The Good Neighbor (16 page)

The Visitor

T
he long pause that followed this question was interrupted by a sudden banging from the front of the house. Neither of them

moved. They could hear Michael’s breath, drawn sharply in sur prise.

“You guys?” he said querulously, from where he had been lis tening around the corner. He sounded as if he’d been crying, like a child caught in a parental crossfire. “I think someone’s at the door!”

The banging came again, more insistent now. Colt picked up a candle and brushed past his wife, heading for the foyer. Through the glass he could see someone standing on the porch, holding a flashlight.

“Hello?” he called.

The response was too muffled to make out. Colt, city-cautious, opened the door a crack.

“What did you say?” he asked. “Can I help you?”

“I—I just come by ta check up on the place,” said the person. It was a small man, wearing a thick snowsuit of the sort that utility

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OWALSKI

maintenance workers wore. He was shining his flashlight at his feet, and his face was lost in shadow. “Live just up the road there. Flebberman. I seen you movin’ in earlier. You, ah . . . you the new folks?”

“Yeah, that’s us,” said Colt. “The new folks.” “Oh. Right. Well. Hi, there.”

“Hello,” Colt said.

The man was clearly uncomfortable, as if he were performing an unpleasant but necessary task. He cast several glances back ward over his shoulder, plotting a quick getaway.

“Well, ah... the juice ran dry, so I thought I might as well come down and check up on ya. See how yer makin’ out.” He cleared his throat nervously and stomped his feet on the porch, which sounded as hollow as a drum.

“Oh,” said Colt. “You’re the neighbor.”

He opened the door wide, remembering the name he’d seen on the truck that had passed them when they were first looking at the house—F
LEBBERMAN
T
OWING
. There’d been a man who’d stared at them, not exactly hostile but not exactly welcoming, ei ther. So this was Flebberman. Colt had thought, without know ing why, that he would be bigger.

“Come on in,” he said.

Flebberman stepped in shyly and followed Colt through the foyer into the living room, where his features were illuminated by the gentle glow of the fire. He looked about fortyish; his spade- shaped face was covered with three or four days’ worth of beard, and his shoulders and head were covered in snow, which he made no move to brush off. Francie and Michael came in together and stood at the entrance of the kitchen hallway. She’d dried her eyes in record time, Colt thought.

“Hello,” Francie said calmly, in a tone that chilled Colt’s bones. “Mister—”

“Randy.”

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“Mr. Randy.”

“No, I mean Randy Flebberman,” said Flebberman. “Nobody calls me mister. Just . . . Randy.”

“I’m Francie. This is my brother Michael, and . . . Coltrane Hart.” She spat his name out like a poison seed.

“Hi,” said Michael.

“Din’t mean ta startle ya,” Flebberman said. “Saw yer movin’ truck earlier, an’ I thought, uh-oh, this ain’t no time to be movin’. With the storm comin’ an’ all. An’ then the power goes out. Ah, well.” He shrugged philosophically. “Waddaya gonna do?”

“We were just making dinner,” Francie said. “Would you like to stay?”

Colt shot her a look that went unnoticed, but it was not neces sary.

“Naw, thanks,” said Flebberman. “Wife has dinner ready. I just come down real quick ta see how things was goin’.”

“We
were
making dinner,” Colt said. “But then the power went out.”

“You got a gas stove,” said Flebberman. “You can still cook. Don’t need power for a gas stove. Jus’ gotta light it yerself, ’cause the pilot’ll be out.”

“Oh,” said Colt, sheepishly. “Right.”

“How’d
you
know we have a gas stove?” asked Francie.

“Bank hired me ta take care a the place,” said Flebberman. “I been lookin’ after it since I dunno when. Long time.”

“Right,” said Francie. “That’s why there was so little dust.

You’ve been keeping it clean?”

Flebberman looked at the floor, scuffing his foot. “Yuh,” he said.

They waited, but he offered no further explanation.

“Any idea when the power ’ll come back on?” Colt asked. Flebberman shrugged again, and laughed wryly. “Could be fi’

minutes, could be tomorra,” he said. “Y’never really know. Power never does go out on a nice summer day, after all. Always at night,

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in weather like this. Haw haw. Crew’s gotta come out from all over creation. Takes ’em at least an hour just ta get mobilized. I oughta know. I useta work for the county.”

He was running on nervously, it seemed to Colt. He attempted to interject, but Flebberman went on.

“Worked plowin’ the roads for ’em, sorta freelance, y’know, ’cause they were always short-staffed on purpose to save the bud get, but then a course when it actually snowed they’d be screwed. They might even call me out for this one. Who knows? Gov ’mint’s run by a buncha goddamn morons. Pardon my French.”

“Would you like a glass of wine, Randy?” Francie asked.

Flebberman seemed taken aback. “Wine?” he said, almost laughing. “Naw. Everything else’s awright? Water on?”

“Yes,” said Colt. “The water ’s on.”

“Well,” said Flebberman. “I grew up in this house, y’know.”

This admission startled them all, since it seemed to come out of nowhere. Francie smiled at the little man.

“Really,” she said. “How interesting. I didn’t know that.” “Well, I din’t really
live
here. But I spent a lotta time here when

I was a kid. My old Aunt Helen was the last one to own the place. Great-aunt, actually. My mother useta leave me with her some times, when she was workin’. Nice old place. Lotta history to it. Woulda bought it m’self, if I coulda ’forded it.” Flebberman shuf fled his booted feet again, pondering his own poverty; then, abruptly, he appeared to become embarrassed. “Nice car you got out there,” he said, almost wistfully.

“Thanks,” said Michael.

“He was talking about
my
car, you dumbass,” Colt said.

