Homebody

10

Tearing Up, Tearing Down

He couldn't accuse her of following him around the house, but that's what it felt like. Half the jobs he set out to do, Sylvie just happened to be waiting right there when he arrived with his tools. It always made him want to turn around and go find something else to do, but he couldn't work that way, ducking out of sight whenever she was around. Yet he couldn't bring himself to bark at her either. She always seemed so glad to see him. It must have been lonely here, hiding out in an empty house behind boarded-up windows. Maybe when the novelty wore off she'd leave him alone.

The water was hooked up and it was time to run the faucets to check for obstructions and leaks. Some fixtures he wouldn't even try—the cracked toilet would never have water in it again. But the upstairs bathtub, where he first found her, that one would probably end up being the one they used.

He caught himself thinking: We'll have to use this tub. It came too naturally, to think "we" instead of "I." And there was nothing wrong with it—as long as Sylvie was in the house, she was going to use the same tub and sink and toilet as him. So why not think of them as "we"?

Because that's how I thought of me and my ex-wife and our—my little girl. My child, my house, my tub. I'm alone here, despite the presence of this uninvited guest. And all the more alone because she's here, to make me say "we" and remember how empty that word is, what a nothing word, impermanent. How it evaporates and carries everything away with it.

There she was, doing situps in the hall outside the upstairs bathroom when he came up to run the water. So of course she quit and stood in the door, then at the foot of the tub as he turned on the cold water faucet.

"Oh, good, a bath," she said.

"Not till we get a hot water heater."

"Cold showers, then?"

"Whatever turns you on," he said. The faucet sputtered and knocked. Brown gunk squirted out, splashing all over his pants. She shrieked and backed up.

"It's just water and rust," he said. "You won't melt."

"How do you know I'm not the Wicked Witch of the West?"

"Because she was green."

"So's that stuff. Gross."

It was as gross as she said. Deep brown, a sickening color. Don stepped over and turned on the cold water tap in the bathroom sink. It did its own knock-and-sputter routine, and then choked out even nastier-looking gunk that splattered them both.

"Oh, this is an improvement, all right," she said, looking at her clothes.

"Nobody asked you to stand in here when I'm working."

She said nothing and he didn't look at her. The water wasn't getting any clearer in the sink or the tub. He didn't like the silence. But why should he let it make him uncomfortable? She needed to learn not to hover.

Instead of leaving, though, she broke her own silence. "You sure they didn't hook these pipes up backward?"

"It's just been standing in the pipes. Run it for a while, it'll clear out."

"Looks like the house has dysentery," she said.

"Don't use this toilet," he answered. "Look at the crack. I'm not putting water in it."

"Is there one I'm supposed to use?"

"Downstairs in the north apartment."

"Will the water look like this?"

"Till the pipes clear."

"If they ever do."

"Water heater should be hooked up tomorrow. Let it fill and heat, then we can bathe."

"Sounds indecent."

He looked sharply at her. She was joking, probably, but even so it was repugnant, having a woman so dirty and unkempt acting flirtatious. There was a reason people became homeless. In her case, it could easily be her bad taste.

He left the bathroom.

Sylvie called after him. "When do I turn this water off?"

"When it looks drinkable."

"I will never drink this!"

He was already halfway down the stairs, so he didn't bother answering. He didn't want to establish the precedent of shouting through the house. He could just imagine her screaming, "Don! Oh, Dahahn!" for the whole neighborhood to hear.

He went downstairs and turned on the toilet and sink in the bathroom he intended to use. Those and the outside hose were all he'd need, so there was no point in testing them until he had new fixtures hooked up to the plumbing. The drain in the downstairs bathroom sink was plugged up, so he did a little work opening the trap to drain into a bucket. A real stink. Wouldn't you know it. A mouse had gotten caught in the trap and drowned. But once it was cleared and reattached, the sink drained fine. Which was good, because in cold water with no soap it took three scrubbings before his hands felt clean again. He didn't put the mouse corpse in the garbage can in back—the last thing he needed was to attach that smell to anything that was going to stay around. Instead he flung it off the edge of the gully in the back yard. It flew ten yards out and twenty yards down, pitching lazily end over end as it fell, till it fetched up about halfway down the gully wall.

