Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Thirty-eight

I'm very good at what I do. Better, probably, than anyone else. But then again, no one else knows what I do, and thus it shall remain, precisely because I’m so good at it.

The open house went well, even though it was a Saturday. I was perfectly prepared, and slipped into the house with the same silence and invisibility as the air of poverty that permeates the neighborhood. The difference, of course, is that while I could sense the air of poverty, I’m quite sure no one sensed me at all.

At least, not the danger inherent in my presence.

The interior of the house was much as I imagined — a sweet little cottage that had once known love but had grown shabby and taken on the look that houses do when no one cares about them anymore. Someone had given up on the little house — I could feel it immediately.

Perhaps someone had given up on love, something I know something of.

After all, I have much love to give.

Her bedroom was that of a sweet woman, exactly the sort I always dreamed of. A wonderfully feminine paper covered the walls, and the ceiling was painted a soft peach.

A shade of peach I remember well.

I could sense her — feel her — know her — despite the fact that most of her life was already packed away in the stacks of boxes that were piled against the walls.

The kitchen cabinets were almost bare, and what little they held was the sort of boxed food that people who live in that kind of neighborhood invariably eat. A shame, really: nutrition is so important to healthy brain activity, and perhaps if they ate better, they would find themselves able to live better.

Regardless.

The poverty of the household did nothing to dampen my spirits; indeed, it confirmed for me that this woman will provide the perfect completion of my little tableau. Knowing that the days until I could make her mine would be incomplete without something to remember her by, I slipped a family photograph from the dresser into my pocket.

And I began to make my plan.

There is a fine line between adventure and recklessness. Parking in front of this house last week was pure recklessness, but after I examined the house more carefully today in the company of a dozen or so other people (each of the agents more ineffectual and each of their clients less observant than the ones who went before) I engaged the host agent in the sort of bland conversation that no one — no one except me — remembers five minutes after it has happened. I have no doubt that the agent will remember no more of what we said than of what I look like. Still, the encounter gave me an adrenaline rush, as toying with people who think they are manipulating me always does.

Having taken his listing sheets, I consistently nodded as if I were interested in everything he had to say. When he finally ran out of platitudes and pitches, I eventually made my way to the basement, where I discovered a perfect hiding place behind an old armoire. Indeed, I tested the niche by hiding myself there for nearly two hours, and listened to the conversations of everyone else who came and went. After the house grew silent and the host agent had come down to check that everything was locked — never, of course, bothering even to glance behind the armoire — I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I stood quietly, my anticipation under control, and waited.