Burning Time

64

Claudia Bartello felt uncomfortable. She had a feeling there was another vibration in the house, something more than the traffic at the height of the rush hour on the bridge. Sometimes it sounded like a hum. Sometimes it sounded like weeping. Twice she thought she heard screams. She moved around the house, upstairs and downstairs, looking for the source of the noise, as if it were an odor she could ferret out and purge.

Since Arturo died a year ago, there had been times when the lights had been funny. They made a crackling kind of noise, or flashed on and off for no reason. She did not question the possibility of there being a ghost in the house. He died there. Right on the front steps while she was in the kitchen making dinner. Without a sound or anything. He just fell over on the way up the stairs and died on her. Maybe he was still mad at her for not knowing, for letting a neighbor find him almost a whole hour later. That would be something he’d be mad about.

But more likely it wasn’t a ghost. It was that man in the garage with his naked girlfriend. The woman hadn’t left yet. Claudia was pretty sure of that. No one had been outside of that garage door. She considered going in and complaining. She considered calling that Irish policeman and telling him something funny was going on. What was his name?

The problem was she didn’t know how to call the police, what number to dial. It wasn’t the number they flashed on the TV screen for emergencies. Arturo tried that once when the car got bumped from behind. After he told them no one was hurt, they promised to send someone over. But no one ever came.

How to get the right number? Her eyes were not good enough to struggle with the phone book. She wouldn’t know where to look in it anyway. And he didn’t seem like he was very interested. She wanted another policeman. An Italian she could talk to, explain about Arturo and the man in the garage. Sometimes the hum seemed like voices arguing.

Claudia could have a whopper of an argument with Arturo right now. What did he mean building a little apartment upstairs that you couldn’t get to without going through the garage and up the stairs at the back? It didn’t make sense. But Arturo never had any sense. He said he wanted to make it hard for people to bother him. Nice.

One thing she could say about herself. She might be old, but there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Claudia could hear dirty things happening on the other side of her wall. She’d heard things like that before. She just hadn’t heard it at eleven in the morning. At twelve.

At one o’clock she decided to do something about it. She shuffled to the front door, remembering first to put her sweater on because it still felt chilly to her. She didn’t put her heavy shoes on because she wasn’t going far, and her feet were swollen. The soft slippers were easier to walk in.

She left the front door unlocked. She didn’t want to have to struggle with the key, and she was coming right back. Finally, for the second time that day, she grabbed the railing and carefully maneuvered the steps that killed Arturo. There were only three of them, and they were not very steep, but Claudia was afraid of falling and did not like them.

When she was on level ground at last, she shuffled down the path to the sidewalk in front of the house. She couldn’t take a shortcut across the tiny patch of grass Arturo called his lawn because it had grown in. Soon the neighbors would start complaining again.

Claudia contemplated the garage door. One thing she could say about herself. She might have arthritis in her fingers, but there was still some strength in her arms. She leaned over, her old bones creaking, and lifted the garage door. It swung open easier than she expected. The guy living in there must have done something to it, oiled it maybe.

When the door opened, the light came on automatically. Claudia walked inside. For a minute she thought the car was Arturo’s car, that no time had passed, and she was going in there to catch him at it. But then she remembered. This car was a Ford. She was in here to scold somebody else. She almost tripped over Arturo’s lawn mower that was so old it didn’t even have a motor. She climbed the stairs slowly, holding the railing, and when she got to the top, she banged on the door three times. No one answered.

She knocked some more.

“Hey,” she said. “I know you’re in there.”

There was a long silence and then a reply right on the other side of the door. “What do you want?”

“You said you weren’t going to do anything,” Claudia cried peevishly.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“I know what you’re doing. You have a woman in there.”

“No way.”

“Yes, there’s a woman in there,” Claudia insisted.

“What makes you think so?”

The voice on the other side of the door sounded reasonable. That sound of reason reminded her of Arturo. It irritated her.

“I’m not stupid. I have eyes and ears. I saw her. I won’t have this.” It was an old argument. “I’m not running a whorehouse. You’ll have to get her out of there.”

“What are you talking about?” The voice was angry.

“I said you’ll have to take that woman and get her out of here. I won’t have no dirty stuff in my house. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“There’s no woman in here, I promise you.”

“Yes,” Claudia cried. “Oh, yes, there is. I saw her.”

“Okay, okay. There was a woman, but she’s gone. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Open the door. I can’t talk like this.”

“I can’t, I’m not dressed. I was sleeping.”

“This is my house. If she’s gone, I want to see she’s gone.”

“I told you I was sleeping. I got no clothes on.”

“Then put some clothes on.”

There was a pause, and then the voice was soothing again.

“Lady, I think you’re all excited for nothing. So I had somebody here for a while. It’s a free country. I told you she’s gone now. Forget about it.”

“I want to see she’s gone,” Claudia insisted. “It’s my house. Do you want me to call the police? I’ll call the police. I got a friend in the police. You want him to take care of it?”

There was another lengthy silence.

“You hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

In a second the door opened, and Claudia shuffled in. The door closed after her before she had a chance to protest.