As he came back into the house, he knew there would be no more delaying it. He had to choose which section of the house to renovate first. Of course, ideally he would do the whole house at once. All the stripping, then all the breaking down of walls he didn't want to keep, then breaking open the rest of the walls for wiring and plumbing, phone lines, intercom, maybe lines for a computer network if he thought the money would hold out for a luxury like that. It was easier and cheaper to do each job for the whole house all at once. But that wouldn't give him a place to live while it was going on; and just as important was the fact that he needed the small payoffs of having finished this room and that room to keep him going.

Not the main floor. Couldn't do the north side upstairs, because that's the side Sylvie's apartment was on. South side upstairs, though, would be fun. Tear out the add-in walls, and it went from being two lousy bedrooms, a living/dining room, and a kitchen, to being two large bedrooms. They wouldn't do at all, of course, since they were too big to be practical and ended up wasting a lot of space. So he would open up the wall between them and put in a bathroom and two wide, deep closets. And in the back bedroom, which didn't have the fancy bay window the front one did, he'd open a ladder to a part of the attic, which he would make into a loft. In a house like this, every room should have individuality. No, more than that—it should have panache.

Armed with his prybar and a tough carpet knife, he went upstairs and began stripping the floor. It was a tough, durable carpet but it had been installed a lot of years ago, and under it the padding was a mass of decomposing filth. Dead insects made another carpet under that.

"How did all those bugs get under there?" Sylvie stood in the doorway.

Don stopped pulling the carpet. "What do you need?" he asked.

"Just curious. I've been walking on those bugs, I just wonder how they got there."

This was not science class, it was sweaty, nasty labor. What made it bearable was the trance of concentration he drifted into while his hands worked on. She had broken that, and for what? And after how many requests that she stay away from him? "I work alone," said Don.

Sylvie shrugged as if to say, Who, me? "So, I'm not trying to help you," she said.

"Exactly my point," said Don.

"All I did was ask how the bugs got there."

"The crawlers crawled, the wrigglers rigged. Now I've told you, let me work."

She looked angry for a moment, but then she backed away out of sight. Not for a moment, though, did Don imagine the struggle was over. She was a shmoozer. He was going to have to be rude to her again and again, just to get some peace, and he hated being rude for any reason. But this woman just couldn't keep a promise or follow instructions. What did he expect? If people like her had skills like that, they most likely wouldn't be homeless.

He got the carpet rolled up and tried to hoist it up onto his shoulder. He could have done a clean-and-jerk with more weight than this, but there was no good handhold on the thick carpet roll, so he ended up having to drag it. This got tricky at the door, where he had to bend it to get it out into the hall and down the stairs. For a moment he thought of calling Sylvie to help, but then realized that if he ever asked her for something, that would open the floodgate. She would be sure that he needed her and she would hover until the house was finished.

So he went back and forth from end to middle to end of the carpet, bending, pulling, bending more, pulling more, until it was finally out in the hall and headed down the stairs. From there it was a simple matter to drag it out the front door, off the porch, and out to the junkpile on the curb.

Coming back in, he glanced over at the carriagehouse. There on the porch sat Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea, eating delicate little triangles of cucumber sandwich with the crusts cut off. He imagined a huge bowl of bread crusts and cucumber peelings being carried upstairs to Gladys, who for all he knew was an omnivorous crocodile or a large fat sow, eating whatever slops came her way. They waved cheerily at him. He waved back, not cheerily.

Dismantling kitchen cabinets was always a pain. It was easiest, of course, to remove each piece as a unit, but not always possible. Though the kitchen in the south upstairs apartment was a dark, narrow, makeshift affair, whoever installed the cabinets was apparently trying to make them tornado-proof. Don crawled into the cabinets every which way, removing every screw and nail that connected the cabinets to the back wall and to each other, but still they wouldn't come out. Finally he had to resort to the wrecking bar, and even then the cabinets didn't come away clean. Someone had replaced the lath-and-plaster walls with two-by-four studs and glued the cabinets directly to them, in addition to nailing and screwing them. Fortunately, the studs weren't structural, so it didn't matter if his wrecking bar chewed them to bits. By the time he had the last cabinet detached from the wall, the upstairs kitchen looked like a tornado had struck after all. Studs were broken, gouged, or sticking out like snaggle teeth. Didn't matter. He'd be taking them all out. He would entirely take down the new wall that separated the kitchen from the parlor, rejoining them into one room; the studs between the original timbers he would replace with new ones on 12-inch centers. Don's standard of sturdiness was even higher than that of the guy who installed the cabinets.

