plate. Take your cell. Youâll have enough time to call the police. The plate should protect you if they start shooting through the closet door.â At least I hoped it would.
She listened with her tough-girl face on, but her eyes were anxious. âAnd if they open the door?â
I walked her into my bedroom and showed her the .38 Chiefâs Special. âDo you know how to shoot?â
She opened the cylinder, saw its five chambers were empty, clicked it back into place, and pointed the compact revolver toward the wall, dry-firing it several times. âYes.â
Full of surprises, my sister-in-law.
âWhen Kate Vare comes back, sheâs going to go at you harder than ever. You canât tell her about taking the dog tags. Ever. Understand?â
She said she did, and asked if I had .38 ammunition.
8
The next week passed dreamlike, uneventful. I was evermore conscious of how the days slipped by, time brutal. Robin and I agreed to some house rules. We wouldnât go out. Move the Prelude into the garage, with its entry on the alley. Let the mail and newspapers pile up. Turn on the lights only in the interior rooms, such as the study and the kitchen, where I tacked up a blanket over the windows that looked into the yard.
We went through the tamales and almost all the cans of soup and frozen Lean Cuisines. I cooked breakfast until we were out of eggs. With the blankets on the windows, the room seemed like a scene out of a World War II blackout. There was nothing to be done about the big picture window in the living room, so we avoided it and kept the lights off. I called out an alarm service and made an appointment to install a system that we couldnât afford.
Fortunately I had bought three large bottles of Beefeater before we became shut-ins. Robin, a wine drinker, began downing martinis. I had to start rationing olives. We drank the houseâs only bottle of champagne on New Yearâs Eve and I tried not to get nervous when I heard the fireworks. Robin would get in foul moods because she couldnât go running but was otherwise decent company. She was not an omnivore reader, and unfortunately we had only two real art books: The Phoenix Art Museum catalogâthe museum director and his wife lived around the cornerâand an Edward Hopper album. So Robin drank each book dry, then watched television, searched for jobs on the Internet, and listened to her iPod while I tried to read. My history books had always been a refugeâmy history porn, as Lindsey called it. They were less so now. My mind wandered.
The street seemed unchanged from before the ghastly FedEx delivery. The usual neighborhood walkers went by at their usual times. Two houses down, the winter lawn was coming in nicely. Cypress was dark and normal-looking at night. No drive-by shooting through the window. No Molotov cocktail into the carport. It almost made me think the worst was over. That we could do this and survive.
At night, I made sure the guns were in easy reach. Sleep evaded me and I lay in the big bed, sure I was going to die within the next seconds. Almost all of my adult life these panic attacks had hit me when I was alone and things were quiet. They had kept me from writing more, from playing well with others when I was on a faculty, probably helped take away my chances for tenure. Sharon Peralta had diagnosed me. Knowing what they were barely made it better. My heart thumped hard and fast against my chest. My breathing was constricted. I was terrified about the next minute and every second within it. They only came in the quiet times. I hoped for a call from Lindsey in the middle of the night, when we might talk soul-to-soul as in the old days, but it didnât come.
We talked every couple of days on a regular schedule. She couldnât talk about her work. She didnât ask about the house or her gardens. She wanted to know how Robin was doing. On the most recent call, I asked her again to let
She listened with her tough-girl face on, but her eyes were anxious. âAnd if they open the door?â
I walked her into my bedroom and showed her the .38 Chiefâs Special. âDo you know how to shoot?â
She opened the cylinder, saw its five chambers were empty, clicked it back into place, and pointed the compact revolver toward the wall, dry-firing it several times. âYes.â
Full of surprises, my sister-in-law.
âWhen Kate Vare comes back, sheâs going to go at you harder than ever. You canât tell her about taking the dog tags. Ever. Understand?â
She said she did, and asked if I had .38 ammunition.
8
The next week passed dreamlike, uneventful. I was evermore conscious of how the days slipped by, time brutal. Robin and I agreed to some house rules. We wouldnât go out. Move the Prelude into the garage, with its entry on the alley. Let the mail and newspapers pile up. Turn on the lights only in the interior rooms, such as the study and the kitchen, where I tacked up a blanket over the windows that looked into the yard.
We went through the tamales and almost all the cans of soup and frozen Lean Cuisines. I cooked breakfast until we were out of eggs. With the blankets on the windows, the room seemed like a scene out of a World War II blackout. There was nothing to be done about the big picture window in the living room, so we avoided it and kept the lights off. I called out an alarm service and made an appointment to install a system that we couldnât afford.
Fortunately I had bought three large bottles of Beefeater before we became shut-ins. Robin, a wine drinker, began downing martinis. I had to start rationing olives. We drank the houseâs only bottle of champagne on New Yearâs Eve and I tried not to get nervous when I heard the fireworks. Robin would get in foul moods because she couldnât go running but was otherwise decent company. She was not an omnivore reader, and unfortunately we had only two real art books: The Phoenix Art Museum catalogâthe museum director and his wife lived around the cornerâand an Edward Hopper album. So Robin drank each book dry, then watched television, searched for jobs on the Internet, and listened to her iPod while I tried to read. My history books had always been a refugeâmy history porn, as Lindsey called it. They were less so now. My mind wandered.
The street seemed unchanged from before the ghastly FedEx delivery. The usual neighborhood walkers went by at their usual times. Two houses down, the winter lawn was coming in nicely. Cypress was dark and normal-looking at night. No drive-by shooting through the window. No Molotov cocktail into the carport. It almost made me think the worst was over. That we could do this and survive.
At night, I made sure the guns were in easy reach. Sleep evaded me and I lay in the big bed, sure I was going to die within the next seconds. Almost all of my adult life these panic attacks had hit me when I was alone and things were quiet. They had kept me from writing more, from playing well with others when I was on a faculty, probably helped take away my chances for tenure. Sharon Peralta had diagnosed me. Knowing what they were barely made it better. My heart thumped hard and fast against my chest. My breathing was constricted. I was terrified about the next minute and every second within it. They only came in the quiet times. I hoped for a call from Lindsey in the middle of the night, when we might talk soul-to-soul as in the old days, but it didnât come.
We talked every couple of days on a regular schedule. She couldnât talk about her work. She didnât ask about the house or her gardens. She wanted to know how Robin was doing. On the most recent call, I asked her again to let
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