Threats (3 page)

“Frances said that,” said another.

“She was so beautiful,” added another.

“Too busy,” said the first.

“Thank you,” he said, and “I am,” and “It's true,” in an order that made the girls briefly cease their instrument movement and look at him with small smiles. One of them scratched her belly with the side of her shears, wincing in pleasure. “We all like things to be a certain way,” she said.

“He's been through a lot lately,” said another, tugging the first girl's shirt down to cover her midriff.

One of the girls said nothing the whole time, but instead hummed a song that was familiar to David. He thought of his mother cutting his hair while he sat on a wooden chair wedged into the bathtub.

The girl who had been scratching her belly advanced on David with floss strung between her fingers. “Open up,” she said cheerfully, and David obligingly leaned back and opened his mouth. The girl plunged her small hands inside and tucked the floss around his teeth. He heard the popping noise of glutinous bits emerging between his second and third molars. The girl rotated her fingers and dipped the floss between his teeth more expertly than the hygienists David had known. As part of his interview process at the dental office, he had set it up so that they would floss him. He could get a better sense of how they handled floss and teeth and various pressure. He could tell a set of hands fumbling with nervousness from a pair that had been undereducated or were simply clumsy, pressing farther when they caught gingival sulcus, causing blood to well up from David's taut gums. With the woman from the salon, he felt his gums plucked and loved.

“You're good,” he said, running his tongue over his teeth when she removed her hands. There was no slick of blood on the floss.

She unwrapped the string from her fingers and dropped it in the garbage pail. “I used to have to floss my brother,” she said, patting his knee.

“We figured a man who didn't leave the house before would really never leave now,” said the one on the floor. “After everything happened.”

When they were done, the women removed the cape and paper collar and gave him a handheld mirror to look at. They packed their scissors and products into black canvas bags and folded the plastic tarp with his hair inside. One tucked the chair back under the table. They hugged him one by one, and he gave them each a book that he picked from his library. This transaction occurred by the door. One of the girls reached for the doorknob and drew her hand back, wincing. “Damn shock,” she said.

“Winter,” said another.

The girls waved as their car pulled out of the driveway. David waved back and thought again about the hygienists he had known. There was one he had liked while he was in dental school who made him quiz her when she studied for her tests. Another, who must have been that girl's friend, put her hand on David's thigh at a party and asked if he knew of any eligible bachelors in school. They made him nervous, these girls. The ones he hired at his office were all intelligent and professional and good with teeth. They were all girls to him, fresh-faced, out of trade school at twenty, worrying about how their underage bridesmaids might drink at their weddings.

He was by no means attracted to the girls, who, with their unmarked faces, shared more features with ambulatory fetuses than with women. Franny teased him anyway, asking him where he had been when he arrived late, noting how comfortable his reclining examination-room chairs were, speculating on the smell of bergamot on his body, a scent David wouldn't be able to identify even if he knew what it meant. It sounded like a flower. Still, Franny would tease him as he sat at the table or lay down in bed, naming scents, claiming to smell lavender or brown sugar, touching his hand at dinner and bringing it to her face, recognition narrowing her eyes. Her scent changed when she began working at the salon, but, she said, that was different.

 

10.

WHEN THE OFFICERS ARRIVED at his front door, David found himself mentally unable to touch the doorknob.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I never use this door.”

“Is there a problem?” one of the officers asked from the other side.

The door's lock was a mystery. Its silver dead bolt gleamed, barely visible through the crack in the jamb. David wondered if the bolt was electrified and immediately became convinced that it was. If the bolt itself was laced with energy, how much would travel through the actuator? How much force would have to be employed to push the engaged device horizontally through the jamb? At that moment, was he safe? David did not feel safe.

One of the men outside straddled a bush and knocked on the window. The glass rattled in the frame and the frame strained on its tracks. David urinated silently down his left leg. He shifted sideways from the window, covering his thigh with his hand. “I'm sorry,” he called out.

“We want to ask you some questions,” the officer said. “Please, David. Open the door.”

There were so many ways anyone could learn his name. David thought of how easy it would be to take a piece of his mail from the mailbox.

He pressed his cheek to the doorjamb. Air whistled out or in. “How did you know?” he asked. His slipper was wet, his leg, his hand. He held his breath to listen.

“We want to talk to you,” said the officer at the window. “What are you doing?”

David removed his pants and underwear and slippers and slid them into a far corner. The scent of urine coated both hands. “I'm sorry,” he said. He sat on the floor by the window. “I've had a difficult day.”

From his spot, he could see the officer on the front porch as well as the one standing at the window. The lawn was graded so that David and the officer were at eye level, though David was seated and the officer stood. “You have removed your pants,” the officer said. The radio on his shoulder buzzed with activity.

David pointed. “They're over there.”

“The man urinated,” the officer at the window, whose name badge read
CHICO
, said to the officer on the porch. The window was an old single-pane variety, which made it easier to talk and listen.

David sat cross-legged on the floor. “I'm sorry, Officer Chico.”

“We don't require an apology,” said Chico. He was an older man, maybe ten years older than David, but he possessed an energy in his eyes that David did not. “You are a man in your own home. You have the freedom to act within the confines of the law.”

“That's a refreshing opinion from a member of law enforcement.”

Chico turned down the volume control on his radio. “Also, I am a detective.”

“You sound like a smart guy,” said the man on the porch.

“Pay no mind to my partner,” said Chico. “Justice holds the progressive close to her breast. Anyway, we see it all the time.”

David closed his eyes. The wood floor felt smooth on his nakedness. “Her heart may bleed,” he said, “but the scales are forged with hands wrought heavy by tradition.”

