The Break-In

A vengeful young woman attempts a prank on a young man in a quiet town, and it quickly goes awry.

1

            As per his weekly routine, the kid rolled out of bed at ten o’clock. His mind was still half-full of sleep, absently rolling thoughts around like so many lumps of cotton�"a load of unseen laundry caught in a never-ending spin cycle; he pictured them grey, like the light seeping from his one bedroom window through the plain blue curtains he had bought so many months before.

            �"Why am I still a kid? I’m twenty-two. When does it stop�"when I have a kid?�"I’m not having a kid anytime soon. At thirty, maybe. Such a popular topic of conversation, kids and whether or not I am one. Wait, no, it was just how long I talked about that with my mother last night. She was a grown-up early in life. Married by twenty. Stella Adler has that quote I brought up, of modern generations gaining ten years of life, but never at the end. She was twenty-eight, and people still called her “kid.” My high school geometry teacher, in Business Math class, told us as much.

            He trailed these thoughts behind him as he lumbered into the bathroom. They were so many lumps of mental refuse to him as he flicked the light switch and noticed a bulb was out; he needed to take out the trash, too, which was overflowing. He gave the shower handle a yank: outward and all the way to the right. Thirty seconds more, and his feet were up and over the plastic edge and that lovely scalding, burning massage was on his skin and the steam had already overtaken half the mirror, and the more practical thoughts started to arrive, as per usual. Then he heard something.

            �"Wait, what was that?

             He tried to look over the slanted top of the opaque shower curtain. It sounded like the old wooden door on the other end of the apartment had opened. Senses immediately jumped�"leapt!�"to full-alert. His heart made its presence known, and fiercely. He always showered with the bathroom door open, so the steam had someplace to go, which was especially good in the winter because it warmed the whole length of the place and lessened the stark loneliness of being the sole occupant of three rooms.

            �"Did I forget to lock the door before I fell asleep last night?

            Now it seemed like everything was much too open. Two open doors was one too many. Only two people in the world were allowed to even so much as see him like this: all soft, pink-hued skin, without even enough hairs to cover his vulnerability.

            �"Is it my girlfriend? Is it just a friend and how heinously awkward would that be�"or should I go for something�"protect myself? Would a plunger work? Should I make a dash for the hammer in my desk drawer?

            These new thoughts flipped one after another into the fraught focus of his mind’s eye, while his ears picked up a series of creaks on the kitchen floor, a heavy-sounding thump, the clink of a limb brushing up against his counter, so heavily laden with plates, forks, spoons, cups, bowls�"knives!�"both clean and dirty. For a fraction of a second, he felt the electric pulse of sexual arousal�"these were unthreatening noises, and he knew of no one who wanted to do him harm, and no person would walk into an apartment without knocking, hear the drum of shower-water on shower-curtain, and not leave, unless that person wanted something�"but the all-powerful fear of the unknown deadened his limbs and turned him from strong young man to quavering jelly.

            �"It’s not just my imagination�"I know that now�"so who is going to come around that corner and what am I going to do? What can I do? What am I going to do? What am I willing to do? Can I defend myself? Some acts are much easier to picture clothed. Who can defend themself naked, all weaknesses�"not strength, not anything but softness�"hanging in plain view.             He put a hand to the roundness of his belly and called out, “Hello?”

2

            The day was rainy.

            �"Just as good, the young woman thought as she crossed the busy street. It suits the mood of the occasion.

            Glancing casually up at the budding branches of a gigantic weeping willow, which dominated the small front lawn, her hand was soon testing the doorknob.

            �"Unlocked�"ha!

            She did not think of herself as a cruel or vindictive person. She was merely helping a friend the sly b*****d had taken advantage of one drunken night�"and then acted like a real prick about it, and nobody ever did that to one of her friends.

            �"He already has a girlfriend! He was playing her, too, the whole time.

            She could absolutely not wait another day to see the look on his face when her plan had come to fruition. It was all so perfectly worked out in her mind. He had gotten into her friend’s pants, so she was getting into his�"and taking them away!

            �"I hope I heard right and he’s really out of town, or this could get severely awkward, her mind told her. Just get in, however you can, find his laundry basket, load up all his pants, run them back across the street to the Jetta, and leave the note. Take pictures later. I hope this isn’t too stalker-ish.

            The door was unlocked�"and, in a second, open!�"but something was immediately wrong. She was already halfway across the living room floor when she realized he was home�"and in the shower.

            �"Do I still dare to go through with this?

            She took a few more steps, less certain of herself by far. The whole plan was crazy anyhow. Who stole someone else’s supply of pants, even if he really burned her best friend? What kind of prank was that? She saw the bloodshot and tear-soaked eyes of her friend, even as she stood mid-kitchen and furtively glanced out the window opposite the cluttered sink, pinned down by the imminence of her decision like a species of bug in some cosmic science project.

            �"I have to get out. I’m so not this kind of person�"but I need to do something to get back at this guy!

            It surprised her greatly that while her social reputation was on the line along with who-could-say-what-else, her mind was doing anything but racing. She started to feel empowered, because she was not faltering under pressure. She felt like the personification of cool.

3

            For an approximate twenty-five seconds two humans stared at one another as if gender did not exist. Precious few such seconds occurred in the culture to which they belonged. It takes a certain degree of shock to knock away the shells made of expectations and defenses built-up during years spent socializing.

