Fiction: "The Veldt"

By Perry Glasser

Poached and snotless eggs quiver on Samson Levy’s bacon-free plate.  Lillian cares about her husband’s heart. She has managed his white toast to an impeccable, improbable golden brown, lightly buttered. “This is good,” Samson lies. His fork stabs a yolk and yellow goo oozes to the edge of the plate where home fries should be, but are not. Forget bacon.  Just forget bacon.

Fourteen days ago, fifteen counting today, Samson emptied his desk at Leaders Are Made, Inc. His accumulated personal crap came to about two cubic feet. The cardboard box is still purloined in the Taurus’ trunk, safe from Lillian’s eyes. Samson has yet to break the news of his dismissal to his wife. Lillian believes they both vacation at home. For once, she is half wrong.

Job search. The phrase makes his head hurt. The market for leadership trainers is less than robust; the market for people who train leadership trainers doesn’t exist. He had a career; now he needs a job. Get-the-job-done Lillian deserves better. He has spared the mother of his sons the news so her time off can be carefree, but come Monday morning when they are scheduled to return to work, only one will have anywhere to go. 

“Eat that, and you’re ready to clear the south forty,” Lillian says. 

“Get my axe.”

“Sam, why don’t you run with me? You used to run with me. Run with me.”

Slivers of egg tremble on his fork and then slide down his throat. He ought to tell her today. “I don’t need exercise. My health is fine,” he lies.  In fact, his blood pressure has his doctor’s notice. Forty-two, and Samson is borderline hypertensive, for crissakes. Blood pressure and cholesterol killed his father. What kind of medical coverage can they get from Lillian’s place? 

“I need you to live longer than I do,” she laughs. Special K fills her bowl. Lillian’s toast is dry. “I’d miss you too much.”

 Breakfast prepared by Lillian comes with the frequency of a solar eclipse--scarce but not impossible, spectacular when it happens. Lillian has spooned Dundee Orange Marmalade and Polander’s All Fruit Strawberry into tiny twin cylindrical clear acrylic containers. She has folded napkins to triangles. Their cotton tablecloth is arrogantly spotless. They sip orange juice from squat, genuine juice glasses. The Levy’s white oak kitchen table overlooks their garden. New autumn air wafts their pale green café curtains.

 This is better than the Marriott, he thinks.

 The fact is that Lillian Levy rarely cooks; Lillian Levy defrosts, opens or pours. Their pizza and Thai places are both on speed dial, and the drivers know their way to the Levy home despite a complicated route through dark suburban streets and unmarked winding lanes. Lillian Levy won’t clean, can’t sew, and only vaguely knows the uses of an iron. When it is her turn to do laundry, she occasionally forgets to separate whites from darks. Still, the wife he adores can describe three uses for a vacuum cleaner, none of which involve carpets or dust, two of which are not recommended for children. As if by compensation or default--Samson could not say which--Lillian has made her reputation as a Big Thinker, the Vice-President and Director of Communications for the Bates Foundation, the charitable trust improving the lives of inner city children and their mothers through entrepreneurial investment. 

Not yet registered for unemployment benefits, Samson clings to what he knows is a delusion; the phone will ring to summon him back, perhaps with a raise, compensation for the terrible mistake and injustice the company perpetrated. He’s mentally rehearsing his gracious and forgiving acceptance speech when movement in the tall grass at the edge of their yard catches his eye. Something out there lives. He peers at the spot. Nothing.

But the thing at the edge of their garden takes him to last night’s dream. It assaults his memory sharp as a whiff of ammonia. The dream is an old friend. He has had it many times. Sexually sated, as his body last night sank into torpor, he lay on his back and drifted in and out of his otherworld.

Bent and hurried, Lillian hunkers down in front of him. They must run. Run. Get away. Run. Run. The grass is dangerously dry. Lillian is naked. Something is out there. Something comes for them. Run. They need to make the trees. For safety’s sake, they need to make the trees. Run. Run. Stay low, and run.

