The Kitchen in Its Eye
After encountering a mutilated deer whose eye reveals his own kitchen, night clerk Danny Kowalczyk returns home to find his roommate brutally murdered—and begins concealing details that could implicate him. Over four nights, uncanny visions and relentless counting deepen his distrust of the people offering help, until he chooses to murder an ordinary neighbor and mistakes his ensuing calm for vindication. As the deer's unmistakable dragging footsteps climb the stairs behind him, Danny turns toward the unseen presence smiling, leaving the source of the horror unresolved but his responsibility undeniable.
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I caught Milo's coffee before it tipped out of the cup holder and put it back beside mine. He took sugar. I took mine black. By then both had gone cold, but carrying two still gave the drive a destination.
At about two forty in the morning on October twenty-seven, I was heading north on Interstate ninety-five beyond Madison, away from home. My night-clerk shift at the store off exit sixty-one had ended. There was nothing up there I needed.
I had taken the extra stretch before. At twenty-nine, in the autumn of two thousand twenty-five, I still called the job temporary. Sometimes I wanted twenty minutes between leaving it and arriving at the second-floor apartment in Branford where my work shirt went straight into the wash.
Milo Reyes would have food. He was thirty-one and cooked on a line, and feeding himself after work usually produced enough for me. Before my shift, he'd been scraping potatoes into a pan.
Milo had held up the spatula. "Eating here tonight?"
I'd been pulling my shirt over my head. "Unless I get a better offer."
"Bring bread, then."
I had forgotten the bread. The second coffee was supposed to make up for it.
Something lay across the edge of my lane. I eased off the accelerator and started to move left, but a truck was coming up beside me. Its tires hissed against the road. I braked and waited for it to pass.
The obstruction had a pale branch sticking up from it.
I wanted to get around it, take the next ordinary interchange, and head southwest through Guilford to Branford. Food, a shower, Milo complaining about the bread. That was the whole plan.
Then the branch moved.
The deer raised its head out of the shoulder grass. One antler had broken close to the skull, leaving a jagged stub. The other tilted over its face. Its front half seemed intact until it pulled itself farther into my headlights.
The hindquarters had been flattened. One rear leg pointed forward alongside its belly; the other bent outward where there shouldn't have been another bend. A strip of skin connected the hoof to the dark, crushed mass behind it.
Its belly hung open. Loops of gut lay on the pavement, steaming in the headlights. When the animal braced on its front legs, more slipped out and settled against the road.
I had stopped with my foot pressed hard on the brake. The truck went by. I could have moved left then.
The deer turned its head toward my car.
I saw my kitchen in its eye.
Not a reflection of the headlights with something familiar laid over it. I saw the cabinet above our stove, including the bare patch where Milo had pulled off a hook. I saw my chef's knife. A hand closed around its handle. Another hand held something below the edge of what I could see.
The image moved while the animal's head stayed still.
I leaned toward the windshield. I wanted to separate one thing from the other, the little black eye from the kitchen inside it. A man's face filled the eye next. Gray eyebrows, a broad nose bent slightly to one side, a short fold running down from his mouth. I knew I hadn't seen him in our apartment.
The deer opened its mouth.
Under the fan and the engine, I heard something with the spacing of numbers. One came clearly enough. What followed almost made two, then almost three. Each sound dragged at the end. I turned the fan down, which was a stupid thing to do, but I wanted to hear whether it was coming from outside.
The animal hauled itself toward me on its front legs.
A rear hoof slapped the pavement. The other leg scraped behind it. The gut stretched, caught, and came loose from the road with a wet lift.
I said it aloud. "No. Stay there. Fucking stay there."
The deer pulled again. Its chest rose high enough for me to see the torn belly underneath.
I accelerated around it. My right tires struck the grooves at the lane edge before I corrected. In the mirror, the animal disappeared behind the headrest and the dark back window.
I took the next exit, followed the signs across the interchange, and joined the southwest-bound traffic. That much stayed clear. Around two fifty, I passed beneath a sign with Guilford still ahead and reached to turn the fan back up.
After that I retained pieces: a white van, a concrete divider, the paper rim of Milo's coffee brushing my wrist. They fitted the drive home. They weren't the drive home.
At three twenty in the morning, I parked outside our building in Branford.
