A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

“Is everything all right? You can tell me, I can keep a secret,” Jill says.

For how long, Jim wonders, five minutes?

Jill is clearly excited. The only time she’s ever seen a husband following his wife around on a weekday is when one of them has just been diagnosed with something horrible, like infertility or breast cancer.

“Did you have a doctor’s appointment this morning?” Jill asks.

“No,” Susan says. “A bomb threat.”

Jill’s eyes light up. The waitress asks if anyone would like a drink, and Jim thinks of having a martini but doesn’t because there’s something about the way Jill’s looking at him that makes him sure she’d tell everyone he was an alcoholic.

“B.L.T. and a Coke,” Jim says.

Susan and Jill talk about houses: what’s good, bad, broken, and who fixes it. Clearly this is where Bill’s Repair Man came from.

Jill’s been inside every house in the area and keeps a running score of who has what in terms of cars, large-screen televisions, walk-in freezers, etc. Jim thinks if she could keep her mouth shut, she’d make a killing as a burglar.

When he can’t stand it any longer, he excuses himself from the table by saying he has to make a phone call—“Checking in with the office,” he says. Jim goes to the bar and orders a double martini, careful to keep his head low. Through the potted plants he watches Susan and Jill, wondering what Susan sees in Jill — it’s not like her to be friends with a woman who frosts her hair. Perhaps she’s changing, he thinks — as though this sort of a change is a precursor to something more serious, like Alzheimer’s.

He tosses back the martini and returns to the table, face flushed, just as the waitress is putting the lunch plates down. Jim picks at his sandwich carefully, knowing if a leaf of lettuce or a piece of bacon were to lodge in his throat he would be unable or unwilling to free it, and in all likelihood neither would Susan.

He pictures himself choking, looking at Susan and Jill as the world around him gets smaller.

“Should we do something?” Jill will ask — she can never do anything without asking someone’s opinion first.

“No,” Susan will say, “let him go. It’s all right.”

He imagines himself falling to the floor, Susan and Jill looking at him sweetly for a moment, like he’s a child imitating a dog. As his eyes roll back in his head, the women return to their conversation, and the last thing Jim hears has something to do with winterizing.

This is not a solution, he tells himself, ending the choking scenario. This is not the way to go. At the office, at the office, he thinks, sucking on his thoughts like they’re lozenges, I’d be talking to my secretary who likes me very much, having a drink in the restaurant next door, buying snacks from the blind man in the lobby, looking out the window, watering Patterson’s plant. His eyes water. He almost cries. Everything is okeydokey, he tells himself. It’s going to be all right.

“Aren’t you well?” Jill asks Jim.

She is used to men who shovel food into their mouths without looking up until finally, when there is no more, they lift their eyes and burp simultaneously.

“Fine, thank you,” Jim says.

“Finished?” the waitress asks as she clears the plates.

“Thank you,” Jim says, plucking the colored plastic swords from his sandwich before she takes the plate.

“How cute,” Jill says.

“Do you want to come with us to the mall?” Susan asks Jim, waving her eyebrows up and down, as though she’s making a special offer.

“I think I’ll just walk home,” he says, standing up. “It’s a nice day for a walk. Good meeting you.” He pumps Jill’s hand as though the up-and-down action turns the key to a spring that winds him up so he can toddle home.

It is a beautiful day, the most beautiful day Jim can ever remember seeing. The sky is brilliant blue, the trees are full of leaves, there’s a light breeze. It’s perfect except the streets are deserted, there are no people, no babysitters, no strollers, nothing. The stillness makes Jim uncomfortable. He feels as though something horrible has happened and everyone except him knew enough to run away. When he turns the next corner, a giant mutant killer will be waiting for him. It will reach down from above the trees and he will never know what hit him. He walks quickly, sure that he will die before he reaches home. He can feel it in his chest. If nothing reaches down to snatch him, it will happen anyway. He will collapse. He will lie crumpled on the sidewalk. The cars driving past him will not see Jim in the suit, they will see only the suit, and think it is a heap of clothing left out for charity to collect. He begins to run. He runs faster and faster until he sees the spastic boy standing in his regular place. The sight of the boy calms him, and Jim stops running and begins waving from very far away. The boy waves back.

“I’m home early,” he says as soon as he’s close enough to talk.

“Did you lose your job?” the boy groans in a voice that is as twisted as his body.

Jim shakes his head. “No.”

“That’s good, I’m happy,” the boy says and waves good-bye.

As Jim goes up the steps to the house he thinks about work. If they cancel it again tomorrow he will go in anyway. He will simply arrive at the office. If the guards won’t let him upstairs, he will refuse to go home; he will throw himself on their mercy.

Frank hovered near the frost-free refrigerators listening to a conversation two aisles over.

“Gross, Julie, what are we getting here — pull-on pants? A washer/dryer? It’s not going to fit into the bag.”

“Open the other one, it’s emptier.”

“You know I’m not supposed to shoplift anymore.”

“Don’t take that, idiot! It has a sensor.”

He worked his way into power tools hoping that between chain saws he’d see them. At the end of the row he poked his head around the corner. There were three girls with what he and his wife called big hair. One of them slowly turned around and dropped a blender into her shopping bag. It was Julie, his neighbors’ daughter, his Saturday-evening babysitter.

“Gross, a blender. What do you need that for?”

“I can make diet drinks in my room. Besides, eventually Christmas will come and I’ll need presents,” Julie said.

“A blender is good. No one would ever steal a blender,” the other girl said. Except for fingernails a mile long, red like they’d been dipped in fresh blood, she had no distinguishing features.

Julie put a mini-chopper in on top of the blender.

“Hurry up, I’m hungry,” the third girl said. She had big breasts and wore a very short T-shirt that barely covered them, and no bra. Frank wondered if anyone had suggested that perhaps it was time she restrain herself.

“How could you be hungry? You just ate a cheeseburger and fries.”

Her breasts were growing, Frank thought, they needed food.

“I threw it up.”

“Are you serious?” the girl with the nails asked.

The overdeveloped girl nodded. He decided to call her Tina.

“Is this, like, a problem?” Julie asked.

“I just need a frozen yogurt or something. I have a really bad taste in my mouth,” Tina said.

“I’m sure,” Nails said.

Nails put a blow-dryer in on top of everything and they walked out of the store.

Frank hung back as the girls got closer to the entrance. He didn’t want to be right there when the security guards grabbed them. He waited by a rack of large-size flower print dresses and watched the girls walk untouched into the body of the mall. Then he hurried to catch up, wondering if it was his obligation to stop them, to drag them kicking, screaming, swearing, maybe even yelling rape, to the manager’s office.