“The Camaro?” Flebberman said. “Nineteen-seventy? ’Bout two hundred horses?”

“The man knows his cars,” said Colt.

Flebberman flushed and scuffed his foot again; then, realizing he was leaving marks on the floor, he abruptly stopped and put his foot over the streak he’d left.

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“You folks got any plans for redoin’ the place?” he inquired ten tatively. “Any renovations er whatnot?”

“Not really,” said Colt. “Not yet, anyway. Hadn’t had the time to think about it, actually. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious, is all.”

“It’s in pretty good shape, for such an old place,” Francie volun teered.

Flebberman appeared gratified. “Oh, yuh,” he said. “I been keepin’ it up, like I said. Takes a lotta work ta keep an old house like this in any kinda condition.”

“You did a wonderful job,” said Francie. “It’s almost like it was waiting for us. We appreciate it. Really.”

This compliment seemed to embarrass Flebberman almost be yond speech. He ducked his head and nodded. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “I’m startin’ ta melt all over yer floor here. I’ll be gettin’ back home. We’re just up the road there, you know, at the top of the hill. Give us a holler if you need anything.”

“We will,” said Francie. “Yeah,” said Colt. “Sure will.”

Flebberman gave them all a curious sort of two-fingered salute as he clomped back down the hall and down the stairs, back into the teeth of the blizzard. The three of them watched through the window as he got into his tow truck and headed up the road. They were left alone again.

“I don’t know if we just met Barney Fife or Gomer Pyle,” Colt said.

“Fuck you,” said Francie, leaving the room.

12
‌

White Men from the Future

W
ith the cold fingers of betrayal firmly wrapped around her heart, Francie headed upstairs to the attic. All she wanted was to

be alone, like a dying dog—for that was how she felt. Like her guts really had been ripped out her middle. Small flames guttered in the saucer that she held, waiter-style, on her fingertips, and her rip pling shadow followed her at a discreet distance, keeping to the wall. So he didn’t want children with her, ever? All right, then. If he felt that strongly about it, why didn’t he just say so? What kind of a man would willingly have his scrotum sliced open rather than risk having to share his life with other people?

And, as long as that was the case, why were they still married? Let’s not go there just yet, Francie told herself. One thing at a time. You’ve only just had a mental breakdown, and now there’s

this. Should we file divorce papers tonight, too? I think not.

That could wait until the morning, at least.

❚ ❚ ❚

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It wasn’t that she’d wanted children
all
that badly. Sometimes she did, of course; that was only natural. It would hit her, at random moments, that she was missing something indefinable, that she was not just bored but unfulfilled, that she had more to offer to the world than just sitting around in the apartment in a state of creative constipation. But there were other times when she was glad she didn’t have them, usually when she was tired and frustrated and frazzled by the ten thousand and one complicated things that were involved in living in a modern city. For example: when she was try ing to get her Metro card out of her purse to run it through the subway turnstile, avoiding being jostled from behind by impatient commuters, avoiding the homeless man up ahead who always seemed to single her out of the crowd no matter how hard she tried not to catch his eye; after which she would have to push her way onto the car, always ending up between some ancient woman who was only five foot four on one side and a sweaty construction worker covered in a natural hair suit on the other, so that she was forced to stand curled sideways, like a question mark, and she would think out of nowhere,
Imagine lugging around a baby on top of all this
, and she would wonder how it was ever done at all.

Yet, from time to time, she treasured the possibilities contained within her womb. It was really just the idea of babies—for she did like to think about them sometimes, and he had held out hope to her, time and time again, when he had known that there really was none. And that was a lie.

He’d lied to her. He might as well have cheated on her.

Francie probed her abdomen as she ascended the stairs. The chicken hole, briefly healed, seemed to have been reopened by the argument. She fancied that she ran her fingers lightly over the bottoms of her lungs, feeling the ragged area where the chicken’s beak had pecked away at them. She caressed her liver, thumbed her pancreas, became intimate with the half-hidden nubs of her kidneys. And here was her uterus, tiny and triangular, dangling like an empty purse.

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It was all madness, of course. She knew full well that only crazy people felt this way. But she couldn’t escape the impression that this wasn’t a delusion; or, if it
was
a delusion, it was a very good one. The most convincing she’d ever had, in fact.

“I’m crazy crazy crazy,” she whispered.

The attic was where she was headed, and she knew it would be freezing up there, so she stopped in the master bedroom on the third floor, where she put on a sweater, jogging pants, a pair of wool socks. She put her bathrobe back on over all of this, added a knit hat, and continued upward, watching her breath spout out before her in a plume of white, as if she were a walking teakettle. Climbing the final set of stairs, she set the dish of tea lights on the attic floor and opened one of the boxes she’d noticed when they’d first come through with Marge Westerbrook. Anything that would distract her now was welcome. Too much thinking at a time like this could drive her back over the edge over which she had only just clawed herself.

Reaching in blindly, she came up with a double handful of comic books. With a connoisseur ’s nose, she sniffed their bouquet of decaying newsprint and antiquated ink. Someone had wanted to preserve these old things; someone had thought they were worth saving.

Francie had been a great fan of science fiction in her early teens. It was just another thing about her that had concerned her par ents, and had made other girls hesitate in inviting her to parties. Girls were not supposed to like science fiction, which was pre cisely why she did; or half the reason, anyway. She’d never under stood why boys were so fascinated with Mars and ray guns and rocket ships and alien beings, while girls ignored such things. The only possible answer was that boys were keeping it all for them selves, because they didn’t want to share. Typical. Boys were dolts—it was their fault the world was not a nice place.

In rebellion against this fact and others, Francie had read every thing she could get her hands on, from the classic works of H. G.