I carried both coffees upstairs. The front door of the apartment was unlocked, which annoyed me before it frightened me. Milo sometimes went down to his car without locking it, but he always said I was the one who forgot.
I pushed inside with my elbow. The television was on in the living area. Someone on the screen was moving furniture through a bright doorway. The sound had been turned down until the words came apart under the music.
From beyond the television came the smell of wet fur.
I put the coffees on the little table inside the entrance.
"Milo?"
The kitchen lay beyond the living area, off to the right. I could see one of his hands on the floor before I could see him.
He lay on his back against the lower cabinets. Both hands were palm up, fingers loosely curved. His face had turned toward the entrance, and his mouth stood open just enough to show the edge of a tooth.
His throat had been opened across the front and down one side. Skin and muscle had drawn apart in thick, uneven edges. At the back of the cut, I could see pale ridges of his spine.
Blood covered his shirt. It had run into the spaces between the floor tiles and dried there in narrow black lines. Higher up, it marked the cabinet fronts in separate throws. There were spots across the ceiling above him.
I stayed in the kitchen doorway.
Milo had a habit of eating standing up when he was tired. He'd rest one bare foot on top of the other and bend close to his plate, annoyed with himself for still being hungry after cooking all night. His feet were bare now. One heel rested against a cabinet kickboard.
I kept expecting that small adjustment, one foot on the other.
"Milo, come on."
I went down on one knee. My trouser leg touched blood that still transferred to the fabric. I reached toward his shoulder and stopped short of it.
There was too much of his throat missing from where it belonged. I could see that. I kept trying to find somewhere else to put my attention, but his face pointed straight at me.
"Fuck. Fuck, no. You can't—"
His telephone began ringing on the counter.
I stood so fast my knee struck the cabinet handle. The screen lit beside a cutting board. Danny filled the caller display.
My own telephone was in my pocket.
I took it out. Its screen woke under my thumb. I remember holding the two facts together: my telephone in my hand, my name on his. Neither told me who had placed the call or where it had come from. I wanted one of them to do that.
My chef's knife lay beside his telephone.
The wide blade was clean. The handle was clean. I had used that knife enough to know the small dull patch near the tip, and I could see it under the ceiling light. I could also see Milo on the floor beneath it.
I picked up the knife.
That was a thing I did before calling for help. I could say I wanted it away from him, or away from the counter, or away from whatever had happened in that kitchen. I carried it out with me. None of those explanations changed that.
Milo's telephone stopped ringing.
I called emergency services from the living area. I gave the address and my name, Danny Kowalczyk, and said my roommate was on the kitchen floor. When the woman asked whether he was breathing, I told her about his throat.
Saying it made my voice come apart.
I answered her questions. I followed what she told me to do. I left out the knife.
I also said I had come straight home from work.
By the time I was answering people outside, I had admitted seeing a deer. I called it dead. I put my last clear stretch of driving in Guilford. Those were smaller things to say than what I had seen, and each one required the next answer to fit around it.
The apartment became a place I needed permission to enter. People went up the stairs carrying equipment. I'd brought out my overnight bag, my telephone, my keys. The knife stayed among my belongings. It wasn't among the things I named.
I spent the daylight hours in my legally parked car, waking whenever a door closed nearby. Once I sat up ready to tell Milo I was coming, then found the building across the lot and stayed where I was.
By the next night I had missed the start of another shift.
Jess Palladino called just after midnight on October twenty-eight. Her voice came through clearly, with the store door chiming behind it.
"Where are you?"
I sat forward in the driver's seat. "I'm in Branford. I was going to call."
"You were due at ten."
"Something happened at the apartment. Milo's dead."
The store sounds continued. A cooler door closed, then the chime went again.
Jess returned to the telephone. "What happened?"
"I came home and found him. Somebody hurt him. I'm not allowed back in."
"Have you got somewhere to go?"
"I've got the car. I'm coming up. I can sit in the back, or I can work if you need me. I don't know. I shouldn't have missed the shift."
"Don't work. Come inside when you get here."
The drive northeast took a little over twenty minutes. I kept the radio on. Between words, I heard the same almost-numbers under the tires. They kept their own pace when I changed speed.