“Urine, I mean,” said Chico. “How are you feeling?”

“I'm confused all day,” said David.

“That's understandable. Do your friends come by? Family members?”

“I got a haircut.”

“Give me a break,” said Chico's partner.

The detective pulled a notepad from his back pocket. “Could you give us the names of some people we could contact?”

David knew he would enjoy very much the feeling of a woman placing her palms on his face. “Someone altered my clocks,” he said.

“We don't want to alter your clocks, sir.”

“I'm concerned.”

“Could you look at me?”

Chico was bundled in police-issue winter gear, which included a heavy coat, his badge pinned to the lapel. “Neither myself nor Officer Riley over there is going to alter your clocks,” he said.

“Maybe clean 'em,” Riley said.

“That's not as helpful as you might assume, Officer Riley,” said Chico, keeping eye contact with David. “Sir, please let us in. We do have the power to make this unpleasant.”

David hooked his fingers under the window's sash. “It has already been unpleasant,” he said. He pulled with no luck, then squatted and pushed up. The sash groaned and lifted, and he felt cool air against his face and lower body. His skin felt moist and young as he leaned close to Chico's face. “I am concerned that the dead bolt is electrified,” he said.

 

11.

THE MEN seemed exceptionally kind, considering that one had crawled through the window. David apologized to them for the trouble, and they apologized for interrupting him. Officer Riley found a blanket and a small cardboard box in the trunk of the squad car. He tossed the blanket to David and deposited David's wet clothes in the cardboard box. He left the box at the base of the stairs.

Riley led the way to the kitchen and began going to some trouble to find instant coffee and mugs. He boiled water in a pot someone had left on the stove. Chico walked the perimeter of the room, his arms crossed.

David stood in the doorway and watched them both. He felt comfortable and warm, wrapped in the police blanket from the waist down. He imagined that if his house was on fire, he would want to be wrapped in that same blanket while standing on the street. The feeling of being swaddled as an adult was foreign and tender.

“The city has no shortage of blankets,” David said. “Have they considered opening a Salvation Army?”

Chico removed his gloves and raised one hand toward Riley. “You know, that's a fine idea,” he said to David.

The men stood, listening to the sound of the hissing range as it heated the water. “The dead bolt was not electrified,” David said. “I was glad to learn that was the case.”

“As were we,” said Chico. “Why would it have been?”

“I feel swaddled.”

“Understandable.”

Riley took the pot of boiling water from the stove and filled the cups. The instant grounds soaked to become an approximation of coffee as the officer carried the remaining water to the sink.

“You'll bust the pipes,” David said.

Riley looked at him. He turned to put the pot back on the stove.

“There are some numbers on the friends,” David said. “For my fridge.”

“Your feelings are understandable,” Chico said.

Watching as Riley opened his notebook and examined the numbers on the fridge, David leaned in toward Chico. “I don't trust that man,” he said.

“Do you trust me?”

David frowned.

“I am trying to find out what happened to your wife,” Chico said. “I am going to be coming back to talk to you over the next few days. I want you to be ready for that. We're going to come back and talk to you. I don't want you to be alarmed, David. Take your head out of your hands and look at me. I don't want you to be alarmed. What happened to your wife has become a question for members of local and state law enforcement.”

“These are numbers for hospitals,” Riley said. “There's a plumber, a salon. Do you have any personal contacts?”

“I certainly don't want you to be alarmed,” Chico said, “but I'm going to ask a lot of questions and not provide a lot of answers. I hope you appreciate my candor and relative honesty at this time.”

“Relative candor.”

“And honesty. Right.”

David swirled his coffee. “I believe there is glass in this,” he said.

Chico lowered his cup. “What inspires that concern, David?”

“The glass broke. I worry it found its way in.”

“When did this happen?”

David pictured the broken glass. They had eaten meatloaf afterward. It must have been winter. Franny sat at the table, drinking from the bottle of wine. She had the ability to look at him as if she was an animal peering in through a window. “I had much more hair at the time,” David said.

“Was this a long while ago?”

The ring on her finger tapped against the bottle when she raised it.

“David, when did you break the glass?”

“The glass broke yesterday.” He could not remember the time.

“Was Franny there?”

“Her hair was longer.” He knew enough to know that hair falls out in autumn, when it reaches the end of its follicle cycle. Two willing partners could make a home with the shedding. It had always seemed unlikely to David, but now he seriously considered living in a comfortable room lined with the product of years of naturally fallen hair.

“It could not have been yesterday, then.”

“We had enough hair between us for a home,” he said. “Franny and myself.”

“David, it wasn't yesterday.”

“Why not?”

Chico opened his mouth. Inside his mouth was a nest, and inside the nest there were three blue pills huddled up against one another like eggs. David leaned close to examine the pills. They jostled, alive on the man's tongue. Saliva dampened the sides of the nest. His mouth made a warm incubator. David could not determine the nest's composition. It looked like sharded toothpicks at first, but closer examination yielded a softer substance, such as a slivered reed wound around itself. The pills were precisely the size of those in the packet that Franny had kept by the toilet for years, exactly the same but for the fact that the pills on Chico's tongue maintained their own individual life.

“I see,” said David.

When Chico exhaled, one of the pills rolled to the lower edge of the nest, looking like it might fall to the floor between them.

“Listen,” David said, closing his eyes. “You should come back another day. I hope you would do me the honor of leaving now and returning another day for pleasant conversation. I will receive you at some time in the future. At the moment, you see, I'm not feeling well. I have been through a lot. I'm sure you understand.”

He remained there with his eyes closed until the men left. Once they were gone, he rubbed his forehead, his eyes. He brought the water to a second boil and poured it down the sink.