John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

He’d stood still in that room for a while, and it seemed he could feel her presence, and it felt good.

Pretty room for a pretty girl.

Then car doors started slamming outside, and he’d straightened the stack of color flyers one more time, checked his tie and his name tag, and put on his professional smile.

He opened the door, and the event began.

The hours had gone by quickly, and he listened to the same comments and answered the same questions, to the point where they almost became meaningless:

“Nice listing, Mark.”

“This place’ll sell in a heartbeat.”

“What’s the asking price?”

Over and over again he had patiently repeated every detail to every agent, all the time keeping an eye on the steady stream of agents who cruised through the downstairs, opening every door and checking the cabinets, then glancing quickly into the garage before heading upstairs to get a feel for the rest of the house.

What was it about garages? Mark wondered now as he drained half his third stein of beer. But of course he knew — garages were boring. And they were boring because people didn’t live in them. That’s what everyone wanted to see at an open house. The places where people lived.

After the agents came back downstairs, they’d checked out the kitchen one more time — always the kitchen, because that’s where people spend most of their lives — then dropped their business cards in the rosewood bowl on their way out and picked up flyers.

He knew that the more flyers they picked up, the better they liked the house.

And today they’d taken a lot.

Over and over, in the lull between each caravan, Mark went back through the house, moving things back to the exact places they’d been, doing his best to keep the house as the Marshalls had left it that morning. After all, even though almost everybody loved poking around in strangers’ houses, nobody liked having strangers poke around in their own. So he always did his best to make it look as if no one — not even he himself — had been there at all. When the Marshalls came home, everything should look exactly right.

It had been late in the day when Sam Cousins and Ike North showed up. He knew they’d be there at the end of the event so they could all go to Fishburn’s together. And he’d been especially pleased when they came down from their tour of the second floor and Ike spoke before they even hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Is this going to be open on Sunday?”

Mark nodded.

“I’ll bring some people by. I wish I could get them in tomorrow, but they’re in the city and won’t be able to make it until the weekend.”

“You’ll be lucky if this place is still available on Sunday,” Sam Cousins put in.

Music to Mark’s ears.

“So,” Ike said, glancing around at the house, empty now except for the three of them. “Fishburn's?”

Mark nodded. “Meet you there. I have to lock up, so order me a cold one.”

Alone, he’d gone through the rooms one last time, turning out all the lights, checking to see that the doors were locked and everything was exactly as it had been that morning. At the top of the stairs, he went first into Kara and Steve’s bedroom, then their bath. Everything looked good. He turned out the lights and closed the door, then did the same with Steve’s study and the guest room.

Then he’d gone to Lindsay’s room and smiled as he turned out the light and closed the door, knowing that this was the room that would sell the house. It was neat and tidy, and you could almost feel the girl who lived in it. A sweet girl — a girl the Marshalls were fortunate to have.

At the front door, he’d picked up his briefcase and the rosewood bowl and looked around one last time. Everything looked perfect, and he felt great.

And now, as he drained the third stein of beer and ordered a fourth, he still felt great.

Great, and lucky that the Marshalls had chosen him to sell their house.

I didn’t expect the house to smell so sweet.

Nor was it the fake smell of rose petals in a bowl, or the kind of canned aroma of baking bread that so many agents fill houses with nowadays — as if anybody really bakes bread anymore! No, the house today was filled with the scent of love and harmony, and the moment I walked through the front door, I could feel the warmth of affection as well.

Some houses fairly reek of suspicion or wariness or anger, and in an instant you can feel the misery of the family who lives there.

Even worse, some houses have no fragrance at all — the poison of indifference hangs in the air.

But not the house I went to today — the house I found on the Internet last week that set me to tingling from the moment I went on the video tour.

This house has balance. Wholeness. Wholesomeness. Here there will be no religious icons on the walls, no evidence of secret perversions hidden beneath the mattresses.

That is the wonderful thing about being utterly nondescript; it is almost the same as being invisible. And being invisible is like being God.

Today I had nearly a whole day of being like God, and the feeling was sublime. As I moved from room to room, seeing everything, touching everything, feeling everything, no one noticed me at all.

Though people were milling around me nearly every moment I was in the house, it was as if I was utterly alone.

Alone with her.

And everything— everything —was perfect.

A calendar hung on the kitchen bulletin board next to some snapshots. One photo was of a blond girl in a cheerleading uniform, and the moment I saw the picture, I knew.

I knew her.

I’d always known her.

She was so obviously the one who lives in the girlish bedroom on the second floor whose every detail I memorized from the tour on the Internet.

And according to the wall calendar, this coming Sunday there would be an open house.

Below that, written in a slightly different hand — a girlish hand — was another notation: “Cheerleading practice.”

And then another notation, written small and by yet a third hand: “House-hunting. Dinner at Café des Artistes?”

So it will be Sunday. What could be more perfect?

After seeing her picture and reading the calendar, I moved with newfound purpose through the first floor rooms just slowly enough to seem nothing more than a mildly interested agent, then headed up the stairs to steep myself in the aura of my new love — my perfect child.

The instant I walked into her room, I knew that she was the focal point, the absolute center, not only of this house, but of this family.

The lovely aroma that imbued the whole house was strongest there in her room, and I wanted to sink into the soft comfort of her bed, to run my hands over the sheets that enveloped her body every night, to feel myself sinking not just into her bed, but into her.

Yet I restrained myself.

I had to be patient.

My digital camera — one so tiny it can be concealed in the palm of my hand — captured every aspect of the room, but when I turned to her bed, I couldn’t quite restrain myself.

I let the back of my hand run across her pillow, and as my skin touched the place where her head had lain, I could feel the residue of her psychic aura.

Oh, yes! It was her!

In that moment, I knew that my instincts had been right: this is the one! It isn’t just the way she looks, but everything else as well.

After I touched her pillow, I touched everything else, too: the things on her desk, the photos on her dresser, the stuffed animals on the windowsill.

I opened her drawers and touched the soft silky garments she wears next to her skin.

Surely it was only natural to slip a pair of her panties into my pocket, given how they soothed my tortured soul.