Jess let me through the counter gate at the store and drew up the stool we used for changing the overhead prices. She wore her coat over her work shirt. Her bag sat ready by the back door.
She reached toward the hand I had put on the counter, then stopped.
"How did you get those scratches?"
Deep red lines crossed the backs of both hands. Some ran under my cuffs. The skin around them had swollen, and one split near a knuckle when I curled my fingers.
I turned my hands over.
"I don't know. At the apartment, probably. There was a lot going on."
"What scratched you?"
"I said probably. I didn't mean I remembered doing it."
She brought a first-aid box from beneath the counter. When the cleaning wipe touched the deepest line, I pulled back and knocked the box lid against the register.
Jess held the wipe out for me to take.
"Did somebody do that?"
"There was a deer. On the way home. I told you that, didn't I? On the telephone?"
"You said somebody hurt Milo."
"Before that. I thought I'd mentioned the deer. It was at the edge of the road, and I went around it. You know I wouldn't get out and go near something like that."
"I didn't ask whether—"
"Right. You know that. I stayed in the car."
A compressor started beneath the drinks cooler. Under its steady hum, something counted badly.
Jess stood with the unused dressings in her hand.
"How did you get those scratches?"
"Are you asking if I'm dangerous?"
"I'm asking what happened to your hands."
"I just told you what I know. It isn't much, but it's what I know. You think I'm leaving out some important fucking thing on purpose?"
Her coat sleeve brushed the counter as she put the dressings down.
"I think you need those covered. I also think you should have called before I worked two extra hours without knowing whether you were coming."
"My roommate's dead."
"I heard you. I can hear that and still be fucking tired, Danny. Sit down."
I sat. She handed me the bandages rather than trying to put them on me.
I remembered Milo telling me once to stop getting adhesive on the kitchen scissors. An ordinary complaint, in his ordinary voice. The counting under the cooler had none of his short, flat delivery.
I went outside to my car while Jess rang up customers. The numbers seemed to move with me. I held my hands beside the steering wheel until the blood that had seeped through a dressing stopped spreading.
A state trooper arrived at the store later that night, after I'd told the police where I was. She introduced herself as Ann Brodeur before asking whether we could talk away from the customers. She was assisting the people handling Milo's death in Branford. Jess stayed behind the counter, and Brodeur and I stood near the closed stockroom door.
Brodeur kept her questions short.
"You drove north after work?"
"For a while. I do that sometimes."
"Home is southwest."
"I know where I live. I mean, yes. I went the wrong way on purpose. To drive."
She let that sit between us.
"Yesterday you said you came straight from work."
"I came from work. I didn't stop anywhere. That was what I meant by straight."
"Where did you turn around?"
I described the interchange without giving it a name. I remembered the signs, the ramp, the return to the highway. Giving those details felt better. They were things she could accept without asking me to describe an eye.
"That was about two fifty. After that it gets patchy. I remember driving. I don't remember every mile. Nobody remembers every mile."
Brodeur waited until I stopped.
"You gave Guilford as the last place you clearly remembered."
"I remembered more afterward."
"Or you've moved the point you stopped remembering."
"Is there an answer you want? Tell me what it is, then."
"I want the answer you can stand behind."
I pressed my thumb into the edge of a bandage.
"The deer was alive. That's another thing. I said dead, but it was alive. It moved. I wanted to get away from it."
"Did you leave the car?"
"No."
"Did you touch it?"
"No. Am I allowed to go now, or is this something else?"
She kept the same volume.
"You can go. Your apartment is still unavailable. Keep your telephone on."
She hadn't told me she believed me. She hadn't accused me, either. I wanted one or the other badly enough that her restraint seemed deliberate.
I drove southwest to Branford. I told myself I needed clothes, although Brodeur had just told me I couldn't go upstairs. By the time I parked outside the building, I had reduced the trip to checking whether anyone was still there.
A man came out of the downstairs entrance in a zipped sweatshirt. He stopped when he saw me and held the door against its spring.
He spoke first. "You're upstairs. Danny, right? Gene Tolland. Down here."
"Yeah."
The porch light showed gray eyebrows and a broad nose bent a little to one side.
I gripped the car door.
He had the face from the deer's eye. Or enough of it. The fold beside his mouth deepened when he spoke, and I found myself waiting for it before he finished.
