Safe as Houses

Safe as Houses

We leave the crystal collar on the Pomeranian. The iPad and the laptops, we leave. We leave the crumpled fifty, the coins in the dish.

We steal the dish — a ceramic art-class concoction that brags, Daddy. We steal the macaroni valentines. The calico cookie jar and the framed cross-stitch, we smash. “Friends Are Flowers in the Garden of Life” preens the embroidered pillow before we gut it with kitchen shears.

Mars steals what’s pinned to the refrigerator by magnets shaped like wine bottles. He slides soccer schedules and report cards into one of the pillowcases.

“Amanda is screwing up math. Bunch of notes from her teacher.”

I flip through a self-help book on the Andersons’ counter: Coping with Care Giving; Woman as Tree. The book is swollen with countless reads in the bath, or maybe tears. “She probably watches too much television like every other kid in America.”

Technically, Jill Anderson and I have never spoken. She belongs to the gym I joined two weeks ago. Untechnically, we’ve spoken several times. Jill Anderson likes to catalog her life to a friend while they run-walk on treadmills, so I know the Andersons will be at Casa de adventuras in Mexico until Friday. I know her neighbor Dorothy is walking Jill’s Pomeranian twice a day and that Dorothy once asked Jill’s husband to borrow five hundred dollars, placing the husband in what Jill called an “off-putting situation.” I know almost every inch of her house, built to look like a suburban Parthenon, minicolumns and all.

The sound of snarling interrupts my reading and I look down into the snout of the Andersons’ Pomeranian, pushed forward by the weight of its own bark.

“Finish up in here,” I tell Mars. “Then join me in the family room.”

The Andersons’ family room is set up like the command station at NASA. You could launch a rocket or pilot a family. I kneel in front of the husband’s collection of jazz LPs. Hundreds. Coltrane, Monk, Reinhardt. I pull each record from its sleeve, flip it over in my hands, and crack it on my leg.

Mars returns, the Pomeranian orbiting his ankles. We wear matching orange jumpsuits. He’s a skinny kid with sandy hair like mine, only his has no gray and is normally organized into a cowlick that juts over his forehead. He has a giant mouth in the literal sense, capable of producing an impressive gape. He gapes at the television, a flat-screen affair that takes up most of the wall. Then he gapes at the horseshoe of white leather couches built in to the ground.

“These people are loaded, huh, Pluto?” he says. “Can’t we take a speaker or two?”

I try to ignore the hammering in my knees as I stand. “What we’re after is worth more than money. We are in tune with a loftier frequency. We are… Byronic.”

“Byronic,” he says, staring at the television.

…

The papers call me what they think are clever nicknames — the knicknack knicker, the memento marauder. I have written them what I know are clever notes, five or six by now. After the first few jobs, I used cutout letters from magazines. This last one was handwritten. Anna used to say my handwriting was crap. Even now, no doubt, a writing expert was dragging a magnifying glass over it, analyzing the alley-oop of my lowercase a’s, the look-out-belows of my l’s.

Upstairs we find the girls’ room. Painted signs hang over their beds — Amanda and Maria.

We knee-smash the unicorn paintings. We scissor-slice the stuffed animals.

I chair-slam a framed poem by Amanda called “Jake the Dog.” Your eyes are like popcorn. You are a magic dog. Then we start on the Barbies. Decapitation, hair cutting, leg twisting.

Mars says, “Was she a dyke, do you think?”

“Was who a… lesbian?”

“Lindsay Wagner.”

Outside on the street, a truck ka-rangs by.

“Not bionic,” I say. “Byronic. Lord Byron.”

The head of the Barbie I’m working on makes a satisfying pop when I wrench it from its body.

He says, “You got a kid, Pluto?”

“Nope.”

“You got a dog?”

“I’m more of a cat… burglar.”

“Jake is a stupid name for a dog. A dog should be named something strong, like Midnight or Bear. Jake’s a faggot dog. But if you get yourself a dog named Midnight or Blue, then you’ve got yourself a dog.”

“I had a cat named Ramon once,” I say, but he is not listening. He continues, “I had a dog who used to hump the side of the porch and go, Arrrrrgh… rooooooooof. Mars mounts the dresser, making sounds like he is in great pain. It seems to be an intimate retelling. I look away.

Then he is in slow motion, overturning each drawer dramatically, accompanying himself with chugging sounds.

“This is called what?” I say.

“This is called bionic, motherfucker!” He tosses clothes across the room. More chugging. “The bionic woman could crush a tennis ball in her hand.” He pretends to do it. “I… fucking hate… this… tennis ball.”

