The Listener

Click. Jensen awoke with a start. That noise! That noise was exactly that of Sir Braveheart’s toenail on the stairs outside Jensen’s bedroom. Sir Braveheart… yes, that big, beautiful Saint Bernard. The dog made his rounds of the house every night. Going from third floor to the basement and back. The click, click of strong keratin toenails on the hardwood stairs of this fine old Victorian house. The click-click a benediction, an assurance of safety. Within the house Jensen’s whole family, his wife and two young boys lay safely abed, guarded by loyal Sir Braveheart. Jensen drifted off to sleep…

Click. No, it was not canine toenails. Sir Braveheart had died several years ago. Jensen lay quietly, musing on the dog. His silent, truest, best friend. The dog that had witnessed Jensen cope with his tempestuous wife and raise two strapping young men. The dog had the thickest coat, furry enough that a grown man could cry into. The heartache of losing Sir Braveheart filled his chest and made his ribs feel too small. Jensen lay, breathing shallow breaths until sleep overtook him again.

Click. The sound happened again, Jensen’s head twitched. The acoustics were bad. Or okay, maybe his hearing was sketchy. He couldn’t tell if the click came from inside or outside the room. Was it Anna’s knee? She had been moaning about it lately. Downing the maximum allowable amount of painkillers. Applying ointments and muttering dire imprecations whenever Jensen thoughtlessly asked her to “Come unpack the groceries” or “Come and say Happy Birthday to your brother on the phone.” She objected to anything that meant she must flex that bum knee. Or, she would lumber mightily, cussing as she moved closer to the pantry or closer to the phone, her knee going click, click, kaboom. Swearing like a trooper.

She needed a replacement knee—and badly—but she had a fear of operating rooms. Her mother had died on the operating table. A deviated septum. She had gone into the O.R. for corrective surgery and never came out. Jensen understood why Anna resisted. He grew deaf to her ranting and hoped she would finally go under the knife. For now, she slept soundly on the other side of his bed, looking for all the world like a bolster pillow. Or a remote range of mountains. And he treasured the silence.

Click. Was it an intruder? Jensen’s mind raced to all the doors in the house, the inner door that kept second and third floors in one apartment. The front door, the back door, the basement door. The patio window door. He always made sure they were locked every night. And a bar laid down to prevent the patio window from sliding open.

Once, many years ago, they had an intruder. A bull in a china shop, this druggie, bumping and creaking and stumbling, too strung out to care. Jensen snorted at the memory. Regretted the years of vigilance, protecting themselves against an intruder, only to have it penetrated by that bumbling ass. Like building a complex anti-ballistic cruise missile network only to have a goose set it off.

That intruder was such a let-down.

Jensen rather welcomed the careful, furtive tread of a professional intruder. He strained to hear anything else.

Click. Ah, it must be the Boy in the Basement. The Boy was fully awake at this hour. He was a full-blown basement-dwelling gamer sycophant. A parasite. Jensen wrinkled his nose. A thirty-three-year-old so addicted to gaming he resisted all encouragements and threats, to flee the nest. The Boy stayed in the basement suite, surfacing only to cook on first floor because the kitchen there was so much better than the unreliable hot plate with the frayed cord and wimpy-motored bar fridge in the basement suite. Plus, the Boy ran the first-floor dishwasher every night, one unusually helpful trait, so Jensen allowed him to stay. Theirs was a complicated relationship.

Click. The Boy only ventured to second and third floors when he was called on to move furniture. Or to assist with the leaking roof, such as happened five years ago. The Boy did not like being on the second or third floor because “my enemies can see through the windows on second and third floor and can put a bullet through my left ventricle anytime they choose.”

Click. Jensen could stand it no longer. He slowly rolled away from Anna’s sleeping form and gingerly peeled off the blanket, and then the sheet, from his prone body. The air dried his slightly sweating skin and cooled him to full wakefulness.

He sat upright, waiting for the dizziness to subside.

The streetlight outlined the blinds pulled down over the windows. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jensen felt his way to the night table, pat-patting with his right hand. And then he rose and moved to the door.

He slowly turned the knob until he noticed a slight resistance. He stopped just before the squeak happened.

Should he suddenly fling open the door?

Or slowly, deliberately turn the handle?

He pictured the Boy on the other side. Someone with a baseball bat resting on his shoulder. Ready to bash him the minute he opened the squeaky door.

Maybe, Jensen reckoned, he could quickly open the door wide. But jump backward so his assailant would lose his balance.

Click. The noise. It was right there on the other side of the door.

His heart leapt into his throat and without another thought, he threw open the bedroom door.

A form moved into the darkness of the stairwell.

“Who’s there?” Jensen shouted.

“Dad.”

“What are you doing here, scaring me half to death?” Jensen hated the Boy calling him dad. He had disowned that ne’er-do-well years ago.

“Relax, Dad, I just had to find my charger cable.” The Boy rubbed his red-rimmed eyes.

“A likely story.” Jensen sneered. The Boy in the Basement was sneaking upstairs to murder his two long-suffering parents and steal the other son’s inheritance. It was Jacob and Esau all over again.

