“No.”
“Ellen?”
“Maybe.”
They’re playing a string of Sam Cooke songs on 1430 AM.
“Well,” she says. “I was thinking Jerome . . . for your father.”
He’s always thought of his father as gone. It never occurred to Jay that his daddy might come back again, in some small, wholly new way. “Yeah . . . okay.”
In the dark, across the torn front seats, he reaches for her hand.
When they arrive at their apartment building, Jay lets his wife up the back stairs first, following behind, providing a buf fer between her and the hard concrete, in case she should lose her balance. She goes into the apartment first, heading toward the bedroom. Jay stops in the kitchen and grabs the trash out of the step can. Alone, he walks it to the Dumpster in the alley out back.
Over his shoulder, he hears his wife scream.
Jay turns, dropping the bag at his feet. It splits open like a cracked egg, spilling coffee grounds and chicken bones. A light comes on in a neighboring apartment as Jay races up the stairs to his building. At the back door, Jay pushes his way into the kitchen, tearing the hinge loose from the wall. He runs to his wife, in their bedroom, in a panic over what he might find.
Bernie is standing in the middle of the tiny room, staring at the bed.
Jay immediately goes for his gun.
He slides his hand under his pillow, feels the cool fabric beneath it but does not find his .22. He looks under the mattress and under the bed. But it’s gone. The look he gives his wife is ice cold. He’s furious with Bernie, thinking she moved it, taking it from him when they need it most, when
He grabs a broken-off broom handle he keeps under the bed, gripping it like a baseball bat. He checks the bathroom, the hall closet, and the living room.
His worse fear—an intruder, someone lying in wait—passes.
There’s no one in the apartment but the two of them.
Bernie calls out his name, calmly this time, as if she were call ing him in to dinner. Jay walks back to the bedroom and sees his wife standing stock-still, where she was. He stares at her, not comprehending. “What is it, Bernie?”
She points to the bed, her hands shaking. He is looking so hard for a spider or a rat, what he’s by now suspected is the root of the problem, that he misses the bigger picture. It takes a moment for him to see the room clearly, like eyes adjusting to bright white sunlight after stepping out of a cool, dark shade. A few seconds, then finally everything comes into focus. On the bed, Bernie’s suitcase, the one she’s been packing carefully in bits and pieces for the last few days, is turned over, upside down, the clothes strewn across the bedspread and spilling onto the floor. Someone has gone through every piece of it, her panties and nightgowns and every magazine; they even opened an enve lope with the doctor’s instructions in it, the name and address of the hospital.
The dresser drawers are open. So is the drawer on his nightstand; a bottle of aspirin and a tin of hair grease have been fished out and thrown across the bed, along with his AM radio. The nightstand drawer on Bernie’s side has been pulled clean out of its socket. It’s sitting on the floor, along with paperback books and a spiral notebook that Jay didn’t even know his wife kept by the bed. Bernie looks at her husband. He’s sure she’s about to cry. He glances over at his side of the bed and sees his overturned pillow and the empty spot beneath it. It’s clear now that his wife didn’t move his gun. Someone came in here and took it.
Bernie walks out of the room first, carrying her notebook.
He finds her in the kitchen, checking the refrigerator of all things. His checkbook is still sitting on top of the stereo speaker in the living room. The television is there. And their books. Even a basket of folded laundry Bernie’d left on the couch. All of it untouched. The only thing he finds out of place is his wedding picture, one he had framed for their first anniversary. Someone has turned it facedown on the coffee table, pressing their noses to the glass.
In the kitchen, Bernie is counting a roll of bills stashed inside a cleaned-out tub of Parkay margarine. She folds the money back into its hiding place, seemingly satisfied that it’s all there. She closes the refrigerator door and walks to the wall phone between the kitchen countertop and their three-piece dinette set. When she picks up the receiver, Jay panics. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the police.”
“Bernie, wait.” He takes the phone from her hand.
“Jay, we are calling the police. Just because we live on this side of town does not mean we don’t deserve to live in peace. I’m not having this in my house, Jay. I’m not putting up with it.” She shoves his hand out of the way, like she’s swatting at a persistent fly. She grips the phone receiver and starts to dial.
“Bernie.
It’s the first thing that comes out of his mouth. He doesn’t tell her what he’s really thinking, his worst fear— that it was police officers, homicide detectives, who broke in here in the first place, possibly looking for information on him. The television, Ber nie’s cash, even his checkbook, weren’t touched. This was not a burglary, that’s clear. The only thing missing is the .22. And he would be a fool to mention a missing gun to any beat cops who would show up at this hour, reporting a gun for which he has no permit. He presses his finger on the hook, hanging up the line. “The mess in the bedroom, B, I did that.”
“What are you talking about?”
There’s a rap on the front door. Two times, then again, louder.
