Marie-Helene Bertino - Safe as Houses

The sound of snarling interrupts my reading and I look down into the snout of the Andersons’ Pomeranian, pushed forward by the weight of its own bark.

“Finish up in here,” I tell Mars. “Then join me in the family room.”

The Andersons’ family room is set up like the command station at NASA. You could launch a rocket or pilot a family. I kneel in front of the husband’s collection of jazz LPs. Hundreds. Coltrane, Monk, Reinhardt. I pull each record from its sleeve, flip it over in my hands, and crack it on my leg.

Mars returns, the Pomeranian orbiting his ankles. We wear matching orange jumpsuits. He’s a skinny kid with sandy hair like mine, only his has no gray and is normally organized into a cowlick that juts over his forehead. He has a giant mouth in the literal sense, capable of producing an impressive gape. He gapes at the television, a flat-screen affair that takes up most of the wall. Then he gapes at the horseshoe of white leather couches built in to the ground.

“These people are loaded, huh, Pluto?” he says. “Can’t we take a speaker or two?”

I try to ignore the hammering in my knees as I stand. “What we’re after is worth more than money. We are in tune with a loftier frequency. We are… Byronic.”

“Byronic,” he says, staring at the television.

…

The papers call me what they think are clever nicknames — the knicknack knicker, the memento marauder. I have written them what I know are clever notes, five or six by now. After the first few jobs, I used cutout letters from magazines. This last one was handwritten. Anna used to say my handwriting was crap. Even now, no doubt, a writing expert was dragging a magnifying glass over it, analyzing the alley-oop of my lowercase a ’s, the look-out-belows of my l ’s.

Upstairs we find the girls’ room. Painted signs hang over their beds — Amanda and Maria.

We knee-smash the unicorn paintings. We scissor-slice the stuffed animals.

I chair-slam a framed poem by Amanda called “Jake the Dog.” Your eyes are like popcorn. You are a magic dog . Then we start on the Barbies. Decapitation, hair cutting, leg twisting.

Mars says, “Was she a dyke, do you think?”

“Was who a… lesbian?”

“Lindsay Wagner.”

Outside on the street, a truck ka-rangs by.

“Not bionic,” I say. “Byronic. Lord Byron.”

The head of the Barbie I’m working on makes a satisfying pop when I wrench it from its body.

He says, “You got a kid, Pluto?”

“Nope.”

“You got a dog?”

“I’m more of a cat… burglar.”

“Jake is a stupid name for a dog. A dog should be named something strong, like Midnight or Bear. Jake’s a faggot dog. But if you get yourself a dog named Midnight or Blue, then you’ve got yourself a dog.”

“I had a cat named Ramon once,” I say, but he is not listening. He continues, “I had a dog who used to hump the side of the porch and go, Arrrrrgh… rooooooooof . Mars mounts the dresser, making sounds like he is in great pain. It seems to be an intimate retelling. I look away.

Then he is in slow motion, overturning each drawer dramatically, accompanying himself with chugging sounds.

“This is called what?” I say.

“This is called bionic, motherfucker!” He tosses clothes across the room. More chugging. “The bionic woman could crush a tennis ball in her hand.” He pretends to do it. “I… fucking hate… this… tennis ball.”

“Not bionic, Mars.”

I find a comic strip about Jake the dog drawn by Maria. In it, Jake solves a crime by pointing out an obvious detail. His sleuthing partner is either a rat or a poorly drawn elk; their relationship consists of grammatically suspect exchanges and high fives. Later, Jake receives an award from the mayor, who is a porcupine. Then Jake, the mayor, the rat-elk, and someone named Harriet Rosenbaum drink glasses of chocolate milk. The strip ends for no apparent reason with a Polaroid picture of Maria’s Barbie collection.

Way to carry a narrative through, Maria .

Mars leans over a small aquarium on Amanda’s bureau. “What is this thing?’

“It’s a newt,” I say. “A small lizard.”

“It’s about to be a dead lizard.” He lifts the sledgehammer.

I catch his arm at full height. “We don’t do anything with the newt.”

He frowns. “No fun.”

I hurl the comic strip into the pillowcase. “We’ll find something for you to smash in the master bed—”

Downstairs a woman’s voice calls “Hello?” and all the blood leaves my head.

Mars straightens up. I put my finger to my lips. From a pocket of his windbreaker, Mars produces a gun, shiny as a slap.

“What is that?” I hiss, stab at the gun.

“That’s the sound of shit going down, motherfucker!”

The voice calls, “Hello?” again. Mars waves the gun toward the hallway. I lead him out of the bedroom and we creep down the steps. When we get to the first floor, we hide behind the arch that leads to the kitchen. The arch is stenciled with leaves and grapes from an art class Jill took to “broaden her horizons.”

Whoever is in the kitchen is making a fuss over Jake the dog, calling him Jake-eroo and Jake-eroni.

Mars’s lips are slick. I mouth the words no gun and enter the kitchen where a woman in friendly-looking jogging shorts is encouraging Jake the dog to jump as high as he can. Jake complies with a whole heart. His overgrown nails slap against the linoleum when he lands. His Swarovski collar flashes.

The woman notices me and stiffens. “Hello?” she says, as if still calling into the empty house.

“Dorothy? I’m Ramon, Jill’s cousin.” I use a tone that implies I’ve heard a ton about her. I learned this the only other time I encountered a human being during a job: Be participatory.

She looks to Jake for validation, but he is taking a water break.

“I stopped by to pick up a book Jill borrowed.” I blink, slowly. Anna used to say this called attention to my azure blue eyes, but Dorothy is staring at the orange jumpsuit. “I am a phone repairman.” My voice is leaden, as if I am reading from a script. “You know,” I say. “Phones.” I pick up the receiver of the Andersons’ phone and wag it as if to say, Here is an example of a phone I would be qualified to repair . I want Dorothy to start talking so I can stop talking. The need blankets me like summer heat.

Finally, she says, “Book?”

I point to the swollen missive on the counter.

“I don’t have my glasses.” Dorothy squints to read the title. Her face relaxes.

“You caught me.” I raise my hands as if guilty of something. “Self-help, I’m embarrassed to say. Renovation of the soul.”

“ Woman as Tree .” Dorothy frowns. “Poor Jill.”

“Yes.” My smile falters. “Poor Jill.”

“I walked Jake this morning, but I feel like I forgot to put his leash back in the vestibule.” She makes a move to walk past me.

I block her way. “It’s there.”

She advances and I back up. We are now in the archway. I affect a casual lean. The only thing separating Dorothy from a room of demolished records and a homicidal twenty-year-old is my untoned arm. I flex. My bicep, if it’s possible, shrugs. In the other room, I hear the sound of a cocked gun.

“Dorothy,” I say. “I saw the leash not five minutes ago.”

“Well, if you’re certain…” Dorothy does not know whether to believe me, but Dorothy wants to get to where she’s going and I have very nice eyes. I read all of this in hers, which she lowers to Jake, who has placed his two delicate front paws on her knees.

“Jake-eroo!” she says. “Jake Jake Jake-eroo!” The dog begins to jump again with renewed vigor.