He'd never dismantled an upper-story kitchen before, and it was backbreaking work to get the cabinets down the stairs without dinging anything. He could have used another pair of hands and a strong back to help, but dammit, he worked alone.

Standing at the junkpile, which now looked like a madman's kitchen, Don wanted to go back inside and lie down and sleep. Wasn't this a whole days work? Hadn't he done enough?

But it was only three in the afternoon, and he knew that the temptation to knock off early and take a nap or go for a walk would be with him more and more if he ever gave in to it. There was always another job to do. He had to put in at least eight hours no matter how tired he got. That was the rule. And most days he tried for ten. That's how he could get the house finished even though he worked alone.

That was the main thing an assistant was good for anyway. In Don's experience you usually ended up having to redo the assistants work or supervise so closely you might as well have done it yourself. But having someone there, watching, was an incentive to keep plugging away. Didn't want to look like a slacker in front of somebody else. Don couldn't stand the thought that he might only be working for show, to impress someone or keep their good opinion. He worked for the job's sake, or for his own self-respect. And so he did not, could not lay off early, take a day off, or even call in sick. Who would he call? He had the sternest boss in town—breaks he would routinely give to an employee he never allowed himself.

Except there by the fence stood Miz Evelyn, holding up that metal pitcher with water beading on the outside so fast it looked like it was raining, all those drops forming, running down the sides, dripping off the bottom. Whatever was in that pitcher must be really cold. And even though it wasn't all that hot of a day, no more than eighty-five degrees, he wanted that pitcher right then with all his heart and soul. Enough to accept it from a crazy woman.

"Yoo-hoo!" she was calling. "Mr. Lark!"

He sauntered over to the fence, trying not to look too eager. She held out a tall metal glass, which was sweating almost as much as the pitcher.

"I've never seen a body work so hard," she said.

"Helps me sleep at night." He drained the glass almost in one draught. It was lemonade, just a little tart, not too tart: just a little sweet, not too sweet. It was a good thing neither of these ladies was his grandma. He'd have moved in with her long ago.

"You can take the whole pitcher if you want."

He wanted. "Thanks," he said, and now, drinking from the rim of the pitcher, he tanked it down so fast it gave him a headache. But the headache wouldn't last, he knew, while the lemonade rushed through his system so fast it caused sweat to bead up on his brow almost as fast as water had beaded up on the pitcher. The pitcher empty, Don wiped his mouth on the upper part of his sleeve, which was marginally cleaner than the forearms.

"Oh my," said Miz Evelyn.

"Sorry. I've got a working man's manners."

"Not to mention a working man's appetites."

He patted his stomach, which now sloshed with liquid. "Nice of you to share that with me."

"We're just glad that you came to see it our way."

Uh-oh. "But I didn't," said Don.

She gestured toward the junkpile. "It looks like you're tearing it all apart in there."

"Just clearing out the ugly stuff." She looked a little disappointed. "I'm going to knock down the added-in walls, too. But the structure of the house—I'm not touching that. In fact I'm restoring it."

"Oh."

"So I guess I got the lemonade under false pretenses."

"You got the lemonade because you needed it and we're Christians."

"Well thanks. I did need it." One good turn deserves another, that's how Don was raised. So: "As long as I'm here, if you ladies need any work done on your place, let me know."

"The only thing we need is for that house to come down." She pointed a bony old finger at the Bellamy mansion.

"Then you should've bought it and hired a demolition crew."

He drained the last bit from the pitcher and handed it back to her.

"Thank you kindly, ma'am," he said. He touched the brim of an imaginary hat as he had seen his father do, as salute or farewell, whichever. Then he turned and headed back for the house.

"Don't you think we would've done it if we could?" she called after him.

