The Dwelling: A Novel (10 page)

Someone’s in the house!
He did not panic. The door closed quietly, but not silently, the way a burglar would try to close a door. Just normal. He sat up in bed, carefully. The sheet tugged where it was tucked under Becca and he relented to it, easing it out, careful not to wake her.

Sound is funny on concrete, street is lined with trees, sound bounces.
It was warm out, maybe the first really warm night after spring, people had their windows open. This occurred to him in a surface sort of way, the lines preaching to him in his head, while he listened intently to the sounds downstairs, under the pumping of his heart.
Some drunk. Mistaken house. Could be anything.

Heels clicked briefly down the hall, not mincing, TV-tiptoe burglar steps, but just steps. He listened, fascinated, as they went from the door to the end of the hall.
Tick tick tick tick.

Sound carries this time of year.
Dan felt every nerve ending light up, go on alert.

The door to the studio opened and closed. He heard the small
snick
of the tongue into the latch. A rational part of him screamed after that,
Someone is in the house!
His mouth felt dry. He couldn’t move. His heart
boom-boomed
in his chest. He could smell himself, his underarms. Fear sweat.
Sound carries. Some drunk mistook the house. Kids, fooling around.

Muffled, tinny, low, up the stairs drifted the sound of music. A woman’s voice thinned through ancient recording, sad and simple at the same time, filtered up through floor, walls. He didn’t know the song, didn’t think he’d ever heard it in his lifetime. But the words came to him.

The music faded out. He listened intently. The silence of the house fell down around him seductively. A minute passed. Then several. In listening, his mind wandered: the possibilities of
someone downstairs!
became the possibilities of the utter hush—a palpable thing, a thing that surrounded him like a blanket. The sounds came from outside then, the burr of distant traffic, the bark of a dog far up the street, the electrical hum, always present. Ten minutes passed. His eyes glanced over at the clock. It was nearly three-thirty by then.

Nothing from downstairs. The press of silence was all he could hear.

Sleep came back, his muscles lost their tension, as though he was unable to fend off what he couldn’t coax over before. Now, sleep wanted him.

Dream. It was a dream.
He’d been dreaming
(sitting up?).
His conscious mind told him it was a dream. He hadn’t really been awake at all. There were lots of names for it. Sleep paralysis. Sleep psychosis. Daydream.

Just falling down the rabbit hole, his first real dream of the night was about to take place on the roof of an abandoned building in the heart of the city and when it started, he thought he knew
oh yes absolutely
that if he went down the stairs the light in his studio would be on. The door would not be closed, but open a crack, just enough to invite you to push it open
(come in).

The door would open with a yawn.

Come in.

Sleep took him.

Whatever fascination had kept Dan in his studio for all hours of the day and night, he managed to avoid it for most of the next morning.

Becca left early for the office, not having said much at all. She told him that she’d called the painters and they would be in on Friday.

“What painters?” he said.

“For the bed—my office upstairs. I told you last night.” Had she? She didn’t meet his glance, but it seemed only that she was lost in thought rather than avoiding him. The rest of breakfast—just coffee for both of them—was quiet: they seemed to have other things on their minds. Becca had said she might be late coming home, not to wait on her for dinner. He said okay. She kissed him lightly on the cheek without making eye contact and he smiled a good-bye. It had the formal feel of mornings after a fight. Except, as far as he remembered, there had been no fight.

There had just been doors opening and closing and footsteps and things that go
hum
in the night. (Not hum, exactly. But something about
leaving
or
going away
or
leaving me lonely.)

Dream.

He drank a cup of coffee in the living room and called Max on the portable phone. Max wasn’t in, and he left a message. He called his mother and told her about the new house; he gave her the new address. He thought about calling the employment agency that Becca had mentioned, but didn’t. She hadn’t brought it up; he wouldn’t either.

Around ten he wanted a toke. His pipe was in the studio. He went upstairs and had a shower.

Under the pelting water, he found himself listening for something.

*  *  *

The mattress for the Murphy bed was delivered just after his shower.

Dan directed two disinterested delivery men down the hall ahead of him.

“Door’s shut,” the guy in front said. He was large, and red-faced, the kind of guy who looked pissed off most of the time. It would probably kill him. That and the belly that Doritos built, hanging over his belt.

“Just give it a push open,” Dan said. He peered around the large man’s shoulders as he shoved the door open. Without hesitation—
wait!
—the guy in front dragged the mattress on its side through the door and into the middle of the room, forcing the skinny guy in back to go along with it. The light popped on with a snap of tungsten.

(Come in.)

“Pretty small space,” the little guy said, his hand on the switch. The big guy breathed heavily with irritation.

“Where’s this going?”

