Intrusion (2 page)

Though I have to say, the longer I stand here watching, the less this idea seems to stick. For a start, he just doesn't
look
as though he's drooling. He looks as he did at the door—so silent and still. I could almost mistake him for a garden ornament, if garden ornaments came in his particular brand of unnerving. If they were haunted maybe and moved around when you weren't looking.

The way he seems to.

Is he closer now?

I think he might be closer, even though I could swear he hasn't moved at all. Maybe it's just that I've moved nearer, for reasons I can't quite explain. I'm almost at my back door, even though that fear is still deep in me. And though I know I should hate his staring eyes, all I can think about is how amazing they are—and even more so in the moonlight. I want to use words to describe them that don't belong in this century, such as
limpid
and
luminous
.

And then I realize what he's wearing.

At first I think he has on a pair of shorts, which would be bad enough. Only they aren't shorts at all. They're underwear—
he's in his underwear
. His legs are completely bare all the way up to places that should be exposed only in intimate company.

And the situation up top isn't much better. His T-shirt wouldn't look out of place on a beach. The material is so thin and so clingy it kind of makes me want to look away. I can see too much of him, and what I see is having a strange effect on me. Usually I don't care about things like that. Yet here, with him, I do. I can't seem to stop noticing stuff, like the way his chest pushes against the material and how big his shoulders seem—far bigger than those eighteenth-century eyes would suggest.

They belong in a painting by some Dutch master.

Whereas his body is. . .his body should. . .

His body should not make something flutter high up inside me, like butterflies straining to escape from a jar. Just because he didn't take my dog, and probably isn't here to do something horrible to me, and may well have done this because I traumatized the fuck out of him when I barged over to his house and accused him of things, doesn't mean he is a safe subject for me to enjoy looking at.

I have to be wary, so wary, because otherwise terrible stuff could happen. I might close my eyes to let my imagination run wild and find that he's moved closer. Or maybe he'll be gone, and I will go upstairs to rest my head, and then in the night I'll hear a tap, tap, tap from underneath my bed.

Just like I did the last time I was kind to a strange man.

Though the longer this goes on, the more I can see that this isn't the same as that in any way whatsoever. This guy is not wearing any shoes.
His feet are completely bare
. I can see the grass between his toes and the mud spattered halfway up his ankles. He must be close to frostbite, and yet he hardly seems aware of it. He hardly seems aware of anything, truth be told—not even me standing here in my see-through nightie.

He doesn't react to the wince-inducing shriek the hinges make. His gaze doesn't shift as I step gingerly down into the grass. There are no comments about my state, even though I must look just as strange as he does. My nightdress is nearly glowing in the moonlight. I have one hand held awkwardly behind my back to hide the Mace I'm gripping. And when I walk I do so like someone going to meet his or her doom. Each step is half-shaking and far too slow, despite what I now know for sure.

He is asleep.

But strangely, that idea only disturbs me more. My breath comes quick at the thought of it; my heart pitter-patters in my chest. What would it take to make someone do this? How asleep do you have to be to walk across a street sheened with frost and stand up to your ankles in icy mud? So asleep I can hardly believe it's true. I raise one trembling hand up to his face and wave, still sure that it will prove to be a lie.

But it isn't. His eyes stay wide and unseeing. He even breathes like someone asleep—so deeply, so slowly. I swear if I listened hard enough I could hear him dreaming.

Somehow, I doubt the dreaming would be good. I think of him by the door, so strange and silent. The line he had between his brows, and the line he has there now. That was pain, I think—and this is pain, too. I just wish I knew what to do about that. I'm still afraid, even though I don't want to be. Part of me still wonders if this is a lie.

Yet I have to try.

Don't I? Don't I?

“Hey, hey,” I say. “Can you hear me?”