Why didn't they just put up signs on houses like this? BEWARE OF STRANGE OLD LADIES AND DISAPPEARING SCREWHOLES. WATCH OUT FOR THE DEADLY LOOMING HOMELESS WOMAN. And—mustn't forget—NO KISSING IN NONFUNCTIONAL BATHROOMS.

Once inside, he had to decide what to do next. Strip off the remaining lath and plaster? Take down the stud wall dividing the upstairs kitchen from the rest of the room? He still didn't feel much like heavy work, though the lemonade had refreshed him.

Maybe it refreshed him too much. He headed for the bathroom at the back of the house.

He was still in there when he heard a loud, insistent knocking on the front door. Hang on a minute, for pete's sake. Stubbornly he rinsed his hands instead of running for the door. Had to remember to buy soap, pick up a couple of towels. He came down the hall drying his hands on his pants when he heard the door opening and Sylvie greeting whoever was there. By the time he got to the parlor where all his tools were, Cindy's next-desk neighbor at the realty was peering around to look for him.

"Hi, Mr. Lark," the guy said. What was his name? As if he heard the question, the man said, "Ryan Bagatti, remember?"

"Who could forget?" said Don. He walked past Bagatti to the entryway, where Sylvie was standing on the third and fourth step—poised to flee. "Thanks for letting a total stranger into my house," he said.

"Nice for you," said Bagatti. "Having your housekeeper living here while you pile up junk on the lawn."

"I'm not the housekeeper," said Sylvie.

"She's the nothing," said Don. "She came with the house. But she's got things to do."

"Cindy know about her?" asked Bagatti, all wide-eyed innocence.

"Bet she will in about fifteen minutes," said Don.

"Aw, man, you're too judgmental," said Bagatti. "I came here because I'm Cindy's friend, you know."

"In other words, she doesn't know you're here?"

"I got a call at the office, she was out. She's been out sick, you know. Ever since you closed on this house."

"Sorry to hear that. Hope she gets better."

"Yeah, send a card or something."

"You got a call," said Don. Whatever this was about, he knew it would be nasty, and he wanted Bagatti just to get on with it.

"From the guy who used to own this place. Actually, from his lawyer. Seems he was suspicious about the way Cindy was handling the sale and how low the price was that she was insisting on. He wanted eighty, you know."

"House isn't worth eighty."

"Well, I guess that's for the courts to decide, don't you think?" Bagatti shook his head. "I mean, that's how the guy's lawyer puts it. He put a detective on her. Got pictures of you going into her house. Coming out of her house. Kissing in the car. Figures it'll prove collusion."

"You seen the pictures, Bagatti?" asked Don.

"Why would I have seen them?" said the realtor.

Don picked him up by the shoulders and jammed him against the wall. His head made a kind of bounce against the plaster, and he lost his silly smirk. "I guess I didn't ask sincere enough," said Don. "You take those pictures, Bagatti?"

"Like I said, a private detective. This is assault, you know."

"Got pictures?" said Don.

"All the guy did was call me."

"So why you telling me and not Cindy?"

"He's gonna name both of you in the suit. But he said, like, maybe it could all go away."

"He said? Or you say?"

"What do you think? What are you talking about?"

"Blackmail," said Don. "Extortion."

"Not me," said Bagatti. "But maybe him."

"Maybe?"

"He said twenty thousand. You still get the house for ten thousand less than he asked for. It's a bargain, right?"

"But I bet he doesn't want to go back and adjust the price on the records, right?"

"Why screw up everybody's taxes?" asked Bagatti. "You'll still get a profit on the house."

"And you came to me?"

"Cindy's got no money," said Bagatti.

"How do you know that? She wouldn't tell you where to point your dick when you pee."

"Like I said, the guy has a private investigator. Man, you're hurting my shoulders."

Don let him slide down the wall to stand on his feet. But when Bagatti made as if to go for the door, Don bounced him back against the wall again. And, again, his head did that little rebound from the plaster. "Careful," said Don. "This is a bearing wall, I don't want to have to replace it just because you put a dent in it with your head."

"Look, Mr. Lark, I'm just a messenger."

"Tell me the lawyer's name."

"He didn't say. He said he'd contact you."

"I don't want any lawyer dust in this house. I'll go to his office and we'll work this out, or he can go ahead and take us to court, because nothing illegal happened."

"I'll tell him."

