When he opened it, he noticed a file folder that had been shoved under the door. He picked it up and flipped it open. It contained a stapled thatch of papers on Hollenbeck Construction letterhead.
It was a construction proposal, clearly done on some template, listing the scope of work. Demolition and renovation, the dates when work was to begin (tomorrow!) and completed (the end of March). A lot of legal gobbledygook.
And a standard payment schedule, including deposit. The cost was reasonable, but there was no mention of any sort of barter deal. Nothing about his doing the work and getting paid from the proceeds of selling the house.
All payments to be made in cash, starting with “Deposit: $8,000.”
If there was any doubt about whether Jeff had seen the cash, there wasn’t any longer.
He hesitated, thought about arguing with Jeff, then decided it wasn’t worth it. He pulled out a pen and signed each copy of the agreement. Then he stepped outside. Jeff’s house had been unimproved for decades, except for an exterior paint job not that long ago. The side door to his house also opened into the kitchen. Jeff’s kitchen, with its sheer curtains on the door and yellow wallpaper patterned with miscellaneous fruits, its Kenmore range and refrigerator, looked perfectly preserved, identical to the way it had looked when Rick and Jeff were kids. Rick slipped the copies of the contract under the door, along with a check written on one of the new bank accounts. He thought about knocking on the window and asking about the change, the money terms they hadn’t agreed to, but decided it was better not to get into it. Jeff had seen something; he’d seen the money, that was obvious. But it was only a glimpse. He had no idea how much there was.
Rick was already zipping up his sleeping bag and arranging himself uncomfortably on the couch when the realization hit him, like a clap of thunder: He didn’t have to stay here anymore. He didn’t have to live like the impoverished, scraping person he used to be. He could stay in a hotel. He could stay in the Four Seasons if he wanted to.
Tomorrow he’d find someplace decent to stay. Tonight he’d relish his last night in the sleeping bag on the leather sofa in his father’s office. Now that he had a choice whether to sleep here or not, he could think of it as slumming, as camping out.
He got back off the couch and walked through the rooms on the ground floor. It smelled faintly of natural gas down here-not squirrel piss-but not alarmingly so. An odor put out by the gas stove, maybe a minuscule leak from the pilot. Behind the stove, the wallpaper was scorched where there’d been a cooking accident years ago. A grease fire from when Wendy had experimented with deep-frying a turkey.
He found the place outside the kitchen pantry where his and his sister’s growth was recorded in horizontal lines made with pen or marker. They’d stopped measuring by the time he and Wendy got to high school. Maybe he and his sister had refused to submit to the indignity any longer, the ruler on top of the head, all that. He didn’t remember anymore.
He had no nostalgia for the house but couldn’t help feeling a slight pang when he saw those lines. RICK-MARCH 2 ’85-50"… RICK-NOV. 14 ’92-64"… Between the ages of seven and fourteen he’d had his major growth spurt. The marker on the pantry wall showed it. Soon that would be gone, the wallpaper stripped off, the walls repainted, along with the scorch mark in the kitchen and the divots and dings and scrapes of a house where two kids had grown up.
He went back upstairs, turning off the lights behind him. He cranked up the space heater and settled down to sleep on the leather sofa.
In the middle of the night a creaking noise woke him up.
He opened his eyes. The only light in the room came from the streetlight on Clayton Street. The noise had sounded as if it came from inside the house, maybe down one flight.
Someone on the stairs?
He waited, listened. The house was old and had always made odd, random settling sounds throughout the day, like an old person sitting down stiffly in an armchair. You noticed it more at night when everything was quiet. That was probably all it was.
He turned over, closed his eyes. The leather sofa squeaked as he moved.
He heard it again, and this time it definitely seemed to be coming from the stairs. The sound of a footstep, a heavy tread taken carefully. No mistaking it.
He sat up, felt his heart start clattering, slipped out of the sleeping bag, and then got to his feet softly, quietly. He listened.
Another creak.
It sounded as if it was coming from right outside the closed door to his father’s study. He slid barefoot along the floor, carefully-the floor in here creaked just as much as the stairs-until he reached his father’s desk. He looked for a weapon, or something that could function as a weapon. There was his father’s ancient computer, an IBM, under a plastic dust cover. He slid open the center drawer, looking for something, a pair of scissors, a paper cutter, a stapler, something heavy or sharp. Nothing-just some old pencils. A sharp pencil could be used as a weapon, but you had to get close up, if it came to it, and that he preferred not to do.
He spotted a bronze bust on the desktop behind the computer. A bust of someone his father idolized, probably Henry David Thoreau. Or was it Ralph Waldo Emerson? He grabbed it, cold in his hands, and substantial, and shushed over to the study door. There he stood and waited for another sound. Thought about switching the overhead light on, then decided not to.
He heard another sound. The high school kids from Rindge and Latin? But they wouldn’t be sneaking around. When they broke in, they did it because they were sure no one was home. Thus, no reason to be quiet. They’d be noisy. Drunk and noisy. Boisterous.
These were careful, furtive footsteps. He stood back from the door and off to one side. If anyone opened the study door, he’d have the jump on them. Slam them with the bronze bust.
He waited, breathing slowly, quietly. Another creaking sound, this one no closer than the last. He listened, heart pounding, and tried to locate the sound, decided it was coming from upstairs. He could hear the steady creaking overhead now, a sound more interior and muted, the sound of old cracked floorboards compressing, protesting underfoot.
Whoever was in the house-because there was someone-was climbing the stairs to the third floor.
He breathed steadily, listening. The sound grew more distant.
The intruder was upstairs.
He turned the doorknob and pulled the door open slowly, steadily, bracing for a squeaky hinge, prepared to stop if need be. He got the door halfway open, just far enough to sidle out, not wanting to risk opening it any farther and causing a telltale squeak.
When he was in the hall, he went still and just listened for thirty seconds, which seemed an eternity. He wanted to make sure the sound was indeed coming from upstairs, not the second floor. His chest was tight and his breath was short.
And the sound was coming from the landing upstairs, the small steady squeak of a heavy tread crossing the wooden floor, moving steadily yet carefully.
He knew which steps creaked and which did not. His bedroom, and Wendy’s, had been on the third floor, and he had gone up and down this staircase innumerable times. He’d sneaked upstairs late at night, occasionally drunk or stoned, in high school. He knew how to climb the stairs noiselessly, and he could walk it blindfolded.
It wasn’t Jeff-he wouldn’t be sneaking around the house, or at least not now that he knew Rick was staying here. Or would he?
What if it was Jeff?
He’d seen the money but said nothing about it, not yet. Maybe he was back to see if there was any more secreted in the house. But then Rick realized: That was farfetched. The money had been behind a closet wall. If there was more to be found, it would be walled up somewhere, behind plasterboard, and reachable only by doing some destruction. No way would Jeff be skulking around the house at two in the morning.