Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 3, March 1990

Part Time by Debbie Hodgkinson

Carol was reaching up into the cabinet for a teacup when a strange man walked in her back door and through the dining room into the living room.

“Hey there,” he said as he passed.

Carol pulled her blue terrycloth robe tighter and retied the belt as she followed him around the corner.

“Who are you?” she demanded. She was more startled than frightened. She had never seen the man before, and there he sat in the morning sunshine on her rent-to-own sofa. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

Carol’s dog Mimi trotted in behind her and began to bark while backing under the dining room table.

The man looked at the noisy mongrel and looked up at Carol standing in the doorway with her bare feet planted wide, knuckles on hips, her mouth wide open in indignation. The man’s face was bland, his eyebrows raised in mild surprise. He stared Carol in the eye for a long moment, then reached out to the coffee table, picked up a news magazine, put the arches of his feet on the edge of the table, leaned back, and opened to the last page. Without speaking he began to read.

“Get out of here!” Carol was getting quite angry. When the man continued to read, she stepped across the room and snatched the slick magazine from his hands. He folded his arms across his stained jacket and looked at her another few seconds. His dirty tennis shoes still rested next to his small gym bag on her coffee table. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt. He could have been twenty-five, maybe thirty.

“Get out of my house right now,” said Carol. “Mimi, shut up.” The curly-haired brown dog paused and looked up, then began barking again.

“Bug off, lady.” With a single motion the man stood, grabbed back the magazine, and reseated himself.

Carol turned and stomped toward the telephone on the wall by the back door, intending to call the police. She stopped with her hand on the receiver, feeling the beginning of panic as she remembered that the phone didn’t work. That was why she was home today. She had traded shifts with another woman at work so she could stay home and wait for the telephone company repairman to come fix the outside line. Well, maybe she could pretend to call anyway, bluff the guy. If he believed the police were coming, maybe he would go away. It worked on TV often enough.

“Phone’s still dead, right? I know, I tried to use it yesterday and I couldn’t get a dial tone.” He was watching her, no longer reading, but still holding the magazine on his lap. “Who you think you’re gonna call, anyway?”

She turned to face him, but stayed as far away as she could. “What do you want? Why are you here?” Mimi moved closer to her, but stayed under the table, whining now.

“I come here every day. What’s it to you?”

“What do you mean, what’s it to me? Every day? This is my house! What do you do here? Go away!” The pitch of her voice was getting high enough to hurt her throat. She consciously lowered it, trying to sound calm and in control. “You have to leave. You have to leave now. Don’t ever come back here again.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no. I like it here.”

“But this is my house. You can’t just walk in and make yourself at home.”

“Sure I can. You never lock the back door. The dog’s usually in the back yard. He barks, but he can’t get over the fence. Your neighbors are gone all day, or watching TV. Either they don’t see me or they don’t care. Or maybe they’re used to me by now.”

Carol stared at him. Replies came to her mind so fast that she couldn’t sort them out sensibly. “But what do you want? Why are you here?” Her throat was tightening up again.

“Well, geez, lady, it’s cold out. I want someplace I can sit down that’s not on the ground. I want to watch a little Donahue, wash a load of clothes, take a shower. I wish you’d get some dandruff shampoo instead of that extra-body stuff, you know? Sometimes I make a little lunch, fry an egg, see what kind of leftovers there are. What do you think I want? I can use the phone. When it works. But I don’t make no long distance calls, you know.” He waited a moment, as if he expected her gratefully to acknowledge his restraint. When she failed to do so, he shrugged and opened the magazine again. “It’s not like you’re using the space. An’ I don’t take nothing you can’t spare,” he said in a miffed tone. He scooted lower on the couch and resumed reading.

Carol realized that her gesturing and stomping had loosened her bathrobe and it was threatening to open. She turn back into the kitchen to close it better and pull the belt into a tighter half knot. She leaned back against the broom closet door and closed her eyes. He’s making me feel like a bad hostess, and I don’t even want him here! What am I going to do? I can’t let him just stay there, but how am I going to get rid of him? She heard claws clicking on the linoleum floor. Mimi walked over and touched Carol’s calf with her wet nose, whined once. Carol ignored the urge to reach down and wipe her skin dry. She looked down at the dog, who looked back up at her. “I don’t know, Mimi.”

