily in his head, without coming to any conclusions, without defining any sort of plan. He and Max would meet with the Apex guy the next day and then he would go from there.

Since it was now discovered to be very important for him to relax, big-time, he went downstairs and out onto the back stoop and had a toke. He stayed out long after the pleasant effects had smoothed the edges of the day and smoked a regular cigarette, watching as the smoke curled up into the air slowly above him, the night darkening on all sides, the air still, the street noises undemanding and easily recognized.

Post-traumatic stress syndrome. Absolutely.
Why not?
Could happen to anyone. They wrote a whole bloody book about it; it had to be true.

Just the same, when he went back inside the house about an hour later, he bypassed the room under the stairs, and cut through the dining room and the living room to go upstairs instead.

It was too dark in the back-door cloakroom to take note of the door to the room with the Murphy bed. Dan averted his eyes, in any case. It stood wide open, propped uneasily against the wall.

Becca soaked, lying in unrest against the sloping back of the oversized tub. She was indulging herself in examination with the fascination of someone who has found an unknown rival in her midst. She heard Dan go downstairs, and the back screen door squeaking open.
Having a cigarette,
she thought absently.

Steam rose lazily above her to the ceiling of the bathroom. The mirror had fogged over and the whole room, in fact, was overcome with the mists of her bath. She kept her eyes closed. Her face was in repose, betraying her lack of inner turmoil.

I don’t have to.
She repeated it after and throughout certain thoughts, not in hope of assuaging any upset but more as a litmus test for her true feelings. Nearly on the heels of every such thought were practical and dogmatic womanly thoughts, such as the fact that if she abandoned her course of action now, it might well be premature: Dan had nothing so concrete as a contract or even a verbal agreement; what Dan had was only a meeting. Not unlike her meeting of that week, her lunch with Mr. Huff. From her point of view, it was only a starting point and, in fact, was still of no more consequence than her handing him her résumé. Just a small step toward a larger goal. He had a meeting. Big deal. That meant nothing in the scheme of things.

They still, all in all, as the way things were
(in this day, in this moment, as of this second)
needed a second—or at least
larger,
much larger—income. As of that moment, in spite of what might happen at Dan’s little (she couldn’t help but lower it in her expectations, condescend to it somewhat by adding
little)
meeting, they were exactly at the point they were at the moment Dan lost his job at Clayton and Marks. Nothing had changed.

I don’t have to sleep with Gordon Huff: I can take the chance. I can wait and see. At very least I can put off the…dinner meeting, until I know what is going on with the comic book. Graphic novel. The one with the evil villainess who looks just like me.

I don’t have to rush forward.

And she would. It was confusion to her. She understood, vaguely, that she didn’t have to do what had been almost proposed at all, that she was, in fact, the
logical
choice for the director’s job; her résumé was in perfect order and she had the unsettling feeling that Mr. Huff had mentioned Don Geisbrecht only to frighten her into something rash. He still hadn’t even said that Don Geisbrecht had applied for the position—only that he’d expressed “interest.” Such an obvious ploy.
Yet I missed it.

Or ignored it.

She swished her legs around in the warm water and slid farther down the back slope of the tub, ducking her shoulders under the water and exposing her knees. The water in the tub was cooling. She opened one eye and, with her toe, nudged on the hot tap. Water rushed out, and to move it around to raise the temperature evenly, she waved her hands under the surface wanly. Steam rose anew and she watched it. The room was quite clouded. When the tub had filled to the point of water running out of the overflow drain, she shut the tap off with her toe and noticed with disgust that the flesh under her natural pedicure was discolored from the week before, when the door to Dan’s studio had slammed shut on her foot. She closed her eyes again. Relishing the heat of the room. Summer was coming and this would soon be an undesirable luxury, like a sauna. She disliked sweating.

It certainly wasn’t the prospect of sex with Gordon Huff that was keeping her from breaking off their dinner meeting. She found she didn’t really like sex.
It’s not that exactly: I’m bored with it. It is the same act repeated over and over, it would hardly be any better with someone else. If I don’t enjoy it with my husband, who at least has an interest in keeping me satisfied, how could I like it with a stranger? An old, paunchy stranger.

She dangled her arms at her sides and let the water hold them up. She relaxed her body as much as she could and tried to doze. She tried to imagine sex with Mr. Huff. Unable to prevent it, she felt herself distracted by the decor of the hotel room, hanging curtains, changing fabrics, choosing bedding. Well-appointed furnishings, of course. There would be a full bar instead of the more likely minibar. Not content with just that, she made Gordon Huff a CEO of a large corporation, and much, much more handsome. He gave her a long velvet box. Changed it to a pendant. Then it was a watch. Then it was the bracelet.

They had a drink. Dark amber with ice. Ice tinkled.
Miss Mason, is it true you are a director of your company?

We were featured in the
Atlantic
last year.

She dozed on this for a while.

Her arms dangled at her sides. Through her reverie, she became aware of a tingling in her hands. They were cold, suddenly, although the water was warm around her. She moved her hands about.

