Warren Adler - The War of the Roses

His ear picked up vague sounds, and he was sure his ally, the house, was trying to communicate with him. Something croaked in the distance, a chopping sound. It was trying to tell him something. He was sure of that. It wanted to communicate its pain, its outrage.

The idea of its helplessness steadied him. It also brought him fully back to time and he realized suddenly that the clock in the hall was not chiming, that he had forgotten to keep it alive by winding it. A renewable life, he assured himself.

Although the present now existed, the immediate past was unclear. History unreeled backward from now. He had searched for her. He had looked in the kitchen, the sun-room, the garden, the garage. He had ripped out the back stairs to prevent her from leaving if she was still in the house. Then he had combed the sides of the house, letting himself in again by the front door. He had got it into his head that she was in the attic, and he had dashed up the stairs, then foolishly tried to ascend the upper flight, forgetting what he had done to make it impassable. He had slipped and fallen before he had gone two steps up. Apparently he, himself, had made the attic invulnerable.

Although the obstacle was of his own making, it had sparked his caution. If she had done that to Benny, she was capable of anything. Anything. And if he were eliminated, who would guard the house?

Once, he had heard sounds and had followed them, hearing screams of pain, and he had arrived in the sun-room to see a vaguely familiar form running in the garden. Ann. He had not set these traps for Ann, and he was thankful that she had escaped. It was not her war. The traps were for Barbara.

It was that idea, he remembered, that had brought him back to his room, where he had let time disappear. He was certain that she was somewhere in the house. Probably living like a rat, burrowing in every nook and cranny. What he had to do was to flush her out. Cautiously. Cleverly. Nothing must be safe.

He lay down, letting his mind grope for a plan. It started to grow dark again. On the night table beside him he found a half-spent candle and lit it with a match. The flickering yellow light calmed him. He felt safe again and his mind became fully alert.

He ate some stale bread and washed it down with wine. Carrying his crowbar and the candle, he carefully opened the door. His foot hit some object and he heard a crunching sound. Bending, he saw a broken Staffordshire figure, one of the most valuable, Garibaldi. Eschewing mourning, he lifted the candle. In its glow he saw her familiar scrawl in lipstick. She no longer used paper or cardboard, but wrote directly on the door.

‘ I’ll break some every day,’ he read.

He did not allow himself the slightest emotion, concentrating only on what he had to do. Gathering his tools, first he removed all the bolts from the hinges of every door but his own – closets, room doors, everywhere there was a hinge. No door but his own and those leading to the outside world could be opened without barking out a signal. He set each door carefully so that the slightest motion would make it fall. Then he went to work on the furniture, loosening bolts, removing legs and supports, tipping every piece so that it would fall on touch.

He avoided the dining room, which was a shambles, although he could not resist looking at what he had carved into the tabletop: bitch. He loosened every screw and bolt in the kitchen he could find, especially those that held up still-intact overhead pots, leaving them just at the point of weakest tension. He did the same with shelves and cabinet doors. Working methodically, concentrating only on his actions, he was able to shut out extraneous thoughts.

The candle went out. By then it had started to grow light again. Thankful for the natural light, he moved the heaviest cast-iron pots and put them at the top of the first-floor landing. Others he wedged into the corners of the risers.

Working now with accelerating speed, he loosened the winding brass banister, then partially removed the tacks that held the stair carpet to the risers. Just brushing against the banister would sent the carpet flipping over into the chandelier well.

The clock offered another challenge. He fiddled with the pendulum to make a longer stroke so that it would hit the wooden sides. Working with the mechanism, he changed the calibration so that the chimes would be noisier and make more of a clanging sound. Then he loosened all the fasteners that held the pictures on the walls of the library and the parlor.

He reveled in his creativity, rejoicing in the imaginative scenario of destruction that would be set off by the slightest vibration. Everything would go off at once, like an explosion in a fireworks factory. The thought made him giddy. With extreme caution, he made his way up the stairs to his room and quiedy locked the door.

Searching among the existing bottles, he found two, both 1969 Dom Perignon. Despite its warmth, he opened one. The cork made a noisy popping sound and the champagne foamed out. Drinking some, he poured the rest over his head, as athletes do when they win a championship game.

But he hadn’t won yet, he admonished himself.

Not yet. He’d save the other bottle for that victory.

From her makeshift bed, composed of insulation pads piled one on top of the other in a corner of the attic, she heard him puttering around beneath her. The attic air was stagnant, blazing hot, and she had removed everything but her panties. Beside her was the canvas shopping bag, containing all her movable possessions.

For the past days and nights she had shifted from place to place, moving stealthily, using all her senses.

The movement below was something new. For some time he had been snoring, with froglike regularity, and she had slipped out of her hiding place to make a sortie into other parts of the house. She had gone into the library and put some Staffordshire figures in her shopping bag, crushing the Garibaldi and sprinkling its contents outside his locked door. Then she had calmly written her warning on his door in lipstick.

She let herself into her old room, looking for some change of clothing, but the room stank from the rotting food and she had to hold her nose. Every object in the room, including her clothes, was permeated with the stench.

Because her inner antenna was so alert, she sensed that someone was watching the house. Peeking through a crack in the drapes, she saw Ann dozing against a tree across the street. It took a while to identify the figure, since she had closed the door on the past. Who was Ann?

She remembered Ann as an enemy, hostile, and she quickly removed the girl from reality by closing the shutters, sealing off the room.

She made her way upstairs, defying his trap by sitting on one step at a time and bracing herself against the wall. It pleased her to have conquered this obstacle. She had already withstood all his assaults. Indeed, she had come up with a few of her own. Her weapon, she decided, would be tenacity. She would outlast him.

He was making no effort to be quiet, and she was able to slip from the attic through the square hole in the ceiling of a storage closet at-the rear of the house. Crawling toward the edge of the stairs, she listened to the sounds he was making, trying to recognize them to identify his actions. He was fiddling with doors and furniture. She heard him go into the kitchen, come out to the foyer, then move up the stairs.

Her instincts were sharp, and by the sounds he made she was able to map his progress. Finally, she came back to the storage closet and hoisted herself back into the attic, pleased with her catlike agility. Lying horizontally across the square opening, she continued to listen. He was setting traps, constructing obstacles, creating new dangers. The idea amused her. Didn’t he know that the house was her ally? Nothing he devised could really hurt her. How foolish of him not to realize that.