you let out when you lose your footing and fall down concrete steps, the kind of lying laugh that says everything's okay.
I crossed to the kitchen. I sat at the dining table. I popped the loader on the camcorder.
The third DVD was inside.
Chapter 7
Fade in on the rear of our house. Horror-movie low angle, a few branches adding menace to the nighttime view. Cutting into one side of the frame was the green corrugated-plastic wall of the shed where Ariana cultivated her flowers. Advancing, the point of view pushed through the brushy sumac and began a psycho-killer crawl toward the other side of the wall I sat facing, the wall holding the flat-screen I was staring at. The sound track, were there one, would have been shrilling strings and huffy breathing. Silence was worse. Through patches of shadow, images loomed--here a solar-powered garden light, there a patch of grass caught in the cone-throw of a porch lamp. Moving up on the house, the angle stayed low, approaching the windowsill, then creeping north to take in the family-room ceiling, dimly lit by the flickering of the TV.
My back was slick with sweat. My eyes moved involuntarily to the window. Through the semi-sheer sage green curtains, the black square of glass stared back, giving up nothing. Until that moment I'd never grasped the stale phrase 'knotted stomach.' But I felt my fear sitting there, deep in the pit of my gut, dense and unyielding. Every second my eyes were off the screen caused a rise in my panic. Surreally, the TV seemed to contain the present threat, and the window itself--outside which someone could be lurking at that very minute--seemed fictitious. The screen reclaimed my absolute attention.
Growing bolder, the perspective rose above the sill. Brazenly sweeping the interior through the window, it settled on a form slumbering beneath a blanket on the couch.
As the camera pulled back, I heard the low rush of my heart shoving adrenaline through my veins.
The image bounced along, moving parallel to the wall, toward the kitchen. A rapid swing to our rear door, autofocusing from the blur. My breath stopped.
A hand gloved in latex reached out and twisted the knob. It turned. Despite Ariana's reminders, I often forgot to relock that door after running trash out to the cans. A gentle push and the intruder was inside, next to our refrigerator.
My eyes pulled frantically to the kitchen, back to the screen.
The point of view floated farther into the kitchen, not hurried but not cautious either. Crossing the threshold to the family room, it angled toward the couch, the couch on which I lay sleeping, the couch where I now sat, stupidly willing myself not to look over my left shoulder for a camera on its way, grasped by a gloved hand.
I couldn't move my eyes from the screen. The angle dipped. The intruder was standing over me. I slept on. My cheek was white. My eyelids flickered. I stirred, rolled over, curling an edge of blanket around a fist. The camcorder zoomed in. Closer. Closer. A blur of REM-shifting eyelid. Closer still, until the flesh was no longer distinguishable, until all bearings were lost, until only the twitching remained, as detached as lines of static across the bleached screen.
Then darkness.
My hand was curled in the blanket, just as in the clip. I swiped a palm across the back of my neck, wiped the sweat on my jeans, leaving a dark smudge.
I ran upstairs, heedless of waking Ariana, and pushed open the door of the darkened master bedroom. She was there asleep, oblivious. Safe. Her mouth was slightly open, and her hair fell forward over her eyes. Relieved, I felt the rush of adrenaline drain from me, and I sagged against the doorway. On the TV, Clair Huxtable was riding Theo about his schoolwork. I had an urge to go over and wake Ari, just to check, but I contented myself with the rise and fall of her bare shoulders. The new bed, an oak sleigh with hand-carved scrolls, looked solid. Protective, even. She'd replaced our old bed last month. The mattress, too. I hadn't slept on either.
I stepped back into the hall, eased the door closed, and put my shoulders to the wall, exhaling hard. It made no sense that she'd have been harmed, of course; the footage was shot last night at the latest, and I'd seen Ariana less than an hour ago. But rationality was about as helpful right now as it had been when I'd braved my first post- Psycho shower.