“Not bionic, Mars.”

I find a comic strip about Jake the dog drawn by Maria. In it, Jake solves a crime by pointing out an obvious detail. His sleuthing partner is either a rat or a poorly drawn elk; their relationship consists of grammatically suspect exchanges and high fives. Later, Jake receives an award from the mayor, who is a porcupine. Then Jake, the mayor, the rat-elk, and someone named Harriet Rosenbaum drink glasses of chocolate milk. The strip ends for no apparent reason with a Polaroid picture of Maria’s Barbie collection.

Way to carry a narrative through, Maria.

Mars leans over a small aquarium on Amanda’s bureau. “What is this thing?’

“It’s a newt,” I say. “A small lizard.”

“It’s about to be a dead lizard.” He lifts the sledgehammer.

I catch his arm at full height. “We don’t do anything with the newt.”

He frowns. “No fun.”

I hurl the comic strip into the pillowcase. “We’ll find something for you to smash in the master bed—”

Downstairs a woman’s voice calls “Hello?” and all the blood leaves my head.

Mars straightens up. I put my finger to my lips. From a pocket of his windbreaker, Mars produces a gun, shiny as a slap.

“What is that?” I hiss, stab at the gun.

“That’s the sound of shit going down, motherfucker!”

The voice calls, “Hello?” again. Mars waves the gun toward the hallway. I lead him out of the bedroom and we creep down the steps. When we get to the first floor, we hide behind the arch that leads to the kitchen. The arch is stenciled with leaves and grapes from an art class Jill took to “broaden her horizons.”

Whoever is in the kitchen is making a fuss over Jake the dog, calling him Jake-eroo and Jake-eroni.

Mars’s lips are slick. I mouth the words no gun and enter the kitchen where a woman in friendly-looking jogging shorts is encouraging Jake the dog to jump as high as he can. Jake complies with a whole heart. His overgrown nails slap against the linoleum when he lands. His Swarovski collar flashes.

The woman notices me and stiffens. “Hello?” she says, as if still calling into the empty house.

“Dorothy? I’m Ramon, Jill’s cousin.” I use a tone that implies I’ve heard a ton about her. I learned this the only other time I encountered a human being during a job: Be participatory.

She looks to Jake for validation, but he is taking a water break.

“I stopped by to pick up a book Jill borrowed.” I blink, slowly. Anna used to say this called attention to my azure blue eyes, but Dorothy is staring at the orange jumpsuit. “I am a phone repairman.” My voice is leaden, as if I am reading from a script. “You know,” I say. “Phones.” I pick up the receiver of the Andersons’ phone and wag it as if to say, Here is an example of a phone I would be qualified to repair. I want Dorothy to start talking so I can stop talking. The need blankets me like summer heat.

Finally, she says, “Book?”

I point to the swollen missive on the counter.

“I don’t have my glasses.” Dorothy squints to read the title. Her face relaxes.

“You caught me.” I raise my hands as if guilty of something. “Self-help, I’m embarrassed to say. Renovation of the soul.”

“Woman as Tree.” Dorothy frowns. “Poor Jill.”

“Yes.” My smile falters. “Poor Jill.”

“I walked Jake this morning, but I feel like I forgot to put his leash back in the vestibule.” She makes a move to walk past me.

I block her way. “It’s there.”

She advances and I back up. We are now in the archway. I affect a casual lean. The only thing separating Dorothy from a room of demolished records and a homicidal twenty-year-old is my untoned arm. I flex. My bicep, if it’s possible, shrugs. In the other room, I hear the sound of a cocked gun.

“Dorothy,” I say. “I saw the leash not five minutes ago.”

“Well, if you’re certain…” Dorothy does not know whether to believe me, but Dorothy wants to get to where she’s going and I have very nice eyes. I read all of this in hers, which she lowers to Jake, who has placed his two delicate front paws on her knees.

“Jake-eroo!” she says. “Jake Jake Jake-eroo!” The dog begins to jump again with renewed vigor.

“This has been fun,” I say. “I’ll tell Jill she has a wonderful neighbor.”

Dorothy looks up from the dog. “Ramon, was it?”

“That’s my name.” I lead her to the door and open it.

“And you’ll make sure he has enough water before you leave?”

“Absolument,” I say.

“Oh,” she winks. “French.”

Dorothy jogs away. I make a big show of waving to her through the kitchen window. Then it’s just Jake and me.