They hurt. She flexed her fingers and found it caused pain and she opened her eyes.

The water was red with blood. She stared gape-mouthed for just a moment and then sat up, fast, her head lightening with it. She stared at the water, swished her hands through it; it was blood. Confusion would have lasted longer—
my period?
—if not for the sudden sharp pain in both wrists that hit her suddenly, like knowledge. She pulled her hands out of the water and blood rushed down her arms, painting her red from her hands to her elbows.

She screamed. The blood flowed freely and with alarming speed, as though from the tap, her hands freezing now, not just cold but dead cold, and from there she saw her wrists were great gaping wounds that coursed blood. The water was red with it, not even pink but red, and she stood up, holding her arms in front of her, fingers curled into weakening fists, and screamed and screamed and screamed, finally stumbling out of the tub, grabbing for the towel that was just out of reach on the rack beside the toilet.

She screamed for Dan, calling his name. She turned, naked, to the door, wrapping her hands in the towel, fumbling with the knob, wiggling out the fingers only of her right hand in order to open the door. She pulled it open, crying then, tears running down her cheeks, flushed from the heat, her hair clinging to her neck and back, and over her face, damp from the steam and sweat.

She screamed through the open door.

“Dan Dan Dan Dan Dan!”
pausing between fits of his name, to gasp, to sob and scream again. She spun around back into the bathroom to find bandages, tape, something to stanch the flow—
bleed to death
—and in confusion and horror she tried to imagine what had happened and could think of nothing. Her eyes, frantic around the bathroom, glanced into the tub to see—
glass? a piece of metal-sharp tap?
—the water in the tub was clear.

The scream that had been on her lips stayed there.

The water was pure and clean. The bottom of the tub winked passively through the surface of the water, sparkling with the overhead light.

The towel wrapped around her hands almost to the elbow was a white one. All of their towels were white. Becca took care to keep them utterly, purely white, adding a half-cup of bleach to every load, washing only white towels with white towels. The end result was snowy—if destructive to the fibers; they went through a lot of towels—and this one still was.

She unwrapped the towel with trepidation, still hiccuping in fear and sobs.

Under the towel were her arms. Intact. Her flesh was pink and flushed from the warmth of the bath. Becca collapsed onto the closed seat of the toilet. She buried her face in the soft, damp towel and breathed in its fabric-softener scent.

Spring Morning, she believed it was called.

*  *  *

Dan had turned off the light in the hallway, and locked the back door when he heard what he thought was Becca, upstairs. It sounded almost like a groan, or a sob, maybe. Frowning, he called up. “Bec?” There was no answer. He flicked off the lamp in the living room and closed the front curtains. It was dark; the light from the street flooded weakly into the front room, blocked by any number of obstacles, the hedge and the neighbors’ tree among them. The street was deserted, in spite of the fact that it was not very late, only after eleven.
Work tomorrow, for everyone.

Him too. The meeting was at three. He would put together a portfolio to show the Apex guy, but there was not much else to do. Probably Max would want to meet earlier, before—

“Dan?”
Becca called from upstairs, her voice soft and strained, as though she was crying.

“I’m coming,” he said. At the foot of the stairs he stepped in something warm.

He paused just long enough to look down before going up. His sock was soaked. A small puddle of water sat at the foot of the stairs. On each stair, all the way up, was an identical puddle.

Becca had come down from her bath, looking for him. He must have been outside.

It took some time to calm his wife down. She’d had a fright, she’d said, but hardly elaborated more.

“You haven’t been sleeping well,” he said. “Maybe you dozed off?” She shook her head, but with less conviction than before. She kept looking at her hands. The fingers were pruny from the bath. He rubbed her shoulders through her robe and held her. She had been crying, he had seen that her eyes were swollen and her nose was red at the tip. She blew her nose once or twice and recovered. She accepted his offer of a drink and he went back downstairs to pour her a shot of something—they had some Scotch left over from an ancient party, and there might be a glass of wine in the fridge. He decided on the wine: it was white and he thought maybe that would be more appealing to her than Scotch without—as far he knew—any rocks. He stepped around the little puddles of water, bubbled up against the heavy layers of varnish on the wood floor, and thought only fleetingly that he should wipe them up before they left a mark.

Concerned as he was with getting Becca a drink, he went directly down the front hall, passing the room under the stairs without thinking. He flipped on the kitchen light, found a wineglass and poured her a full glass from the bottle in the fridge—emptying it—and grabbed a tea towel from the door of the stove to wipe up the footsteps from the wood floor.

The recycling bin was beside the washing machine in the mudroom and he flicked on the light in there to toss the empty wine bottle into it.

I closed that.

The door to the studio was wide open. He shrugged, but without conviction. The skin at the back of his neck tightened and he felt his balls actually retreat into his body. He backed his way into the kitchen and shut the mudroom light off from there. He went the long way, through the dining and living rooms, wineglass in one hand, tea towel, momentarily forgotten, in the other.