The front door opened and Paul walked in. "Hey," I said, standing in the front hall, holding my right hand with my left.
"Uhhn," he said, walking past me. Then he noticed that the back of my hand was bright red. "Whadja do?"
"Barbecue," I said.
"That button doesn't work," Paul said.
"I know."
"When's Mom getting home?"
"She's home. She's upstairs."
"Car's not here." He tipped his head in the direction of the driveway.
"I know. But don't say anything."
"About what?"
"That the car's not there. She doesn't know the car's not there."
Paul looked at me. "What happened? Did you smash it up or something? Because I was gonna ask her to drive me over to Hakim's after dinner."
"I didn't smash it up. I just moved it."
Now he looked at me harder. "You're doing something, aren't you?"
"Maybe."
"Don't do another one of your lame-ass things, Dad. Are you trying to teach her a lesson or something? Because, like, we're all tired of that kind of thing. What'd she do? Leave the keys in the car?"
"Not quite. But sort of. Just go into the kitchen and butter some hamburger buns."
"I'm not hungry."
"I didn't ask if you were hungry. I asked you to butter -"
"I can't find the aloe!" Sarah shouted from the bathroom.
"Don't worry about it," I said, but the truth was, the back of my hand was really stinging. "Maybe we've got something else. Like, I don't know, isn't butter supposed to help?"
"Butter? Where'd you hear that?"
"I don't know. I just thought I had."
"I'm going to go out and get some aloe." She was coming down the stairs now, reaching into the closet for her jacket, grabbing her purse on the bench by the front door.
"Really, it'll be fine."
But Sarah wasn't listening. She was rooting around in her purse, looking for her keys.
"Where the hell are my ..." she muttered. She threw her purse back on the bench and strode into the kitchen. "I must have left them in here when I brought in the groceries ..."
I hadn't planned to make my point about the keys this quickly. Things were ahead of schedule because I'd burned my hand and Sarah was frantic to ease my suffering. It was starting to look as though my timing could have been a bit better.
"I wonder if I left them in the car," Sarah said, more to herself than anyone else. "Except I remember unlocking the door and -"
The bulb went off. You could see it in her eyes. She knew exactly where to find those keys. She strode confidently through the front hall to the front door, opened it, her eyes drawn to the lock.
Things did not turn out as she'd expected.
"Oh shit," she said. "I was sure I'd left them there. Did you leave the door unlocked when you went out?"
"I don't think so," I said.
"Then they have to be in the car." She took one step out of the house and froze. I couldn't see her face at that point, with her back to me and all. But I had a pretty good idea how she must have looked. Dumbfounded. Dumbstruck. Panicked.
"Zack," she said. Not screaming. More tentative. "Zack, Angie's not home yet, is she?"
"No," I said. As far as she knew, I was unaware that her Camry was no longer in the driveway. I came up behind her. "Listen," I said, shaking my hand at my side, trying to make the sting go away. "I should tell you -"
"Shit! Shit! Shit! You were right! Shit! I did it! It's all my fault. Jesus! Oh shit!"
She spun around and pushed by me on her way back into the house. She was headed straight for the kitchen, and I nearly had to run to catch up with her. She had the phone in her hand. "I'm going to have to call the police."
"Sarah." I didn't want her to make the call. The last thing I wanted was the 911 operator getting another false alarm from this address.
"The car's been stolen," she confessed to me. "Shit, I can't believe this. I don't even know what I had in there. What did we have in the car? We had that stuff, from the trip, those Triptiks from the auto club, and a bag of old clothes in the trunk I was going to drop off at the Goodwill, and -"
"Don't call," I said.
"- not that that's very valuable, but Jesus, we were going to give those to people who needed them, not some asshole who steals -"
"Put the phone down," I said. But she wasn't listening. She was about to punch in the number, so I reached down into my pocket, pulled out her set of keys, and set them on the kitchen counter where she could see them.
She stared at them a moment, not comprehending. If her car had been stolen, how could I have the keys?
"It's around the corner," I said, softly.
"I don't understand," Sarah said. "You were using the car?"
"It's around the corner," I repeated, whispering. "I moved it. Everything's fine."
Sarah replaced the receiver, her face red, her breathing rapid and shallow. "Why did you move my car around the corner? And why have you got my keys?"
"Okay, you see, what happened is ... you know how you thought you'd left your keys in the door?"
Sarah nodded.
"And you know how I've mentioned that to you before?"
Sarah nodded again, a bit more slowly this time.