I went back downstairs. To the couch where the intruder had pointedly shown me sleeping apart from my wife. The foldout couch that I'd steadfastly refused to fold out for fear that would add a level of permanency to the current arrangement. In the clip, the blanket covered whichever boxers I'd been sleeping in, so more laundry forensics wouldn't help me deduce when it had been shot. Bracing myself, I picked up the remote and clicked 'play' again. Seeing that grainy approach to the house sent another jolt through my system. I tried to detach myself and watch closely. No gauging how recently the lawn had been mowed. No fresh scratches on the back door. The kitchen--no plates in the sink showing the remains of a meal. Trash! I punched 'pause' and studied the full can. Empty cereal box. A crinkly ball of foil stuck in the mouth of a yogurt cup.
I rushed into the kitchen. The trash in the can matched the screen snapshot precisely, in content and composition. Nothing on top of the cereal box or yogurt cup. Today was Tuesday--Ariana had worked late as usual and probably ordered takeout to the showroom, so she'd added no new trash since yesterday. I checked the coffeemaker, and sure enough the soggy filter from this morning was still parked inside.
The footage of me sleeping had been shot last night. So that clip, on the third DVD, had been shot before the second clip, which in turn showed me checking out the location of the first. Pretty good planning. I almost had to admire the care being taken.
I checked the back door. Locked. Ariana must've caught it this morning. I wouldn't require any more reminders to throw the dead bolt. Handling the DVD, as before, with a tissue, I snapped it into a spare case.
Julianne's nicotine-fueled commentary in the faculty lounge took on fresh significance. Clearly this had gone beyond harassment. Three DVDs like this in under eighteen hours constituted a threat, and that scared me. And pissed me off. It seemed certain that, as Marcello has intoned in innumerable trailers, this was only the beginning. I would have to tell Ariana now, that was certain; for all its shortcomings, our marriage had a full-disclosure policy. But first I wanted to cross Don, the obvious red herring, off the list.
I headed out, turned left at the sidewalk. The night was brisk, the clean air and bizarre mission making me light-headed. Just a neighborly visit.
A bus rattled by, unnervingly close, a behemoth on creaky joints. It carried a coming-this-summer ad for They're Watching: a figure in a raincoat, made blurry by Manhattan rain, descending into the subway. He toted a briefcase, his shadowy face peering over his shoulder with a furtive panic that implied paranoia. As the bus passed, I skipped back to the curb, dodging a slapstick obituary.
The chimes sounded unusually loud inside the Millers' foyer. Charged from fear, the night air, my proximity to their house, I shifted from foot to foot, composing myself. An interior light clicked on. A shuffling, some grumbling, and then Martinique at the front door. Don's long-suffering, beautiful wife, with her sad eyes and contrived L.A. name. The flesh at the backs of her arms was feathered, loose from the sixty pounds she'd dropped. Her waist now looked like you could fit a napkin ring around it. Stretch marks formed half-moons emanating from her belly button, the lines of a cartoon explosion. They were faded, microdermabraded into submission, and looked soft and feminine. Even roused, she looked impeccable--her hair shiny and brushed, satin pajama bottoms matching her burgundy halter camisole. She was aggressively competent--ethnically appropriate holiday cards, morning thank-you calls after our infrequent dinner parties, twigs and raffia adorning neatly wrapped birthday presents.
'Patrick,' she said, casting a wary glance over her shoulder, 'I hope you're not going to do anything you'll regret.' She clipped some of her words, only barely, but enough to broadcast that she was Central American instead of Persian.
'No. Sorry to wake you. I just stopped by to ask Don something.'
'I don't think that's a great idea. Especially right now. He's wiped. Flew back this morning.'
'From where?'
'Des Moines. Work. I think, anyway.'
'How long was he gone?'
She frowned. 'Just two nights. Why--did she take a trip, too?'
'No, no,' I said, trying to hide my impatience.
'Someone lies once, you know. How am I supposed to believe he went to Iowa?' She was standing quite close. I felt her breath on my face. It smelled faintly of mint toothpaste. It seemed odd to be close enough to a woman to breathe her breath, and it brought home how long Ariana and I had been keeping our distance from each