By an act of will, he pulls himself back to the present. “Family week was a good idea,” he says. Last week, while the boys began their first full days of school, Samson and Lillian were like teenagers with over-trusting absent parents. They did it on the stairs, in the shower, and once, when Lillian snuck up on him, in the garage. They’d polished the hood of the Ford.

On her feet, Lillian braces her ankle on a chair frame, straightens her leg and bends her forehead to her knee. She grasps her elevated toes with two hands. Lillian’s perfectly black hair is as short as his, bone dry as soon as she steps from the shower. She visits a health club three days each week in a futile attempt to harden the Mommy-pouch at her abdomen.  Bearing children will do that. He tells her not to bother. This week he’ll need to tell her they cannot spare the expense. Why does she want the body of a teenager? Lillian’s hips were made to bear children. The rich lushness of her body makes him want to drop to his knees and weep with thanks.

Samson Levy loves his wife; when he has dirty dreams, Lillian is in them.

Lillian yelps as she slaps open the screen door and skips down the three wooden steps to run in place on the flagstone walk, pumping her knees to her chest, elevating her heart rate for the run. Her red Nike shirt matches the crimson trim of her shoes and the pom-poms at the heels of her socks. At the property’s edge, beyond the spruce and a flock of starlings, she gains speed, and her elbows pump as she sails beyond the taller grass where the live thing hides. Samson follows her with his mind’s eye. Three lots away, she will stretch to longer rhythms and pick up the paved-over railroad bed that like a ruler slices through five miles of their community. Her gait will smooth. Leaning a shoulder against the doorframe, Samson watches the landscape swallow his wife.

Lillian needs protection from truth like Mozart needs a kazoo.  Samson tosses the last of his coffee into the yard. The live thing rustles the tall grass. Everything turns out for the best, his mother liked to say.

Of course, the last time he heard her say that they were casting the first clods of damp earth clattering onto his father’s coffin. But the old girl may have had a point. Samson’s mother is remarried to a man who smells of Lagerfeld. They summer in the Italian Alps. Samson’s father smelled of cheap cigars, and after three hours in the Abruzzi he’d have gone batshit in search of “basic American food,” by which he meant a Big Mac, fries and a shake, his ordinary lunch. At sixty-one, driving back from Buffalo, Dad’s heart stopped. The Chevy continued for several hundred yards before colliding with a bridge abutment. Dad sold medical supplies, so the lesson was clear: you can hump a Chevy Impala full of stents and bandages, but you cannot cheat McDeath.

The live thing stirs the line of weeds at the edge of the Levy yard.  Rabbit? Squirrel? Mole? If he trapped it, could he eat it? Not that he’d want to, but perhaps it tasted like bacon.

Samson Levy is cursed to live at a time when habits developed over 250,000 years on the evolutionary mainline have become fatal. His instincts will kill him. Like his father, Samson Levy’s tongue prefers the rich oils in fried foods. His teeth are designed to tear at meat. Salt tastes so good because salt is supposed to be scarce. Sweet is sweet for a reason, and fats taste smooth for a reason, and shit neither tastes nor smells like ice cream because on the evolutionary mainline we need to avoid shit whenever and wherever we encounter it.

Samson Levy has grown expert at detecting the presence of shit. 

Sweet-faced, blonde Davy bounces around in the back seat of the Taurus like a marble in a shaken shoebox. Forget seatbelts. Davy may be the whitest white boy in America, but he wants gangsta-rap. His parents stay with Oldies and Classic Hits, but this fact does not inhibit their eight-year-old son who stands on the seat and postures, holding two fingers horizontally like a gun, a badass honky with a badass attitude doing his very best with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Teach your mothafuckin’ children well....

Above the granite cliff north of Route 9, the Chestnut Hill Mall gleams white in the sun, a fortress-temple from a Biblical age. Samson navigates the spiral ramps that deliver the Taurus into the concrete ziggurat that is a parking garage. In this mall, for the cost of a macadamia nut cookie, you can feed a family of four in Haiti.