Then once that brilliant ploy fails, I have the overwhelming urge to apologize. After all, my accusation could be the
reason
he is doing this. Maybe it set something off in him, and suddenly he just had to sleepwalk to where I was. He had to clear his name while unconscious, and I can help him by saying sorry.

Naturally, I know this theory is insane. People don't wake up just because of stuff like that. They wake up because you slap them or shake them—or is that what kills a sleepwalker? I try to remember exactly what you're supposed to do in this situation, and all I can come up with is
saying his name really loudly
.

Only I don't know his name. Everyone is always talking about him, but no one ever says what he is called. The only option I have is
hey, you
, so I guess it's a good thing that I don't have to go with it. I guess it's a relief that he blinks slowly, and suddenly focuses every ounce of his attention on me.

It just doesn't
feel
like a good thing. Instead, my insides sink the second our eyes lock. I squeeze the Mace so tight I squirt some down my leg. Suddenly every inch of me is tense, and not just because of how scary all of this is. I'm also waiting, waiting, waiting for him to shut the door on me again, even if there is no door here.

I can see he's looking for one, however. His eyes dart left and right as soon as he starts to process—in that muzzy, dazed way people do when they're just waking up. Then, when it gets clearer for him, he puts a hand to his face. He does it as if he wants me to think he's wiping sleep away, but I think it's something else.

I think he would use anything to hide from me.

“Where am I?” he asks, and I hear something else shifting behind the words. A slight implication that maybe I did something—that I brought him here. Somehow, I'm now the bad one. I'm the stalker; I'm the kidnapper; I'm the one who hurts him.

He might even think I have a well in my basement. It certainly sounds like he thinks so when he adds, “How did I get here?”

Now I have to explain, the way Ted had to explain.

“I just saw you outside my window. You must have. . .I don't know. Sleepwalked?” I nearly stop short of saying more. Only his expression—half-hidden and vaguely wounded—pushes me on. “Maybe you were disturbed. By the things I said the other day.”

“I don't have your dog.”

“I know that now.”

“I would never steal someone's dog.”

“I think I know that, too.”

“And I'm not trying to do anything weird by being here. It just happens to me from time to time—I wake up in strange places, occasionally holding strange items. Once I found myself in a hospital talking to a doctor about a disease I don't have. He thought I was completely conscious and lucid.”

“Are you conscious and lucid now, or am I talking to the dream you?”

It disturbs me a little that he has to think about this. I clearly see him doing it—eyes focused inward, shifting a little back and forth as he considers. But there is something not so awful about this disturbance. It isn't the same as the kind I felt about Ted or the thought of my dog being stolen. This is
for
him, instead of
about
him.

And that makes a lot of difference—even if he answers oddly.

“Do I seem it to you?” he asks, and now it's my turn to work something out—though doing so is a lot harder than it should be. My first instinct is to tell him yes, but there is a bunch of other stuff buried underneath it. Strange, shiftless wondering if maybe he isn't real at all. Maybe I'm the one still sleeping.

“I could pinch you to check,” I say finally, expecting him to brush it off.

Instead he holds out his arm, the gesture so trusting I hardly know what to think. All I understand for sure is that something squeezes my insides when he does it. I see the soft, pale skin of the inside of his wrist, and a great hand just gets my heart in its fist.

I guess that might be why I ask him inside.

Chapter Two

A
T FIRST HE
will only stand in my doorway, hesitant to cross the threshold, as though the threshold is just a little too much. Like a vampire, I think, if vampires were actually repelled by the many busy details of someone's home. I see those big eyes skittering over everything, as though my kitchen table just made the sign of the cross and my refrigerator has a feature that shoots holy water.

It makes me wonder what his home is like, when he seems so wary of furniture and flooring and the fern on my windowsill. Maybe he eschews stuff like this and spends his whole time sitting on bare boards with only a pallet for his bed. Or does he simply despise my color scheme? Either way, he finds all of this strange. He finds me strange.

His eyes ramble over me in almost the exact same manner.