Dan peeked into the room. It was
(of course
) empty. He gestured to the wall.

“In there,” he said. Two sets of eyes looked surprised at the blank wall of the studio while Dan found the depression near the ceiling and pulled the frame down. The clank of the feet on the floor made the big guy snort. “I haven’t seen one of these in years,” he said, and the two of them tossed the mattress on top. When they settled it in the center of the bed, the big man sent it back up into the wall. It closed with a solid, woody
thunk
.

The three of them stood, staring at the wall for a moment, where the bed had disappeared. It fitted snugly, as it had before the mattress had been added. The room was thick with inspired awe.

Then the fat guy turned his head slightly, as though listening, hearing something. He got closer to the wall, a serious expression on his face.

“Gee-zus!”
he said, alarmed. “Did you hear that?”

“What?” Dan said, eyes widening.

He raised a hand for quiet and pressed his ear to the false wall. Dan and the other fellow leaned in toward it, listening also. Then the big guy dragged his hands down the wall. “Help me! Help me!” he said, his voice raised in falsetto. Then he turned to them and said, with exaggerated concern, “Somebody wants out.”

Very funny.

They laughed, none harder than the big guy, who insisted on pulling the bed out again, and then sending it back up, as though it were a toy.

Max called at one, excited. He wanted to know how far Dan had gotten on the first scene. “Are you sitting down, buddy?”

Dan had grabbed his pipe off the table in the studio and was sitting on the back step, having a toke. He told Max he
was
sitting and then drew deeply on the pipe.

“I got a meeting with
Apex
on Friday. Fuck! Friday afternoon. You too, right? They’ll want to see characters and at least a scene of story with an outline and a bible. This could be it—”

“Who’s Apex?” Dan said, exhaling at the same time.

“Who’s Apex! They’re a publisher, boyo! A small one,” he conceded. “They publish
Brat Boy
and
Tunnel of Time.
Not bad company.” He waited for Dan to comment.

“How small?” Dan asked. “They got any money?”

“Fuck off, dickbrain! You’re sucking the life outta this.
They are a publisher who wants to see our book.
So shut the fuck up, draw some pretty pictures and phone me when you’re done. Like tonight.”

“Tonight!
Fuck you,” he said, alarmed.

“I’m a married man,” Max said, with mock primness. “I’m bangin’ ya. But Friday bring something. It doesn’t have to be anything more than the story pages roughed for the first scene. Atmospheric, original and…I dunno, haunting or some kind of shit. Meeting’s at three at Jester’s on Oak. I can’t believe it! Apex! I am so
pumped!
Phone me—” His voice rose and fell with a few more
Apex, shit!
and then he hung up.

Dan clicked the phone off with his thumb and took another hit off the pipe. He sat for a moment more, taking in the sun shining on the tangled back garden, which looked less appealing, somehow, than it had.

Then the idea of a publisher and something to offer Becca
(gee, a couple of months out of work and I’m a working artist and how was
your
day, you director yet?)
and he smiled, not without a little cruelty, and then felt bad enough and pumped enough to pull his ass off the back stoop and put himself into the studio to work. Stoned, he hardly paused at the door. But he thought, however briefly,
Bring it on, if you’re gonna—

All was quiet (empty) in there. But, just to be sure, Dan put Aerosmith on the stereo, and cranked it. Loud.

Becca was back at her desk by three. It had been a long lunch.

She tried to get back to work but the two glasses of wine, combined with her nervousness, had made her quite light-headed. She had no idea if it had gone well or not.

He had read her résumé, he’d said. It was complete, he’d said. He’d asked her some questions about her department and the work that she was currently doing. She had answered everything with dignity and confidence—a confidence that went up and down as the lunch progressed, veering wildly in both directions.

Mr. Huff had Scotch straight up, which seemed to Becca terribly CEO-ish of him, and she wondered if he was doing it to impress her (it had). He had downed the first one quite quickly and she wondered if that meant he was nervous. But the talk had been entirely shop and she was starting to relax. Her career was not, in general, a source of anxiety for her. While they stayed in the realm of the current, she was fine. When they moved into the director’s position (a position she could practically taste, almost reach out and touch), the nervousness returned. Ambition made her tremble with anticipation and fear.

While she had no reason to be thinking of hotel rooms and beds, the conversation did get personal. But he asked her almost nothing about herself.

“Do you have children, Rebecca?” he asked her. When she said no, she braced herself
(why?)
for the married question, but it didn’t come. Instead he told her he had two children, both in university. They talked of schools for a while. She used the opportunity to mention her education and a course currently offered by the local university, and
What do you think? Is it worth looking into?
By-the-book flattery; men rarely noticed.

And so it went.

