His excavation only succeeded in stirring up fleas and aggravating his dust allergy. The hapless resident was being imposed upon in some insidious way he hardly understood, but there was nothing to show for it.

Nearly incapacitated, Michael did more laps around the house, cursing himself, and amazed by how, in the haze of a schoolboy crush, he allowed the rude reality to pile up at his doorstep without complaint. It did not take much to push his mercurial state into overdrive, and here too his temper got the better of him. His reason could never circumscribe his runaway emotions, so any healed-over furuncle was subject to revisit. One minute he would be yelling at a drawer for banging his elbow, and the next, berating people of no or former acquaintance for past unaddressed grievances. By the end of his tirade he simply threw things as he stormed blindly and ranted. Several forceful points would be made in this habitual practice of vocalizing his arguments, and being struck by the thoroughness of his logic he would repeat them, and repeat them again, and again, as though rehearsing lines in a debate. Anyone listening in would be confused by how his extemporaneous monologues would drop out in places, like he was getting distracted by other forming points, but instead of picking up where he left off he would recommence from the start. This broken record oratory was far from cathartic, since his expositions might go on for hours and even carry on in his head to deprive him of sleep. Generally, inflicting superficial pain to his body, or becoming physically exhausted from pacing, were actions capable of arresting his freefall; a flare-up of his acid reflux did the trick this time. The stressed man retreated to the bathroom to swig down half a bottle of antacid and take a Loratadine tablet for his allergy. After a few moments of sobriety, he picked up the telephone and dialed again.

“Hello…?” the voice crackled on the other end.

“Let me talk to your mother,” asked the uncle.

Aaron grunted.

At first Michael thought his nephew set down the receiver to go search for Miranda, but sensed a lingering presence. “Aaron...?” he blurted.

“Yes?

“Let me talk to your mother.”

“But that’s not my mother.”

The uncle sighed with exasperation. “Are you quoting Body Snatchers?”

“No.”

“Where’s the boarder?”

“He’s dead,” the boy explained. “Gort took him back to the spaceship.”

A second voice crowded the nephew. “Hello?”

“It’s me, ” the brother explained. “I came by the house the other night when you weren’t home. The spare key outside was missing.”

“Why would the spare key be missing?” she challenged.

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“You are the only one who uses it.”

“Does the boarder know of the key? Would he tell someone about it?”

“Who would he tell?”

Michael confessed, “I saw a woman in the house.” (He fudged on a detail.) “I saw a woman in an upstairs window.”

“It was probably the physical therapist.”

“She was nude, Miranda.”

“Maybe she’s having a fling with her patient.”

The brother was struck by the impassivity in his sister’s response. “Under your roof?”

“Why did you come by?”

He invented an excuse. “I needed a floor fan. I wanted to see if there was one in the attic.”

Squeaking was heard in the earpiece, as if his preoccupied sister wound the phone cord around her finger. “I’ll check for you,” she replied. “If I find one I’ll leave it in the tool shed.”

This answer infuriated the brother. “All I need is a key.”

Miranda sighed—or so he thought it was a sigh. It might have been more breathing at her shoulder. “I don’t know where the key is,” she reiterated.

The brother was certain his sister was nervous over someone else in the room—someone not her son. “But I need a key,” he stressed.

“I’ll have another one made, then.”

The deflective nature of the back-and-forth flabbergasted the brother. Perhaps his initial impression of the woman he saw on the dark second floor landing that night was correct. Perhaps it had been his sister. Perhaps there was no “invalid” boarder at all. Miranda simply moved a lover into the house on a pretense. This would explain her removing the key and turning off all the lights in the house the night he came by. She wanted the only person who could barge in on her—her brother—to stay away. But it was his house as much as hers.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“No,” he grumbled.

“Then I’ll see you here on Christmas Eve, if not before.”

Miranda hung up the phone, but instead of the return of a dial tone, dead air lingered on the wire. It had not been someone standing next to his sister he heard, but someone on an extension. “Aaron…?” he groped.

Nothing…

“Is this the boarder?”

Still nothing…

“I’m onto you,” Michael growled.

Click.

The house continued to darken with the overcast Sun tracking west over the roof, and the diminution of light meant the whole day was spent unproductively reducing the property to shambles. Yet Michael could neither undo his mess nor think about anything else. The sound quality off the extension phone in the old family house was crisp—too crisp to be coming from Chicago. He had hastily assumed an indiscretion on his sister’s part, but the only real problem was in this house. Whoever had been listening in was close by. Another exhaustive search for a second phone line was pointless, though the tenant was now convinced he was not alone on the premises. Disheartened and defeated, he flopped down on the couch and scrutinized one of Jacques’ cassettes on the coffee table, as if it contained a devious plot already finished but for a punch line. It then occurred to him, with rough clarity, if he was being interfered with, then maybe he could turn the tables to his advantage. Instead of cowering and waiting for the next blow, instead of following the script of the clueless victim, he would initiate a confrontation on his terms. Inspired (or merely desperate), he dashed up the stairs with the videocassette and a plan.

The camcorder was pulled from the closet and set up by the bed, and the tape slapped into its compartment. It was already as good as night, and without a working alarm clock it would be difficult to carve out a nap in darkness better suited for deep sleep. Emma’s wristwatch was a windup that offered no alarm feature, which meant there was no way to mark time in the house. One plan required another. Michael went downstairs to grab a wider candle from the box by the kitchen door and placed it on a ceramic plate. Both items were taken upstairs and set on the nightstand. A spare blade for his utility knife was wedged into wax about an eighth of an inch down from the top of the candle, and a glass marble was balanced on the flat, protruding end of the blade. The painter was a light sleeper, and his thinking was that when the candle melted down to loosen the blade, it and the marble would clap loudly on the plate. He switched on the camcorder before lighting the wick, and proceeded to the bathroom. It was not his intention to sleep too deeply, so a sleeping tablet was placed on the sink and, using the file from his toenail clippers, a small portion of it was sliced off. It was not clear what he hoped to accomplish in recording over the mysterious video, or whether he would take enough of the pill to matter. However, no sooner did he fill a glass of water than the telephone rang by the bed; the reverberating acoustics came as a revelation.

Ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g-g-g!

He picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hello, Michael. It’s Amber.”

She sounded close, although he could not adequately compare the sound quality to what transpired moments earlier on the same receiver. “Are you in town?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’m out at the Peek-a-boo Motel. My client cancelled. I saw where you called my machine without leaving a message. I didn’t call you back because I knew I would be driving down.”

Michael blew out the candle. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

“Do you want to meet here at the motel? I already have the room.”

He waffled, yet could not say if Amber was part of the conspiracy. Her admission about where she was at least convinced him she was not calling from the house.

“It’s just to talk, of course,” she added as an inducement.