Gene nodded toward the front hall.
"Couple pieces of your mail went in my box. I left them on the shelf. They keep doing that."
"Thanks."
"And the television's been coming through the ceiling. Last night, anyway. Could you turn—"
He took his hand off the door and caught it again before it closed.
"Sorry. Forget that. I heard about your friend. I'm sorry."
"Roommate."
"Your roommate. Right."
He rubbed the side of his nose.
"I used to fix buses. Retired now. Got me checking the mail too often, that's all. I can leave anything else that turns up."
"That'd help."
I could have told him. I could have said that his face resembled something I had seen on the highway before finding Milo.
Instead I thanked him again.
He had spoken to me without needing me to explain the drive. I wanted to keep that.
I returned northeast, past Guilford and the store. I used the local exits and roads until I found lawful parking off the interstate near the stretch I remembered. I stayed outside the highway fence, on the public side, and walked far enough to see the northbound shoulder through a gap in the brush.
The deer was gone.
Under my telephone light, nearer the fence, flattened grass held three dark patches. Farther out, a streak crossed the shoulder and disappeared into the verge. I took the patches for blood. From where I stood I couldn't make them connect.
The grass beyond bent toward a drainage hollow. After that came brush, a culvert, and a section I couldn't see.
I kept trying to follow it anyway.
Branford lay southwest. The marks led inland for the little distance I could make out. I supplied a turn beyond the culvert, then another stretch through the trees, then all the roads and miles between that place and our kitchen.
I knew I was supplying them. I also kept doing it.
Something had come off that road. Something had reached Milo before I did. I couldn't have told anyone what I meant by something without returning to the animal's eye.
The telephone light showed my bandaged hands against the fence. I lowered it.
On the way back to the store, I practiced explaining the interrupted marks as an interrupted view, rather than an interrupted trail. There could have been more beyond what I could see. That was true. It became the first thing I intended to say.
Jess was still working when I returned. She had taken off her coat. The sleeves of her work shirt were pushed up, and the little kettle beside the microwave was heating.
I stood inside the counter gate.
"I found where it went off the road."
Jess set a soup cup beside the kettle.
"You went back there?"
"Not on the highway. I parked properly. There's a local road. The deer was gone, but there were marks."
"What marks?"
"Blood. Dragging. Going into the woods. I couldn't see all of it, obviously, but it went away from the road. That's what I was trying to tell you."
"You told me you stayed in the car."
"I did. The first time. This is afterward. Two separate things."
She pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose, then reached for a second soup cup.
"Have you eaten?"
I couldn't remember eating anything since Milo's potatoes.
The kettle clicked off. Jess poured water into both cups, stopping well below the line inside mine. I pointed to it with the end of the plastic spoon.
"That's going to be too salty."
"I like it stronger."
"It's powder. More powder isn't more chicken."
She tipped the kettle toward my cup again.
"Say when."
"To the line."
"Then it'll take longer to cool."
She added a little, less than I wanted, and put the kettle down. We waited with our cups on the counter while a customer filled a fountain drink. Jess stirred hers, tasted it, and made a small disappointed movement with her mouth.
I tasted mine. Salt caught at the back of my tongue, exactly as I'd expected. Bits of dried vegetable stayed hard between my teeth. Under the cooler, the count continued.
I kept eating. Jess did, too. For several spoonfuls we stood side by side without discussing Milo or my hands.
Then I put down the spoon.
"You understand what I'm saying about the marks, though."
Jess folded the soup lid back from the rim.
"I understand what you saw."
"So it could have come from there. Not necessarily the deer. I'm not saying an animal climbed the stairs. Whatever I saw there, it could have got to the apartment."
"I don't know what got to your apartment."
"But you know I didn't do it."
She set the cup down.
"I know you came here hurt. I know Milo's dead. I can let you stay at my place when I get off at six."
"That isn't what I asked."
"And you still haven't told me how you got those scratches."
I pulled my hands off the counter. The dressing over my knuckle had stuck to the split skin beneath it.
"For fuck's sake. If you think I might hurt you, why offer me your couch?"
"I asked about your hands. Stop changing it."
"I need somewhere I can sit without answering the same fucking thing over and over."
Jess held the counter edge.
