Bad Move

I didn’t know that the developers of Valley Forest Estates were a bunch of environmental rapists, but I did know that they were unable to properly caulk a window or keep a leaking shower from staining the kitchen ceiling below. Maybe they should be stopped from building more homes anywhere, not just on the banks of Willow Creek.

When I was finished reading the Suburbans and some sections of the Metropolitans from the previous weekend, the sun was up. I heard Sarah go into the kitchen, and she said nothing when I wandered in.

The remainder of the day before had not gone well. I expected to make amends with Sarah shortly after I returned with her car. But she took the car out again as soon as I was back with it. She went, it turned out, to the drugstore, and bought a tube of ointment for my burned hand. She pulled into the driveway half an hour after she’d left and found me sitting at the kitchen table, where I had been wondering whether Sarah had left me for good and what that meant in terms of how many burgers I should throw onto the barbecue. She pulled the tube out of her purse and threw it at me, nailing me right in the eye.

She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the evening. We started out in the same bed, but there was a gulf between us under the covers. I reached over tentatively once, to touch her back lightly, a lame gesture at trying to open communications, but Sarah shifted away, and matted the covers down around her as a defense against any more entreaties. So I slipped out from under the covers, tucked a pillow under my arm and grabbed a blanket from the closet, and went downstairs.

Paul and Angie, taking their mother’s side, had given me the cold shoulder the rest of the day. Paul had filled Angie in, when she got home, on my car-hiding stunt. I tried to explain to them, while their mother was upstairs, that it hadn’t been my intention to be mean. What I’d done was for their mother’s own good. Sure, she was angry with me now, but did anyone think she’d ever leave her key in the lock again? Huh? Did they?

They walked out of the room on me. And the next morning, at breakfast, they said nothing as they poured themselves juice and spooned down some strawberry yogurt. Actually, Paul used a spoon only to finish off the residue of yogurt he was unable to consume by tipping the small plastic container up to his mouth and hurtling it down like an extremely thick milkshake. And then they left together, walking a half block to the corner to meet the high school bus.

I offered to make Sarah some tea and toast, but she indicated she was fine, she’d take care of it, although what she actually said was “Move.”

I went to reach for the kettle to fill it from the tap, but she nudged me out of the way and grabbed it herself.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

Sarah said nothing.

“And thanks for the stuff, that ointment. I was surprised you still went out and got it for me. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t. I put it on my hand and it was right back to normal this morning. It stung a bit in the night, you know, but then it went away, so, thanks.”

Sarah got out a teabag and a slice of bread for the toaster. When couples aren’t speaking to each other, all the other sounds in a room become heightened. The ticking of the electric kettle warming up, the scraping of the butter knife across hot toast, the clinking of a spoon against the inside of a china cup. As much to break the silence as to find out what was going on in the world, Sarah turned on the small under-the-cupboard TV. In addition to reading a couple of papers every morning, she watches a lot of CNN and local news so that she has a good handle on what’s happening before she gets to the paper.

“-the third house in the region police have raided this year,” said the morning man with the very nice hair. “Police are alarmed by the growing number of people who have turned their homes into massive marijuana- growing operations. Not only is it against the law, but it’s a major fire hazard, considering that these illicit growers bypass the electric meters, sometimes inexpertly, and all that extra power can overheat circuits with disastrous results.

“A woman in Bentley says the thief who stole her purse from her shopping cart also made off with a winning lottery ticket for $100,000. Lottery officials say they are paying special attention to people coming in to claim prizes.

“Finally, more about a story that still haunts this city, nearly two years later. Police say they may have some leads in their hunt for Devlin Smythe, wanted in the death of little Jesse Shuttleworth, who-”

Sarah scrambled for the remote on the kitchen table and turned up the volume.

“-was found dead in a refrigerator in Smythe’s apartment. Police believe Smythe also went by several other names, including Devin Smythe, Daniel Smithers, and Danny Simpson. There have been reports of suspects matching Smythe’s description in the Vancouver and Seattle areas.”

“Jesus. Two years,” Sarah said. “They always call her ‘little.’ Of course she was little. She was five years old, for Christ’s sake.” It was the most she’d said in my presence since the day before.

“Authorities in those areas are assisting local police in their inquiries. Coming up: Take a close look at those bills you’ve got in your wallet. They may just be counter-”

Sarah turned off the TV, dropped off her plate and cup in the sink, and went upstairs to brush her teeth before heading into the city. I refilled the kettle and plugged it in to make some coffee for myself. While the water heated I went into my study around the corner from that ground-floor laundry room, which was no longer the aphrodisiac it once was, booted up my computer, and opened the file folder next to the keyboard where I kept the pages of my manuscript. The word “Position” was scribbled across the otherwise blank title page, but that was just an inside joke. The real title, the one that would appear in the publisher’s spring catalogue, was TechnoGod. There were 357 more pages under that title one, and only a last chapter to write and some proofreading to do before bundling it off to my editor.

I write science fiction, mostly, and you could probably figure this out by stepping into my study. Or else you’d conclude that I’m a thirteen-year-old boy trapped in the body of a forty-one-year-old man. Maybe you’d be right on both counts. The room is littered with SF kitsch. Star Wars figures, Terminator statuettes, plastic Jurassic Park dinosaurs from Toys “R” Us, a rubbery shark from Jaws, small diecast models of the various flying machines from the Thunderbirds puppet show, an assortment of Enterprises from all the Star Trek series and movies. My writing center constitutes the short end of a large L-shaped desk, while the long end is my modeling center. On this particular day there were two model kits on the go-a foot-long Seaview submarine from the 1960s television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and a resin model of Ripley, the Sigourney Weaver character from the Alien movies. I like building models of things-spaceships, submarines, futuristic cars-more than assembling models of people, but I’ve always been partial to anything related to the Alien flicks.

I’m aware that it may not be normal for men in their forties to collect such toys, but then again I don’t make my living in a normal way. Being an author of more conventional fiction would be unusual enough, but writing SF puts you in a different category altogether. Science fiction writers don’t find their books reviewed in Time or Newsweek or The New York Times, although the latter has its token science fiction column in the book section every couple of weeks. I’ve never understood the ghettoization. Science fiction offers cutting-edge social commentary, inventive allegory, a grand vision of where our current social and political trends are taking us, an exploration of the human condition told through high-tech metaphor. And, of course, little monsters with razor-sharp teeth bursting out of people’s chests.

I’d been putting the finishing touches on my fourth book, and had hopes, as all authors do, that this would be the one that would once again earn me some critical attention, even if only in the cozy SF community, but in the pit of my stomach knew it wouldn’t be. The novel would be published to little fanfare. There would be virtually no publicity. The author tour would consist of two magazine interviews by phone. It would be ordered by the major book chains in such disappointing numbers as to make it impossible to create an impressive display of copies near the front of the store. Instead, it would be put back in the regular stacks, spine out, on a shelf reachable only by NBA stars, thereby guaranteeing that no one would ever find it. The publisher would arrange one book signing, not at one of the big chain bookstores, but at a mall store, where I would be seated behind a table in view of passing shoppers weighed down with Gap and Banana Republic bags and carrying