Steering through the parking aisles, Samson envisions the day before them. Davy will grow cranky; Lillian will buy something she believes they can afford, but which Samson knows they cannot. Then the Levys will have a small lunch at a restaurant that floats lemon slices in the water glass. He and Davy will order something with a fancy name that really is spaghetti drizzled with the cheese of a barnyard animal, possibly a goat.  After critically eyeballing the menu and questioning a waiter on the exact preparation of two or three tempting items--all of which will be cooked with too much oil--Lillian will order Cobb, Greek or Garden salad.  Dressing on the side. Who can screw up lettuce?

The woman at the wheel of a white Mercedes SL with glowing brake lights starts her engine, adjusts her rear view mirror, and brushes back her hair with the palm of her hand. The Levys wait. She readjusts the rearview mirror only after she is satisfied with her looks. She reaches down and to her right, fumbling with what must be her purse, and comes up with a pack of cigarettes. She moves with the deliberation of a glacier.  The Levys wait more. Her window drops as she exhales a cloud of blue smoke.

“Do not honk the horn,” Lillian says. “Do not.” In the backseat, Davy does his trampoline workout. The kid may mature to be a dolphin.  Maybe he can be Davy’s agent, get him a job at Sea World.

The Mercedes crawls an inch, then jerks a few painful inches more. It takes the Mercedes three tries to create maneuvering space sufficient to exit. As the car passes them, Samson can’t help but see the crone’s dyed copper hair, her smear of lipstick, her eyebrows no more than so much paint. She’s a death mask bent low over the wheel, and the sight of her is so startling that Samson hesitates.

Naturally, in that heartbeat of hesitation, a blue Mazda RX-7, top down, snaps smartly into the parking space.

The driver can’t be twenty-two. Twisted in the Mazda’s seat, the little putz flashes a grin at Samson and kills his engine.

“Don’t,” Lillian says, but her far-off voice hardly registers over the blood thundering in his ears. It’s like running crouched through the weeds. It’s all instinct now.

Samson leans most of his body out his window to shout, “You’re kidding, right?” Maybe Lillian reaches for him, there’s no saying. Nothing is under control. Runrunrunrun. Samson kills the ignition, cracks open his safety belt and his door, in a single fluid movement stands beside his car.

The kid is already walking away. Muscled, young, his crimson golf shirt trimmed with gold is cut so that it flaps loosely at his exposed, hard waist. There’s spring in the little bastard’s step. Samson wears baggy cutoffs. Threads flutter about his bare knees. His faded t-shirt was a gift from the exec board of a promising dot-com that invested in leadership training in preparation for their imminent expansion just before their bankruptcy. Their final asset was a foosball table.

“Sam!” Lillian calls. She says other things. Samson cannot hear her.

“Back in five minutes,” the kid calls over his shoulder. He can hear that. Oh, Samson hears that just fine. “I just need tennis balls.”

“You think I should wait?” Heat fills Samson’s face. Anger is a tourniquet at his throat.

The kid breaks into a sprint.

The Leaders Are Made manual calls this an LCP, a Leadership Choice Point. Receding before him is a totally arrogant asshole who needs killing, but Samson wrote the LAM manual and so he knows that any hormonal response to stress lasts no more than three seconds. It’s all on page thirty-eight. Heart rate soars; blood pressure follows, but after those initial three seconds, the mind can reassert itself. Fight or flight responses are instinctive, wholly human, but effective leaders seek the third option, the LCP.

Rage drains from Samson like dirty dishwater.

Back in the car, Lillian pats his wrist as he turns the ignition key, and as if by reward, Fate compensates his self-control. An aisle away, an engine starts. Davy laughs as centrifugal force hurls the boy across the car seat when Samson circles into the correct parking aisle. This time, there is no competition.

The mall itself is a temple of cool marble, gold fixtures, and sparkling chrome. Lillian is talking copper-bottomed pots and pans for meals she will never cook. Davy wants to know if the pizza is good here. Davy eats anything, anywhere, anytime. The kid might be hollow. But this day Samson hardly notices the polished surfaces, the silent escalators, and the artificial public spaces. Instead, this day, though he is out of the hormonal storm of anger, he chooses to focus on the jerk in the blue Mazda.  It’s a choice. Why let the moment go? Where’s the satisfaction in it? What about justice?

