Abe sat naked on the couch.
He hunched over the family photo album, dirty fingers lifting the plastic sheets one by one, skin tingling to the crackle as each sheet separated from the one below it, breath catching at the slight hook in the binding as it turned and releasing on the static contact when it fell.
From the suburban morning beyond the picture window, his ears took in conversing birds, their flutter between bushes in the mulched landscaping, their clatter in the eaves as they sought nests. Somewhere a truck idled, awaiting a co-worker and the appointed time to leave. Perhaps just waiting for the sun to spring out over the horizon of Nevada mountains.
His ears heard while his eyes devoured the pages. Memories in awkward candidness, red eyes and visages never before or again seen, back of heads that ought to have been turned, and perhaps were, before the shutter snapped. The interior scenes of birthday parties, kids staring at the photographer over sliced cake, their faces smeared with frosting, their small bodies half-in and half-out of too large chairs. The colors not quite real, off and old, like the photos themselves, and not real like the children too, who no longer existed as they appeared in the dead memories on his lap, but surely now as adults who contained mere vestiges of their childhood personalities, if they were lucky enough to retain any semblance of their former selves at all.
He could not find a photo of the child, the one upstairs. The photos were too old, likely the memories of one of the adults, likely the woman, since a blonde little girl starred in many of the photographs. He turned a page and there she was, in arm floaties and a pink bathing suit, her hair in strings and darkly wet, smiling with a blue and green beach ball beside an above ground swimming pool whose water fractured harsh rays of sunlight.
He pressed his barefeet down to relish the cool hardwood. Soon he would have to dress and leave the house, and yesterday the desert had heated to oven temperatures. Already, without AC, the living room was feeling tepid, and his bareskin stuck to the couch leather. He became aware then that his feet were sticky too; when he lifted them, the soles parted from the floor with a sound like the removal of duct tape.
Alternating his feet, he marched in his seat until the sound had faded to just a whisper of skin, then he leaned forward with his elbows on the album so that the vinyl cut into his thighs. Some person had left footprints in the night, already darkening in the light of day. He followed them to the end of the couch where they turned and likely continued along the kitchen's half counter to the stairs and up. In the kitchen gloam he noticed the stainless steel door of the refrigerator reflecting light from the picture window, and on top the fridge, a line of cereal boxes.
He put the album aside and walked lightfooted to the kitchen, stepping to avoid the footprints and checking behind him for any new marks. There were none, though his feet still stuck a little. In the refrigerator he found milk, from the line of cereals he selected a box of Kix, and with a spoon and bowl he had the makings for a bowl of cereal, which he took to the half counter and arranged so that he could eat while watching the neighborhood take on sunlight.
He didn't want to leave the house; he wanted to pretend that the family would awaken and join him, in spite of whatever had happened in the night. He finished the cereal, drank the milk, and prepared another bowl, shaking out the Kix with his right hand and pouring the milk, simultaneously, with his left. It would be rude to wake the family, as much as he'd like to. He carefully avoided clinking the spoon against the glass bowl, thrilling with both dread and anticipation when his hand slipped at the chance he might hear the pitter-patter of muffled feet in the hallway upstairs.
A drip of sweat rolled down his side from his armpit. Without electricity, there would be no AC; the house was going to turn into a boiler box. Even if the family would soon wake, it would be better at the bus station downtown, where there might be a breeze. At the end of this bowl, he thought, I'll tiptoe upstairs and get my clothes.
He paused with the spoon in midair, dripping milk, his mouth half full of soggy cereal and open for the next bite. He couldn't remember how he had turned off the power. Had he simply disabled the breaker in the basement? Or had he, as on occasions in the past, gone so far as to rip the power line that ran from the street off its connection at the eave? In the daylight the neighbors might see and report the problem to the power company, or they might even come knocking.
He let the spoon clatter in the bowl and hurried to the living room, halting next to the stairwell with his head lowered before the footprints. His legs and torso were splattered with some dark matter; his uncircumcised penis caught the light. He looked up and out the picture window into now full daylight and saw that the house across the street had its drapes open. He had to get upstairs and put his clothes on, but he hesitated at whatever he would find.
Finally, someone in the neighborhood slammed a car door, pushing him around the corner to the carpeted staircase, which he tiptoed up to the left of the footprints. There was one on every step, each darker and more complete than the one before it. Halfway up he found his knife, the serrated blade sticky with blood the same color as the splatters on his body, the same dark shade as the footprints. He had no memory of placing it there. Or had he dropped it? He had no idea. The child lay discarded on the landing in a broad stain of bloodsoaked carpet, his barefeet stuck out over the top step, his dinosaur pjs shredded and bloodsoaked, his neck crooked back so that his eyes stared up the hallway. Likely the child would not wake up, but he tiptoed up and leapt over the stain, then continued to tiptoe down the dim hallway.
He paused at two open doors that faced each other. Windowed light from both rooms cast a wide bar across the floor; on the right he knew the adults were in their bedroom, hopefully still asleep. He cringed to think that they would see him naked. Last night in the dark he hadn't cared, and he had a flashing sense of himself inching barefooted down the hallway, the knife in one hand while the other felt along the wall. He closed his eyes and shook his head, hard, until he was only aware of the black behind his eyelids and the small stars that sparkled at the end of each jerk. Then he gathered himself and leapt across the bar of light, glancing into the doorway to see the bed covers thrown off in a heap and the adults in a tangle of limbs upon bloodsoaked sheets.
At the end of the hall he found his clothes in a pile outside the lavatory, which was spotless, its whiteness broken only by the gold lines that bordered each square of linoleum, the yellow soap in its dish on the sink, the green and blue conditioner and shampoo bottles in the shower. The small window in the shower was open; he knew that he had climbed up on the garage roof to enter that window. Which meant he had most definitely yanked the power lines out of the wall to cut the power, and the lines now hung from the street into the driveway. He needed to get out of there.
He placed the knife on the floor and looked at the crusted blood on his hands and forearms. Dry, except for a smear on his fingers from picking up the knife. He wiped the smear on his leg, then picked up his jeans and inspected them, verifying that his bus ticket was still tucked in the back pocket. The jeans were filthy, but bloodless, as was his Nirvana T-shirt. He couldn't remember if he had been wearing underwear. It was hot; he didn't need it. He dressed and looked around for his sandals. Likely they were outside, right where he had kicked them off before climbing the trellis to the roof.
He would wash his hands in some garden hose on the walk back to the bus station, rather than soiling the sink or bathtub. Perhaps he could stop off at the playground he had seen yesterday, to swing or test out the monkey bars, and still catch the next bus for Seattle. But first he had to climb through the window and down the trellis quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping family.
