Shadow Traffic

Single-Occupant House

209 Single-Occupant House I would have stayed in the other place longer but the false teeth in the bathroom upset me. It was like walking along a beach looking for shells and suddenly seeing a dead lobster. A bad sign, a bad omen, so I knew I had to quit the house and go to the other I’d been considering on Silver Place. I couldn’t even remember now why I hadn’t gone there before and wondered what that said about me. The outdoors was full of scares. Tried to keep my eyes closed as much as possible and find my way to Silver Place like a bat. It had taken weeks to learn about the house—its locks and security system—(I used to be a locksmith years ago). I even posed as a sewer worker, which was a risk since I lived nearby, but it worked! Found out it was a single-occupant house, the best kind for me, and that the lady of the house was planning an out-of-state trip to visit her daughter. Managed to find that out by chatting her up a bit. I also saw how I could get in from the cellar. Then one day I noticed her car was gone—twenty-four hours and counting —making her garage look like an enormous, empty mouth. It was time. I was on the main floor and it was as if I’d climbed to shadow traffic 210 the main floor of my memory, too. I saw the cab again, heard the conversation. “Why are you driving so fast?” he said from the back seat. I could hear and see him again so clearly it was more like watching a movie, than a memory. I didn’t answer him at first but he repeated himself. “I’m thinking,” I said. “Excuse me?” “I need to think.” “Could you just slow down a little? I don’t want your ‘thoughts’ to kill me, OK?” “That’s what I’m thinking about,” I said. I shudder now, as I should have then. It’s odd—most bad memories are about the start of something or the end of something but this one was both. It was the end of my driving for Sun Cab Company and the start of my visit to this house and it was all decided that day. Because I certainly couldn’t stay in my apartment after what happened with the passenger, who I knew would call about me. I thought that after I stopped answering the phone they would come to my home and so decided I had to go to others, which I’d been doing more and more often anyway. I walked through the first-floor rooms quickly. It was like moving under water, with small life forms floating around me. Went into the family room and saw a blue reclining chair, a LaZ -Boy. I stared at it as if it might dissolve at any moment into a shattered reef of blue dots. Eventually I sat on it, turned on TV, watched it too until I saw an ad for Plavix. “Plavix saves lives,” the ad said. “If you save lives, why aren’t you free?” I said to the TV. Then I shut it off. ■ ■ ■ Single-Occupant House 211 When I’m in people’s houses I don’t steal or eat their food and rarely use their bathrooms, much less ever hurt anyone. I thought this and then I said it to myself on my La-Z-Boy, or her La-ZBoy , to be more precise. Of course it’d give her an awful scare if she came home suddenly and saw me, but I’m very careful about that. That’s never happened either. I’ve developed a sixth sense about when I should leave a house, almost as if the house warns me in advance. I’m really not a person who dreams of doing harm to anyone. Yet I’ve been told otherwise. “OK, just stop and let me out now,” he said. I heard him again in my mind movie. “We’re on a highway,” I reminded him. “Just slow down right now, OK? Slow down or I’ll call the police. I mean it,” he said, brandishing his cell phone like a little spear. I lightened my pressure on the pedal, reducing the speed. But...