"No, I'll tell him. Give me his number."

"He said he'd call me back. Didn't give me a—"

This time his head didn't bounce as much. "Don't hold your neck stiff when I do that," said Don. "It'll just make it hurt worse later. Stay loose."

"You're hurting me, man."

"His number."

"Let go of me and I'll write it down."

Don stepped between Bagatti and the door and watched while he pulled out a business card and with trembling hands struggled to write the phone number.

"Memorized it, huh?" said Don. "From calling it so much?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're the office sneak. You're the one tipped him off that maybe Cindy and I liked each other. And he must have got you to hire the detective. Fast work, getting those pictures only a couple of hours later."

"So what? The ice queen starts getting lovey with a client, I get suspicious, and it turned out I was right, wasn't I? Getting a thirty-thousand-dollar discount on the house. So don't get all righteous with me, calling me a sneak when you're a thief."

Right then. That was when Don could have crossed the line. All these years of self-control. All those months when he wanted to go kidnap his daughter and hide her in Bulgaria or Mongolia and he didn't do it. All those months, all those years afterward when he wanted to find his ex-wife's lawyer and smash the sanctimonious snake's head into splinters against a lightpost, and didn't do it. All the violence that had gone unexpressed, he wanted so badly to let go... and didn't.

Bagatti must have guessed at the decision he was making, because he cowered, watching Don's eyes. And when Don finally stepped back against the outside wall, letting Bagatti pass, the realtor bolted like a squirrel, out the door, down the porch steps.

Don held the card with the lawyer's number. Another lawyer. Another attempt to destroy him. When you kill, Don, kill the right guy. Life in prison for killing a realtor? Come on. One dead lawyer is worth ten dead realtors any day.

He locked the door, got in the truck, and drove. At first he thought of driving to Cindy's. But what would that accomplish? Either she knew about the threat from the previous owner, or she didn't. Either she would be embarrassed about their near-tryst or she wouldn't. No possible meeting would work out happily for either of them.

So he drove. Up to some of the new housing developments around some of the lakes north and west of the city. Houses for doctors and lawyers, executives and car dealers. Big houses, on huge wooded lots, designed to have great views and to give them, too. From the road over there where the common people drive, this house would look like a slavery-era plantation house, and that one like a Federal mansion, and this other one like a Hollywood extravaganza, and that last one like an escapee from the ugliest part of the 1950s. Taste didn't come with money. Nor restraint. Nor even common decency. I used to build their houses, thought Don. I used to try so hard to please them. Excellence that they didn't understand and didn't want to pay for. I built their house as meticulously as I would hope they did surgery, or handled legal cases, or whatever. Was I the only one who cared that much? The only one who wanted to do good work even where it wasn't on display?

He came out onto Lake Brandt Road, and then took the left fork onto Lawndale. He stopped at Sam's and got out and used the payphone to call the lawyer's number. He recognized the name of the firm when the receptionist said it. They didn't have the best reputation in town, but extortion was a new specialty for them.

"He's with a client," said the receptionist.

"Get out of your chair," said Don, "and go tell him that either he talks to me on the phone or he talks to me in person ten minutes from now."

"We do not respond to threats, sir."

"It says a lot about your law firm that you have a policy about that," said Don. "Don't waste my time, I'm calling from a payphone."

It only took a moment for the lawyer to get on the phone. "Most people make appointments," said the lawyer.

"What you and your client are doing is extortion," said Don.

"No it's not," said the lawyer. "It's fair warning."

"But if I give you twenty thousand, the whole problem goes away."

"It saves everybody a lot of unnecessary legal fees and court costs," said the lawyer. "It's called settling out of court."

"Then in exchange I get a quit-claim that specifies the amount I paid you."

"No you don't."

"Then go to court, and I'll testify that only your unwillingness to have a legal document with the amount of money on it stood between us and settlement."

"That's a privileged matter."

"There's no privilege because you're not my lawyer," said Don. "I'll be at your office at eight-thirty in the morning. The check will be made out to your client."

"It will be cash."

"No it won't. Again, I'm happy to testify in court that your client wanted to leave no paper trail."

"Cash or no deal."

