Housebreaking by Dan Pope

she possibly be serious? He hadn’t done push-ups since his Navy days, but back then they’d performed marathon sessions, one hundred at a time, more. Leonard was fit. A bit hunched, the years weighing on his back, but not overweight; he’d never been overweight, never smoked, never drank as much as the others—Terri Funkhouser, Myra, Bob Amato; they’d poured it down like water. He had always been the one to drive them home. He’d played golf every Sunday at the country club during the season, competing in tournaments well into his sixties, until at last he’d torn his rotator cuff to shreds slicing a three wood.
    Leonard stretched out on the rug. Good thing Benjamin couldn’t see him now. How could he explain these gymnastics? He took a deep breath and pushed himself off the floor.
    â€œOne,” he said aloud. “Two. Three—”
    He felt it coming, a welling up, like a storm rising.
    He never reached five.
    * * *
    SOME MINUTES EARLIER , sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper, Benjamin had glanced up to see the dog through the kitchen window—an odd sight in suburbia: a malamute trotting up the street without leash, without master.
    He’d seen the dog before, tied to a tree outside the old farmhouse, roaming the lawn on a thirty-foot line: her dog.
    Immediately, he jumped to his feet. Like any good salesman, Benjamin Mandelbaum knew when to seize an opportunity. He grabbed a turkey leg out of the refrigerator, picked Yukon’s old leash off the hook by the kitchen door, and hurried outside.
    He whistled. The dog turned toward him, both ears raised. When Benjamin tossed the turkey leg onto the lawn, the dog ambled over to inspect the offering, and Benjamin reached out and snapped the latch onto its collar.
    Gotcha.
    * * *
    FOR THE PAST MONTH , since he’d moved back into his father’s house, Benjamin had kept a sort of vigil. Each morning on his way to work he would linger at the stop sign at the bottom of the street to inspect thefarmhouse. Most days there would be a workman’s truck or van parked in the driveway, sometimes a whole fleet—plumbers, landscapers, carpenters, painters. On his way home, he would examine what they’d accomplished during the day. The row of tall pines along Mountain Road was cleared, the logs and stumps cut up and removed, the brush fed into a wood chipper. A fresh coat of paint was applied, the house a soft gray, the shutters barn red. The split-rail fence rose up from where it had fallen.
    Finally, a couple of weeks ago, he’d gotten his first glimpse of her, walking her dog up the street. He’d squinted. There was the red hair, down to her shoulders. Yes, it was her, it was his Audrey Martin, he knew in the first instant. That night he’d pulled out the yearbook again. In addition to her senior picture, there were three other shots of Audrey Martin: a candid of her lying on a blanket on the senior green; the group photo of the gymnastics team with her kneeling in the front row; and the cast picture from the spring musical, with Audrey dressed in leather pants as Sandy in Grease , wearing too much makeup. He wondered where her life had taken her since Goodwin, and how she had ended up living on his childhood street. They had expected so much of her; she had everything—talent, beauty, intelligence, athletic grace. (Not to mention that fine ass.)
    He closed the yearbook, distracted. A Pavlovian reaction of sorts had occurred, almost against his wishes, the same thrill that had seized him every June in high school on the day they handed out the new yearbooks, smelling of ink and glossy paper. He had a hard-on. Did the other boys do as he did, race home and flip from one page to the next, gorging on images of Wendy Brewster and Wendy Yelton, the girls’ soccer team photo? Back then, it had offered more excitement than Playboy or Penthouse , the intimacy of knowing the girls in the photos, even