Godzilla show up to devour them was a little more than my delicate sensibility could handle.
After that, we had the daily tantrum over homework, followed by the making-up and post-tantrum hugs, then preparing dinner, celebrating the arrival of Abby, eating dinner, packing Leah off to her soccer game, talking to the other parents at the cold, damp high school field during said game (nobody there knew anything about the stink bombs, either), then back home, baths, showers, pajamas, brushed teeth, arguments about why one has to go to bed at the same time as the other despite the age difference, then a cuddle on the couch with my wife before she headed off to bed.
Through it all, my mind was occupied with something else. I had to get to “THE END” of that damn screenplay, so I sat down to complete my task at 11:30 p.m.
By 1:30 a.m it was pretty much done, and purged from my conscious mind. I’d pay for it in the morning, but I already felt better. The mystery had been solved, the wicked punished, the good rewarded, and most importantly, the words “FADE OUT” typed. I’d print out a copy in the morning and force Abby to read it the next night.
The computer went off about a quarter to two, and I headed for the stairs, with the lights out everywhere on the ground floor. Luckily, I know where everything is in my house, so I only stubbed my toe twice and tripped once.
But the moment my foot hit the first stair, I heard a jarring crash of glass and the sound of a car peeling away. Quick as a cat, I stood transfixed on the first stair, and gaped into my living room wondering what to do.
Amid the broken glass, a splinter of wood from the frame of what used to be our bow window and the usual clutter of remote controls, discarded socks, and forgotten toys, was a rock about the size of a softball, covered in a man’s handkerchief.
I shook off my initial stupor and walked to the rock, careful to avoid the shards of glass. Passing the side table, I picked up a pair of gloves I’d left there the previous March after the final snowfall of the season. No sense rushing these things—we might have gotten one of those freak blizzards in July you’re always hearing about.
I pulled on the gloves and bent down to pick up the rock. It was fairly heavy, and the handkerchief, it was now obvious, had been lashed to it with thick rubber bands. I eyeballed its trajectory from the street, and marveled at the thrower’s arm. The Yankees could use a guy like that for middle relief.
Written in permanent marker on the handkerchief were the words, “YOU WERE WARNED.”
Chapter
Eighteen
You don’t often get a rock with a threatening message thrown through your front window at two in the morning, so I savored the moment. In other words, I stood there a long time with a knot in my stomach and a definite shimmy in my knees.
The knot in my stomach leapt to my throat when the light in the room suddenly came on. I spun, sending broken glass sliding to various corners of the room.
“Jesus!” said Abby, standing on the stairs and looking down at me. “What happened?”
To my eternal shame, I considered lying to her. Abby was already on edge about the phone call, and this would be about sixteen times worse than that. So what could I say—that I’d been walking across the room on my way to the stairs when the window inexplicably exploded?
I held out the rock, like a little boy explaining to his mother how he hadn’t meant to break his fire engine, but displaying two, neatly snapped-apart pieces.
“Somebody threw this through our window.”
“Holy shit,” she said daintily. Abigail walked down the stairs and surveyed the wreckage that is our living room, layered with the wreckage that now was our front window. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I was on the stairs when it happened.” She put on a pair of slippers that were on the stairs, came over and gave me a hug anyway, which I would have appreciated more thoroughly under different circumstances.
“Why would somebody throw a rock through our window?” she asked. Abby hadn’t seen the words on the handkerchief, and I wasn’t rushing to show them to her.
“I didn’t have time to ask.”
Her eyes narrowed. She knows when I’m being evasive. Apparently the only emotion she can’t detect