She took a deep breath and walked back around the corner to the edge of the living room rug. She tensed herself to speak. “Look, you have to leave. I don’t want you here. I don’t have anything worth stealing. No jewelry, no silver, not even a stereo. Well, okay, the TV. So take it; it’s yours if you’ll just go away. Please. Now.”

“I don’t want your crummy old black and white TV, lady. I just come here to kill time. Besides, I got to wait for the mail to come, so I can get my unemployment check. They always come on Thursday. Sometimes Friday. So just leave me alone, okay? You ain’t big enough to make me leave anyway. Don’t be dumb.” He sounded as if he was talking to a creepy kid sister.

The fear she felt surprised her. Of course he was right. She was not a bouncer capable of chucking him out. She was only average-sized for a woman, and she didn’t know any karate tricks or anything like that. She was certain that he was stronger than she was.

For the first time, the possibility of rape occurred to her. That frightened her more than his scoffing tone, and she felt foolish and naive not to have thought of it sooner. True, he had made no move to attack her, only to invade her territory, but she was alone, and weak, and words were definitely not working against him. She turned, stumbled over Mimi, and walked with a rush back through the kitchen, out the other end into the short hallway, and into her bedroom. She held the door open for a moment to let Mimi follow her in, then shut it and threw the puny brass bolt.

She pushed aside the loose blankets on the bed and sat down facing her reflection in the dresser mirror. Mimi hopped up beside her and squeezed in under Carol’s right elbow. Carol rested her arm on the dog’s back and began scratching the curls behind Mimi’s ears. She never looked directly at the dog, only watched their reflection in the mirror. Mimi whined and tried to lick Carol’s face. Carol pulled back out of range, without being fully aware of the reflex. She pulled the dog completely up onto her lap and embraced the mongrel with both arms. She put her cheek down on the soft curly back, still watching the reflection. Mimi’s whining became continuous and sounded more upset. The dog wiggled to reach Carol’s face with her tongue, still unsuccessfully.

“Mimi, I don’t know what to do. I’ve got to make him go away.” She was breathing deeply and her ribs felt tight. She was frightened and cold. “I don’t have a gun, not even a toy gun to scare him with, and even if I did have one I’d probably shoot myself in the foot with it. And he wouldn’t even be scared of it. I don’t think he would. He’d just take it away from me and shoot me instead. Oh, Jesus, Mimi, there must be something I can do.”

A minute later, she heard footsteps in the hall. Frozen, she stared at the bedroom door. But the man went into the bathroom and closed the door. Through the wall she heard a trickle of water, then the toilet flushed. The sound released her. Dumping Mimi, who jumped to the floor, she pulled jeans off the dresser and put them on under her bathrobe. She took a thick navy blue sweater from the bottom dresser drawer, pulled loose the belt of her robe and shrugged it onto the floor, then pulled the sweater over her head. The high turtleneck warmed her throat. From the closet she got rough leather hiking boots with thick black rubber soles and laced them tightly, without bothering to find socks.

She put one hand on the doorknob, the other on the bolt. Mimi stood with her nose at the crack, her tail held out stiffly. Carol held her breath and listened. She heard a television commercial for bleach. She moved her hands and a single click came from the bolt and doorknob together. She listened again at the handspan opening. The channel changed to an ad for men’s underwear.

So he was still there.

She pulled the door wide and stepped into the hall. She took four steps and then stopped. Mimi stood at her heels. Carol was not cold any more. Moisture filmed her forehead and palms, and made her sockless boots feel clammy. Straight ahead was the living room. To the left was the kitchen. She stood breathing shallowly, listening. Geraldo Rivera said something about elementary school kids carrying pistols. The man must still be sitting on Carol’s sofa. She could see the end of it in the doorway. He was only a few feet from her, barely hidden by the wall. She wasn’t ready to face him yet. She turned.

In the kitchen she silently lifted her largest knife from the clutter on the stove top. The teakettle of cold water was still on the stove and she never had made tea, she realized. She held the knife in her left hand and squeezed the handle hard. The weathered wood felt cool and dry in her hand. The knife was heavy, with a long, rigid blade of black steel.