And it only gets worse when I offer him a blanket. He glances at my hand as though no one in the world has ever done anything like it. I have to put it around his shoulders, but even that is an awkward affair. He stiffens the second I get too close, and I very nearly back out. Then when I marshal my courage and lean in again, I feel that scrutiny all over the side of my face. It roams down my arms to my elbows as I tug it tight, and finds the backs of my hands when I cross the material over his chest.

The only thing he doesn't examine is my cleavage, just above the frothy neckline of my nightdress—which I suppose I should be grateful for.

Instead, it just makes things weirder. It makes things even more like a dream. What sort of man looks at hands and elbows and arms and avoids the best parts? I've had job interviews before today where the ogling was worse than this. I'm not even sure if you could
call
what he is doing ogling.

Does it count if it's only your arms?

Does it count if you feel like the one doing the ogling?

“You could have frozen to death out there,” I say, but only because I feel weirdly like I have to. If I don't he might not get why I just touched him with a blanket—or at least, that's how things seem on the surface. Underneath I suspect there is something else. His eyes seethe with too much intelligence for it to be otherwise.

He understands. He just maybe understands
differently
. I suggest that he sit down, and his reaction is just to the left of weird. His face seems to open somehow, as though the gesture is much bigger than it would be to anyone else. It has this note of revelation—like I solved some difficult problem for him.

And there is a kind of wariness in him, too. He moves toward the chair in the same way that I moved toward him in the yard. On slow, careful feet that often seem to falter. It makes me hold my breath to watch him—though I don't realize I'm doing it until he sits down and everything suddenly gusts out of me in a rush.

I wish it hadn't, however.

He turns at the sound. He fixes those eyes on me, so direct suddenly it seems to strip a layer of my skin off. I have to turn away and focus on something else just to keep myself intact.
Cosmo
never told me how to cope with sudden sleepwalkers in my garden. It was all about businessmen you meet in bars.

What use is that to me now?

There is no way I can compliment him on his cravat. He has no cravat. He barely has on any clothes at all, and I definitely can't draw attention to that. The only thing I can think to safely do is run a bowl of warm water for his freezing feet, but even that has massive drawbacks I don't really appreciate at first.

They occur only once I'm standing next to him with the bowl in my hands, and he's looking at me with confusion. And then I have to crouch, while that confusion gets worse. It makes me wonder how on earth anyone ever does anything kind for other people, when being kind is so fucking awkward and dangerous. All I can think is:
He hates my kindness. He's disgusted at the thought of me washing some of the mud off. If I touch him, he'll kick me in the face
—
or worse. Oh God, what if it's worse?

He might grab me. Maybe all of this was just a ploy, a plan, a trick, and just as I get into this vulnerable position at his feet he'll get me around the throat. Only this time, I won't survive. People don't escape death like that twice. I was lucky with Ted, but now I won't be because I let him in and left my Mace on the counter and—

“If you want me to go, I can.”

“No, no that wasn't what. . .I thought. . .”

“You don't even have to say. You can just nod and I'll go away. I won't be offended, or hold it against you, and even if I was and I did don't let it be a concern. Too often women are expected to be considerate and thoughtful when really fear and doubt would be a more reasonable response.”

“I'm not fearful or doubtful.”

“Whatever you squirted down the back of your leg suggests otherwise. Is it burning you a little? Maybe burning you a lot? You don't have to pretend it isn't so we can have a pleasant conversation. I would have a pleasant conversation with you anyway, if I had the first clue how to have one.”

There are so many things I want to respond to in that one little speech that I don't know where to begin. Has he really known all this time about the Mace? And if so, how in the name of God did he figure it out? He could have seen the bottle, I suppose. But knowing that a line of it is currently stinging the back of my shin is something else.

It makes me wonder if he can smell it somehow, though that insane idea is not the one that really sticks out from among those words. The one that really gets me is that thing about not knowing how to have a conversation.