"I've been here since yesterday afternoon. I've called around, I've covered you, and I'm trying to get you somewhere other than that car. You don't get to tell me what I think on top of it."
"When they let me back in, I'm going home."
"You can still come with me."
I pushed the soup away. There was enough left for another meal if I added the water she hadn't.
"No. I'm all right."
She stayed behind the counter when I left.
I slept in pieces again after daylight, in the car in the store's parking area with permission to leave it there.
When I woke again, I checked my telephone. It worked. People had tried to reach me. I answered what I had to answer and left the rest until later.
The permission to return came after dark on October twenty-eight. Access had been released. That was all the notification gave me: I could enter the apartment. It said nothing about making it fit to live in.
I waited before driving southwest. I could have called Jess. I could have asked whether the couch was still available without asking her anything else.
Instead I took my overnight bag and went to Branford.
The car carried me through Guilford and off the interstate by the usual roads. I parked in my usual space. The knife I had taken from the kitchen remained among my belongings. I had never told Jess about it, or Brodeur. I hadn't told anyone about Gene's face.
Upstairs, the shallow landing gave me just enough room to set down the bag and find the right key. I checked my telephone before putting it away.
At twelve twenty in the morning on October twenty-nine, I lifted the overnight bag in my left hand and finished turning the key in my right. The lock released. The door stayed closed.
I pushed the door inward with my right hand still around the key and carried the bag through in my left. My shoes squeaked on the living-area floor. I stopped to listen for Milo before I remembered there would be no answer. The kitchen light worked. I reached around the doorway and switched it on without stepping onto the tiles.
They had taken his body. The dark blood remained in the joints of the floor and on the cabinet fronts. One patch had dried with a raised edge. Where his head had rested, a pale curve interrupted the stain.
I set my bag beside the little table near the entrance. The knife stayed in it.
There were potatoes in a covered bowl on the stove. I lifted the lid, then lowered it immediately. I had already drawn enough air to ask whether Milo wanted me to heat them. Instead I stood holding the lid against the bowl until my fingers hurt.
I went back into the living area and turned on the television. Two people were arguing about a house they wanted to buy. Their voices reached the kitchen without changing anything there. I sat on the couch in my coat.
A knock came while I was working the key off the ring, although I had no reason to remove it. I went to the door and opened it.
Gene stood outside in his zipped sweatshirt. The shallow landing allowed him one step between my doorway and the top of the descending stairs. He kept his hands in his pockets.
"Saw your light under the door. Didn't mean to get you up."
"I just got in."
"Good. Well. Not good. Listen, if you're sorting his work things, don't throw those shoes out. The black leather ones. He showed me when he got them. I could take them back to the restaurant. Somebody there could use them."
For a little stretch of his sentence, I almost asked him to handle it. He could take the shoes. He could speak to somebody who had worked beside Milo without needing me to describe the floor.
"I haven't sorted anything."
"Whenever you do. I'm only saying they're worth keeping."
"I know what shoes cost. I'm not putting his things in the fucking garbage."
Gene took one hand out of his pocket.
"All right. Nobody said you were."
"You came up here to tell me not to."
"I came up to offer to carry a pair of shoes downstairs. Forget it."
He turned carefully at the stairhead. I held the door open while he descended, then pulled it inward far enough to clear my foot and shut it.
The apartment had room for somebody else. I had forgotten how much of it there was.
Brodeur called while I was taking off my coat. I answered. When she asked whether I was back in Branford, I told her I was home. She asked if she could come by. I agreed before I thought about where we would stand.
I left the kitchen light on. From the couch I could see the bottom cabinets, and turning it off would have left me checking the same place in darkness. By the time Brodeur knocked, I had changed the television channel several times without finding anything I could follow.
She stood where Gene had stood, but she waited for me to move aside. I let her into the living area and closed the door. Her shoes made a small gritty sound on the floor.
Brodeur indicated the television.
"Would you turn that down?"
I muted it. Under the sound of her coat shifting, the count continued. She remained standing near the entrance.
"Where did you turn around?"
"I told you about the ramp. I don't know the number. I've been over it in my head, and I can see the ramp, but I can't give you a number I didn't notice."
"Tell me what you remember."
I described the signs and the turn. I described joining the traffic headed southwest. She let me finish, then waited until I had stopped adding things.