She moved to the broom closet and opened it carefully. It was impossible to be silent, and she was almost grateful for the noise of the television. She was very much aware of the sound of Mimi’s nails clicking on the floor. She reached for the broom, but it wasn’t there. She had a moment of panic, then saw the broom in the far corner, behind the dining room table. She looked down at Mimi and mouthed the word “sit,” while jerking her extended index finger down. The “s” hissed only a little, but Mimi sat, ears alert. Carol took three steps, made a long sideways stretch across the table, and grabbed the broom. She lifted it above the table and stepped back into the kitchen. She listened closely. Could he have seen the moving broom from where he sat? Was he reacting? Was he coming for her?

She didn’t hear anything but the television.

Setting the bristle end on the floor, she slid her hand down the broom. Lifting, she found the balance point about eight inches above the bristles. She held the broom in her right hand and turned it so that her thumb rested on top of the handle and the bristles were tucked under her elbow.

She stood in the dining room, out of sight of the living room, and tried to set her mind on violence. Could I deliberately cut somebody? A closeup image of a deep slice in an arm filled her mind, blood running everywhere. She told herself that this was a satisfying thing to happen, not something to avoid. She tried to imagine stabbing him with the broom handle, a nasty bruise on the shoulder, the ribs, in the solar plexus. Yes, and a crack on the side of the head. And if he stood up, she could use the long pole to trip him, whack him in the shins. Okay, she could enjoy that. She expected that he would try to take the weapons away from her. Well, she would watch for that. She wouldn’t let him. Okay, ready? Yes, ready. Okay, go. Yes. Go. Now? Okay. One more deep breath and hold onto the resolution, she told herself, hold onto the weapons. With Mimi behind her, she walked into the living room and faced the man on the sofa, keeping the coffee table between them.

He pointed the remote control at the TV and silence returned. Carol thought he looked annoyed with her for interrupting.

“Get up,” she told him.

“Why should I?”

“Get up, I said.” She swung the broom handle toward his head. He ducked and dropped his feet to the floor.

“I want you to go away!” Carol said. She swung the broom handle sideways again, this time hitting the man on his left arm.

“Ow! Hey, goddam, lady, watch out with that thing.” Leaning to his right, he got to his feet. She waved with the knife to indicate that she wanted him to walk around the coffee table and toward the dining room. As he did so, she stepped back toward the wall to give him room. As he neared the dining room, he suddenly lunged and grabbed the broom. Startled, Carol took another step backward and felt the wall behind her. The man jerked on the broom and twisted it easily from her grasp.

Carol gave a small cry as Mimi started barking again from the middle of the living room.

Carol passed the knife to her right hand and swung it in a wide circle in front of her. The man was just out of her reach. She took a step forward. She was frightened of stabbing the man, and frightened of getting close enough to do it, but she knew she had no choice.

The man was holding the broom in both hands, and as Carol took her second step toward him, he swung it so that it hit her in the hip, knocking her off balance. He hit her again and again, sweeping her sideways into the dining room.

Carol was overwhelmed. She couldn’t try again to stab the man, but in the dining room she could back away from him enough that he couldn’t reach her with the broom. She pulled a chair out from under the table and tumbled it between them. She turned and threw open the back door and rushed out. Mimi ran under the dining room table and followed her.

It was cold outside, a fact she only noticed after she had crossed her own carport and entered that of the next door neighbors. The shrubbery along the property line screened her from the view of the man in her house. She couldn’t hear him following her. Mimi was still with her. She stood listening and breathing white vapor while she tried to decide what to do next. So far she had not accomplished much. Maybe she should wait for the phone man to show up, but that could be as late as five o’clock. And it was cold. Maybe she could phone the police from a neighbor’s house.

Carol tried to decide which neighbors to ask for help. She didn’t know very many of them, even though she had lived there nearly four years. She had shared the house with one roommate during college, then another, and when she’d graduated and gone to work, she found she could afford to keep it alone. Between her shyness and her school, then her work, she had never joined in the daily neighborhood socializing she remembered her mother’s engaging in. Now she wished she had.

