Lily Hoang - Unfinished - stories finished by Lily Hoang

Then, yeah, there’s the bathroom. I suspect the old one sleeps in the bathtub downstairs. I never use it but there’s a stain. It’s like he fills it up with soapy water and falls asleep. It’s like he sleeps until everything evaporates.

You can scrub and scrub — for hours, which I do — and still have no indication that you — I — exist. What remains is proof that the old one sleeps down here, in the bathtub filled soapy water, not that I have been cleaning for hours.

Once, the phone rang and I heard some un-American accent speak.

Mostly though, the phone rings and I don’t answer it but it still finds a way to stop. Consider that one.

No one calls my unlisted number for me. That much I know for sure. Besides, I never answer my phone. Everyone knows that. Everyone who knows me knows that. I can’t think of anyone who knows me well enough to know that.

Also, I prefer only outgoing calls. That should be the only use for the telephone.

I see people in certain stores I wouldn’t mind calling: the Jew woman from the cheese shop, the single mother who lost her children, the gregarious man with too many friends. But how could I really know it’s their voice and not some recording approximating their voice?

Some important facts: I have never been a risk-taker. I have never been a cheat.

These men who live in my house, they are my biggest risk.

I have never had men — other than my father — live in my house.

I often ask myself if it would technically be cheating to bring home another guest. There must be rules, but I don’t know them yet. I wish they would tell me how to behave.

I’ve given them names, although I sometimes change my mind. Right now, I think of them as the black one, the old one, and the third. Thing is: the black one is not black and the old one is not old. I think perhaps the third is older than the old one and the old one is blacker than the black one, although none are really very black or old. As far as I can tell from the clues they leave.

There is only one photograph of the third, but it’s only the back of his head: he’s got no hair, only white, unfreckled skin. That doesn’t necessarily make him old. His skin is still quite taut.

Sometimes, I call him Steve.

Before these men arrived, I would have food delivered to me. But it got to be too expensive to maintain, once these men arrived. I bring home mac and cheese and it’s gone in an hour. I sit there, watching it on the kitchen table, and somehow, it disappears.

Maybe when I blinked or got up to make some tea.

Now, I know better. I cook enough for four.

There are never leftovers in the refrigerator.

It’s a good thing: I hate leftovers. I hate Tupperware, although I have many cabinets full of them. I do like how well they stack.

I suppose I could call the third the bald one, but there’s something almost malicious in that. Besides, he shaves his head with a straight razor every morning. I should know: I have to provide him with his supplies and clean up after him.

I also thought about calling the old one the foreigner for a while, but I can never be sure which one it was with the un-American accent. It could have been the black one or the third for all I know.

My house is old. My mother died in one of the rooms downstairs. My father would have died in the same room — it was what he wanted — but he asked to go to church that day. I thought he’d dozed off during the sermon — as I’d done myself for only a few minutes — so I let him sleep through the hour. I wouldn’t consider that a mistake.

My father was a snorer. I am not. He’s been dead forever now, but I still hear snoring in the house. Mostly, while I am watching the birds near my lake. Very rarely, at night. I would get up to find its source, but I wouldn’t want to startle or disturb.

Truth is: I’m not sad I never married. Perhaps things would be different if these men weren’t keeping me company.

It’s not the pc thing to admit, not wanting marriage. I’m a capable man, a smart man, I should be doing my part for the world.

But I am providing shelter for the homeless. Or at least I assume they were homeless before they came here. Why else would they come here?

Not that it’s too late for it, marriage I mean, but I’m just saying. For honesty’s sake.

Thing is: I’m actually kind of afraid of children. Their little eyes, their dirty fingernails, their cruddy hair, and I figure a woman would want to make one. She’d want to coo at its dirtiness. I would want to clean it. Perhaps with bleach and Pine-sol.

I prefer to take the opportunity to avoid letting someone down by never meeting them in the first place.

To me, that makes clean sense.

Which may be why I have avoided my visitors. Or housemates. That sounds ridiculous. But they aren’t quite visitors either. Lodgers?

I kind of like the idea, though I wish they’d buy their own food.

I wouldn’t mind cooking it for them, if they’d just provide the supplies.

It’s not that I’m cheap. I have my reasons: I don’t know what kind of food they like, but they seem to really like the mac and cheese; I have a very small car; and not that I really care, but the grocer must think I run a brothel.

In the second Polaroid, the first one of the old one, his eyes were closed.

His eyes are always closed. I don’t know if it’s the flash or if he is blind.

For a blind man, he maneuvers around this foreign landscape surprisingly well.

Well, it’s not foreign to me, of course, but it must have been for him. At least at first. Which leads me to believe that either they know each other and the others are helping him or he has lived here, right underneath my nose, all these years without my knowing.

In all, I’ve found six total photos, over a period of six months. It doesn’t seem right. It feels to me as though they’ve been here so much longer. To me, it feels like this is as much their home by now as it is mine.

Tomorrow, I may add them to the estate.

But the lawyers probably won’t accept the black one, the old one, and the third as legal names. There must be loopholes for this kind of thing though.

No one ever takes pictures of me.

I am two full cm of conditioner older this morning from yesterday. I should leave a note. What, they think I got this stuff coming out of my eyes? I use quality conditioner.

Loopholes or not, they don’t deserve to have their non-names on my deed.

I’m not frugal. I’m not cheap. But I haven’t worked in years.

I didn’t retire either. No unemployment — I’m American for God’s sake! I can’t go exploiting my own damned system — or workman’s comp. I just kind of quit going. I have some money. I have this house.

I don’t know where the money came from. One day, it snuck up on me. But they didn’t give it to me. That much I know for sure. They don’t pay for shit. The money came from somewhere, but definitely not from them.

My parents died two days apart. I hear that’s the way it is for old couples.

They didn’t love each other.

Hell, they tried to avoid ever being in the same room.

Of course, they tried to make this conspicuous, but some things are hard to ignore. See: they used to trade places at the dinner table. My ma would need more salt, which could only be added in the kitchen. That took ten minutes. She’d come back in, and my dad would want more green beans. Again, only in the kitchen. It was a rotating table, only I was the center.

As the center, they’d spin me in circles, only think: as the center, you just see the changes. You don’t really feel yourself getting dizzy. Then, one day, one of them dies, and that’s it. All of a sudden, all that spinning catches up to you because once you’re still, once those revolutions stop keeping your spine upright, you fall. It’s simple physics.