I saw the best place instantly, even while listening to them talking upstairs.
The best place was under the shelf with the rolled-up rugs; I just sort of instinctively saw that place and picked it without even really trying.
I was still holding my shoes, because I knew they’d make noise and I certainly didn’t want to leave any mud tracks on the floor. So without making a sound—and I can scoot just about anywhere without making a sound, especially over a stone floor—I zipped right over to that shelf.
It was a shelf about a yard deep and ten feet long, waist high, attached to the wall stones with some sort of long bracket and held flat by steel cables strung from each end of the shelf to metal bolts stuck in the wall. I got under it really fast, and it hid me perfectly, because first of all, there was a table not too far in front of it that had boxes and household items both on top and underneath, and also because part of the paper wrapper had come undone off one of the rolled rugs, and it hung down almost all the way to the floor like a brown paper curtain.
The craziest thing is that there was a goddamn bed behind that paper curtain. It was this long plushy bed of what looked like piled cotton, and it was very soft and a little greasy under my hands. As soon as I was on it, I smelled the unmistakable odor of dog. And then I remembered Laura’s dog, this humongous Doberman named Dobey who scares everybody, and I literally prayed to god in my head, Oh please don’t let them be bringing that dog down—
I stopped praying.
All I did was listen.
He was out there, Jack was. I figured it was Jack because I didn’t think Laura’s dad would be singing some pop song to himself, this sort of sing-humming that I heard going from one side of the room to the other as he walked around.
And I was right, it was Jack, because I could see out one end from under the shelf, and at one point he came into view under the light hanging from the ceiling over the washing machine, this big, wide-shouldered guy in a Stanford T-shirt. I think he does actually go to Stanford—Laura said so, she said he was a “Stanford man,” those were her exact words, and she really sort of bragged about how brilliant he was.
I saw him noodling around in the cabinet next to the washer. I couldn’t get a clue about anything he was up to until I saw him drag out an old leather bag and unzip it and look inside and dig his hand through what I thought by the sound must have been papers and then zip it shut and walk off.
Jack.
I guessed he was back a while from school.
Funny enough, I was sort of glad to see him. He had always been a pretty friendly guy. On a couple of occasions he drove Laura and me to the movies and came to pick us up afterward, and also drove us to this roller-rink, where Laura had taught me how to skate. That was the first date we went on, when we skated around in big circles hanging on to each other in an embrace, because if she’d ever let me go, I’d have fallen on my ass and embarrassed the hell out of her. I remembered it perfectly.
So I liked Jack and had a lot of respect for him for being so big at Stanford and playing football and everything, even though to tell you the truth, he was a very privileged guy and knew it. And I really did forgive him for being a bit naturally snooty to me and not actually deigning to look in my direction when he talked; though in all honesty I have to say he had to keep his eyes on the traffic.
I lay there waiting, hoping he’d go up soon so I could breathe again.
But then he did the worst thing.
I have to admit that lying there on that dog bed I was sweating bullets and really feeling pretty frantic and stupid for even being there; I mean, the whole dumb aspect of having come in sort of fell on me all of a sudden like an avalanche. All I wanted now was for Jack to go the hell back upstairs so I could creep out and climb through the window and go home, because by then I’d finally resigned myself to going home and seeing what was up with my dad.
But instead of that, what happened was that Jack walked right past where I was hiding. I even saw his feet in these sort of plush moccasins going right past. His legs scraped against the paper curtain, and then he must have angled around the table, because he stopped for a few seconds at what must have been the sink I’d washed my hands in, and then I heard some squeaky noises and then this sort of vacuum/lever sound that really made my blood run cold. Then he went up the stairs and shut the door.
The lights went out.
I didn’t even move.
I listened hard.
And then I heard it.
Five little beeps, and then a long beeeeep!
And I was like, Oh crap.
I crawled out very quietly. I swear to god I had this sort of dead feeling in me. I kept crawling and didn’t even bother to stand until I was near the sink.
Then I stood.
Yep.
Sure enough, the window was shut, the hose no longer hanging down. I could just barely see, along the edge of the right side of the
