to the basement. He entered Corbin’s unit, pulling the door shut behind him, and used his penlight to search the small space. There was box after box of comic books, neatly organized. There was a barbecue grill, and there were several framed posters, the type of posters someone in their early twenties might hang on a dorm-room wall or a first apartment. Car posters. Girlie posters. He wondered why Corbin had kept them. One of the posters was a large framed album cover: Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese. A woman’s torso, the bottoms of her meaty breasts hanging below a cutoff top. Henry felt for his pocketknife. He decided to do some surgery on the poster.
Kate was back for some of the afternoon, Henry hiding in the guest room, but she left again. He went to the bedroom, where her shucked jeans were on the floor, still a little warm. He sniffed at them, detecting almost nothing of her scent, just a faraway whiff of baby powder. Where had she gone that she needed to change out of her jeans? He looked in the bathroom; her toothbrush was recently used, still wet, and he put it in his mouth, sucked the minty taste out of the bristles.
Ever since cutting the poster, Henry, instead of feeling pleased, was agitated and anxious. He wanted something to happen, for Corbin to return or for the police to come, or even for Kate to discover him hiding in her closet, the pocketknife conveniently held between his fingers. He did his stretching exercises, then found a fresh bottle of vodka and cracked its seal, pouring half a tumbler’s worth over crushed ice. Hours later, Kate was still gone, and Henry, his face numb and tingling from drinking the vodka, was pacing the apartment, hungry and annoyed. He decided to leave, stashing his backpack in the guest room closet and heading out into the night through 101’s back entrance. Before he left, he returned the storage key to the drawer, but pocketed one of the other unlabeled keys, assuming it was a spare for the apartment, plus a key that was labeled am—Audrey Marshall’s apartment, probably. He had the picks, but they took time, and it was always better to have actual keys. He walked across the Commons to a dark bar he liked called the Proposition, ate two orders of wings, and drank several Heinekens.
“You’ve been away,” the bartender said.
He looked at her, and it took him a moment to realize they’d talked before, but then it all came back. Samantha. Bay State College undergrad. She had to take a semester off from school because her grandmother had been paying her tuition but now her grandmother was in an expensive nursing home, and she hadn’t squared away her financial aid package yet. Henry also remembered the things he knew about Samantha that she hadn’t told him. The bulimia she’d been fighting on and off for years, evident by the puffiness of her face and the loss of enamel on her teeth. The way she’d sleep with any guy who was halfway nice to her, and plenty who weren’t. How bad she felt about herself most of the time.
“Not away, just trying to eat better,” Henry said.
“I hear you,” Samantha said, and ended the conversation. Henry wondered if she sensed he didn’t want to talk, and found himself annoyed that she probably had. He hated being read by anyone, even by stupid female bartenders. He cracked a chicken bone between his teeth and sucked at the marrow.
Henry returned to Bury Street, studied Corbin’s windows from the sidewalk, and decided that Kate wasn’t back. Or if she was back, she’d gone straight to sleep. He’d risk it, either way. He entered the basement, which was empty except for the cat that was always around. “Here, kitty, kitty,” he said, pushing his fingers underneath its chin. The words sounded a little slurred in his own ears, and he wondered if he’d had too much to drink, if maybe he should just head home to the South End and sleep it off. He rubbed the cat’s twig-like jawbone. It didn’t purr, and when he pulled his hand away, it latched onto his forearm with both paws, its claws sinking into his flesh. Henry, shocked, pulled back, feeling his skin tear, and the cat hissed viciously, then turned and bolted before he had a chance to stamp it to death. He looked at the wound, the skin already beginning to puff