After Midnight

I tossed the shirt into the washing machine, then whipped off my belt. My cut-offs dropped to the floor. I stepped out of them. Standing there bare naked, I checked myself for ants. I was feeling itchy, but couldn’t find any critters. So I picked up the cut-offs and emptied the pockets. The shorts, hanky and bandana went in with the shirt.

I set the keys aside, added detergent to the wash, and started the machine. While it was filling, I hurried to the foyer and slipped the saber out of the denim legs. Sword in one hand, legs swinging in the other, I returned to the laundry room. I tossed the legs into the machine with the other stuff.

Back in the kitchen, I stood at the sink and washed the saber. It looked clean even before I started. I must’ve done a pretty good job on it with the hose. But I scoured the thing with a rag and liquid soap, being especially careful to get at the crevices where the blade joined the handle.

You can never get rid of all the blood. That’s what I’d read, anyway. Police investigators would take the sword apart and find traces, no matter what I might do.

I wasn’t doing this for the police.

I was cleaning it so Charlie or little Debbie wouldn’t notice blood on the saber next time they took it down to play “charge” or “Peter Pan” or something.

With a dish towel, I wiped every bit of water off the sword. Then I dried my own bare front, which had gotten splashed.

On my way into the living room, I changed my mind about hanging up the weapon right away. What if some water or blood was trapped inside the handle, and leaked on the wall?

Besides, I sort of liked having it handy.

So I took it with me.

In the den, I set it down and turned on a lamp. Right away, I looked toward the sliding glass door where my prowler had been. I couldn’t see it, though. The curtains were shut.

Thank God.

What I didn’t need to see, on top of everything else, was the mess my prowler had left behind.

With a feeling of relief—and a touch of nausea just from thinking about what he’d done—I turned my attention to the answering machine. It blinked a tiny red light to let me know we had a message.

I poked the “new message” button.

The quiet hiss of rewinding tape seemed to last a long time. When it stopped, Tony said, “Ah, you finally got yourself an answering machine. Hope it’s not because of me. But it probably is, huh?”

Listening to him, I felt strange.

So much had happened in the hours since he’d made that call. Especially to him.

But my own life would never be the same, either. Nor would Judy’s.

Or Milo’s, for that matter.

All because Tony had dialed a wrong number.

He’d probably only been one digit off, or reversed something.

And WHAM!

Just goes to show what can happen because of a little mistake.

“The thing is,” he was saying, “I’m not going to call again.”

How right you are, I thought.

But I didn’t laugh, I wrinkled my nose.

And kept listening.

He sounded like a pretty nice guy.

When he started in about moving to a new place, I pulled open a drawer of the telephone stand and hunted for something to write with. There were plenty of ballpoints and pads of paper. And some miniature tape cassettes. I snatched up a pen and note pad just as he started to give his new phone number.

While I was busy writing, his call ended.

That’s because I had picked up and blurted, “Tony!”

My voice wasn’t there. Nothing else was there. The tape stopped, and the machine made a few beeps to let me know there were no more messages.

I frowned at Tony’s phone number for a few moments, not sure why I’d bothered to copy it down.

Maybe it would come in handy for something.

But probably not.

It was only on paper, though. I could burn it easily enough, later on—along with the rest of the note pad, so nobody would ever be able to discover the imprint of Tony’s number.

For now, though, I had another matter to deal with.

I opened the answering machine, pulled out the tape, and replaced it with a spare cassette from the drawer.

Then I stood there, staring at the machine and wondering what to do next.

Get everything together.

Seemed like a good idea. With the note pad and cassette in one hand, I picked up the saber. Then I headed for the laundry room. Along the way, I noticed my favorite blue silk robe draped over a chair in the living room, where I’d put it such a long time ago. It had pockets and I needed pockets. But I was awfully hot and sweaty and dirty, so I decided to save the robe for later.

I walked on through the kitchen and entered the laundry room. The washing machine was still going, of course. My belt lay on the floor, and the two sets of keys were on a shelf beside the washer.

Except for Judy’s car and the odds and ends in the washer, that was everything.

I wanted to keep it all with me.

But I left it in the laundry room for a couple of minutes while I rushed into the kitchen. Serena keeps a drawer full of small bags. I grabbed one, returned with it, and loaded it up with the two sets of keys, the tape cassette and note pad. I wound up the belt and stuffed it inside, too.

Leaving the washer to finish its business, I carried the saber and bag into the living room. There, I grabbed Charlie’s robe.

In the hallway, I stopped just long enough to flick the air conditioner on. Then I went to the end of the hall and entered Serena and Charlie’s bedroom. It was dark with the curtains shut. I didn’t turn any lights on, though. I just walked straight through to the master bathroom.

I swung the door shut with my elbow, bumped it with my rump to make it latch, then elbowed the light switch. I needed a hand, though, to lock the door. So I held the sword between my legs and thumbed down the lock button.

After that, I hung the robe on a hook. I set my bag on a counter near the sink and took the saber with me to the sunken bath tub.

I set it down on the tile floor beside the tub.

Not that I’m paranoid, or anything. I just wanted to be safe. And what good is a weapon if it’s out of reach when you need it?

While the tub was filling, I used the toilet. Then I stood in front of a full-length mirror and looked at myself.

What a wreck.

My hair, dark and clinging to my scalp, looked as if I hadn’t shampooed it in a month. Everywhere, my skin looked greasy. I must’ve had about two dozen scratches on my front and back. Several of them had bled. I didn’t have much blood on me, probably thanks to spending time in the creek. But some of the scratches looked like bright red threads across my skin. I had plenty of welts and bruises, too.

The grand-daddy of all my injuries was my stomach, where I’d walked into that broken branch. It had rammed me and gouged me raw. Skin was ruffled up around the edges of the wound, and I had a bruise the size of a grapefruit.

Nothing looked bad enough to require medical attention, though.

I’d gotten off lucky.

At least compared to a few other people I could think of, such as Tony, Milo, the gal in Milo’s tent, and even Judy.