She did know the couple who lived at the end of the block with their four-year-old daughter. The wife stayed home with the child, and maybe she would help. But Carol looked at their house and saw that the car was not in the driveway. That meant the wife was not home.

The empty carport she was standing in belonged to an older couple who both worked days. Their children were grown and gone. The couple didn’t like Carol much. They were always complaining about the dog barking or about the trash cans sitting on the curb the day after the trash was collected or about Carol entertaining gentlemen callers without a chaperone. She thought they might have helped her with the intruder, since he was so much more clearly a rulebreaker in this instance than she was, but they wouldn’t be home for hours.

The only other people on the block that she knew at all were the woman across the street and her two children. That woman was a nurse named Ellen and she was divorced. Her boy was in high school and the girl in junior high. They, too, were all gone for the day, but Carol had watched their house for them when they went on vacation last summer. Ellen kept a plastic piece of fake granite in the flowerbed that held a hidden key in case the kids locked themselves out.

Carol and Mimi trotted across the deserted street. Carol looked back over her shoulder at her own small house, but in the bright sunshine she couldn’t see into the dim living room. She didn’t know if the man was watching her or not.

Carol scanned the edge of Ellen’s flowerbed for the only rock that wasn’t white chalky limestone. The black and white speckled fake granite was easy to spot. She turned it over and slid it open. There was the brass key. Carol began to feel some hope that she might be on the road to help. She closed the granite and set it on the step before opening the door with the cold key. She called Mimi to stop sniffing the yard and come in with her.

Carol had intended to walk directly to the phone and call 911, but forgot that plan when she saw a tiny old black woman sitting in Ellen’s living room watching television.

“Oh, excuse me,” Carol said. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I’m... I’m a friend of Ellen’s. She told me where she keeps the key. I hope I’m not bothering you. I just wanted to use the phone. Uh, is that all right?”

“Don’t make me no never mind, dearie. You just can’t make no long distance calls or they’ll know, you know what I mean?” The woman was a little hard to understand, perhaps because the game show was turned up so loud, perhaps because many of her teeth were missing. “And you got to clean everything up real good, too. See, when they’re clean housekeepers, they notice more if you been there. You got to wash everything and put it back just where you found it. That’s when they’s clean housekeepers, you know. They notice if something’s out of place. I wish I had one of them messy housekeepers sometimes, ’cause then it’s easier, but it’s not so nice, you know? But them clean housekeepers, you know, you got to clean up before they come home.”

Carol noticed that, indeed, the house was tidy, the rug vacuumed, tabletops cleared off except for lamps and short, neat stacks of magazines. She was very confused about who the old woman was. Ellen had not mentioned any relatives coming to visit, although she might not, of course, but then again, the woman did not look like a relative. Ellen and her children were clearly Caucasian and the old woman was clearly not. An old family retainer? Carol realized she was grasping at straws. A horrible thought occurred to her. “I’ll just go use the phone, then.”

“You do that, dearie, but if you bring that dog in here, you got to vacuum, ’cause they’ll see them dog hairs on the carpet, you know. And I be too old to go vacuuming up for you, you know. You bring in that dog, you got to vacuum.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I will,” Carol lied as she edged into the kitchen with Mimi. She picked up the phone and dialed the emergency number. She heard a busy signal. She was very surprised, but realized that all the lines could be tied up at once. She pushed the hang-up switch and dialed again. Still busy. She hung the phone up.

The old woman had stopped paying any attention to her and had gone back to watching her game show. Carol called 911 again. And again. And again. She hung up and waited some more. She tried again.

At last she went into the living room and sat down. Mimi curled up at her feet. “So, how long have you known Ellen?” she asked.

“What’s that?”

“I said, how long have you known Ellen?”

“Oh, I been coming here a long time. How long you been coming here?”

“A couple of years.” The mustard ad on TV was much louder than the show had been. Sandwiches were screaming and cringing.

Carol was not sure exactly what information she had just received or given.

“How long will you be staying, do you think?” Babies of all races modeled disposable diapers.

“Oh, I got to go by four today. The boy, he got basketball practice, but the girl, she be home on time.”

“Oh.” Carol paused, not sure what to say next. “Well, do you think you’ll be back soon?”

