Black House

Mouse takes no notice. His dimming gaze is fixed solely on Jack. “Listen to me, cop. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Christ, you better be,” Mouse tells him.

As it always has, the work captures Henry, absorbs him, takes him away. Boredom and sorrow have never been able to stand against this old captivation with sound from the sighted world. Apparently fear can’t stand against it, either. The hardest moment isn’t listening to the tapes but mustering the courage to stick the first one in the big TEAC audio deck. In that moment of hesitation he’s sure he can smell his wife’s perfume even in the soundproofed and air-filtered environment of the studio. In that moment of hesitation he is positive he isn’t alone, that someone (or something) is standing just outside the studio door, looking in at him through the glass upper half. And that is, in fact, the absolute truth. Blessed with sight as we are, we can see what Henry cannot. We want to tell him what’s out there, to lock the studio door, for the love of God lock it now, but we can only watch.

Henry reaches for the PLAY button on the tape deck. Then his finger changes course and hits the intercom toggle instead.

“Hello? Is anyone out there?”

The figure standing in Henry’s living room, looking in at him the way someone might look into an aquarium at a single exotic fish, makes no sound. The last of the sun’s on the other side of the house and the living room is becoming quite dark, Henry being understandably forgetful when it comes to turning on the lights. Elmer Jesperson’s amusing bee slippers (not that they amuse us much under these circumstances) are just about the brightest things out there.

“Hello? Anyone?”

The figure looking in through the glass half of the studio door is grinning. In one hand it is holding the hedge clippers from Henry’s garage.

“Last chance,” Henry says, and when there’s still no response, he becomes the Wisconsin Rat, shrieking into the intercom, trying to startle whatever’s out there into revealing itself: “Come on now, honey, come on now, you muthafukkah, talk to Ratty!”

The figure peering in at Henry recoils—as a snake might recoil when its prey makes a feint—but it utters no sound. From between the grinning teeth comes a leathery old tongue, wagging and poking in derision. This creature has been into the perfume that Mrs. Morton has never had the heart to remove from the vanity in the little powder room adjacent to the master bedroom, and now Henry’s visitor reeks of My Sin.

Henry decides it’s all just his imagination playing him up again—oy, such a mistake, Morris Rosen would have told him, had Morris been there—and hits PLAY with the tip of his finger.

He hears a throat-clearing sound, and then Arnold Hrabowski identifies himself. The Fisherman interrupts him before he can even finish: Hello, asswipe.

Henry rewinds, listens again: Hello, asswipe. Rewinds and listens yet again: Hello, asswipe. Yes, he has heard this voice before. He’s sure of it. But where? The answer will come, answers of this sort always do—eventually—and getting there is half the fun. Henry listens, enrapt. His fingers dance back and forth over the tape deck’s buttons like the fingers of a concert pianist over the keys of a Steinway. The feeling of being watched slips from him, although the figure outside the studio door—the thing wearing the bee slippers and holding the hedge clippers—never moves. Its smile has faded somewhat. A sulky expression is growing on its aged face. There is confusion in that look, and perhaps the first faint trace of fear. The old monster doesn’t like it that the blind fish in the aquarium should have captured its voice. Of course it doesn’t matter; maybe it’s even part of the fun, but if it is, it’s Mr. Munshun’s fun, not its fun. And their fun should be the same . . . shouldn’t it?

You have an emergency. Not me. You.

“Not me, you,” Henry says. The mimicry is so good it’s weird. “A little bit of sauerkraut in your salad, mein friend, ja?”

Your worst nightmare . . . worst nightmare.

Abbalah.

I’m the Fisherman.

Henry listening, intent. He lets the tape run awhile, then listens to the same phrase four times over: Kiss my scrote, you monkey . . . kiss my scrote, you monkey . . . you monkey . . . monkey . . .

No, not monkey. The voice is actually saying munggey. MUNG- ghee.

“I don’t know where you are now, but you grew up in Chicago,” Henry murmurs. “South Side. And . . .”

Warmth on his face. Suddenly he remembers warmth on his face. Why is that, friends and neighbors? Why is that, O great wise ones?

You’re no better’n a monkey on a stick.

Monkey on a stick.

Monkey—

“Monkey,” Henry says. He’s rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers now. “Monkey on a stick. MUNG-