Break-In

            by Maggie Bond

 

“That pass expired yesterday,”

            “Really? Because I-”

            “Yeah.”

            Art scrounged up bus fare, and was thrown into a seat as the bus jerked forward. His spindly legs sprawled where they’d been flung, his fingers curled tightly under his seat. He arranged his limbs carefully, as if wary they might disconnect from his body.

            Art usually loved his rides home from work. He liked to watch people, looking for couples, or dog walkers, and breathe onto the cold window and try to spell words backward, like “OJNAB”. Today Art merely composed himself, and inhaling a slow breath in, a dejected puff out, he gazed at the bleak, autumn sky.

            “Bleak,” he whispered, tasting the word, letting himself revel in self-pity.

            “Is it a bad idea to call Wendy?” he asked himself, remembering their last conversation. “Definitely…” he answered himself. He jiggled his knee, glanced out the window, and dialed his phone anyway.

            “Hey, Wendy?”

            “What, Art?”

            “Can you talk right now?”

            “No, not really.”

            “Okay. It’s just I could really use some sympathy. I got—well, I lost my job. Ha…”

            “You got fired from the train station?! You couldn’t even keep a job as batboy for the White-Collars.”  

            “Don’t start with that, please.”

            “You’re right. Why should I bother? I broke up with you yesterday. Gotta go.”

             Wendy slammed the phone down before Art could bring it away from his ear. He held the phone in his lap a while, watching the seconds of the call still ticking away.

            “That really wasn’t a good idea at all,” Art said.

            Art’s large forehead and small, delicate chin gave one the impression he could easily topple over. As familiar sights whirred past, Art’s head flopped to rest more comfortably on his shoulder, and his eyes glazed over. His whole body sunk lower and lower in his molded plastic seat, his thoughts a mess of doubt and perpetual doom. Through his haze intruded a gum smack, a “…and I was like WTF?”, a shriek. His heart sank.

            “Why?” he asked a billboard. The bottle of vodka shrugged, and they sighed to one another.

            Flicking a piece of hair off her lip gloss, her eyes over her friends shoulder, the girl said “Anyway, and now I’m like supposed to be writing this tragedy, and I’m like, I don’t even know.”

            “OMGthatsucks.”

            “I mean, yeah. Anyway, and like, what do I even write a tragedy about?”

            “Well, what is a tragedy? Like, (giggle) death?”

            “Ugh, how about my life?” popped out of Art’s mouth. The girls smacked their gum, unamused, and blinked haughtily at him. Art had a level of subservience about him that was apparent to the smallest child, who might kick him in the shins because he knew he could get away with it.

            “Ha…” he glanced about awkwardly. “My stop.” He darted off the bus and down his street.

            Art’s street smelled of wet leaves and rain rinsed sidewalks. A light wind chilled the tops of his ears and his egg cozy of a head. He hurried down the block to his warm little haven, his yellow door welcoming him back. Reaching into his pocket to pull out the key, he found only a little piece of chocolate, warm and mushy in his palm.           

            Rain began to fall lightly.

            “Crap,” he said aloud.  

            He knew Wendy still had a key. “She never wants to see me again,” Art thought, lifting his right hand, “She’s my only hope,” then lifted the left. Weighing his hands against each other for a few minutes, and deciding the left one was heavier, he gave Wendy a ring.

            “Hi Wendy…it’s me. I guess you didn’t pick up because you still have a job. Ha ha…Listen, I’m just calling because-” Beeep. “Hello? Hello?...oh.” Art put down the phone. He was going to have to break in.

 

            Art rubbed his hands together and walked around his little house slowly. He groaned with the effort of trying to force locked windows and bolted doors. Downtrodden, but not without hope, he plopped, slightly damper, onto his back doorstep.  Light sheets of rain fluttered bushes and vines in his backyard. Untamed, monstrous hedges swayed with the wind and sprayed flecks of water this way and that, quite often in Art’s direction.

            “Settle down,” he said, but his yard continued in its previously unruly manner.

 

            Trying to pick his back lock with his old bus pass, and then a stick, Art tried to hold back the desperation filling his lungs. He jabbed the stick into the keyhole. It just wasn’t going to fit.

