Simmering unease eroded my optimism. Ariana's meeting--the one I hadn't picked up the suit for--was supposed to be in the afternoon. So why had she been at the showroom when I'd called? For a half block, I actually debated calling back and checking with her assistant. As Ariana had pointed out, it doesn't take much more than a white handkerchief and a few well-placed nudges. My paranoia, I realized, was bleeding outward, making me question--however stupidly--everything going on around me.
I passed the shopping strip, and the reception bars blinked off the cell-phone screen, offended by the altitude. As I slowed for the driveway, a sense of foreboding seized me, and I couldn't help but crane to see if a new surprise was waiting. The front yard looked normal, and the doorstep was empty. But a ripple at the curtain snagged my focus. I caught a flash of a white hand before it withdrew. Too white.
A latex glove.
It was so odd, so out of place, that at first it stunned me into a kind of mental blankness. Then, through my rising alarm, I registered the figure behind the curtain, shadow-smudged like a fish in murky waters.
My body had gone rigid. But I didn't slow the car further; I rolled right past my driveway and the house next door before pulling over to the curb. I debated hooking back to the grocery-store pay phone to call 911, knowing that the intruder would likely be long gone by the time the cops arrived. Gripping the door handle, staring at my fist-battered dashboard, I fought with myself for several prolonged seconds, but my fury--and burning curiosity--won out.
I climbed out and jogged back. Cutting up the driveway, I slid along the fence, reaching the door to the garage. I paused for a silent twenty-second freak-out, my fists shoved against my head, and then I regained what composure I could muster, slipped my key into the door, and pushed it tentatively open. The garage's walls and ceiling seemed to amplify my rapid breathing. My eyes darted around, settling on the golf bag languishing beneath a veil of cobwebs, where it had lived since my then-agent bought it for me to celebrate the screenplay sale. My hand fussed across dusty club heads, upgrading from wedge to iron to driver.
The door leading into the dining nook had a creak. I knew this. I'd been meaning to WD-40 the hinges for months. I was in the garage; why not do it now? I found the blue-and-yellow can, sprayed the hinges until they dripped. Under the guidance of my white-knuckle grip, the door swung in, slowly, without complaint. I realized, too late, that it could have sounded the alarm, but the intruder had disarmed the system.
A bead of sweat held to the line of my jaw, tickling. I slipped inside, easing the door shut behind me. Setting down my feet as silently as I could, I led with the club, holding it upright, a yuppie samurai sword. I inched around the cabinets, my view of the kitchen opening up.
Across the room the back door finished a slow opening arc, stopping halfway.
I bounded over to it. At the far edge of the lawn, a large man in a ski mask and black zip-up jacket stood perfectly still, facing the house, arms at his sides.
Waiting on me.
I froze, my heart lurching, my throat seizing up.
His gloved hands floated at his sides like a mime's. He seemed to register me not with his dark irises but with the suspended crescents of white that held them.
He turned and ran almost silently through the sumac. Enraged, terrified, I followed. In the sane quadrant of my brain, I noted his bulk and almost military efficiency. And his black boots, which I would've bet were size- eleven-and-a-half Danner Acadias. He bounded from an upended terra-cotta pot to the roof of the greenhouse shed as if off a trampoline bounce, then whistled over the fence. I hurled the club at him, but it hit the wood and rebounded back at me. I slammed into the fence and hoisted myself onto it, shoes scrabbling for purchase. Hanging, the slat edges digging into my gut, I looked up the street, but he'd vanished. Into a yard, a house, around the corner.
I dropped back down with a grunt, fighting to catch my breath. Had I surprised him by altering my schedule, skipping the movies? If so, he sure hadn't seemed concerned. Judging by his build and adroitness, he could have dismantled me. So hurting me wasn't his aim. At least not yet.
I trudged back inside, collapsed into a chair, and sat, breathing. Just breathing.