            The kid in the shower recovered first. Pushing aside his emasculating fear, he brazenly turned around, taking two rotations to wash the soap from his naked body. In this short but ever-so-deliberately created span of time, he located the girl’s face in his memory�"he knew instantly that he had seen her before�"and upon realizing who she was he pieced together the only two reasons for being there. She was either acting out a revenge for his treatment of her friend, or talking to him about it. The mere fact of her showing up at his front door told him she was anything but passive, so it remained to be seen whether she was threatening. Something in her demeanor empowered him�"maybe the late-evening-sky color he saw in her eyes, or a matching v-neck that hugged only the right curves in precisely the ways they begged to be hugged.

            The young woman had no idea what was going through young man’s head. He was staring at her, daring her with his eyes. She took note of this showboating, recognizing that he was making a performance of being a cool customer. For all she knew, this was his penultimate fantasy come to life, and she was a role in it, not even herself. The idea vaguely aroused her, and far under the surface of her conscious pool of thoughts something shadowy stirred and came to life. It was knowledge of possibility. This rare encounter was an aphrodisiac in itself, her sharp wit told her. Her counterpart, reveling in his half of their moment, was not.

            �"I could use him like the tool he is!

            She realized this without having to think it. She was not vicious, merely aware. He had been the sexual predator, acting bigger than himself�"playing with the impossibility of trying to act larger than life�"so that he could schmooze his way into taking her inebriated friend home while her decision-making abilities were impaired and do with her whatever his whims told him to. He was one of those guys, she had long since decided; just another victim of his own caprice.

            So, after exchanging glances with him for a moment, noting with secret glee that she could see the shadow of his erection through the opaque shower curtain, her mind began the rapid notation of every object in the room. There was a small walk-in closet to her right, then his bed to her left, and a partially full laundry basket between its foot and a stumpy-looking armoire. She glanced at him, placed her hands on her hips, and raised a provocative eyebrow. Then she  was a bee-line of motion toward the closet, grabbing clothes and stuffing them in the laundry basket in a frenzy while he watched in surprised amusement.

            �"Got to stick to the plan, stick to the plan, stick to the plan, her mind was saying, robotic in its insistence.

            �"Looks like she really was crazy, after all, the young man’s mind said.

            He turned off the water, drew back the curtain, and reached for the towel hanging on his bathroom door. She grabbed it, stuffed it, hefted the laundry basket and made a stumbling run for the door.

            �"What the f**k?�"gotta find something to dry off with�"Do I cover up? Do I give chase? His thoughts were no longer grey lumps in his mind, but angry, buzzing molecules, rapidly assembling and dissembling about.

            “Hey!” His voice came out sounding slightly more lighthearted than he wanted. Her laughter filled him with a perplexing rush�"a thrill to his insides�"as he stood in the middle of his bedroom, dripping and naked. It took conscious mental effort to get mad again. He glanced at the sheet on his bed and wondered if it would pass for clothing, then sighed angrily and clenched his fists at his sides.

            �"Somehow she is already leaving the building and he had only taken a few steps.

            And he was out the door in a flash, chasing after her, each step serving to erase his self-consciousness. He caught up to her mid-lawn, and grabbed her slender bicep in his hand. His breathing was heavy.

            “What the Hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t just enter somebody’s house and steal his clothes!”

            But she was already screaming out, “Help!” and trying to give him the slip. Clutching the laundry basket in one arm, she put her shoulder into his chest with all her weight behind it and bolted across the small lawn to the street, cut in front of an oncoming car, and was inside her Jetta, while he was still apparently weighing the pros and cons of dodging traffic.

            In another moment, he was in his kitchen calling the police and giving them her license plate number and telling them the story as best he could.

            �"If I only had two cell-phones! I could call a friend and get some god-damned clothes. God, this is humiliating! I bet she was crazy. I should have fucked her! She was blazing, blinding, brilliant…

            He grabbed his keys and ran out the door again, drawing shocked looks from all the neighbors as he fumbled with the door of his car, still holding his cell-phone up to his ear as he waited for someone from the police station to respond. Impatiently, he hung up, jumped in his driver’s seat, fired up the engine, and gave chase.

            �"She can’t have gotten far.

            With spinning tires and burnt rubber he was on the road, desperate to find his clothes and his lost pride.

            �"I bet this is precisely what she wanted, he thought. Only one of us could have come out of this with something, and she got precisely what she wanted.

4

            On the morning of the Ides of March, 2008, an accident was reported. A purple 2002 Volkswagen Jetta collided with a slightly rusted white 1982 Chevrolet Berretta. The two cars were apparently racing northbound over the General Sullivan Bridge. A young woman was pulled out of her overturned car unharmed. The other driver attempted leaving the scene, but was picked up by local police and detained in the town jail for the night on charges of indecent exposure. Both drivers were heavily fined for reckless endangerment by the State of New Hampshire, although a controversy has begun to boil regarding just whose jurisdiction the two were in, since the accident occurred in the middle of the bridge, directly on the line that divides New Hampshire and Maine. Incidentally, several torn items of clothing were found on the scene, and a flying shirt caused another minor fender-bender. The young man driving the Beretta is currently being treated for minor lacerations and a radial contusion.