"I'll be there at eight-thirty with the cashier's check. You be there with the quit-claim specifying the amount of money and making no assertions about any kind of relationship between me and Ms. Claybourne. Or you can sue your brains out."

"Apparently you don't know what a court action like that will involve, Mr. Lark, or you wouldn't talk so blithely about getting into one."

"I spent a quarter of a million dollars on assholes like you, trying to get my daughter back. And other assholes who were even assholier than thou managed to keep me from getting her back until my ex-wife got them both killed. What exactly do you think I'm afraid of now?"

"You're afraid of Cindy Claybourne losing her job."

"Not really," said Don.

"So chivalry is dead?"

"No, I'm just not afraid of her losing her job. You and your client picked the wrong targets here. Ms. Claybourne and I have both lost about all we have to lose. You don't have it in your power to do more than inconvenience us."

"So why are you agreeing to the twenty thousand?"

"Because if I don't get this whole thing to go away right now, I'll probably end up losing control and killing somebody."

"Now who's the extortionist?"

"Yeah, that's it, I'm trying to force you to accept the twenty thousand dollars you demanded from me. Eight-thirty in the morning. Check made out to your client. Quit-claim. No mention of Ms. Claybourne or of any improprieties."

"I won't accept anything but cash."

"Fine. I'll have a dollar in cash, too. The check or the buck. Your choice. See you in the morning." He hung up. He was shaking as bad as Ryan Bagatti had been. It did no good to talk tough with a lawyer, he knew that. They just smirk at you and think of new ways to make your life a living hell. But Don's life was already a living hell. Lawyers had lost their last hold over him.

He went to the bank where his renovation money was and withdrew the twenty thousand in the form of a cashier's check. On the bottom of it he wrote, "For quit-claim on Bellamy house and all related matters." Then he put the check, folded, into his shirt pocket and returned to the house.

The front door was locked, just as he had left it. Of course. Sylvie didn't have a key.

Sylvie didn't have a key, but she had let the Helping Hands guys in.

No. He must have forgotten to lock the house up. That was the morning of the closing, after all. He left the door unlocked.

Okay, so maybe he did lock it. She picked it, that's all. It's not like he'd paid Lowe's for some fancy unpickable lock or anything. She was a burglar, probably, that's how she paid money to support the drug habit she doesn't have.

He thought of the missing screwholes in the door. This house was going to get to him pretty soon.

He took the check out of his pocket, tucked it under the screwdriver he'd used on the kitchen cabinets, and then, wrecking bar in hand, went upstairs and tore off lath and plaster until he was covered in white dust and sweat.

It had been a hot day. The water wouldn't be all that cold. He went down the hall to the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, shook off as much dust as he could over the tub, then got into the shower and rinsed himself off. The water was running clear now, but that just increased its resemblance to a mountain stream. He took it as long as he could, then turned it off and stood there shivering and shaking off the water until he was as dry as he was likely to get. Only then did he remember that he wasn't alone in the house. He hadn't seen Sylvie since he got back from his phone call and from the bank, so he'd forgotten about her. But he couldn't very well parade naked through the house. But he also couldn't put back on these clothes covered in plaster dust. So he compromised. He put back on his briefs and carried the rest of his clothes downstairs.

Of course she was standing in the entryway to watch him come downstairs. "Water's pretty cold, isn't it?" she said.

Wordlessly he passed by her. The fury of his confrontations with Bagatti and the lawyer swept over him, and he wanted to shake her and scream at her to give him some privacy. Instead he walked to his suitcase and got out what was now his cleanest set of clothes. He had to do a laundry, there was no doubt about it.

"What was that guy here for?" said Sylvie. "He sure took off out of here. But then, so did you right afterward."

He didn't owe her any explanation. Especially when he was doing his best not to erupt in fury. So he turned his back to her and hooked his thumbs under the elastic of his briefs and said, "I'm changing my clothes. I prefer to do it alone, but I can't seem to do anything alone in this house." Then he pulled off his briefs and turned around. She was gone. Finally.

He got dressed in clothes that were pretty rank, even for him. It was nearly seven, and even though it was still daylight savings time, it would be dark soon. He took everything but his dirty clothes out of his suitcase and left the house. This time he didn't bother to lock the door behind him. That way he wouldn't have to wonder how she got it open, if he found she had let yet another person into the house in his absence.