He releases Davy’s hand. “It’s not enough,” he mutters, and to Lillian says, “I left something in the car. I’ll catch up to you.” His wife calls after him, “Don’t do this,” but Samson is already at a near-sprint to the garage elevator.

The garage air is foul with auto exhaust. The black plastic dome of a ceiling security camera is maybe thirty yards off, but the blue Mazda just might be in a blind spot. He’ll need to take special care.

Samson is genuinely relaxed. He operates on instinct, yes, but it is deliberated action. His blood is cold. This is leadership. Leadership in a new direction, but nevertheless leadership.

At the Mazda, Samson kneels as if to tie a shoe. From this spot, at this height, he sees no ceiling camera. Unless their cameras can see around corners, his luck is with him.

Twelve years and screwed. A tiny wrinkle in the economy, and the sons-of-bitches who were happy to let him create their business suddenly cannot afford him. Sure, mid-level execs were being incinerated like underbrush to slow an engulfing firestorm, but where did they come off firing him?

He unfastens the valve cap of the Mazda’s right front tire; his fingers come away grimy. He spits on his thumb. What was it Lillian had called after him? Don’t do this? He needs to do this more than he needs to breathe and eat.

Air hisses slowly around his fingers, but the tire stays round. He tries squeezing it, but the rubber is hardly as soft as a bicycle’s tube. He moves to restore circulation in his lower legs and his keys jingle. He still uses the key chain his older son, Michael, gave him for Father’s Day, what, ten years ago?

The Leaders Are Made office key is the largest in the ring. That crew of quick-hit buccaneers did not have the smarts to ask for the return of his key. He ought to pull up some night and greet Freddy, the security guard, before helping himself to five or six computers. Hell, Freddy would help Mr. Levy carry the stuff out.

He presses the point of his office key into the valve. The aroma of vulcanized rubber and stale air teases his nose. The key is better than his fingernail, but the tire simply isn’t deflating fast enough. All right, so no phone call and apology were coming soon. But what were they thinking?  Did they expect to find some twenty-two-year-old tennis-playing snot in a crimson shirt that could do his job for half his pay by reading his manual?

His back aches. He straightens up; at the elevator, two women in heels and shorts walk past, but they hardly notice him at all.

Samson won’t put sugar or a burning rag into the gas tank. Samson will smash no headlamps. The windshield will stay intact. Pissing onto the convertible’s seat has appeal, but is just a touch beyond what this considered LCP calls for. Not a violent man by nature, Samson is well aware he skirts at the brink of an abyss. If he falls, he will leap. A choice.  There are no accidents.

He should have said something. Anything. Instead, he meekly loaded his stuff and skulked out of the place like a beaten dog. To save their own worthless hides, they’d pushed Samson to the herd’s edge and left him for the jackals.

He wants to cripple the Mazda. He thinks how his bright yellow road emergency kit is in his car’s trunk beside the box of his stuff, the framed pictures of Lillian and the boys. Tools. Tools separate us from the animals. We’re slower, weaker and less adaptable, but boy oh boy oh boy, how we like tools for that evolutionary advantage.

Samson saunters to his Taurus. He chirps the alarm and pops the trunk. No one can just open a car anymore; it has to wink and engage in an electronic dialogue. Car alarms--who or what was being alarmed?  Who heard a car alarm and called the police? All they did was notify the neighborhood that some asshole did not know how to unlock his car, or that the alarm itself was broken. They never, never, indicated theft. What kind of survival mechanism was that? But a good Phillips head screwdriver; well, that was another story.

The screwdriver’s rubberized grip feels right in his fist. Jesus, how he loves the feel of tools. Back beside the Mazda, the screwdriver handle becomes moist in his grip. He looks over his shoulder, and with his knees bent just so, he swings his arm past his own hip. It’s a backhand shot.  The tennis player would appreciate that.

The screwdriver’s point strikes the tire sidewall and bounces harmlessly off the sidewall.

