“It’s been a long day.” I glance at my empty glass, feel a prickle of guilt. “What’s Livvy up to?”
“Getting ready for tomorrow.”
“Oh. What’s her costume?”
“A ghost,” Ed says.
“You got lucky.”
“What do you mean?”
I laugh. “Last year she was a fire truck.”
“Man, that took days.”
“It took me days.”
I can hear him grin.
Across the park, three stories up, through the window and in the depths of a dark room, there’s the glow of a computer screen. Light dawns, an instant sunrise; I see a desk, a table lamp, and then Ethan, shucking his sweater. Affirmative: Our bedrooms do indeed face each other.
He turns around, eyes cast down, and peels off his shirt. I look away.
Sunday, October 31
10
Weak morning light strains through my bedroom window. I roll over; my hip cracks against my laptop. A late night playing bad chess. My knights stumbled, my rooks crashed.
I drag myself to and from the shower, mop my hair with a towel, skid deodorant under my arms. Fit for fight, as Sally says. Happy Halloween.
I won’t be answering any doors this evening, of course. David will head out at seven—downtown, I think he said. I bet that’s fun.
He suggested earlier that we leave a bowl of candy on the stoop. “Any kid would take it within a minute, bowl and all,” I told him.
He seemed miffed. “I wasn’t a child psychologist,” he said.
“You don’t need to have been a child psychologist. You just need to have been a child.”
So I’m going to switch off the lights and pretend no one’s home.
I visit my film site. Andrew is online; he posted a link to a Pauline Kael essay on Vertigo—“stupid” and “shallow”—and beneath that, he’s making a list: Best noir to hold hands through? (The Third Man. The last shot alone.)
I read the Kael piece, ping him a message. After five minutes, he logs out.
I can’t remember the last time someone held my hand.
11
Whap.
The front door again. This time I’m coiled on the sofa, watching Rififi—the extended heist sequence, half an hour without a syllable of dialogue or a note of music, just diegetic sound and the hum of blood in your ears. Yves had suggested I spend more time with French cinema. Presumably a semi-silent film was not what he had in mind. Quel dommage.
Then that dull whap at the door, a second time.
I peel the blanket from my legs, swing myself to my feet, find the remote, pause the movie.
Twilight sifting down outside. I walk to the door and open it.
Whap.
I step into the hall—the one area of the house I dislike and distrust, the cool gray zone between my realm and the outside world. Right now it’s dim in the dusk, the dark walls like hands about to clap me between them.
Streaks of leaded glass line the front door. I approach one, gaze through it.
A crack, and the window shudders. A tiny missile has struck: an egg, blasted, its guts spangled across the glass. I hear myself gasp. Through the smear of yolk I can see three kids in the street, their faces bright, their grins bold, one of them poised with an egg in his fist.
I sway where I stand, place a hand against the wall.
This is my home. That’s my window.
My throat shrinks. Tears well in my eyes. I feel surprised, then ashamed.
Whap.
Then angry.
I can’t fling wide the door and send them scurrying. I can’t barrel outside and confront them. I rap on the window, sharply—
Whap.
I slap the heel of my hand against the door.
I bash it with my fist.
I growl, then I roar, my voice bounding between the walls, the dark little hall a chamber of echoes.
I’m helpless.
No, you’re not, I can hear Dr. Fielding say.
In, two, three, four.
No, I’m not.
I’m not. I toiled nearly a decade as a graduate student. I spent fifteen months training in inner-city schools. I practiced for seven years. I’m tough, I promised Sally.
Scraping my hair back, I retreat to the living room, yank a breath from the air, stab the intercom with one finger.
“Get away from my house,” I hiss. Surely they’ll hear the squawk outside.
Whap.
My finger is wobbling on the intercom button. “Get away from my house!”
Whap.
I stumble across the room, trip up the stairs, race into my study, to the window. There they are, clustered in the street like marauders, laying siege to my home, their shadows endless in