After a time I rose and checked the kitchen drawer. Both new tubular keys to the alarm were there. Nothing appeared to have been touched. At the base of the stairs, I stopped to stare at the alarm pad as if it had something to say. I continued up, checked our bedroom and then my office. The cover had been removed from the DVD spindle and set beside it. A count confirmed that one more disc was missing. I went back downstairs and into the living room. The intruder had pulled the tripod clear of the lady palm and tugged the curtain closed. My camcorder's digital memory had been erased. I walked numbly into the family room.
The DVD player tray was open, a silver disc resting inside.
I thumbed the tray closed and sank into the couch. The popping of the TV turning on struck me as unusually loud. I kept getting a blank screen, so I fussed with the buttons, clicking 'input select,' 'TV/video,' and the other usual suspects.
At last there I was. On the couch. Wearing my clothes. From today.
I stared, waiting. I chewed my lip. My on-screen self chewed my on-screen lip.
The blood in my veins turned to ice. I tried to swallow, found my throat stuck.
I raised a hand. My double raised a hand. I said, 'Oh, Lord,' and heard my voice come out of the surround sound. I took a deep, shaky breath. My double took a deep, shaky breath. He looked utterly dumbstruck, blanched, his face an ungodly shade of pale.
I got up and walked toward the TV, my image growing like Alice. I tugged the flat-screen off the wall and set it, trailing wires, on the floor. The same perspective of myself stared up at me. Shoving and pulling the tightly stacked equipment had no effect on the shooting angle either. Leaning into the top shelves, I ripped out a few plugs and snapped off the outlet covers. Nothing. I yanked out discs and books, used a paperweight to punch a hole in the drywall near a ding and the fireplace poker to pry around further. Finally I reached down and swung open the glass door of the cabinet protecting Ariana's teenage record collection. The TV image at my feet spun vertiginously.
I crouched. A tiny fish-eye lens clipped to the top of the glass. I rotated the door open, closed, the room swaying correspondingly on the TV. I unclipped the little lens. A wire trailed back, across the dusty cover of Dancing on the Ceiling. I tugged. It came, giving some resistance. At the end, hooked as neatly as a rainbow trout, was a cell phone. Some shitty prepay model that you'd buy off the rack at 7-Eleven. Clenched in my shaking hand, the crappy cell phone, of course, showed full reception. Unlike my three-hundred-dollar Sanyo.
I took a step back, and then another. Stunned, I mounted the stairs and retreated to our bathroom, the farthest point in the house from the fish-eye lens. I was acting automatically, like an animal, a zombie, and my actions made about as much sense. I turned on the shower, cranked it to red, and let steam fill the room. I wasn't sure if the sound of running water provided cover from whatever other bugs had infiltrated our house, but it always worked in movies and seemed like a good idea now.
In a flash of lucidity, I went over to my office, where I grabbed a digital mini-recorder to document any call that might come in. I trudged back and sat with one arm resting on the toilet, the fuzzy oval rug wrinkled up beneath my shoe, the cell phone precisely centered on the floor tile where I could keep an eye on it. One knee was raised. I wasn't cowering in a corner, but it might have looked that way to an impartial observer. The water drowned out my thoughts; the steam cleaned my lungs.
I don't know how long I'd been sitting there when the door banged open and Ariana came in. Her face was red, her hair frizzy; she clutched a butcher knife like a crazed soprano. At least she'd upgraded from the badminton racket. The knife clattered into the sink, and she sagged against the counter and pressed a hand to the slope of her bosom in what seemed a genetically conditioned response.
I felt more protective of her in that moment than I could ever remember.
Her gaze took in my expression, the throwaway cell phone, the mini-recorder I'd left on the counter. 'What . . . The TV . . . What . . . ?'
My voice sounded dry and cracked. 'I came in on an intruder. Ski mask. He ran away. There's a bug in the house. A hidden camera. They've been recording us. Every fucking thing we've . . .'
She swallowed hard, her chest jerking, then crouched and picked up the phone.
'It was hidden,' I said, 'in the cabinet under the TV.'
'Has it rung?'
'No.'
Working her bottom lip with her teeth, she punched a few buttons. 'No incoming. No outgoing. No saved