Jensen patted the wall near the stairwell for the light switch. He flipped it. But no light came. Then he remembered it had burned out last night. And he had been meaning to tell Anna to ask the Boy to come up to the third floor and change the bulb in the high sconce he could no longer reach.

Jensen reached back into the bedroom. And turned on the overhead light. He waited a moment, staring at the lump that was Anna, hoping she would stay sleeping. She did. Blessed relief for her with that knee.

Grasping the door frame, he turned back to the stairwell. Light flooded from the bedroom down the narrow passage. The Boy looked pale and drawn with dark circles under his eyes.

Stomp, stomp, stomp. Up the stairwell came a young woman. She halted two stairs behind the Boy. “Didja find the charger?” she muttered to the back of the Boy. He turned to her and said, “Dad got up. I didn’t mean to wake him.”

She leaned around the Boy and directed a toothy smile at Jensen. “Hey, Pops,” she said.

“Who are you?” Jensen said.

“I’m his girlfriend. Tisha. Remember me?” she said, jabbing the Boy.

Jensen squeezed the door frame, nauseated. Tisha was dressed in a big, stained T-shirt that stretched immodestly across her breasts.

“We better finish this up, the light will wake your mother,” Jensen said, frowning at the Boy.

Tisha and the Boy exchanged a look. “Dad,” the Boy said. “Mom is—Mom’s—”

Tisha interrupted. “We better get you back to bed, Pops.” She moved up the stairs toward Jensen.

“Never mind,” Jensen said. “Anna sleeps like the dead.”

This made the younger folks exchange another, longer look. Tisha shrugged.

“You say you needed your charger cable,” Jensen said. “Where did you last see your charger cable?” Charger cable charger cable. The words had ceased to make sense to him.

“In the kitchen,” the Boy said. The kitchen was on the first floor.

“How did you get up here, anyway?” Jensen snapped. “I lock the door to my apartment every night.”

The Boy looked genuinely surprised. “I have the key, remember? In case something happens. And you have my key too. The pandemic, Dad, remember? And we just never returned keys to each other.”

Jensen stamped his foot. Of course. That damned pandemic. The reason for inflation? The reason for shortages? The reason for line-ups? And now the reason for letting a killer into his apartment? He said, “Why do you think I would be stealing your precious charger cable, Boy?”

“You and I have the same phones. I thought maybe you used....” The Boy had adopted the super-calm voice he used whenever explaining “features” on Jensen’s computer.

“Maybe since you lost your cord in the pigsty that is your basement hideout,” Jensen burst out. “You thought you could steal mine? Why don’t you clean your place up? Instead of midnight raiding my oasis of bliss,” he yelled. “My tidy, clean, little apartment?” Jensen was on a tear now. “I would gladly buy you ten charger cords if I knew you were looking for a job, you rotten brat!” A wave of heat surged from his chest to his temples.

The Boy looked stunned. As if Jensen had slapped him.

“You watch your mouth,” Tisha said. “That’s no way to talk to your son.” The young woman landed an ineffectual slap on the banister rail.

The Boy’s face revived. He covered his neck with the palm of his hand. “Tisha, it’s okay, Dad’s right, I should be looking for work. I just can’t—my resume is so—I’m so old now—who will hire me? It’s been seven years since I held down a job.”

“Excuses,” Jensen thundered. He let go of the door frame. “Just go out there and start looking! Be a man!” His arm swung wildly at the railing.

Not grabbing it in time, he lost his balance and fell thud, thud, thud, THUD, THUD down the whole flight of stairs.

The two hundred pounds of him bumped and bounced and propelled his head full-force against the wall. Putting his neck at a very awkward angle.

The Boy’s reflex had not been to stop his father’s fault. His reflex was that of a people-pleaser, someone who always stands aside to let others pass by more easily down the subway stairwell.

“My God,” Tisha screamed.

The Boy screamed. “Stop him!”

“Call 911!” she shrieked.

“But my phone’s not charged. Where’s your phone? Where’s Dad’s phone? He never uses it. He forgets he has it.”

Weeping and wailing, she stumbled down to the bottom of the stairs. They were both trying to straighten Jensen’s head from the terrible angle he lay at.

She stuck her face extremely close to Jensen’s. And then pulled it away. “I think he’s still alive. I think he’s breathing. Shallow.”

The Boy said again, “Where’s your phone, Tisha? We need—we need to call right away.”

“My purse.”

“Where’s your purse?”

“Oh my God. Oh my God, I don’t know.”

The Boy took her by both shoulders. Pinned her against the wall, glared at her face. “Where is your purse, Tisha? Every minute counts. Take a deep breath.”

She writhed against the wall, her face a rictus of concentration. A tear made its way down each cheek. “I brought it to the front hallway. I must have,” she began to sob.

The Boy let go of her shoulders and jumped toward the front hallway. “There, there.” He saw her old handbag slumped in a corner. He dug out the phone and called 911.

“My dad had a bad fall. He’s unconscious. His neck is at a bad angle.” As he spoke, the Boy moved toward Jensen.

Click. The wooden floor reacted to his movement. “Yes, I’ll stay on the line,” the Boy said. “I’m going to open the house front door right now. Here is the address….”