When one batch of clothes was washed and dry, he picked a pair of underwear, some socks, and a pair of pants and a shirt, went into the restroom at the laundromat, and changed into them. Then he came back out and put the dirty clothes he'd been wearing into a washing machine together.

A tired-looking middle-aged woman in a grocery checker's outfit was the only other person in the laundry, and apparently it irked her to see a man put underwear and socks in with blue jeans and a red shirt. "Didn't anybody ever tell you to separate whites and coloreds?" she demanded.

"They did, but America is past that now," he said. When she finally realized he had deliberately misunderstood her, she huffed a little and left him alone. If only a little snottiness would work as well on Sylvie.

When everything was clean and dry, it was nearly ten. He stopped at Pie Works and got a pizza and took it back to the Bellamy house. It was late for him, the house was dark, and he wasn't even sure he was hungry, just knew he had to eat in order to keep working again tomorrow. He came in, turned on the worklight in the parlor, and went to set down the pizza on his workbench when he saw the check. He had left it folded, tucked under the screwdriver. Now it was open, tucked under nothing. Sylvie just couldn't stand not prying, it seemed. And she didn't even have the decency to hide the fact that she'd done it by refolding the check and putting the screwdriver back on top of it.

Twenty thousand dollars. Now he'd have to redo his budget. But he could juggle the figures till he was blue, there wouldn't be enough money. He'd have to borrow against the house after all. Not till near the end, though. To buy the countertops and chair rails, the carpet and window treatments. Twenty thousand dollars. That was the most expensive love affair he ever heard of that didn't actually include any sex.

Why am I doing it?

Not for Cindy. Nothing chivalrous about this. I'm just buying my way out of death row. I really am ready to kill somebody. I'm paying them to get out of my life so I don't have to kill anybody.

He sat on his cot eating the pizza as mechanically as if he were driving nails. He heard the telltale footsteps on the stairs. She was making another foray into his territory. She seemed determined not to learn.

But instead of barking at her he just closed the pizza box and slid it across the floor. It stopped right in the doorway between the parlor and the entry. He saw her appear behind it, looking at him gravely.

"Nothing special, just pepperoni and sausage," he said. "I've had all I want."

"Thanks," she said.

"Yeah yeah."

"Why can't I say thanks and you just say you're welcome like a normal person?"

"Why can't I just..." He had meant to say, Why can't I just say leave me alone and have you go away like a normal person.

"Why can't you just what?"

"Finish the pizza, it's still warm."

"No thanks," she said. "I'm not hungry."

"Then don't eat it," he said.

"I just came down to say I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For always wanting to watch what you're doing. I can't help it, nothing's happened in this house for so long."

"I ought to sell tickets."

"And the work you do, it's kind of dangerous, isn't it? Like you're tearing up the house."

"It's safe enough." Especially if you stay out of the room while I'm working.

"No, I mean, dangerous to the house. It feels like it's being knackered, you know? Cut up and boiled down for glue and fertilizer."

"I know what knackering is," said Don.

"You're not hurting it?"

"The lath and plaster is nothing. It has to come off so I can bring the house up to code. I'll put new studs in between the timbers to take nails for, like, hanging pictures or whatever. And for outlet and switch boxes and TV cable outlets. Then I'll put on wallboard and it'll be good as new. Better."

"I don't know how it could be better than new," she said. "It was so beautiful then."

"You weren't there," said Don.

"But can't you just feel it, here in the house? How he loved her?"

"Who?"

"Dr. Bellamy. He built this for his bride. I looked it up in the library, back when I was a student here. That's what I majored in, you know. Library science. I was going to take a job in Providence, Rhode Island. I was about to get my master's degree."

"And?"

"Oh, I found all kinds of wonderful things about the Bellamys. They were so much in love, and so much a part of life in Greensboro. Soirees, parties, dances. Not a month went by without some mention of him or his wife or their house in the newspaper."

"Any pictures?" asked Don.

"Some lovely ones. When they were young. And later, too, when they were getting into late middle age. Not a one when they were old. When they died they ran youthful pictures of them. I think that's the way everyone thought of them their whole lives. Forever young."

"I meant, any pictures of the house. To help in my renovation."