That’s all right. Anything this fulfilling ought to require muscle, sinew and bone. The second time, his hip braced against the fender, when he swings his arm down and backward the effort actually lifts him off his feet. The screwdriver’s point barely penetrates the tire sidewall, but this blow is a kill. He works the tool a bit, widening the wound.  When the sidewall rips, there is no explosion, but the final expiration from the tire sussurates the sigh of Death itself. The screwdriver dangles in the gash as air streams weakly around it. The tire collapses, and the Mazda finally, satisfyingly, lists, brought down and crippled.

Naturally, at that moment, the crimson-shirted tennis player appears at the elevator. The guy swings a plastic bag--tennis balls, for sure.  “The foursome may be delayed,” Samson thinks as he squats lower to scuttle away. When he straightens up, the tennis player is ten yards before him, closing fast, grinning like a birthday balloon. Samson can make out the stitching on his chest. Harvard. He’d be playing tennis at Longwood, the nearby country club. Harvard. Of course.

To look away would be fatal. The jerk is still grinning, but his face swirls puzzlement. From where does he know this guy coming toward him? At five feet, Samson nods imperceptibly. As they pass shoulder to shoulder, Harvard does the same, as if they were old friends. Giddily, Samson considers striking up a conversation. They could exchange business cards, except for the facts that Samson’s phone has been disconnected and his only business is to survive.

Once Samson passes the guy, he quickens his pace. He’s still heeltoe, but he readies for a dead run. It won’t be five, maybe ten seconds before Harvard sees what there is to see.

Samson makes the elevator plaza, swings open the glass door, barely feels the rush of air conditioning on his face. He swings into the stairwell as he hears a wail of loss. The fire door booms shut behind him. He yields to his panic. Run, run get away. Runrunrunrun. 

He hauls ass, taking the stairs two at a time. At the first landing, he hears nothing, but at the next landing he hears the metal fire door below boom open.

The chase is on.

In his dream, he keeps low and move move move. So this is old stuff. He’s been here a million times; his DNA has been here a million more.  He feels his pulse in his scalp. Blood pressure? Hypertension? Oh, doctor! He is as alive as he can be! After two weeks of gloom, the chase is exhilarating. He wonders: other than shoplifting, is there a way to get paid for this?

 Samson pivots on the ball of his foot, takes the next landing, swings around and realizes he’ll have to outthink his younger pursuer. This is part of the game. What’s the point of experience and age if you don’t get cagey?

Instead of headlong flight, he lunges out a door and pops into the first floor of the garage. Palms against the cold metal, he carefully, softly, closes the steel door behind him. Two seconds of stealth will buy him much more time to escape. He moves among cars, fast enough to cover ground but not so fast as to draw attention to himself on a security monitor. He sees sunlight beckon to him from outside. A tree lies in stark silhouette against the blue sky.

The little jerk will charge up the stairs into the mall itself, counting on his youth and speed to overtake his prey, when all the while Samson will have sidestepped the chase.

Samson’s heart slows. For propriety’s sake, he retucks his shirt into his waistband, cooling down as he walks the circular gravel path to the mall’s pedestrian entrance. It’s a lovely day. It would not have done to have taken the elevator. Oh, no, the doors might open and there might be Harvard waiting for him. Samson has better instincts than to be boxed in.

Lillian sits on the marble lip of a bubbling fountain near the food court. The blue tile bottom of the round pool sparkles with quarters and dimes. For the patrons of the Chestnut Hill Mall, the chlorinated pool reproduces the magic of Rome’s Trevi fountain. Yeah, right. Like Rome, but in a mall.

Samson joins Lillian. 

“You did something stupid.” 

“Depends on how you look at it. Davy?” 

His wife points to the kid on line for ice cream. Davy waves, his little fist clutching a few bills. Samson scoops enough water from the fountain into his hand to wet his face. He wipes his hands on his shirt. Lillian gives him a tissue. He presses his forehead dry.  

When he opens his eyes, Harvard’s finger is inches from his face.

“That’s the man!” 

