scene in Psycho. Now, as I considered my next move, with monkeys closing
in all around me, Imagine low, ominous, pulsing tones plucked from a
bass fiddle, threaded through by a single attenuated but muted high note
from a clarinet.
Although I am as capable of self-delusion as the next guy, I decided
against the most cinematic of my options, electing not to swashbuckle
into the night. After all, though charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison
Ford. In the majority of his handful of movies, sooner or later he got
the crap beaten out of him.
I quickly sidled across the floor, away from the windows, but also away
from the entrance to the dining room. Within a few feet, I bumped into
cabinetry.
These cabinets would match those in every house in Dead Town, plain but
sturdy, with birch frames, their shiplap doors painted so often that the
shallow grooves created by the overlapping joints had all but
disappeared under the many coats. The work counters would be laminated
with one color or another of speckled Formica.
Before any of the troop entered the kitchen from the front of the house,
I needed to get off the floor. If I stood with my back to a wall,
pressed into a corner, dead motionless, breathing as noiselessly as a
fish passing water through its gills, I was still certain to give myself
away. The linoleum was so curled and so undermined by tiny pockets of
air that it would crackle and pop from any unintentional shift of
weight, from no more than a heavy thought. The betraying sound was sure
to come precisely when the monkeys were stone still and ready to hear
it.
In spite of darkness so thick that it seemed viscous, and in spite of a
stench of decomposition strong enough to mask any scent of me that they
might otherwise detect, I didn’t think I’d have much chance of escaping
the troop’s notice during a search of the kitchen, even if they
conducted it strictly by touch. Nevertheless, I had to give it a try.
If I climbed onto the countertop, I would be restricted by the narrow
space between the Formica and the upper cabinets. I’d have to lie on my
left side, facing out toward the room. After drawing my knees toward my
chest, curling compactly into the fetal position, so as to occupy as
small a space as possible and to make myself more difficult to locate, I
wouldn’t be in an ideal posture to fight back if I was found by one of
those walking condominiums for lice.
By body contact alone, I followed the cabinetry to the corner, where the
kitchen in every one of these bungalows features a broom closet with a
tall lower compartment and a single shelf at the top. If I was able to
squeeze into that narrow space and close the door after me, at least I
would be off the treacherous linoleum and beyond easy reach if the troop
probed-poked-groped-tapped its way around the room.
At the end of the cabinet row, I discovered the broom closet where I’d
expected it to be but the door was missing. With dismay, I felt one bent
and broken hinge, then the other, and patted air where the door should
have been, as though just the right series of magical gestures would
charm the door into existence again.
Unless the horde of monkeys that had followed Curious George onto the
front porch was still huddled there, devising strategy or discussing the
price of coconuts, I was nearly out of time.
My hidey-hole was suddenly more hole than hidey.
Unfortunately, no alternative presented itself.
I fished the spare magazine of ammunition from its pocket in my holster
and clutched it in my left hand.
Holding the Glock ready in front of me, I eased backward into the broom
closet and wondered if the reek of death that saturated the kitchen might
have its maggoty source in this cramped space. My stomach slithered like
a ball of copulating eels, but nothing squished under my shoes.
The closet was just wide enough to admit me. To fit, I had to scrunch my