Likes by Sarah Bynum (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

what it’s called?—and uses the empty case to catch the stuff he’s scooping from a jewelry box divided into a crazy-making number of small compartments. Good stuff? Bad stuff? He’ll sort it out later. Digging through the dresser drawers yields nothing. Where do they keep the watches? He circles the room pointlessly, and the floor vibrates slightly beneath him as the front door slams shut. “Doug?” a woman’s voice calls from below. “You’re still home?” He drops the sham.

Her husband doesn’t answer. She goes to the bottom of the stairs and calls his name again. Is he on the phone? It could be work-related, in which case she shouldn’t keep hollering in the background. She hears more footsteps and a man’s voice from the bedroom: “It’s just us. Just the cleaning crew.”

Cleaning crew? Where did that come from? More like a break-in crew. Break-in crew? Ha! Breakin’ crew! He cracks himself up sometimes, he really does. His whole body is shaking. Breakin’ 2, Electric Boogaloo. Breakin’ 2, Electric Boogaloo. He’s going to have that shit bouncing around in his head all day.

“Oh! Hi!” She is briefly confused. “Did my husband let you in?” He must have made it to work on time. “Please let me know if you need anything, okay?” she calls up the stairs. “Or if you want something to drink?” There’s still soda left in the refrigerator from when her in-laws visited. How funny to say cleaning crew—but then again who would want to call themselves exterminators? The phone starts ringing in the kitchen: either her mother or the dentist’s office or the Music Center looking for a donation. Nobody else calls on the landline anymore.

From below, a robotic murmur: Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. Pause. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. Fuck! Forget the master. Forget the pillow sham. Grab the laptops and go. The office is down the hall from the bedroom. Keep it simple. In and out of the office, down the stairs, through the front door, and you’re gone.

“Hello?” She picks up the handset, dropping her keys and gym bag on the counter, and notices for the first time that Misha isn’t in his crate. Did Doug put him in the backyard? She’s told him how many times that the dog’s peeing on her tomato plants—the only things worth saving out there—and can’t be left unsupervised. The woman on the other end of the line is saying that her name is Gloria. She’s asking, “Is this Maggie Voder, at 541 North Arden Boulevard?”

There’s Spawn, Spider-Man, Neo and Morpheus, the Crow. A really nice selection, but they’ve been taken out of their boxes, which is retarded, and arranged on a shelf above the computer and the desk. At least the comic books are stored properly: long white cardboard boxes line the walls, and he knows that if he lifts a lid he will find the books inside bagged and boarded, organized by artist or series or year. He would like to sit on the floor for a while and see what’s in there, fingering through the issues, granting or withholding his approval, losing track of time. How often has he opened one of his own boxes, just to check on some small detail, the first appearance of a minor character, only to look up a moment later and discover that the day has disappeared?

“Yes, this is Maggie,” she says into the phone. She has it tucked under her ear and is wandering back to the foot of the stairs so that she can adjust the thermostat. She’s still sticky from the gym and wants to turn on the air. Gloria explains that she is calling from Greenleaf. That she’s very sorry for the inconvenience but she’s just spoken to the technician who’s got stuck in traffic on the 101 and should be arriving at 541 North Arden Boulevard no later than—“He’s already here,” she tells Gloria, just as she sees him for the first time, coming down the staircase. She smiles at him. He’s African American! Good for Greenleaf.

The front door now seems impossibly far away: There’s a woman standing at the bottom of the staircase and beaming up at him. For a moment, he can’t figure out who she is. She’s short, squat, sweaty, brownish, her ponytailed hair frizzing around her face. The nanny? So where’s the woman who called up to him—the lady with the voice? As he inches farther down the stairs, he catches himself saying again, idiotically, “Just the cleaning crew,” like it’s the magic password that will get him safely out the door.

Who does he remind her of? Oh right—that kid from the Disney Channel who’s now competing on Dancing with the Stars. The eyes wide set, the face a little too broad, the cheeks chubby, the smile ingratiating. That’ll be something to tell Violet when she gets home from school. She always likes it when her mother pays attention to the Disney Channel universe. You’ll never guess, she’ll say, who he looked exactly like …

Emmett pauses in front of a house that reminds him, finally, of hers. Something about the sloping lawn and the red front door, or maybe it’s just the tinging of the wind chimes and the way the midmorning light makes the house look picture-book flat. He strides up the driveway. He smooths his hair. Without hesitating, he walks across the grass and goes straight to the windows farthest on the right—where the sewing room would be—but instead of the little lace-covered table and the pedestaled fern he sees only a mattress and box spring, a set of barbells, a bicycle, and an enormous black dog, which has risen up on its hind legs, placed its front paws on the windowsill, and is barking at him miserably.

All in the same moment she hears, from behind the guest room door, Misha barking (Why did Doug put him in there?), and notices, on the man above her on the stairs, the absence of a Greenleaf uniform