disinfected, as close to sterile as possible outside of a hospital
surgery or laboratory. He broke into a sustained sweat that soaked his
shirt and pasted his hair to his scalp. The muscles in his neck,
shoulders, and arms began to ache from the repetitive scouring
motions.
The mild arthritis in his hands flared up, his knuckles swelled and
reddened from gripping the scrub brushes and rags with almost manic
ferocity, but his response was to grip them tighter still, until the
pain dizzied him and brought tears to his eyes.
Eduardo knew he was striving not merely to sanitize the house but to
cleanse himself of certain terrible ideas that he could not tolerate,
would not explore, absolutely would not. He made himself into a
cleaning machine, an insensate robot, focusing so intently and narrowly
on the menial task at hand that he was purged of all unwanted thoughts,
breathing deeply of the ammonia fumes as if they could disinfect his
mind, seeking to exhaust himself so thoroughly that he would be able to
sleep and, perhaps, even forget.
As he cleaned, he disposed of all used paper towels, rags, brushes, and
sponges in a large plastic bag. When he was finished, he knotted the
top of the bag and deposited it outside in a trash can.
Ordinarily, he would have rinsed and saved sponges and brushes for
reuse, but not this time.
Instead of removing the disposable paper bag from the vacuum sweeper,
he put the entire machine out with the trash. He didn’t want to think
about the origin of the microscopic particles now trapped in its
brushes and stuck to the inside of its plastic suction hose, most of
them so tiny that he could never be sure they were expunged unless he
disassembled the sweeper to scrub every inch and reachable crevice with
bleach, and maybe not even then.
From the refrigerator, he removed all the foods and beverages that
might have been touched by . . . the intruder. Anything in plastic
wrap or aluminum foil had to go, even if it didn’t appear to have been
tampered with: Swiss cheese, cheddar, leftover ham, half a Bermuda
onion. Resealable containers had to be tossed: a one-pound tub of soft
butter with a snap-on plastic lid, jars of dill and sweet pickles,
olives, maraschino cherries, mayonnaise, mustard, and more, bottles
with screw-top caps–salad dressing, soy sauce, ketchup. An open box
of raisins, an open carton of milk. The thought of anything touching
his lips that had first been touched by the intruder made him gag and
shudder. By the time he finished with the refrigerator, it held little
more than unopened cans of soft drinks and bottles of beer.
But after all, he was dealing with contamination. Couldn’t be too
careful. No measure was too extreme.
Not merely bacterial contamination, either. If only it was that
simple. God, if only. Spiritual contamination. A darkness capable of
spreading through the heart, seeping deep into the soul.
Don’t even think about it. Don’t. Don’t.
Too tired to think. Too old to think. Too scared.
From the garage he fetched a blue Styrofoam cooler, into which he
emptied the entire contents of the bin under the automatic ice-maker in
the freezer. He wedged eight bottles of beer into the ice and stuck a
bottle opener in his hip pocket.
Leaving all the lights on, he carried the cooler and the shotgun
upstairs to the back bedroom, where he had been sleeping for the past
three years. He put the beer and the gun beside the bed.
The bedroom door had only a flimsy privacy latch in the knob, which he
engaged by pushing a brass button. All that was needed to break
through from the hallway was one good kick, so he tilted a
straight-backed chair under the knob and jammed it tightly in place.
Don’t think about what might come through the door.
Shut the mind down. Focus on the arthritis, muscle pain, sore neck,
let it blot out thought.
He took a shower, washing himself as assiduously as he had scoured the
soiled portions of the house. He finished only when he had used the
entire supply of hot water.