Becca looked at her watch several times—discreetly—but he did notice. She wondered unkindly (and a little gleefully) if that was because her arm was attached to her chest, and whenever she looked away, his eyes wandered back there.

“You’re very conscious of the time, Miss Mason,” he said, and she wondered about his vacillating use of her name, Miss Mason one minute and Rebecca the next. She frowned inside, thinking it meant something and she would have to figure out what: was he moving randomly between intimacy and distance, or was it a power thing; Miss Mason when she was being a bad girl, and Rebecca when he was condescending
(good girl)
to her? She tried to pay closer attention. She enjoyed such challenges: they were easier, in a way, than sitting back and hoping for the best; it was like working a room or being a wallflower. Math as opposed to guesswork. Active versus passive.

“Do you have a meeting?” he asked.

“No, but I have some things I would like to get off my desk today,” she said importantly. In fact, she was checking out how long they had been at lunch. How long she had been listening to stories of his university days and the time he caddied for Jimmy Carter.

“When you’re a director”—
(he said when!)
—“lunches will take up your afternoon. It’s part of the job. A director has to spend a certain amount of his—or her—time
making nice.
Do you know what I mean?”

It was then that she became most confused. Making nice. Her mouth went dry and she casually took a sip of her wine. “I think so,” she said. “I think there’s a certain amount of time that most of us spend advancing the Center. On or off the job.” She tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck. She looked at the table. Remnants of lunch. Her salad had gone mostly uneaten. Her head was light.

There was a pause in the conversation that seemed important. Her head was buzzing. She was having trouble focusing. She would have liked another glass of wine, something to take the spin out of her head and make it stay put in an easy place.
Do you like to dance?
she would have liked to ask him.
Do you think Prada will come out with a new line for fall or do you think this heavy-heeled, masculine thing is going to go on forever? I’m thinking of painting my office pink. What do you think of pink as a working environment? Do you like my shoes? They were three hundred dollars.
Easy things. Things with answers. She put her glass down and reminded herself not to touch it again.

If he had said at that moment that a room was waiting for them at the Houston, she would not have refused. She would have gone meekly, just to lie down. Just so the unanswerable portion of this thing would be over.
I will sleep with you for the job. There it is.
If only she could say what she thought he might be thinking. It was all very exhausting. Innuendo was hard for her.

She would rather he just gave it to her because her work was good, of course. It just didn’t feel likely. His eyes on her body made it feel less likely. Her work flashed occasionally before her eyes. She had no idea if she was the right person for the job. She couldn’t have said at that moment that the current holder of the job, Mr. Caldwell Anderson, was the right person for the job. They all felt the same to her. She was the
logical
choice for the job; of that she had no doubt.

I am the logical choice for the job, for Chrissakes. Don’t make me have sex with you.

She looked him in the eye. “I’m the right person for this job, Mr. Huff,” she said anyway. She didn’t say the rest.
I will do anything to have it. To be it.

He might or might not have known that. He reached over and put his large hand over hers. She looked down at their hands. His was covered in hair. It was white. It would be demanding. She could tell.

He rested it there for a moment and then shook it a little. “I’ll see what happens,” he said. “In the meantime, this has been a very pleasant lunch. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

And it was over.

Ambiguity.
A job description for women.

Just before leaving work, packing up her desk, memos, notes, phone messages that had gone unreturned through the course of the afternoon fog, and with the beginnings of a headache probing her temples, she decided that if he wanted her to sleep with him, she would just do it. It wouldn’t be cheating. It would be business. It wasn’t as though she’d like it.

It was just the way things were. Probably (maybe not) everyone did it.

She loved her husband. This was just business. In a perfect world, he would understand.

Dan’s afternoon had not been particularly productive, although he had started out with good intentions.

The jumpiness of the morning had simply had to give way to work. He started with his pivotal frame, the Reporter and the Headhunter locked in an emotional and politically savvy embrace on the rooftop of the abandoned building. It was good, great even. And he worked backward.

He ran quickly through preliminary sketches of Hanus and Malicia in the office headquarters. He had a nice early sketch, an overhead view of Hanus on the phone, Malicia pacing patricianly. That was the first frame. They wanted the Headhunter.

He roughed out five frames with those two, then backtracked for another with the Headhunter, the first study of him. He’s in his cave, head and shoulders illuminated by his computer screen, face pensive, reading headlines out of indymedia.org. Dan had to come up with an expression other than pensive for him. So far he had only
pensive
and
longing.
Weren’t they very nearly the same muscles?

Dan worked through the afternoon without pause. Repeatedly, he slipped outside for another toke. He smoked cigarettes (four) in the studio. Becca would probably freak, right up until she heard the good news. Then she would back off.

What’s Apex?

A publisher.