The mall security guard restrains Harvard with an outstretched arm.  Samson doesn’t let himself smile. It’s another LCP, all right. Samson opts for puzzlement and denial. He says to Lillian, “The quarters and dimes in this thing must come to a hundred dollars.”

“That’s the man!” Harvard repeats, practically squealing.  Runrunrunrun, but Lillian’s hand at his back, just a touch, helps him keep still. 

“You slashed my tire, you fuck!”

 Lillian blanches like the Mother Superior of the Order of Purity. Last night, she’d have shamed a street whore in Amsterdam, but this Saturday afternoon she is scandalized by profanity. “Don’t curse in front of my wife, fella,” Samson says easily.

The unarmed guard’s khaki uniform makes him a credible rent-a-cop.  He has handcuffs and is burly enough to handle anyone he ordinarily might have to--teenage shoplifters or errant Harvard tennis players. “Sir, did you damage this man’s car?”

“Not me. Not possible. I’ve been here all day.”

Davy ambles over. The ball of vanilla ice cream already melts over the edge of his waffle cone. It drips gooily onto his hands. He’s got multicolored jimmies, as many stuck to his lips as to the ice cream. That’s Davy for you. More mess than nourishment, and go for the good parts first. How will he provide for his sons? Samson grasps his boy and protectively cages him behind his arms and legs.

“I saw you!” Harvard shrieks.

His tone defeats him, Samson knows. Harvard should enroll for some leadership training. He sounds like an hysterical girl, while Samson, Lillian and David Levy seem to be a Norman Rockwell reverie.  Lillian says to the guard, “Sam and I have been in the mall all day with our son.” She tousles Davy’s hair. The boy grins. His tongue lolls about his ice cream.

“They’re lying!”

It’s too wonderful seeing the little jerk turn purple with indignation.  A small crowd gathers. Samson stays non-confrontationally seated. Lillian’s hip presses his. He holds Davy closer. 

The potbellied guard has a Lebanese nose, and the weariness in his eyes is the sure indication that he works this security job only on weekends for a few extra bucks. He does not need this shit from a kid who goes to Harvard. “Maybe you saw someone else,” the guard suggests. It is no question.

Lillian stands. “Officer,” she says, “I appreciate your efforts, but I am not going to subject our son to any more of this. We’ve been together since we arrived. The three of us.”

“Right,” Davy says and licks the cone. “Me, Mommy and Daddy.”

The guard turns to Harvard. “There’s nothing on surveillance tape. You saw camera eleven. We looked with you. Did you physically witness this guy cut your tire?”

“I told you, no. But he was walking away...” 

“What floor of the garage?” Samson asks. 

“Three,” the guard says. 

“Did we park on three?” Samson asks Lillian. 

“I think so.” 

It’s an interesting moment. What can the guy say? I recognize you and your lovely family from when I screwed you out of a parking space. 

Lillian sighs. “This is ridiculous,” she says. She takes Samson’s hand and pulls him to his feet. She reaches easily into her bag and gives the guard her business card. “If you need to contact us, here’s my information.  However, if you give my name to this man, I will sue you and the mall. The card is exclusively for your convenience. Do we understand each other?”

“Lady, I don’t want your card,” the guard says, pulling back his hand. Liability suits danced left and right. Ah, Lillian, the Big Thinker.

They’ve made it. They are in the tall trees beyond the grass. Lillian replaces her card in her purse.  “Then you’ll understand that I’d appreciate your staying with this man until we are safely away. I don’t want a lunatic stalking my child,” Lillian says. She bends to lift Davy. She hated carrying the kids when they were little. I am not some goddam gorilla, she’d say. Pearly white vanilla glazes Davy’s face. It’s sticky in his hair, and it sticks to Lillian’s cheek.  She probably has not lifted Davy for at least three years.

The small crowd seems pleased at this victory for family values.  Nobody likes anyone from Harvard, anyway.

“Holy shit!”

“Hey, fella, that’s enough of that,” the guard says. The crowd nods agreeably.

At the elevator, as Lillian drops Davy to the floor, Samson whispers, “Nice show.”

“Don’t push it, bucko,” she says. Her nostrils are distended, her bloodless lips thin.