            Art and Wendy had never been quite the right size for each other. Wendy was not a large woman, but Art was a very small man. Remembering the few and much looked upon pictures of the two of them together, Art often wondered if her shoulders really were that much bigger then his. Possibly her business suits had shoulder pads. He had loved her crisp work outfits; she always looked so driven and confident. She had often looked lovingly at his slightly wrinkled uniform; he was so carefree back then, with so much time to make up stories about the people he saw coming and going to work in the city, or paint the trains for his train set.

            Rain rushed through the trees with ever more force, while Art lay on his stomach and reached his arm experimentally into the cat door. Swinging it this way and that, he searched for the lock.

           

            Art had kissed girls before Wendy, plenty of girls, but he wasn’t sure if he’d ever been kissed back. That first kiss with her had left Art breathlessly happy, and only slightly overeager.

“Woah, cowboy.” Wendy pulled back.

“Oh. Ha ha,” he blushed, “I- should- you don’t want to leave, do you?”

“Nooooo, that was hot stuff,” she replied, and gave him a smack on the lips. “Who knew you could kiss like that?” 

Wendy and he had taken it slow, but finally, one night, she had popped his cherry.

“Soooo—are you, like, resting?” she asked.

“No—I’m done.”

“…oh.” She rolled over. He caught his breath. Then silence.

Art couldn’t quite reach the lock. He stretched, his fingers just barely touching it, and heard his cat meow questioningly at his squirming limb.

“Pongo!!” he peeked through the little door.

“Mreow?” she called, a little louder, and turned to him with wide eyes.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here!”

“Meooow.” Pongo walked over to Art, and rubbed her body across his face flirtatiously.

“Ppppppp,” Art said, trying to keep her hair out of his mouth, “Pongo, this is your chance to do a noble deed for your master.”

“Meow.” Pongo demanded. Art sighed and took his head out of the door, replacing it with his arm. 

“Purrrrrrrrrr.”

Art and Wendy had gotten the cat together, but Pongo had quickly established herself as a daddy’s girl. She would hiss at Wendy as she entered the room Pongo and Art were napping in. Pongo made no attempt to hide her opinion that Wendy was the other woman. Eventually Art and Wendy didn’t spend much time in the same room anyway. Wendy keeping longer and longer hours at the office and Art retreating to his attic and his train set.

            “Okay, Pongo,” Art said, stroking his cat through her little door and staring at the stormy sky, “You’re going to jump onto the kitchen table, grab the keys between your teeth, and drop them in my arm’s general vicinity!”

            Pongo said nothing.

            “It’s a mission!!” Art stopped petting Pongo.

            “Pongo?” Art stuck his head back through the door, only to see her tail waving casually as she sauntered off toward the living room.

            There was a way into Art’s house that he had not previously been desperate enough to even think about. Below Art’s romantic little cottage there lay a dark, evil place called “under the house”. He had never actually been brave enough to follow contractors and plumbers into its murky depths, but he heard it was a pitch dark place, filled with rats and spiders and possibly wild mushrooms.

            “Am I a chicken?”

            Wendy had often called him chicken.

            Art knew in the end Wendy and he weren’t a good couple. He just didn’t know who to call when he made a new tunnel, or got locked out of his house. He sighed. She’d become what people expected of a business woman, lost her imagination but gained a couple figures on her paycheck. Spite never did much to cure loss, however, and Art had found himself watching for her at the train station all morning. 

            “No- no.” Just as Art had willed himself no to think about what might be in the dark of “under the house” he stopped himself from delving into the memory of his lost job. He focused on his train set, the lights and towns, as he neared the entrance to the dank darkness he must face.

            He couldn’t do it, he was such a chicken.

            “I’m- I’m not chicken!” Art stood up and walked through the storm to his front door.

            “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrra!” he growled, and blinked a bit.

Art’s heart felt full, powerful, and active. He wasn’t just going to sit around and let the world wash over him as though he were a little tiny boat against a tidal wave. Ripping off his scarf with vaguely manly abandon, he wrapped it tightly around his hand and swung it into the glass panel of his door. His fist bounced off, throbbing.

            “Raaaaaaaaawr!!” Art yelled again, and punched through his window. Catching his breath, he quietly let himself in. Art’s train set waited for him in the attic, but Art wouldn’t be visiting it for a long time.