…

I met Mars when I did his family’s house and found him sleeping in a back room. He threatened to go to the police so I took him on. Mars is the name I gave him. He said it could be like a Red Beard pirate thing, with him eventually taking over and me sailing off into the sunset. I said, Let’s do the Anderson house and see how it goes. He’s young and has time for a few bad lives. I’m old; I cut out fast food a couple weeks ago when I excised curse words from my vocabulary and joined the gym.

I want to go back to when I was eating oranges and saying yes to things. Before Anna’s accident fourteen months ago, I knew what it meant to leap out of a chair with enthusiasm. Now my muscles are flabby with disuse, and I don’t think the push-ups I’m doing at the gym are making any difference.

I find Mars upstairs in the master bedroom, pawing through Jill’s underwear drawer. He holds up a pair of red lace undies. “This is what I’m talking about.” He places them under his nose and inhales deeply. “Do you think the husband understands what to do with a thong like this?”

“It’s better not to think of them as people.”

He pins the undies to his face with his nose so they can hang unassisted and tosses his head back and forth. “Do you mind if I take these though?”

“In fact I do mind, Mars.” I rub both temples with my fore-fingers.

I want Jill to run-walk-cry on the treadmill and say to her girlfriend, “They took everything that mattered. My daughter’s jewelry boxes, my husband’s baseball trophies, poof!” I want her to shake her head, locked in the band that pulls her face into a painful-looking grimace, and know I have done her a favor. She will say, I will never take anything for granted again.

We hammer-smash the pictures lined up on the bureau, all of Jill. We karate-kick the antique mirror, donkey-punch the wedding picture.

Mars says, “So you used to be like, what, a teacher? The paper said you were some kind of professor with a wife. That she’s dead but you write them letters about her, and the letters have fancy-ass words like an Ivy League professor.”

I am happy the papers have me teaching at an Ivy League school. It feels like a promotion from where I do teach — a community college classroom that smells like a sandwich. My shoulders tense with unearned pride.

“So what happened?” he says. “Cancer?”

The panties are still on his face. “Will you kindly take those off?”

“Will you kindly blah blah blah?” Mars disappears into the master bathroom.

In Jill’s bureau I find a card from the husband, whose name turns out to be Craig. Amateurish thanks-for-sticking-by-me-through-hard-times crap.

Jill Anderson can put together entire paragraphs using nothing but the word husband. “My husband said… my husband knows… my husband sees….” The fact that he has an actual name cheers me even though it’s Craig, the sound a car door makes when it needs oil. She is a woman who thinks a book can turn her into an oak tree, who has imagined a hole inside her so big it could vacuum up the tables and chairs, the refrigerator magnets, the candlesticks, her two kids, and the husband. That can be the cruelest part of happiness — its tendency to disguise itself in boredom.

“Why is there a lock on the medicine cabinet?” I can hear but not see Mars talking to himself in the bathroom. “Who the fuck locks up their toothpaste?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I check my watch.

“I’m smashing it.”

“Leave it alone,” I yell. I hear a few jarring thumps and the sound of glass exploding.

“Holy shit,” Mars says when the sound settles. “Pluto, come in here.”

Mars stands in front of a giant medicine cabinet, whose doors are now on the floor. Hundreds of prescription drug bottles glimmer inside.

Mars holds one up. “They’re all Craig’s.”

I cross to the hacksawed cabinet and read. OxyContin, oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone, Percocet, Ambien.

“Dude is seriously sick.” Mars whistles. “I know you’re gonna let me take some of these.”

“We don’t do anything with the drugs,” I say.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

Craig Anderson. Twice a day, three times a day, once daily. Craig Anderson. Craig Anderson. “Not effing kidding you at all.”

“Don’t think of them as people, huh?”

“Stay on task.” I leave, dragging the pillowcase behind me like a bad leg.

He follows, the thong hooked around his ears like a Red Baron cap. “You’re no fun, man.”

…

In Craig’s study, Mars elbow-clears the desk of framed pictures while I stare at a portrait of Craig, Jill, the girls, and Jake the dog. Jill and the girls wear matching summer dresses, Jake wears a complementing visor. A sunset, smug looks, etc.

It’s the only picture of Craig in the house. His nose is bulbous in a pleasing way that probably makes his new clients trust him instantly. It sits on top of a mustache — a sunset on a well-trimmed horizon.

Normally something like this portrait would repulse me. When you are unhappy, other people’s happiness comes off as an affront; innocuous beach pictures are framed fuck-yous. However, Jake looks charming in his visor, jaunty even, like he has just cracked a good-hearted joke to everyone’s delight. A soft feeling unrolls inside my chest.

