Eric Puchner - Model Home

Dustin closed his eyes, slumping back in his seat. “Fuck,” he whispered. “Can’t you just help me for once?”

“What are you suggesting we do? Break a window and sneak in there while they’re asleep?”

“No! Don’t make any noise!” He explained that Kira’s sister kept her window open in order to sneak out at night. She was still at the party, probably wondering where he was and vandalizing the Dart. Warren could go through her window and no one would know. “I’m just too… fucked-up to do it.”

“Dust,” Warren said. “I’m a grown man. I can’t break into someone’s house.”

Dustin glanced at him for a second, that same wild look, before returning his eyes to the dash. Despite the absurdity of the request, Warren felt an odd flush of happiness. He wished— longed —for the opportunity to help him. Amazingly, the boy started to cry. A distant, murmury sound, like something from another room. Warren hadn’t heard this murmury sound since Dustin was a child. The crying grew louder. Besides the persistent rattling of the muffler, it was the only sound in the car. There was real fear there, panic or distress.

Warren decided to answer its plea. Whatever it was, Dustin needed him.

They entered Herradura Estates; at the top of the canyon, Warren flipped off his brights and turned down John’s Canyon Road toward the Shackneys’. The rain had cleared, and the damp streets shone noirishly under his headlights. Warren parked by the curb where no one would see him. Floating above the HACIENDA DE SHACKNEY sign, half-hidden behind the branches of a pepper tree, the gibbous moon looked like a spoon-cracked egg. He asked Dustin where the sister’s room was, trying to remember what he’d said.

“Around back,” Dustin mumbled. He was no longer crying, his face pale and listless. The skin under his nose gleamed with snot. Warren waited, but this appeared to be all the intelligence he was getting.

He got out of the car and crept up the driveway, stepping past a drowned worm wiggling on the asphalt. His T-shirt fluttered in the breeze. He passed a sign on the lawn that said PROTECTED BY NORCO; Warren imagined this Norco, a Spanish thug with a gold tooth, patrolling the grounds with a tire iron. Except for the kitchen-bright glare of the porch, the house was dark. Warren went through the side gate and crept his way along the brick path skirting the house to the swampy grass of the backyard. The wetness seeped into his slippers and soaked his feet. Warren didn’t care. His mind was sharp, free of the usual burdens. He felt almost spry. He tried to imagine Dustin’s expression when he showed up with the tape, the glow of gratitude on his face.

The backyard was immense, a battlefield of toys, the moonlit trampoline glazed like a pond. Warren rounded it as quietly as he could, almost tripping over a croquet wicket hidden in the grass. He lowered into a crouch, heart beating in his neck. It took him a while to find the sister’s room. Slowly, like a burglar, he waded through a thicket of butterfly bush to the open window, ignoring the icy crunch of a snail under one slipper. He peered into the moonlit room. Empty. Warren stepped through the window — a brief, painful pirouette — and entered the Shackneys’ house. The room could have been Dustin’s: the same spectacular mess, clothes everywhere, dirty dishes in the bed and T-shirts lolling from the dresser. There was a familiar smell of rotting apple. They even had the same poster on the wall, the spiky-haired fellow who looked like he was clubbing a seal with his guitar.

Warren picked his way through the clothes on the floor, opened the door as quietly as he could, and crept into the hall. A light went on and he froze in his tracks, petrified. No one. He squished down the hall and the light went out again, shrouding him in darkness.

By the time he’d felt his way into the kitchen, dimly beckoned by a light over the stove, any similarity to his own house had ended. The room was enormous. There was a built-in wine cooler and a Viking stove and a refrigerator that looked like it could house a side of beef. Warren opened the fridge, and a peach tumbled at his feet. He tried to put it back in, but the fridge was so stuffed with meat and produce and subtle variations of mustard that he couldn’t find a place to put it. He turned around, still holding the peach. On the counter was a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, a price tag stuck conspicuously to its neck: $64.00. Warren did not know what Châteauneuf-du-Pape was, but the mellifluous words seemed to invoke everything that was lovely in the world, utterly at odds with the harsh Germanic syllables of his boyhood. He thought of those girls at the Seven Seas Club, sunbathing in their swimsuits, their legs crooked into perfect châteauneufs .

He crept across the tile and peered into the family room, which was lavishly furnished, a showroom of matching leather merchandise. He squished into the room in his soggy slippers and sat down on the edge of the couch, staring at a gigantic television set housed in an Oriental cabinet crowned by an intricately carved peacock. It was the biggest cabinet Warren had ever seen. The Shackneys must have commissioned it. Warren sat there for a minute, eating the peach in his hand and letting the juice run down his arm. His feet were cold, but he did not feel like getting up. His face stared back at him from the TV screen, darkly, like a ghost’s.

Warren closed his eyes and sank into the couch. He could have been anywhere, in a church or a palace, so silent was the sleeping house. He had the odd feeling that he belonged there, that he could drift to sleep and be woken with a kiss.

Returning to the kitchen, oozing rain from his slippers, he found the answering machine blinking calmly on the telephone table. He laid the gooey peach pit beside it. All he had to do — to win his son’s love and gratitude — was steal the tape. He pushed EJECT, but the button wouldn’t work. It seemed to be jammed. He tried prying open the cassette cartridge with his fingernail, but it threatened to snap his nail off at the root. He did not want to bleed all over the Shackneys’ kitchen. Warren shook the machine, hoping it would magically dislodge the tape. No luck. A bead of sweat trickled down his nose. The imprisoned tape mocked him, leering at him with owlish eyes. He thought about trying to erase the message, but couldn’t find the volume and didn’t want to wake anyone up.

He’d have to steal the whole thing. There was no other option. Reaching behind the telephone table, feeling his way down the cord, Warren unplugged the answering machine from the wall and tucked it under one arm.

He stood there for a second, gripping the machine like a football. Something about the deepening stakes, the responsibility of holding his son’s future in his hands, made him not immune to his own heroism.

He turned around. The bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, beautifully labeled in Art Deco script, sat on the counter. Warren grabbed that, too. On his way to the sister’s room, fleeing the automatic light, he tripped over the runner tacked to the hall and nearly dropped the wine on the floor. He looked up after regaining his balance and saw a child standing at the far end of the hallway, face doughy with sleep. The Shackney boy. He was naked except for his briefs. In the harsh light of the hallway, he looked gentle as a fawn. The boy blinked at Warren a couple times before noticing the plunder in his hands, his gaze sliding from the bottle to the answering machine, a look of fear crossing his face.

Warren dashed into the sister’s bedroom and scrambled through the window, losing a slipper in the mucky grass of the backyard. His foot slapped against the driveway. In the car, he jammed the ignition and spun away without looking back, pulling a U-turn on the rain-slick road and hydroplaning for a second before the wheels caught, the tailpipe rattling enough to wake the Dunkirks’ Labrador, whose yapping Dopplered into woofs as they passed. Warren’s eyes stung; he was panting; an angina-like pain clenched his chest. The bottle of wine rolled around at his feet. When they’d gained a safe distance, Warren rescued the answering machine from his lap and held it out to his son, who lifted his eyes from the bottle on the floor and gazed at the machine with a look of astonishment, recoiling in the dim light of a streetlamp.