Crashed

game leg that he dragged around like an anchor. I’d hooked onto his back bumper one night and followed him up into Benedict Canyon until he slowed the car to allow a massive pair of wrought-iron gates to swing open, then took a steep driveway up into the pepper trees.

But Janice wasn’t aware I knew any of this. And if she had been, she wouldn’t have been amused at all.

“Where’s the streetlight?”

She gave me her bad-news smile, brave and full of fraudulent compassion. “Right in front. More or less directly over the end of the sidewalk.”

“Illuminating the front door.”

“Brilliantly,” she said. “Don’t think about the front door. Think about what’s on the other side.”

“I am,” I said. “I’m thinking I have to carry it seventy-three feet and nine inches to the van. Under a streetlight.”

“You always focus on the negative,” she said. “You need to do something about that. You want your positive energy to flow straight and true, and every time you go to the negative, you put up a little barrier. If it weren’t for your constant focus on negative energy, your marriage might have gone better.”

God, the things women think they have the right to say. “My marriage went fine,” I said. “It was before the marriage went that was difficult.”

“You have to be positive about that, too,” she said. “Without the marriage, you wouldn’t have Rina.”

Ahh, Rina, twelve years old and the light of my life. “To the extent I have her, anyway.”

She gave me the slow nod women use to indicate that they understand our pain, they admire the courage with which we handle it, and they’re absolutely certain that it’s all our fault. “I know it’s tough, Kathy being so punitive with visitation. But she’s your daughter. You’ve got to be happy about that.” Janice put down her glass and patted me comfortingly on the wrist with wet, cold fingers. I resisted the impulse to pull my wrist away. After all, her hand would dry eventually. She was working her way toward flirting, as she did every time we met, even though we both knew it wouldn’t lead anywhere. I was still attached to Kathy, my former wife, and Janice demonstrated no awkwardness or any other kind of perceptible difficulty turning down dates.

“Of course, I’m happy about that,” I said. And then, because it was expected, I made the usual move. “Want to go to dinner?”

She lowered her head slightly and regarded me from beneath her spiky bangs. “Tell me the truth. When you thought about asking me that question, you anticipated a negative response, didn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “It’s the ninth time, and you’ve never said yes.”

“See what I mean?” she said. “Your negativity has put kinks in your energy flow.”

“Can you straighten it for me?”

“If your invitation had been made in a purely affirmative spirit, I might have said yes.”

“Might?” I took a pull off the beer. “You mean I could purify my spirit, straighten out my energy flow, sterilize my anticipations, and you still might say no?”

“Oh, Junior,” she said. “There are so many intangibles.”

“Name one.”

The slow head-shake again. “You’re a crook.”

“So are you.”

“I beg to differ,” she said. “I’m a facilitator. I bring together different kinds of energies to effect the transfer of physical objects. It’s almost metaphysical.” She held her hands above the table so her palms were about four inches apart, as though she expected electricity to flow between them. She turned them so the left hand was on top. “On one side,” she said, “the energy of desire: dark, intense, magnetic.” She reversed her hands so the right was on top. “On the other side, the energy of action: direct, kinetic, daring.”

“Whooo,” I said. “That’s me?”

“Certainly.”

“Sounds like somebody I’d go out with.”

“And don’t think I don’t want to,” she said, and she narrowed her eyes mystically, which made her look nearsighted. I’ve always loved nearsighted women. They’re so easy to help. “Some day the elements will be in alignment.” She pushed the glass away and got up, and guys all over the place turned to look. In this bar, Janice was as exotic as an orchid blooming in the snow.

“A brightly lighted front door,” I said, mostly to slow her down. I liked watching her leave almost as much as I liked watching her arrive. “Seventy-three feet to the curb. Carrying that damn thing.”

“And nine inches.”

“Seventy-three feet, nine inches. In both directions.”

“And you have to solve it by Monday,” she said. “But don’t worry. You’ll think of something. You always do. When the child support’s due.”

She gave me a little four-finger wiggle of farewell, turned, and headed for the door. Every eye in the place was on her backside. That may be dated, but it was true.

And, of course, I had thought of something. In the abstract the plan had seemed plausible. Sort of. And it had continued to seem plausible right up to the moment I pulled up in front of the house in broad daylight. Then, as I climbed out, wincing into the merciless July sun that dehydrates the San Fernando Valley annually, it seemed very much less plausible. I felt a rush of what Janice would undoubtedly call negative energy, and suddenly it seemed completely idiotic.

But this was not the time to improvise. It was Monday afternoon in an upscale neighborhood, and I needed to justify my presence. Sweating in my dark coveralls, I went around to the back of the van and opened the rear door. Out of it I pulled a heavy dolly, which I set down about two feet behind the rear bumper. I squared my shoulders, the picture of someone about to do something difficult, leaned in, and very slowly dragged out an enormous cardboard refrigerator carton, on one side of which I had stenciled the words SUB ZERO. This was no neighborhood for Kelvinators or Maytags.

Back behind the house, the dogs began to bark. They were all bassos, ready to sing the lead in “Boris Godunov,” and I thought I could distinguish four of them, sounding like they weighed a combined total of 750 pounds, mostly teeth. Christ, I was seventy-three feet, nine inches from the door, not even standing on the damn lawn yet, and I was already too close for them.

Kathy, my ex-wife, has taught Rina to love dogs. It doesn’t matter how obscure the opportunity for revenge is; Kathy will grab it like a trapeze.

Grunting and straining, I tilted the box down and slid it onto the dolly. I’d put a couple of sandbags in the bottom of the box, mostly to keep it from tipping or being blown over, but it took some work to make it look heavy enough. Once I had it on the dolly, I tilted it back and made a big production of hauling it up the four-inch vertical of the curb. Then I walked away from it so I was visible from all directions, pulled out a cell phone, and called myself.

I listened to my message for a second and then talked into the phone. With it pressed to my ear, I turned to face the house, looked up at a second-story window, and gave a little wave. The cell phone slipped easily into the top pocket of the coveralls, and I grabbed the dolly handles, put my back into tilting it up onto the wheels, and towed the carton up the slate path.

At the door, I positioned the box so the side with SUB ZERO on it faced the street. Then I got in between the box and the door and pushed open the flap I’d cut in the closest side of the box-just three straight lines with a box cutter, leaving the fourth side of the rectangle intact to serve as a hinge. The flap was about five feet high and three feet wide, and it swung open into the box. I climbed in. From the street, all anyone would see was the box.

The door was fancy, not functional. Heavy dark wood, brass hardware, and a big panel of stained glass in the upper half-some sort of coat of arms, a characteristically confused collision of symbolic elements that included an ax, a rose, and something that looked suspiciously like a pair of pliers. A good graphic artist could have made a fortune in the Middle Ages.

My working valise was at the bottom of the box. I snapped on a pair of surgical gloves, pulled out my set of picks, and went to work on the lock. The temperature in the box was about a hundred degrees, the gloves quickly became wet inside, and-appearances to the contrary-the lock had muscles. But I didn’t feel cramped for time, since I doubted anyone would suspect a Sub Zero refrigerator of trying to break into a house. After nine or ten warm,