I wonder how many people I pissed off when I was happy.

When I don’t immediately react, Mars says, “Ain’t that something?”

I say, “That is something.”

“Jill Anderson’s sort of all right — looking. Nice ass.”

“I prefer brunettes.”

Mars nods. “Brunettes with nipples the size of dinner plates.”

“Brunettes who paint shoddy replicas of the solar system.” I squint, taking in the size and construction of the painting. “Who cheat at board games.”

“If that’s your thing, dude.” Mars rolls his eyes. “You know what my thing is, though?”

I prepare for one of his profanity-laced monologs and realize with pain I’ve come to enjoy them.

“Granny nightgowns. The long jobbers with the sleeves. They’re normally made out of cotton or what’s that other… with the squares. I screw girls who wear these,” he gestures to the thong on his head. “But I have a thing for those nightgowns. They remind me of my grandmother. She knew what was up.”

It isn’t every day a man reveals deep sentiment for his grandmother in the same thought that contains a reference to a thong on his head. Mars is silent, wistful. We stand in Craig Anderson’s office and think about women we love.

“Now let’s smash the shit out of these people so we can go,” he says. “I’m bored and this isn’t fun anymore.” Mars yanks the picture from the wall. He smashes it on the desk and pulls the photograph from its mat “How’s this for on task?”

I shake off my hesitance. We rip and rip until you could use what’s left as wedding confetti.

Inside a drawer, Mars finds a thick wad of money. He gives it a shake next to his ear. “Yo ho, lookie here!”

“Put it back,” I say.

“What’s the big deal, Pluto? They’re all hundreds. Just one or two?”

“Posit,” I say, “you are Craig Anderson. What causes you more consternation: replacing a wad of money or a macaroni valentine from your adorable daughter?”

“What’s ‘posit?’” he says.

“It’s a fancy-ass word for question, Mars.”

He scratches his ankle again. “And is consternation some kind of pervert thing?”

“Just leave the money there, Mars. Leave it right effing there.”

“You want to ask someone a question, why don’t you just say question?” Mars sighs and produces a flask from his jumpsuit. “I have a headache.” He takes a long, rueful drink.

I remember a comment Jill hurled to the friend about a wine cellar. “Basement,” I say to Mars.

We find the door to the wine cellar in the kitchen. Jake the dog, whose eyes are like popcorn, is back, yelping and sputtering and getting in our way.

“Fucking dog,” Mars growls. I smell the spice of rum. Had he been smeared with diesel grease and walking late into my class, he would have been indistinguishable from my students.

Craig Anderson has racks of pompous-looking California reds and whites. I start with the whites. I don’t know anything about wine. They all sound the same when they hit the floor, which begins to look like a Jackson Pollock. I would say this to Mars but I’m certain there would be an explanation involved and I am suddenly overtaken by a spasm of yawning. I sit the rest of it out. Mars smashes and poses, smashes and poses. Jill’s thong hangs from his back pocket, a red grin.

He hands me the last bottle, a Spanish white, so I can do the honors. Instead, I place it on the empty racks.

“A watermark. Making the others pale in comparison, becoming the reference point for everything else.”

Mars says, “Do you two want to be alone?”

I turn to him, newly surprised by his slovenly appearance.

“Question.” He screws and unscrews the top of his flask. “We’re tearing around all bionic, destroying dolls and shit. To teach them to appreciate the stuff they don’t appreciate? Why don’t you steal what they do care about? Steal their stereos and money so they learn to pay attention to their love letters, or whatever.”

I say, “You don’t understand. The specific nature of…”

Mars shakes his head, sucks from the flask again.

Now we both stare at the bottle. After a moment, Mars says, “These people didn’t kill your wife, man.”

I let out a massive sigh that takes longer than I think it will. “I don’t think the weights I’m using are working.”

He takes another drink, thinks about it. “You’re probably not doing enough cardio.”

…

Back in the Andersons’ kitchen, I do a mental survey. Refrigerator, records, wine bottles: have we forgotten anything?

Jake the dog has lost interest in us and laps water out of his bowl. Mars and I register him at the same time. “All we have to do is shoot the dog and we’re through.”

I am joking.

Mars pulls the gun out of his pants. “Good call.”

“No.” I use my biggest voice. “We don’t do anything with the dog.”

“This wasn’t as much fun as I thought it’d be,” he says, and aims.

