The Move to Darna (Cont.)

Darna upstairs, wakes to a fumbling of keys, hears the door open and shut and someone stumble through the dark. Quietly, on reflex, she gathers her stuff, sticks everything back in her pack, crawls to the window and checks to see if she can get down to the street. Careless - "Fuck, fuck!" - she can't believe she didn't look before, finds in the dark only the flat of the house, no trees near enough or even a drainpipe from which to shinny and run. She sniffs the air, checks for scents, somehow sure if Berit's found her she'll recognize his smell and know, despite the height, she has to jump.

Alarmed, she imagines Berit calling up to her in that basso boombox voice of his - "Come out, come out wherever you are!" - knows he would not have a key, would have to smash a window to get in, and who's downstairs then? She turns, listens for more sounds, squints toward the hall. How safe the house had felt before, she thinks, and what a joke, the breach between reality and first impressions. Soon after her mother began sleeping with Jack Barell, bringing him in from Feelhur's Pub like a big dog lost, Darna was amused by Jack's drollery, the soothing peal of his soft southern accent, how gently he placed his large hips in the motel's rickety old furniture. The illusion created was that of a well mannered, good old boy, though within the week things changed, Jack no longer asking but ordering Darna about, sending her off for cigarettes, teaching then telling her to fix him a drink. A few days before leaving with her mother, Jack came in to pee while Darna was in the shower. "Shit, Darn, save me some of that hot water," he said, then groaned, "Aw hell. Aw hell," as if the inconvenience was his and the sacrifice of joining her a noble gesture.

Berit, too, was the same song sung. When they met, Darna was working a few hours a night at Marchino's Restaurant, washing vegetables, pealing and dicing in the rear of the kitchen. She sat by the screen door, comfortable in the slight breeze as Berit came around back, more clever than the others who showed up when the restaurant was closing and Marco the manager had time to run them off. Berit appeared during the dinner rush, his face an inch from the screen, gabbing at Darna as she concentrated on the vegetables. "I know you," he said that first night, and whether or not he did, the line came easy. "You were in the park right? The other day. Smoking. You were, I mean. You looked good."

She ignored him mostly, did not answer or even turn her head. He could see her smile though at his jokes, and when he asked for a carrot, and later for a tomato, and whatever chicken and meat came back on a plate, she gave it to him. He wore a brown corduroy coat, the material smoothed with age, the fit tight across his shoulders which were broad, his jaw outlined by whiskers. He had fat, bear paw hands which touched her gently on the flat of her back as they walked together. Berit talked her out of the shelters, showed her the buildings he knew and went to to crash, his hands eventually exploring her firm and grasping, his fingers strong, his arms as he lifted her through windows she learned to open, squeezing into places she'd better sense than to be.

Sam stands in the dark, the hollow of the front room without its furniture somehow indecent. Cleo is in his head again, complaining about his failure to sell the place, her disappointment covering old ground. "What am I to do with you?" she asked, and when he tried to comfort her, she pushed him away, called him, "Painter boy," flipped a hand toward the new Sony plasma tv her mom sent over, all 50 inches with a 3000:1 contrast ratio, 29.8-80 KHz, 1366x768 native resolution, and "Dishnet, Sam. You see that? What is it you don't get?"

He flicks the overhead light on then off, not wanting to attract attention. Heel to toe, he walks with arms out in front of him toward the kitchen. The effort makes him feel foolish, and stopping, he turns on the small light above the stove, tells himself if the cops come and ask why he's here, he'll show his Shakumot ID, say he couldn't sleep and wanted to go over a few ideas for selling the place and hope they believe him.

The stove's light shines into the kitchen, yellow through the dark, the effect similar to shades found in an Edward Hopper painting. Sam unclips his cell phone, sets it beside the refrigerator, glances at the rear door, sees the shadows on the wood, the way the light from the stove effects each pane of glass, the subtle variance, the kitchen in different stages of gossamer glow. Cleo wouldn't notice this, he thinks. Dancing on her toes, she has no interest in small details, no patience for capturing moments which might otherwise go unnoticed. Last month, as Sam struggled with a canvas, the shapes refusing to come together the way he imagined in his head, to a point he worried what he first saw was never really there at all, Cleo came to the basement studio at the School of Art, and standing beside him, laughed. "What is it?"

"What?"

"You. This!"

He stared back at the painting, and then at Cleo, her blond hair bobbed above her eyes, her face round and neck square. The image at the top of his piece had a similar circle placed on the edge of a cube, the other shapes arranged beneath in a way which may or may not have been the body of a woman. "I don't get it," Cleo poked at Sam's arm, refusing to take his frustration seriously. "I mean it's an abstract. You can't get it wrong. Come on, come on." She tugged at him, determined to talk of different things, to make sure he wasn't late for Shakumot and got a good house this time to sell.

The light drifts across the tips of his sneakers. He looks from the door over to his left, away from the refrigerator and his cell phone, across the counter toward the sink. For a second he's still distracted by Cleo and what he sees doesn't register, the unexpectedness of what's there. At any other time the sight would be quite normal, but not now, not in an otherwise empty house where nothing of the sort should have been there. Confused, he takes a step closer, stops, reaches out, then draws back his hand, inches forward again and picks up the can of corn.

Darna moves silently from the window, considers slipping into another room, checking the opposite side of the house for a better way to get out. The idea makes sense, and still she hesitates, nervous and tired and why couldn't everyone just leave her alone for one God damn night? She takes two steps toward the hall then changes her mind. If the owners or realtors have hired a guard, he'll leave soon, she tells herself, hopeful if not completely convinced. She slides closer to the door, her head in the hall, the light below producing shadows. She waits, then hears below a series of sounds, a discordant sequence of notes meant to replicate music, followed by a tinny sort of clang. The notes repeat themselves, again and again, without interruption.

Sam is sure there must be a logical explanation, and yet he can't think of one. He's about to switch on the overhead light when his cell phone rings