"No," she said. "Except the outside, but I don't think that's changed all that much."

"I suppose not. No obvious add-ons, anyway."

"Sorry I couldn't help."

"No, it's fine. I'm not restoring the place anyway, I just thought if there was some special touch or something—doesn't matter."

"There are all kinds of wonderful things in this house," she said. "But the house keeps its secrets." Then her face darkened. "I'm sorry I've been bothering you. I know it drives you crazy, but I just can't seem to stop myself. My old roommate Lissy used to do that to me. Sneak up behind me while I was studying or something. And all of a sudden I'd sense she was there and nearly jump out of my skin."

"Well, you've never done that to me."

"Of course not, but you know, looking over your shoulder—that drives you crazy."

He waved it off as if it were nothing. Then cursed himself silently for being a hammered man. Grow up Southern, and you just can't help but do the polite thing even when you've already decided not to do it.

"Drives everybody crazy," she said. "Lissy was just... difficult."

She had been going to say another word. Something nastier.

"So why did you room with her?" said Don.

"Younger girl, took her under my wing," said Sylvie. "She was a senior, and I don't think she would have graduated."

"Would have?" asked Don.

"She left," said Sylvie. "She was never that serious about school."

"But you didn't finish either?"

Sylvie shook her head.

"So you were close after all? I mean, why else would her leaving cause you not to finish your program and go take that job?"

Sylvie shook her head. "My life story is too boring for anyone to waste a minute on it." She smiled wanly. "I hated her at the time, but you don't know how often I've wished I could just see her again. Now that she's not annoying me, you see. I miss her a little. She was so exuberant. Headstrong. She found this place. The owner was going to close it down, but she was able to talk him into letting us stay here till we both graduated at the end of the next year."

"What did your family think when you dropped out?" asked Don.

"They did what they always do. They stayed dead."

It sounded like a joke, and then it didn't. "Do you mean that?" he asked. "They're dead?"

"I'm an orphan. Put myself through school. I had a scholarship, but housing and books and food and all that, I earned it all. And grad school, I worked for every dime. And I wasn't in debt, either. I paid my way."

Well, not anymore, Don thought churlishly.

"Dr. Bellamy and his wife lived here until they died in the flu epidemic in 1918. But they were so old by then it wasn't sad, really, it was kind of sweet that they went together, so neither one had to stay behind and grieve."

Don had nothing to say to that. How often had he wished he could have died in the same car that killed his baby?

"But how awful of me," said Sylvie. "I was forgetting. Your wife and daughter."

"What do you know about them?" he snapped at once. Then relented: "I'm sorry. I just don't talk about them usually."

"No, I just... your engineer friend told that realtor lady the first day you came here. How your ex-wife got custody of your daughter and then they died in a car accident."

"What the newspaper didn't tell you was that my wife was so drunk and drugged up she didn't even fasten the car seat to the car."

"Was it in the papers?" asked Sylvie. "I don't get a paper."

Don could hardly imagine how isolated her life in this house had been.

"How many years have you been living like this?" he asked.

"I don't know. A long time."

"What happened to you? I mean, you were in grad school, you were going somewhere. You had a job lined up."

"They were expanding the children's section of the city library, starting some new programs with grade school kids. That was my thesis project, kind of. The effects of competitive versus cooperative reading programs for children in community libraries."

"So why didn't you finish your degree and take the job?"

"For a man who lives and works alone, you sure have a lot of questions."

"Look, I didn't start this conversation," said Don.

She glared at him, then turned and stalked upstairs. Don looked at the pizza box on the floor. Keep up your strength, even if you're surrounded by hypersensitive crazy people. He got up and brought it back to the cot and ate another bite. It was cold now and tasted nasty.

Why should he feel bad because he offended Sylvie Delaney? She was the one who kept intruding on him.

Yeah, right, it's always other people's fault, isn't that right, Don.

In frustration he took the biggest surviving piece of pizza and flung it against the wall. He had expected it to stick, at least for a minute. But it didn't even leave a stain, just bounced off and fell down among his tools.

Got to stop throwing things against the wall.

He went over and found the piece of pizza, put it back in the box, and carried the whole thing outside to the garbage can. It was late. He had to get up and pay off an extortionist in the morning.