microwave, and glanced out the side window at a man in a hooded raincoat walking down the alley, his shoulders rounded, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his red tennis shoes splashing in the puddles. He disappeared from her line of vision. She picked up her cat, cradling him heavily in one arm, and tugged playfully on the furry thickness of his tail. “What have you been doing all day, you little fatty?” she said.
Cedric pushed against her grasp with his hind feet, indicating that he wanted to be bounced up and down. For some unaccountable reason, he changed his mind and twisted in her arms and jumped onto the breakfast table, staring out the rear window at the alley. Alice peered out the window and saw a neighbor lift the top of his Dumpster and drop a vinyl sack of garbage inside.
“You’re a big baby, Cedric,” Alice said.
She heard the microwave ding and took the preprepared container of veal and potatoes and peas out and fixed a cup of tea and sat down and ate her supper. Later she lay back on a reclining chair in front of the television and watched the History Channel and fell asleep without ever realizing she was falling asleep.
When she woke, the thunderstorm had passed and flashes of electricity were flaring silently in the clouds, briefly illuminating the trees and puddles of floating leaves in her yard. Cedric was on the rear windowsill, flicking a paw at a raindrop running down the glass. Then someone twisted the mechanical bell on the front door, and she slipped off the night chain and pulled open the door without first checking to see who her visitor was.
He was black, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, with a goatee that looked like wire protruding from his chin. He wore a dark rain jacket, the hood hanging on his back. Through the screen, she could smell his body odor and unbrushed teeth and the unrinsed detergent in his clothes. Under one arm he was clutching a cardboard box that had no top.
“What do you want?” she said.
“I’m selling chocolate for the Boys Town Fund.”
“Where do you live?”
“In St. Bernard Parish.”
She tried to see his shoes, but her line of vision was obstructed by the paneling at the bottom of the door. “There’s a white man who picks up you kids in the Lower Nine and drops you off in neighborhoods like mine. You have to pay him four dollars for each chocolate bar you don’t bring back, and the rest is yours. Is that correct?”
He seemed to think about what she had said, his eyes clouding. “It’s for the Boys Town Fund.”
“I can’t give you any money.”
“You don’t want no candy?”
“You’re working for a dishonest man. He uses children to deceive and cheat people. He robs others of their faith in their fellow man. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, turning toward the street, his gaze shifting off hers.
“If you need to use the bathroom, come in. If you want a snack, I’ll fix you one. But you should get away from the man you’re working for. Do you want to come in?”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I ain’t meant to bother you.”
“Were you in my alleyway a while ago? What kind of shoes are you wearing?”
“What kind of shoes? I’m wearing the kind I put on this morning.”
“Don’t be smart with me.”
“I got to go. The man is waiting for me on the corner.”
“Come see me another time and let’s talk.”
He looked at her warily. “Talk about what?”
“Anything you want to.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll do that,” he said.
After she closed the inside door, she looked through the side window and watched him walk up the street under the overhang of the trees. He did not stop at any of the other houses. Why had he stopped at only hers? She stepped out on the gallery and tried to see down the sidewalk, but the boy was gone. Maybe he had gone up a driveway to a garage apartment. That was possible, wasn’t it? Otherwise… She didn’t want to think about otherwise.
As she chained the door, she heard a Dumpster lid clang in the alley and the subdued thunder of rap music from inside a closed vehicle and a tree limb scraping wetly across the side of her house. She heard Cedric run across the linoleum in the kitchen.
“Where are you going, you fat little pumpkin head?” she said.
She glanced in her hallway and in her bedroom and in her clothes closet, but Cedric was nowhere to be seen. Then she felt a coldness in the wall that separated the guest room from the bath. She opened the door and stared numbly at the curtains blowing from the open window, one from which the screen had been removed.
She turned around in the hallway, her heart beating hard, just as a man in a purple ski mask and black leather gloves and red tennis shoes stepped out of the bathroom and swung his fist into the middle of her face. “You’re sure a stupid bitch,” he said. “You live in a neighborhood like this without a security system?”
When she woke up, she didn’t know if she had been knocked unconscious by the blow of her assailant or by her head striking the floor. All she knew was that she was in her kitchen, stretched out on the linoleum, her wrists wrapped with duct tape and the duct tape wrapped through the handle on the oven door. The only light in the kitchen came from the gas flame under the teakettle and the glow around the edge of the blinds from a streetlamp in the alley.
Her attacker was standing above her, breathing through the mouth hole in his mask, his gloved hands opening and closing at his sides. “You like opera?” he said. His pronunciation was strange, as though the inside of his mouth had been injured or he were wearing dentures that didn’t fit. “Answer my question, bitch.”
“Who are you?” she said.
“A guy who’s gonna turn you into an opera star. I’ll put you on the phone so you can yodel to a friend of yours. I heated up your teapot for you.”
“I know who you are. Shame on you.”
“That’s a dumb thing to say. Why do you think I’m wearing this mask?”
“Because you’re a coward.”
“It means you got a chance to live. But the odds of that happening aren’t as good as they were a few seconds ago. Your cat is hiding under the bed.”
She tried to read the expression in his eyes inside his mask, to no avail.
“Has the kitty got your tongue?” he said.
“Leave him alone.”
He looked over his shoulder at the microwave. “I think he might make a nice fit.”
“Friends are coming over anytime. You’ll be punished for whatever you do here. You’re a nasty little man. I should have let Mr. Purcel have his way with you.”
He leaned over her, looking straight down into her face. “You don’t have friends, lady. Nothing is gonna help you. Accept that. You’re totally in my power, and you’re gonna do everything I say. I think I’m gonna alter my plan a little bit. What do they call that place in Kentucky where people take vows of silence?” He snapped his fingers, his glove making a whispering sound. “Gethsemane? I said I was gonna make an opera singer out of you, but that’s not a good idea. You’d wake up the whole neighborhood. I’m gonna give you my own vow of silence. Open wide.”
When she refused, he clenched the bottom of her chin and stuffed a dishrag in her mouth and pressed a strip of tape across her cheeks and lips. “There,” he said, standing erect. “You look like a balloon that’s about to pop. That’s not far from wrong.”
He turned off the flame on the stove and picked up a hot pad from the drainboard and lifted the teakettle off the burner. “Where do you want it first?” he asked.
She felt sweat popping on her brow, her throat gagging on the dishrag and her own saliva, her shoes coming off her feet as she thrashed against the linoleum. He tipped the spout of the teakettle down and slowly scalded one of her legs and then the other. “How’s that feel? That’s just for openers,” he said.
It became obvious that he was not prepared for what came next. Alice Werenhaus flexed both of her upper arms and her massive shoulders and tore the handle out of the oven door, rising to her feet like a behemoth emerging from an ancient bog. She ripped the tape from her face and pulled the dishrag from her mouth and drove