“Oh yeah, I be back tomorrow eight o’clock. That’s right. Tomorrow Friday, I be back.”

“Ah. I think I’ll try the phone again.” She got up and dialed 911. Still busy. She dialed her own house. It rang twelve times before she hung up. She wondered if it had really rung, or if the lines were still messed up. She dialed the store where she worked. That was busy, too, but it was no surprise. They got a lot of telephone calls at the store. She dialed the time service. It was ten fifty-three A.M. She tried 911 again. Busy. She tried work again. Busy. She dialed Mimi’s vet. A recording told her she had dialed a number not in service and to please check the number and try again. Nine eleven was still busy.

They must have designed a busy signal to sound as infuriating as possible, Carol decided. Her teeth were on edge with frustration. She told herself to be patient and sat back down in the living room to wait for people to hang up. She watched another game show with the old woman.

A few shows later Carol felt as if she was waking from a trance. She wondered what time it was. A lawyer was telling her that she should hire him to sue somebody, anybody, if she had been in an accident. Mimi was asleep at her feet. The old woman was getting up and hobbling down the hall toward the bathroom.

Carol still had Ellen’s door key in her hand. She stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans and tried the phone again. No matter where she called, she could not reach a live human being. She could only get recorded messages, unanswered rings, or busy signals.

When the old woman got back, Carol asked her about the phone.

“That’s right, sometimes when you on the time share, they don’t let you tell nobody, you know. You’re new at this, huh?”

“I don’t even know what’s going on. This strange man came into my house this morning and he wouldn’t leave, and then he chased me out and I came here and now I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, now you know. That’s what you get when you stay home and it ain’t your turn. Now you got to take your turn, too, long wi’ the rest of us.” The old woman ran water into an electric coffeepot, then opened a canister. “I’m Agnes. You want coffee?”

“No,” said Carol. “No, thank you.”

She went to the front door and looked across the street. There was something on her porch. She called Mimi and went out.

They found two things on the porch. The smaller was a yellow note on the front door handle saying that the phone company repairman had found no one at home and that she should call for another appointment. The larger was a pile of her clothes. There was a suitcase on top of the pile, and as Carol stuffed her clothes into it, she realized that the man had selected well for her. There were four pairs of heavy socks, some longsleeved shirts, an extra pair of jeans, a knit cap and gloves, and her winter jacket. There was her toothbrush, deodorant, all her prescriptions. He even sent out the car keys, although the house keys were missing. And no I.D., either.

Carol tried the front door. It was locked, of course. She always left the front door locked. She went around to the carport and tried the kitchen door. It was locked, too. She knocked. Mimi wagged her tail and pressed her nose to the crack.

The man answered promptly. He had the security chain on.

“I need the dog brush,” Carol said. “It’s in the bathroom drawer. If I don’t brush her every day, she gets mats.”

The man didn’t say anything, but closed the door. Mimi was caught off guard and nearly got her nose smashed. Carol shifted her weight from one foot to another while they waited. In a minute the man came back and handed the metal brush through the small opening the chain allowed. He waited silently.

Carol didn’t know what he expected from her. “Thank you,” she said, and turned away.

“You bet.”

Carol took her bag back across to Ellen’s house. She made sure the door was still unlocked, then she put the key back into the fake rock and carefully replaced it in the flowerbed. She went inside and put her bag on the kitchen floor. Mimi went exploring down the hall.

During the news, Carol and Agnes shared three scrambled eggs, an orange, and some toast. Carol had a small glass of milk and the old woman drank more coffee. Mimi had an egg and toast chopped up in a bowl with milk on it. She whined eagerly while it was being fixed, as if she knew it was a special treat. Agnes assured Carol that Ellen would never question the missing food, not with teenagers in the house.

Carol washed the dishes and the old woman dried, since she knew where to put everything away. Agnes took the orange peels and eggshells out of the empty wastebasket and warned Carol to be more careful. She washed them down the garbage disposal.

That afternoon they watched an old black and white movie in which Cary Grant married an American servicewoman in Europe and had to wear a wig made of horsehair to pass as a WAC nurse to get free navy transportation home. They didn’t get to see the end because Carol had to vacuum before they left.