"And after that?"
"The sign before Guilford. Like I said."
"You first put the last clear memory in Guilford."
"I was trying to give you a place you could recognize. I wasn't measuring where my memory ended with a fucking ruler."
She rested her hands loosely in front of her.
"Did you leave the car?"
"What would I have gone out there for?"
"Did you leave the car?"
I pressed my hands together. The dressings Jess had given me had loosened at the edges, and one rubbed against the open line beneath it.
"If you've decided I did something to Milo, just say that. I don't need you coming into my house and pretending this is about a ramp."
"I asked whether you left the car."
She had kept the same voice. No satisfaction, no rise in volume. I wanted her to do something I could answer.
Then I saw her eye. The room stayed in place around her. Her coat sleeve hung beside the door handle. The little red light on the television remained steady. But within her right eye, behind the upper lid, I saw the wet brown crescent and black center I had leaned toward on the highway.
I moved my head to separate it from the reflection of the kitchen light. It stayed.
Brodeur blinked. When her eye opened, the deer's eye filled it again. Beneath the count, a voice identified her as something wearing a person.
I stopped pressing my hands together. That answered the patience. That answered the question she could repeat without getting tired of it. I had been waiting for her to admit what she wanted, and she had been waiting for me to keep talking.
Brodeur shifted her weight.
"Danny?"
"No."
"No, you didn't leave the car?"
"I'm done talking tonight."
She let a deliberate pause pass.
"You can call me when you're ready to continue. Keep your telephone on."
I opened the door for her. She stepped onto the landing, turned toward the stairs, and went down at an ordinary pace. I watched until her head passed below the stairwell wall. Her voice had never changed. I held on to that as evidence of how well she had done it.
I put the television sound back on.
Jess called later. I told her I was inside, that I had somewhere to sit, that she could stop worrying about the car. When she asked whether I was alone, I said somebody was staying with me. The answer came out quickly. I wanted the next question to be about something else.
She arrived before the end of her shift, carrying a paper bag with a roll and a container of soup. I let her into the living area. She kept her coat on and her car keys looped over one finger. Jess put the bag on the table beside mine.
"Who was here?"
"Brodeur came. Gene was up for a minute. People know where I am."
"You said somebody was staying."
"I said I wasn't on my own. There's a difference between being alone in a room and being completely on your own. Gene lives right downstairs."
She glanced toward the kitchen. The glance stopped her hand halfway into her coat pocket.
"You're sleeping here with that still on the floor?"
"They let me in."
"That isn't what I asked. Who was going to stay with you?"
I stood between her and the short passage to the bathroom. My sleeves had slipped back, exposing the swollen lines above my wrists.
"You came all this way to catch me saying something wrong?"
"I got somebody to cover an hour. I still have to go back. I came to see whether you had somewhere you could actually sleep."
"I have a bed."
"And you told me somebody was staying. Who?"
"Nobody, all right? Nobody. You can have that. I said it so we could get past the same fucking conversation."
Jess pulled her keys free of her finger.
"You don't get us past it by telling me shit that isn't true."
"So I'm a liar now."
"You just told me you lied. What am I supposed to do with that?"
I wanted her to put the keys down. She had brought food. She could stay long enough for me to eat it without making the meal depend on an answer.
I raised my face toward hers. The same eye sat within her left eye. Her lashes moved over it. The corner nearest her nose had the small red mark I had seen before, but inside that familiar edge waited the wet black oval. I could see a narrow strip of brown around it. The eye held steady while Jess rubbed at the other side of her face.
I backed into the passage. Jess lowered her hand.
"What?"
"You need to leave."
"Danny, I can't keep coming over here and then going back to cover you. If you want me to help, tell me what you need. An actual thing I can do."
"Leave."
She stayed beside the table. I could hear her breathing through her nose. The soup container clicked when she adjusted the bag around it.
"The food's here. I'm going back to work. Call me if you want to talk, but don't tell me somebody's with you when there isn't."
"You don't know who's here."
She waited for me to explain that. I let her wait. Then she went to the door and let herself out. I stayed in the passage until I heard her steps reach the bottom.
The eye had come to both of them while they were asking for an answer. I had seen enough.
