Amelia Gray: Threats

ONE NEW MESSAGE. Three saved messages. First new message. From, phone number three three zero, three two three, seven four nine eight. Received, November eleventh at two-thirty-two p.m.

Hello, David, this is Reginald Chico. I’m going to need to come by and ask you a few questions about the case. It’s important that we clear up some things to close the file. It’s an open file now. Well, we opened the file. Please give me a call if you won’t be home. I figure you’ll be home.

Message erased. First saved message. From, phone number three three zero, four five four, eight seven zero one. Received, September fourth at nine-forty-three a.m.

Hello, this call is for Frances. This is Andrew at the Precious Memories preservation department. I am calling to report that your order is complete and ready for pickup. Thank you for your patience and have a wonderful day.

Replay, four. Erase, seven. Return call, eight. Save, nine. More options, zero. Message erased. Next message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.

Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.

Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star.

First saved message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.

Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.

Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star.

First saved message. From, phone number three three zero, eight four five, three four three three. Received, October fifteenth at eleven-eleven a.m.

Hey. Please wash and prep the vegetables before I get home. We’re in a hurry. Sorry. See you.

Saved. There are no more messages. Main menu. Listen, one. Send, two. Personal options, three. Call, eight. Exit, star. To indicate your choice, press the number of the option you wish to select. Whenever you need more information about the options, press zero for help. You can interrupt these instructions at any time by pressing a key to make your selection.

CHICO knocked on the front door for some time before moving to the window. David lifted the sash and held out his hand for Chico to take as he crawled in. The detective was a thin man, but it took some leverage to pull him through. He moved as if struggling against considerable weight, and the two men had to take a break in the middle of the action, while the detective’s legs still rested on the ground outside.

The detective tried to find a toehold on the brick wall. He grunted and sighed. “You’ve got to get that door fixed,” he said.

“It may be electrified.”

“I know. I know you think it may be electrified.” He wedged his foot into a crack in the foundation and hefted himself in.

They sat on the floor together. Chico leaned against the wall and coughed. “The doctor claims I have a good heart,” he said. He removed his muddy shoes and placed them carefully on the wood floor beside the rug.

David produced one of the police blankets and made a nest around Chico’s feet.

“Thank you,” said the detective. “Cold outside. I believe I walked through half a pond in your driveway. Have you examined the drainage out there?”

“Can I offer you something to drink?”

“No thanks, David. But thank you. Thank you. I came to ask you a few questions. The department prefers that I travel with a partner, but I felt you were uncomfortable with Officer Riley. I came alone today to ask you some questions.” He tucked the blanket around his feet. “Would that be amenable to you?”

David nodded.

“Very good.” Chico leaned to the side and extracted a writing pad and utensil from his back pocket. “You’re wearing your bathrobe, David.”

“That’s right.”

“And your slippers are wet. You’ve been outside?”

“Sure,” David said. “Yes.”

“Where did you go?”

“I walked on the grass after the ice storm.”

Chico nodded, making a note.

“I like the sound of the ice. I was wearing pants at the time.”

“Pants,” Chico transcribed. “Jeans, or pants?”

“Pants.” David half stood, but didn’t complete the action and ended up bending at the waist over the detective.

“Did you have somewhere you needed to be?” Chico asked, leaning back to meet David’s eyes.

“I thought we had been talking for a while.”

“We just started talking.”

David looked at the hall clock, which had stopped. “It is possible we have only just begun to talk. I’m sorry.” He sat down again.

“The apology is unnecessary.” Chico maintained his extended level of eye contact.

David regarded him as a careful man who took regular trips to the doctor. It seemed easier to trust a careful man.

Chico turned back to his notepad. “Did you love your wife?”

“I love my wife.”

“Did you two ever have any big arguments? Fights? Shouting, throwing objects at each other? Physical contact?”

“Not really, no.”

“It’s a common phenomenon.”

“She threw a newspaper at me once, but she apologized.”

Chico turned the page and kept writing. “Did Franny enjoy her job?”

“It was half a newspaper, really. Less than half. Just the sports section.”

“Did she have many friends?”

“Of the Saturday paper, you know. We’re talking eight sheets of paper here.”

“That sounds very minor, David.”

“I wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t knocked my glasses off. She messed up the center bar. I had to tape them up. They were never like they were before.”

“You wear glasses.”

“I’ve always worn glasses.” David touched his own face. “I’m wearing them now.”

Chico closed his notepad. “David,” he said. “What happened to your wife?”

“When?” asked David. “When?” He lay down on the floor, at Chico’s feet. He saw a paper bag on a shelf. The ceiling was a strange thing to see, and David realized that he had never lain flat on the floor in his own home. The ceiling’s surface was dusty and smooth, forming an angled plane with the wall. It looked like it was a cold surface, one he could press his face against. He thought about how no dust should rightly form on the ceiling and how strange it was that dust did somehow populate up there, the webbed pockets of dust texturing in the corners. David imagined that if one or two specks of dust impossibly clung to the minute crevices of the ceiling, then another piece of dust and another could attach to those first colonizers, and in the course of fifty years, that string of codependent detritus could make its own meaningful line, stretching toward but never reaching the floor, existing beyond the reach of brooms and rags. He remembered how his mother would dust the corners of that very room with a damp rag. She wore another damp rag tied over her mouth for the sake of her allergies. He thought of the individual path of one such piece of dust: into the rag and washed down the sink, affixed to the interior of a pipe for a few weeks or months, time becoming less relevant to the speck than time was before — which is to say not at all relevant or perhaps negatively relevant — the speck washed free after some time, proceeding through the mess of pipes and into an underground tank, sinking through sludge to become sludge yet remaining an individual speck, having no original qualities yet remaining unique, sinking or aloft, present in the world.