At the intersection with Redfern, Thomas Huston paused for a while. There was no traffic in the development at that hour. The houses were dark. No dogs barked, no alley cats prowled the shadows. All quiet on the suburban front.
By the time he returned to his garage, he had finished crafting several sentences for the novel. The first two would introduce the scene in which his protagonist first succumbed to his desire. He knew what he had to do. His heart knew what was necessary and right, but he could not make his body move away from her, could not summon the strength to resist what he would have to live with forever and which would give him no peace. The other sentences were about Annabel by way of Claire, about his protagonist’s desire by way of Huston’s own.
In the garage he closed and locked the door and crossed toward the kitchen. He thought he detected a faint odor of cigarette smoke. Maybe a neighbor had stepped outside for a midnight smoke. Surely Tommy hadn’t sneaked a quick one earlier in the evening? Huston paused for an instant and sniffed the air. Was it really cigarette smoke he smelled? Maybe the odor had come from the bag of chicken bones. Maybe he was just imagining things.
He locked the inside garage door behind himself and crossed toward his study. He knew what he had to do, he thought, and repeated the sentences again, working on the cadence, the pauses, getting them just right. Sometimes a comma made all the difference.
He sat at his desk and laid his journal open and wrote down the sentences. A few more sentences followed. He worked on each one in his head until it sounded just right, then he wrote it down. She is a dark-haired woman, green eyed and dusky with secrets. Maybe twenty minutes passed, not long, certainly no more than thirty. A creak of footsteps upstairs. Tommy taking a leak probably. Maybe sneaking in some time on his laptop. Huston read over what he had written, was pleased with the sound of it. Then he closed up the journal and returned it to the bookshelf.
Suddenly the scent of cigarette smoke intruded again, this time he was sure of it. He had never smoked, always abhorred the stupidity of the habit, its selfishness and self-destructiveness, and his sensitivity to its stink had always been keen. But he felt no anger, only sadness, because now he would have to go upstairs and catch Tommy in the act and read him the riot act. The boy would be embarrassed. Maybe he would cry. And Thomas Huston’s only desire was to fill his house with happiness. Disciplining his children was a duty he accepted but never enjoyed.
Just outside Huston’s office, a man he had never before seen was waiting in the unlit foyer at the bottom of the stairs. The man stepped into the doorway before Huston reached it, a big man, not as tall as Huston but broad shouldered, thick necked. His head was shaved and gleaming with perspiration. The scent of cigarette smoke clung to his tight black T-shirt and jeans.
Huston gave a small start of surprise at the sight of him, an involuntary chuff of air, a barely audible “unh.” It was as if all the rest of the house went dark around him but the man remained clearly illuminated in the light from the office. In that first instant Huston took in everything about the man, the broad, round face and gray eyes that seemed too small for his head, the black nylon batting gloves, the black enameled pistol in his right hand, the chef’s knife in his left. That’s my chef’s knife, Huston thought, and was suddenly disoriented by his recognition of the knife, the dreamlike incongruities of stranger, knife, gun, my home. For several moments, all he could understand, all that registered on him, was the soreness of every breath, the sudden heavy hurt in his gut. It was not fear that paralyzed him but this sudden interjection of the inexplicable, and in the dark congestion of his mind, he could think only of his mother and father.
“Back up,” the man told him.
Huston only stood there. He tried to swallow but could not. The smell of stale smoke was nauseating.
The man raised the pistol. Huston stepped back.
“Keep going. Back further.”
Three halting steps. The movement broke something loose in Huston’s chest and he sucked in three desperate breaths. The man was fully inside the room now, and now the room felt tight to Huston, a carpeted cage. “Who are you?” he said.
“I’m the man whose baby you killed.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t fuck with me, man. You know what I’m talking about. You took her to Cleveland and you killed my fucking baby.”
In a distant part of his brain, Huston thought Bonnie, he thought the abortion pill, he thought of the long night in the motel room while she waited for the cramping and the flow of blood to begin. He thought of the silence as they drove back to Pennsylvania Friday morning. Yet even those thoughts would not cohere to explain that pistol, that knife, this man whose presence choked like a hand around his throat.