I went into the bathroom and peeled away the loose dressings. A little dried blood came with the one over my knuckle. The scratch beneath it gaped when I spread my fingers. In the shower, water collected in the cuts and ran pink along the sides of my hands. I held them under the spray until the sting made me pull them against my chest.
The counting came through the falling water. One sound separated clearly from the rest, then another dragged beyond its proper length. I turned my head. It seemed to come from the tiled wall, then from the showerhead above me. I put both palms over my ears. Water struck the backs of my hands. The count stayed.
"I heard you. All right? I fucking heard you."
I waited with my mouth open. There was no answer I could use.
I shut off the shower and climbed out. The bath mat stuck to my wet heel. I dried myself, pulled on clean clothes, and left the bathroom. I drew the door shut behind me and returned to the couch with the towel still around my shoulders.
Jess's food remained beside the entrance. I ate part of the roll without going near the kitchen.
Later, from beyond the closed bathroom door, I heard Milo's voice.
"You saw it too."
Low, dry, with the small pause before the last word. Nothing dragged. Nothing tried to become a number.
I put the roll down.
"Milo?"
The television continued behind me. I walked into the short passage and stopped outside the bathroom. Beneath the door, a strip of light showed the edge of my bare foot.
"I saw it."
Water ran inside. I could open the door. I could leave him there. For several seconds I kept my hand close to the knob without touching it.
He had asked for no route, no explanation of my hands. He had said I saw it too.
I turned the knob and pushed. The shower ran against the tiles. Its curtain hung half open. Water darkened the bath mat beneath my earlier footprints. I checked the space behind the door, then the empty tub. Nobody stood anywhere in the bathroom.
"You don't have to come out."
The water kept running. I stayed in the doorway long enough for the towel to slip from one shoulder.
I could have called Jess and told her exactly what I had heard and exactly what I had found. I took my telephone out. Her name was there, close enough to touch. I put it away. I wanted to hear Milo again without somebody telling me what the empty bathroom had to mean.
By daylight I lay on top of the bedcovers in my clothes. I slept at home for the first time since finding him. When I woke, a fold in the pillowcase had pressed a hard line into my cheek, and the room had gone dark. I stayed in bed while a telephone call rang through. Later I got up and drank water from the bathroom tap.
After midnight, on October thirty, I brought the rest of the roll to the couch. Crumbs dropped onto my trousers.
"Get a plate."
The words had come from my mouth. I heard them in the room before I had decided to say them, low and flat, with Milo's little break between the words. I touched my lips with two fingers. We had lived together long enough. People picked things up. I had heard him say things in that voice every night, and now I knew how to say them.
The count continued beneath the television. Milo's spacing had nothing in common with it. Still, the words from the bathroom and the sounds under everything else belonged on the same side. Neither had asked me to improve my account.
I turned up the television. Then I opened my overnight bag and took out the chef's knife. The dull patch remained near the tip. I ran my thumb along the handle, keeping it clear of the blade, and set the knife on the little table beside the entrance. It was mine. I had brought it home.
Jess called again. The telephone vibrated against the table beside the knife. I watched her name until the call ended. A message from Brodeur arrived later. I left it unopened. The telephone stayed on. They could reach me. I had nothing to give them.
I sat with my hands resting apart on my knees. The scratches had stiffened. Every time I curled my fingers, the skin pulled open a little more.
The knock came while a man on television was laughing. I stood and crossed the living area. When I opened the door inward, Gene stood on the shallow landing in slippers, holding several pieces of mail against his sweatshirt. He lifted them slightly.
"Yours again. And you've got to turn that television down. I can hear whole conversations through the ceiling."
The counting stopped. Gene waited with the mail extended. In the space it left, I heard one word. Now.
My hands remained at my sides. I could feel the sore skin along the backs of them. Gene shifted one slipper away from the edge of the top stair.
"Danny. The television."
I could have taken the mail. The sound had stopped, and I could have let that be all that happened.
I hit him. His lip split against his teeth. Blood appeared across the lower part of his mouth before he had lifted his free hand. He made a short, startled effort to speak. I hit him again and drove him sideways into the frame. The wood gave a hard knock against his shoulder. He caught at it with the hand that still held the mail, crumpling the envelopes. One slipped free and fell between us.
Gene raised his other arm across his face.
