Document of Expectations

Monday, 4:00 a.m.

4 shining object and tapped its handle lightly on the dark old wooden door. a few moments passed, silent but for a few labored breaths. no one answered. the trespasser leaned close to the window and peered through a thin slit at its edge that the poster did not cover. the woman was not in her office. she had forgotten to turn her lights off. “shit,” he muttered again. He had missed one target. the figure retraced the route down the hall, with uncertainty in every step. stopping at the stairway, hesitating, looking down the stairs, the invader decided what to do next. instead of descending, the infiltrator crept slowly to another corner and peeked around it. Light shone brightly through a door that was left ajar in the third office from the end of the hall. the prowler heard paper rustling inside. a smile formed under the hot, scratchy mask as the intruder gripped a stainless steel hunting knife with laminated wood handle and a five-inch blade with a gut hook. it was just a few steps down the hall to the lighted office. It’s just not safe to work at night in this building the mind thought as the face grinned. monDaY, 4:00 a.m. monique Blue Hawk opened her eyes and saw the outline of her afrin squirt bottle and a tumped-over plastic water cup on the nightstand. a hazy dream drifted through her mind, although she couldn’t say what the dream was. she dozed and dreamed more of the same, and during her thrashings flung her arm across the table and knocked the cup off the nightstand. that woke her up for good. the ceiling fan whirled above her, creating a pleasant breeze. steve, her husband, snored softly beside her, holding a teddy bear with his left arm and cradling their impressively ugly cat, foogly, with his right. monique wasn’t sure how many men slept with a cat, much less a stuffed animal, but she did know that if she took either animal away from him, he’d toss and whimper. the bear friend was one of steve’s childhood things, one she had never understood. as a kid monique had played with tonka trucks and frogs. it was no use trying to sleep. monique kissed her finger and touched 5 steve’s face. He slapped his face as if he thought a mosquito was sucking on his cheek. He sat up, looked around, and said, “i wanna pizza with extra mushrooms for dinner.” then he lay back down and hugged Bear. foogly meowed indignantly and licked her calico butt. monique yawned and rubbed her temple. she had run too far yesterday , then lifted weights for half an hour without drinking enough water. all night she had paid for her workout with a dehydration headache that hadn’t improved with the passage of time. she swallowed an ibuprofen with help from the extra water bottle stashed on the floor next to the bed, stood up, and, in the darkness, almost tripped over a pile of books, one of many stacked throughout the house. in the darkness she blindly pulled a cD from the wooden entertainment center and hoped that she’d picked robert plant instead of steve’s Willie nelson. monique made her way to the kitchen, where she flipped on the coffee pot that she had prepared the night before. after a few seconds of waiting for sounds of percolation that never came, she realized that she hadn’t put in water. “Damn it,” she muttered, filling the pot. she pinned up her long hair with two butterfly clips, turned on the stereo, slipped on headphones, and read Consumer Reports while slowly pedaling her recumbent bicycle. no sunlight peeked through the curtains yet. steve and their son robbie normally woke at 7:00, early enough for steve to get ready for work at his auto parts store and for robbie to finish whatever eighth grade homework he hadn’t completed the night before. she set the resistance on high and peddled hard for half an hour before venturing out to get the paper. the sun was rising and the day felt like it would bringt-shirt weather. a box turtle puttered across the lawn. she picked him up and he promptly peed on her. she opened the gate that led to the back of their home, an old rambling ranch-style house that sat comfortably behind what soon would...