Very late that night, close to morning in truth, Lillian awakens when she thinks she hears a sound. Samson is not beside her. His place is cold. She waits a bit, hoping to hear him stir in the bathroom, but there is nothing.  Rolling to her hip, Lillian hugs a pillow and waits, but after thirty minutes it is plain Samson is not returning from wherever he is. She slips her feet into mules, wraps herself in her thin cotton robe and makes her way from the bedroom. This, she thinks, is it.

Passing the boys’ rooms at the head of the stairs, she peeks in. She likes this life. She heard Michael come in after one and take milk. Her teenager might have been with a girl. Well, why not? Michael’s room is ankle deep in clothing. With his air conditioner turned to the highest setting, he is a huddled mass below several blankets. David, her baby, as always sleeps with his arms and legs spread wide, flat on his back, his carefree face visible to her. Like a Rembrandt, his face is luminous with a light all its own. She needs no light to see David’s face anywhere, anytime.  Yes, she loves Michael, but in her heart her baby is her favorite. So close to sleep, she can admit this to herself. God, yes, how she likes this life.

The cold in the kitchen floor penetrates the soles of her slippers. She expected to find Samson here, murmuring on the telephone, so she is only a little surprised to see the rear door to the yard open. It’s a warm enough night. She goes down the wooden steps to the yard.

Her husband squats on the grass at the far edge of the property. He holds a flashlight. He has some other stuff. It is too dark for her to make out what. His back is toward her.

She says. “What’s up?”

“Something is living in our garden.”

“Rabbit?”

“Probably.” He does not turn to face her.

The neighbors’ houses on both sides loom dark. The air is chilled with oncoming autumn. She does not look forward to going back to work. She asks, “Sam, what’s going on?”

“I need more tools if I am going to get it.”

“Get what?”

“Whatever it is.”

She gathers the cloth of her robe beneath her and kneels beside him. He’s in boxer trunks and a t-shirt. “Do you have to get it?”

“It’s on our land. I thought I might freeze it with the light and just grab it with my hands, but I think I will need a snare. I don’t need to kill it. I want to take it someplace safe.”

The night smells different from the day, she thinks. “Sam, is there anything you need to tell me?”

“I told you. There’s a live thing out here.”

Her hand reaches for his shoulder. “You’re worrying me,” she says.  “I’ve been fired,” he says after a short pause. “I was going to tell you in the morning.” He turns to face her and sits directly on the damp ground. “I am so sorry, Lil. I did nothing wrong. They just fired me. There’s not enough money coming through the company’s door.”

“When?”

“Two weeks ago.”

It is hard to see him in the darkness. “You should have told me,” she says and immediately sees why he did not. She might well have done the same. Tomorrow they will work on his résumé. It’s Sunday--that means the big Help Wanted section. Good. There’s the executive recruiting service that has been sniffing around her: she’ll offer Sam up on Monday.  “You should have told me,” she repeats.

Her arm circles his shoulders. His head rests against her breast. “I am so sorry, Lil.”

Lillian holds him. Men do not know what women will guess or imagine. Samson has been distant and strange; Lillian thought it was his health or another woman. What she knows about men is that what men will do is leave. But after that business today at the mall, she imagined far, far worse. For two weeks, she’s done everything she knows to do to keep him--sex, food, food and sex--and it turns out he simply needs her. She should have thought. “Life could be worse,” she says. “We’ll work on it.”

“The bastards.”

“The bastards,” she repeats.

At that precise moment, far to Lillian’s left, the thing that lives in the yard watches them with its black eyes and does not so much think as know how this and every other place is very dangerous, and it knows, but does not quite think, how it will be hard to return to the burrow while the Levys are in the garden but any other burrow is much too far away and in this garden there is much nourishment maybe more than any other garden on the hill so all that can be done is to wait and wait and not move and watch through very black seldom-blinking eyes while the Levys sit on the grass and hold each other and make sounds until they return to be safe in their house where they nurture their young.

 All who are in the big garden in this night know these truths: Keep silent. Keep together. Seek shelter. Run close to the earth.