The sun is rising through milky cloud over the trees. Pink touches the sky in the east, like a finger.
Something stirs the air at the front of Ted’s house. A rectangular object hurtles out of the mail slot and sails through the air. It makes a crack as it bounces off two steps, then falls silently into the rhododendron bushes that spring up about the steps, glossy and green. The mail slot opens again with a faint creak.
Every one of Dee’s senses is alight. She starts for the door. Her heart is so loud in her ears that she can’t hear anything else. She forces herself to breathe deeply. Her hand is on her door handle, turning it, when she hears the familiarthunk,thunk,thunkof the locks.
Dee freezes for a moment. Then she goes to the window. Ted comes out onto the front steps. He looks slightly neater than usual. He seems to have combed his beard.
As Ted goes down the steps he glances to his left, stops and bends to pick something out of the glossy green leaves. Everything stops inside Dee. Too late. Whatever it was, he has found it.
Ted stands up. He has a little pinecone in his hand. He turns it this way and that, looking at it closely in the morning light.
When he has been gone twenty minutes Dee walks over to his house. She follows her plan carefully. She rings the doorbell. When there is no answer, she lifts the mail flap.
‘Hello?’ she calls into the bowels. The mood of the house strokes her face. It is dust and old despair.
‘Hello,’ she calls again. ‘Neighbour, here to help!’ It took her a while to come up with the right phrasing. Something the little girl would understand, but would also sound innocuous to anyone else listening. The house breathes at her. But there is no other sound.Then Dee puts her lips to the aperture and whispers, ‘Lulu?’ She waits for a minute, and then two. But the silence of the house only thickens.
The day is getting brighter. Some guy passes, walking his dog. There can be no breaking and entering. Sooner or later someone might start to wonder why she’s loitering on Ted’s steps.
She takes out her flashlight, gets on all fours and crawls quickly into the rhododendron. Cobwebs cling to her face like tiny hands. Adrenaline punches her heart. It makes her feel good, alive.
The cassette lies half buried in dry leaves. A beetle sits atop it, waving curious horns. Dee brushes the beetle off and puts the cassette in her bra. She backs slowly out of the bush. The rush is seeping away and she feels cold. To her right something moves through the leaf litter in a long thin line. She gasps and backs out of the undergrowth, hitting her shin painfully on the edge of a step. She beats her head frantically with her hands, feeling the phantom weight of a scaled body clinging and coiling in her hair. She runs, panting, to her front door.
Ted
It’s bug-man day at last. I have to see it through. I have to do this for Lauren. But I should not have yelled at him last time. I saw the light come on in his eyes.
The walk is nice. Not too hot. I stroke the little pinecone in my pocket. I found it by the front steps. I love pinecones. They have very individual personalities.
I stop with my hand on the door handle. The bug man is talking in his office. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen or heard another patient, here!
‘Goddamn small minds,’ I hear the bug man say. ‘Small towns.’ It makes me feel weird. I knock so he knows I’m there. I really respect privacy. He stops muttering and says, ‘Come in!’
The bug man’s round eyes are calm behind his spectacles. There is no one else in the room.
‘I’m glad to see you, Ted,’ he says. ‘I thought you might not show up. There are more scratches on your hands and face, I see.’
‘It’s my cat,’ I say. ‘She’s going through a rough patch.’ (Nails on my face, her screams as I put her in the crate.)
‘So,’ he says. ‘How are things?’
‘I’m good,’ I say. ‘The pills are good. Only, I run low real fast.I was thinking maybe I could have a prescription I could refill, instead of getting them from you.’
‘We can talk about increasing the dosage. But I would rather you continue to get the pills from me. And you would have to pay to fill a prescription. You don’t want that, do you?’
‘I guess not,’ I say.
‘Have you been keeping your feelings diary?’ he asks.
‘Sure,’ I say politely. ‘All that is great. Your suggestions have been very helpful.’
‘Has the diary helped you to identify some triggers?’
‘Well,’ I say. ‘I am very worried about my cat.’
‘Your gay cat.’
‘Yes. She shakes her head all the time, and she claws at her ears like there’s something in them. Nothing seems to help her.’