"Wait. What are you—"
I struck his arm. Pain spread through my own hand, and the scratch over my knuckle opened. I could see his face between his elbow and shoulder. Gray eyebrows. The bent nose. Blood spilling over the fold beside his mouth.
Gene. I knew the face now.
He reached for my shirt and caught it. The pull brought him partly into the doorway. His slippers scraped on the landing, one sole squealing as he tried to plant it.
"Stop. Danny, stop."
I stood close enough to feel the words against my cheek. He had my shirt in his fist. He could have let go and I could have stepped back. For a stretch neither of us moved. Blood from his lip dropped onto the fabric between his fingers.
Then I pulled against him and reached for the table. The knife handle met my palm. He saw it. His expression changed before his grip did. His mouth opened around the broken lip. He let go of my shirt and caught my arm with both hands. The remaining mail fell from his hand and struck the sill.
"Put that down."
His voice remained gravelly and practical. The words were thickened by blood, but they were his. I could put it down. The table stood beside my hip. I could lay it there and let him leave.
Instead I drove forward. The knife struck him through the sweatshirt. The cloth tore, and blood spread beneath my hand. He pulled at my arm with enough strength to turn my shoulder. The knife moved away from him. I held it out of his reach while he tried to get a foot under himself. His slippers made small scraping sounds. He kept trying to speak, working his damaged mouth around the blood.
I heard my name once, clearly. I answered him.
"You don't get to come in here."
Gene shook his head. He pushed against me, and my back struck the edge of the open door. For that instant he had space. His hand opened toward the table. His other hand stayed on my sleeve, trying to hold the knife away.
I brought it back against him. Blood ran over the torn sweatshirt. A pale, uneven edge showed through the opening in the cloth. Gene bent toward me, and the sound he made broke before it became a word. I kept hold of him.
"Get the fuck out."
He tried to do it. He got one foot onto the landing and dragged the other after it. His heel came out of one slipper. I followed him through the doorway. For a moment we stood outside together, pressed close on the shallow landing.
Gene caught the frame again and turned toward the apartment, trying to pull himself back onto the level floor. I shifted beside him and turned inward, with the stairs behind me. I knew what he was doing. His bare heel slid on a fallen envelope. He needed somewhere to put his weight. He turned his bloody face toward mine.
"Please. Let—"
The rest failed in his mouth.
I still had the knife. His hand rested on my wrist now rather than gripping it. I could feel each finger separately. I continued.
His knees gave. He dragged at my sleeve as he went down, tearing the seam near my elbow. I held him long enough to stay on my feet, then let his weight go. He fell forward across the threshold. His shoulder landed inside the living area, his cheek turned against the floor. His legs remained on the landing. One slipper lay beside his foot.
I stood over him with the knife in my hand.
Gene drew a breath that lifted his back. Blood spread from beneath him and reached the edge of the nearest envelope. His fingers moved against the floor, pressing without raising him. I waited. He tried to breathe again. The effort shook his shoulder. A wet sound came from his open mouth, and a thread of blood stretched from his lip to the floor.
I could still call. My telephone lay inside on the table. I knew what to tell the person who answered.
Gene's fingers relaxed. I waited through the next space where a breath should have come. Then another. His back stayed still. His mouth hung open against the floor, and the blood kept spreading without another movement from him.
Gene was dead.
I stepped around his feet and faced into the apartment. His body lay across the doorway between me and the television. Blood had soaked through the fallen mail. One envelope clung to his trouser cuff.
The effort left my arms. I lowered the knife beside my leg. My hands hurt. The scratches had opened, and blood from both of us had dried along my wrists. My shirt pulled at the torn sleeve when I moved.
Everything else settled.
I had expected to need another answer. I had expected the old rush of things I ought to say, the distinctions that would make somebody understand. There was nothing to explain.
The calm proved it. I had done what I needed to do.
I left the telephone where it was.
Behind me, something struck a lower stair with a flat slap. A drag followed it.
I stood on the landing facing the apartment. Gene lay still across the entrance. The knife remained in my hand. Another slap came, higher this time, followed by the scrape and weight of something pulled over the edge of a tread. I knew the spacing. One ruined hind leg striking, the other dragging after it. It came up the stairs behind me.
I turned around smiling.