American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,67

to the fitness magazine he bought at the store, and he grunts as if to say—How did this get here? And he absentmindedly leaves it on a shelf in the linen closet of the bathroom, making sure it appears as though he just set it down on whichever surface was available.

Then he decides to go through the cleaning supplies under his sink. And again, he finds something that should not be there: a bottle of baby oil. He shakes his head, tsking and bemoaning his poor organizational skills, and again returns to the bathroom. Yet rather than putting the baby oil away, he enters the linen closet with it, and shuts the door behind him.

In Wink, it is always smart to live your life as if you’re being watched. Because so frequently, you are.

Norris blindly reaches out and picks up a waiting flashlight from one of the closet shelves. He turns it on, grabs the magazine, stoops, and crawls below the biggest shelf at the bottom of the closet. There, curled up in the fetal position, his breath trembling and his fingers quivering, he begins to page through the magazine, his eyes devouring every image.

Wink has strict rules, and though one of its rules is never to discuss what the rules are, there are certain things that just don’t happen. No one gets divorced in Wink, for example. Premarital sex is deeply frowned upon, and pregnancy out of wedlock is beyond scandalous. Yet there are things even worse than these.

Norris is not sure why, but he’s always found it easier to fall in love with men than women. He’s just more comfortable around them. And he knows it is wrong—it is wrong—yet he cannot stop himself. He cannot stop the bolt of energy that sometimes comes rushing out of his heart. He has never really acted on it: though sometimes he might desperately wish for physical contact (the brush of knuckles on the back of his hand, perhaps) he cannot allow it. His one moment of perfection, his guilty, trembling moment of joy, occurs once a month in the cramped dark of his linen closet, lit only by a flashlight and perfumed with the puerile aroma of baby oil. It is the only time he feels happy and whole, and each time it is followed by unspeakable self-hate. What a fool he is to follow such passions, and what a coward he is to do so in such a craven way.

He is just about to unbuckle his pants when he hears a crash from his kitchen. He sits up so fast he knocks his head on the shelf above him. A single thought cracks through his mind like a caroming bullet:

He’s been found out. They know what he is.

He sits in the closet for a moment, listening, but he hears no other noise. Then, slowly, he emerges from the closet, making sure to leave the baby oil and the fitness magazine hidden below piles of bedsheets. He looks down his hallway but sees nothing there. He grabs the only weapon he can find—an old brass candlestick—and, feeling like a cartoon out of Clue, he stalks down the hall.

He finds his French press has fallen off the top of the stove and shattered on the kitchen floor. He can’t imagine how this could have happened, yet it seems innocent enough. He sighs, relieved, puts the candlestick on the kitchen counter, and stoops to pick up the glass.

It’s as he’s on his hands and knees, brushing shards into a paper towel, that he hears the hiss. And it’s just sheer coincidence that he looks up and sees the severed tube resting against the wall behind his stove. And isn’t the air at the mouth of the severed tube awful shimmery? And what is that smell in the air…

Norris’s eyes shoot wide and he stands up and bolts out of his house, stumbling out the back door to his porch. He jumps his fence and peers back through a crack, watching his house for any sign of movement.

He isn’t sure how they got in, but someone’s broken into this house and cut his gas lines, he’s sure. Just the tiniest spark could have set the whole thing off. But why would someone do that? Is it because of what he was about to do? Was it a message?

A cloud drifts over the moon, and Norris absently glances up at it. He does a double take, and freezes as he realizes he’s just broken