Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

But that’s not to say I wouldn’t have welcomed a glimpse of somebody else doing something I wasn’t supposed to see. I didn’t go looking for it, and in fact took great pains to make sure other people’s houses were empty before I came calling. All the same, I was frequently stirred by what I found. An unmade bed would send my mind reeling, just at the thought of what might have taken place in it mere hours before I arrived on the scene. A bra, a pair of panties-I didn’t steal them, I didn’t stand around sniffing them and pawing the ground, but I was damn well aware of them.

Once, then, I’d have found it thrilling to be so close to a coupling couple, intensely aware of them even as they were wholly unaware of me. Maybe, if I’d managed to get in touch with my Inner Adolescent, I could have summoned up some excitement even now, but I’m not so sure. I think those days are gone, and good riddance.

Because, as much as I enjoy the sport as a participant, I’ve long since outgrown any interest in it as a spectator. I’ve seen a few XXX-rated movies over the years, and I don’t think I’m a prude about it, but I’d just as soon get through life without ever seeing another.

So I stood there and listened to their lovemaking, wishing I or they or all of us were elsewhere, engaged in some other pursuit. Watching TV, say, or playing pinochle, or sharing a pizza. I didn’t have to close my eyes-they were in the other room, and I was behind a curtain-but I’d have liked to put my fingers in my ears, to shut out sounds I didn’t much want to listen to.

And I did that at one point, only to take them out a moment later. Because, see, I needed whatever information my ears might bring me. I didn’t know a damn thing about them beyond the fact that one was male and the other female. So far I hadn’t heard a word out of him, and the only words she’d said were “Your turn” as she left the bathroom, and that hadn’t been enough to let me know if it was a voice I recognized.

Maybe they’d talk. Maybe they’d say something that would serve to tell me who they were, or answer some of the questions on my unwritten list. So I listened, and all they did was make the sounds people make when they’re thus engaged. Some grunting, some groaning, some mumbling, some moaning, and the occasional sharp intake of breath and small sigh of appreciation.

And then, at the very end, it got discernibly exciting for her. It may have been every bit as thrilling for him as well, but he was man enough to keep it to himself. She got verbal, and pretty noisy, and I tried to tune it out, and then a phrase caught my attention and I listened more intently than ever, and yes I thought yes it was yes!

I knew who she was.

I don’t know how the dictionary defines “anticlimactic.” I suppose I could look it up, but so could you, if you care. I don’t, because I know what it is. It’s standing in a bathtub, desperate for a pee, after two people in the next room have finished making love.

Now what?

I couldn’t hear a thing, and just what did that mean? Probably just that they were lying there in companionable silence, either gathering their strength for another round of the same or drifting off to sleep. Either way, I was stuck.

I stayed where I was, and I found myself thinking about Redmond O’Hanlon and the candiru. Suppose I was swimming in the Amazon, feeling the same urgency I felt now, and knowing that to pee was to send an engraved invitation to every candiru in the neighborhood. How long could I hold out?

Well, you get the idea. I don’t know how far I might have gone with that line of thought, or what action it might eventually have prompted, but sounds from the other room intruded. They were moving about, I realized, and having a conversation, though in voices too low-pitched for me to make out.

Footsteps approached, and the bathroom light came on. Oh, Christ, were they going to shower? It wasn’t exactly unheard-of after a romp of this sort, but-

It was the woman, and I was pleased to discover that she was less fastidious than I’d thought earlier. She wet a towel in the sink and dabbed herself with it, then blotted herself dry with another. She left, and it was his turn, and wouldn’t you know the son of a bitch peed again? And flushed, and washed his hands, and switched off the light and left.

Then there were more sounds of movement, and then the light went out. Not the one in the bathroom, that was already out, but the one in the bedroom. And next I heard an unimaginably sweet sound, that of a door closing and a key turning in a lock.

I waited a moment-to make sure that was really what I’d heard, to give them a chance to come back for whatever they’d forgotten. I’d have waited longer, to give them a chance to walk clear to the elevator and back, but I have to say I’d already waited long enough.

I drew the shower curtain, climbed out of the tub. I didn’t have to raise the toilet seat. He’d left it up, loutish inconsiderate male that he was.

Not me. I am, after all, a sensitive New Age guy. When I was done, I put the seat down.

I’ll tell you, all I wanted to do was get out of there. But I did remember to check the closet. The suitcase was still in place. I don’t even know that either of them ever bothered going into the closet. It seemed to me they were too busy scuttling in and out of the bathroom.

I took a good look at the tag on the suitcase, and the name on it was Karen Kassenmeier, with an address in Kansas City. I thought about copying it down, but why bother? I recognized the sounds she’d been making toward the end. I’d heard them before, and the woman who’d made them certainly hadn’t introduced herself as Karen Kassenmeier.

And who was he, and why did he get to make those particular sounds come out of her mouth? I probably should have nudged the shower curtain aside just long enough to get a quick look at him. But I’d have just seen the back of him while he was using first the toilet and then the sink. I probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

They’d made the bed, I noticed. But they hadn’t changed the sheets, so there was a good chance he’d left some DNA behind. And it could damn well stay where it was as far as I was concerned.

Odd that they’d stop to make the bed…

I went back for another look, and my legendary powers of observation determined that they hadn’t made the bed, having never unmade it in the first place. The chenille bedspread bore unmistakable (not to say unmentionable) evidence of the very sort of activity I had so recently overheard. They were what you’d expect, along with one thing I wouldn’t have expected-a blackish mark, roughly the size and shape of the palm of one’s hand, directly above one of the pillows.

I wondered what it was. I didn’t much want to touch it, but I took a long look at it. Could it have seeped through from beneath? If so, I didn’t much want to see the source of the seepage. But I made myself lift up a corner of the spread for a peek at the pillow beneath it, and what I saw was an ordinary white pillowcase, with no blackish mark on it, and indeed nothing out of the ordinary about it.

And was that what I wanted to be staring at when she-or both of them-came back?

No, emphatically not. I wanted to be in my own room, staring at the undersides of my eyelids. And, in not much time at all, there I was and that’s what I was doing. It was getting on for five o’clock, and I’d draw less attention leaving the hotel at a decent hour than slinking off before dawn. And why chase all the way uptown to my apartment only to hurry back a couple of hours later to open my shop? My rent was paid. I might as well get some use out of the room.

It says right on the aspirin bottle not to take the stuff more often than every four hours, but the person who wrote that didn’t have any way of knowing how I was going to feel right now. I’d gulped a couple more first thing upon returning to the room, and now I lay on the bed in the dark and waited for them to kick in.