Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

I was in the closet, examining the clothes as if in the hope that her mother might have sewn in name tapes before sending her to camp, and pondering laundry marks and labels as if they were going to tell me something. I popped the catches on a small suitcase, the kind with wheels and a pull-up handle. A few years ago nobody but stewardesses had them, and now it’s the only kind you see. This one was empty, and I closed it up and turned off the closet light, and I was on my way out of there when something flickered in my memory. I’d just seen something. Now what the hell was it?

A luggage tag.

Well, of course. People tie tags on their suitcases, with their names and addresses and phone numbers, so that the airlines, having lost their luggage for them, can, once in a blue moon, find it again. (It’s also handy if someone steals your bag. If he likes the general quality of your possessions, he knows right where to come to get more. And, if you tucked a set of keys in your bag, all the better.)

I spun around, leaned over to peer at the luggage tag, and of course the light was too dim to make it out. I straightened up and reached to switch on the closet light, and as soon as it came on I switched it off again.

Because I heard a key in the lock.

Oh, God. Now what?

Stay in the closet? No, I couldn’t, the desk lamp was on. I got to it in a hurry and switched it off, while the key went on jiggling in the lock. The worn pins and tumblers evidently presented the same sort of problem even if you had a key, and what had been a nuisance a few minutes ago was a godsend now. Back to the closet? No, the bathroom was closer-and in less time than it took to have the thought I was in it with the door closed.

And just in time, because I could hear the door open, and a moment later I could hear it close. I didn’t hear the light switch, but when she switched the light on in the room some of it showed under the bathroom door.

Good I’d stayed out of the closet. I’ve been in closets a couple of times in the past when householders turned up unexpectedly, and I always managed to escape detection, but I didn’t like my chances this time around. It was a cool night, and she’d almost certainly have been wearing a jacket or a coat, and the first thing she’d do was take it off, and thus the first place she’d go was the closet.

And where did I think was the second place she would go?

The bathroom, of course, and what was I going to do when she burst in and found me there? I couldn’t pretend I was a plumber sent to fix a dripping faucet. I wasn’t dressed for it and I hadn’t brought the right tools for the job.

Should I lock the door?

Hell, she’d hear it if I did. Unless I covered the sound by coughing or flushing the toilet, and then she’d hear that. And even if she didn’t, she’d find out that the bathroom door was locked when she tried to open it. And she’d call downstairs, and they’d send somebody up, and the next thing you knew I’d be having my rights read to me. They’re important rights, but there’s a limit to how often I want to hear about them.

There was a window, the glass frosted so that I couldn’t tell if it led to the fire escape. It didn’t look as though it had been opened since the last time it had been painted, and there was no guarantee I could open it, and no chance at all I could do so without making a lot of noise. It was a tiny window, too, and no cinch to climb through, and-

The doorknob turned. The door opened.

But by then I was standing in the bathtub, cowering behind the shower curtain, feeling every bit as secure about the whole enterprise as Janet Leigh in Psycho.

She turned on the light as she entered. This didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t make me happy, either. The shower curtain was somewhere between opaque and translucent. I could see shapes through it, but only if I worked at it. The more light there was, the more clearly I could see.

If the shower curtain had been designed by the inventor of the one-way mirror, I might have welcomed the extra illumination. But every quid has a pro quo, and the better I could see, the more easily I could be seen in return.

Even with the light on I couldn’t tell much about my visitor. Based on the ordinariness of her silhouette, I could estimate that she was not too tall and not too short, and neither a wraith nor a blimp. But I could have guessed as much without having seen her at all, and I’d have been right ninety percent of the time. Anyway, I had more to go on than the blurred shape visible through the plastic curtain. I’d seen the clothes in her closet.

Well, I knew one thing more now. I knew she was proper, even prim. Fastidious, at the very least.

Because the first thing she did after turning on the light was close the door.

I don’t know. Maybe everybody does this, or maybe it’s a girl thing. But when I’m alone in my apartment, I’ll tell you right now that I don’t close the bathroom door when I have to take a whiz. I’m sure there are people who do-I was in a room with one of them now-even as I am sure there are people who run water in the sink while they are thus occupied, so that they won’t be able to hear what they’re doing.

She didn’t do that, and I could hear her loud and clear. This might have been provocative, even exciting, if I’d been a little kinkier than God made me, but under the circumstances all it was was disturbing. Not because I was offended, but because I was envious. The gentle tinkling sound made me aware that I, too, had a bladder, and a hitherto unnoticed need to empty it.

I’m not going to dwell on this, but it’s something to profit from if you’ve been contemplating a life of crime. It’s not all glamour and big profits. You’re going to spend a fair amount of time wishing you had the chance to pee.

My guest had the chance, and she was taking it. Then she stood up and flushed, and then she washed her hands, and who could have expected less of someone who’d bothered closing the door?

Then she opened the door and walked through it, and then my blood froze, because, casually and conversationally, she said, “Your turn.”

Not that I wouldn’t welcome a turn, as I’ve already explained. If I hadn’t quite reached the shifting-one’s-weight-from-one-foot-to-the-other stage, I could already see it looming on the horizon. But when had she spotted me, and how had she masked her discovery so well, only to tip it off so offhandedly? “Your turn” -and while I was taking my turn she’d be on the phone, telling the number-cruncher downstairs to call 911.

And she left the door open.

I should point out that all of this happened quickly, and that I didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it. Otherwise I’d have figured it out, as you very likely have, but before my drunk/hungover (choose one) mind could run through its gears, a taller silhouette passed through the door, pausing to draw it shut. Then he strode manfully over to the commode, bent over to raise the seat, straightened up, and went at it.

I’d draw the curtain here, but for the fact that I was behind it. He did what he’d come there to do, flushed, washed his hands, dried them on a towel, and switched off the light on his way out the door. He didn’t close the door this time.

So I got to hear them making love.

Some years ago, when I was a teenage kid embarking on a career in burglary, the whole enterprise (I blush to admit) bore a distinct undercurrent of sexual energy. You can blame it on my youth; it seems to me there was a sexual aspect to everything back then.

I suppose a Freudian might have contended that I started breaking into houses in the first place in hopes of sneaking a peek at the primal scene-i.e., my own parents, doing the dirty deed. God knows what lurks in the unconscious, but I have to tell you that was the last thing in the world I wanted to see, and if I’d wanted to spy on my folks I wouldn’t have gone looking for them in other people’s houses. I’d have stayed home.