…

Anna kissed me whenever we left each other and whenever we, after being apart for even an hour, met up. That day I stood next to the car as she adjusted the driver’s seat and rearview mirror to take into account our differences. Ramon had an abscess on his cheek, a bump I figured would heal by itself. Anna reiterated: it was always better safe than sorry as far as the cat was concerned. I stopped listening in anticipation of her certain, thrilling kiss. Finally she delivered it to my bottom lip. I gave the roof of the car two protective slaps, then watched as she reversed into the street. She was hit by a bus of Fresh Air kids, whose driver didn’t know that in that area of the state driveways spring up like wild violets. I ran. The kids were bellowing out the windows. The cat carrier on the dotted yellow line, swiveling like a nickel.

…

Before I can stop him, Mars pulls the trigger and a bullet goes into the rump of Jake the dog, whose breath smells like bacon and friendship. The dog makes a muted sound and collapses.

“What the fuck?” I startle us both with my volume.

Mars smoothes back a piece of hair. “That’s the point of all of this, right?” His eyes are bright. He is happy.

My hands shake. “You shot the dog.”

“Chillax.”

Chillax, I think. The dog is dead. Pomeranian finito. The Anderson family will come home with tan lines. The dog will still be dead. Jill will cry. Craig will trim his mustache, then die. No one will learn anything. Maria will go to art college and compare sob stories with girlfriends who will say, I hate my calves, and Maria will say, An English professor broke in to my house, desecrated my room, and shot my dog. In the losing game, Maria will always win. Because of me. The dog is dead. Chillax. Chill and relax. Hybrid.

We hear a wheezing sound and turn. Jake’s eyes are open. He lies on the linoleum, stiff, staring out with an unfocused gaze. He tries to raise his head when I kneel next to him but pain halts him.

Mars grunts. “It must have grazed him.”

I stand and lift the receiver of Jill Anderson’s kitchen phone. The dial tone is strong, unwavering.

Mars panics. “Who are you calling? Why are we waiting?” He consults the windows to check if the neighbors have heard the sound of a gun in the middle of the otherwise peaceful Wednesday afternoon.

“Let’s go.” He pulls the arm of my jumpsuit.

A voice answers after two rings. “Nine-one-one-this-is-Theodora-what-is-your-emergency?”

“I’d like to report a robbery,” I say. “And a shooting. A robbery and a shooting.”

Mars’s enormous jaw goes slack.

I give her the information, respelling the name of the street. When it comes to the matter of who I am, there is no reason to be coy. “I’m the robber.”

Theodora says she’s never fielded a call made by the perpetrator of the crime and would it be okay for her to get her manager?

“Theodora,” I say. “Hurry up.”

Mars paces in front of the bare refrigerator. “I ain’t goin’ to jail for this,” he says.

“I’m not going to jail for this.”

He throws up his hands. “Then let’s get the fuck out of here!”

A voice comes on the other end — pert, breath-minty. “This is the manager. Can I ask with whom I am speaking?”

“Sometimes they call me the keepsake klepto, the swindler of sentiment. Send someone who knows about animals. A dog has been shot.” I replace the receiver and face Mars.

“You can do what you want,” I say. “But this is over for me. I’m sorry I cursed at you, but you don’t shoot the effing dog.”

Mars looks shocked. “I thought that’s what we were doing here!”

“You don’t… shoot… the effing… dog.”

A moment passes. Except for the small motor of Jake’s breathing, the house is quiet as a wish.

“I feel bad for you,” he says. “You’re so—”

“Fancy-ass?” I say.

He shakes his head. “Ineffectual.”

The last I see of Mars are the red panties hanging from his back pocket, the final part of him to make it over the Andersons’ vigorously landscaped bushes. Then there is the new horror of a neighbor’s barking retriever, sprinting the length of fence next to him before finding with a sharp pop the end of its chain. Mars disappears. The retriever thinks about it, quiets.

There is nothing to do but wait. I retrieve the watermark Chardonnay from the basement and pour myself a glass.

Blood blooms in the fur near Jake’s tail.

I squat next to him against the cold wall. “Magic dog.”

I turn the glass in my hand. I don’t know what to look for but I’d bet it is a good wine — fruity or woody or mossy or whatever. Even Anna would have appreciated wine like this, though she would have had nothing but disdain for a man who keeps bottles of it loaded like torpedoes in his basement.

Anna liked a glass of beer on the porch at sunset. That was her thing.

My vision dulls with tears. I hear sirens.

Jake issues a small woof. The bullet clipped his back but didn’t penetrate; I can see where it lodged itself into the kitchen wall. He’s stunned and nervous, but he’s okay. I move my hand over the full length of his body so he knows he is still in the world.