The Silent Men

Peter Rock

The last diners left the restaurant around midnight, and it was usually after one o’clock before Kristine, a waitress, headed home. Some nights she caught a cab, but it was better to walk, to unwind the pressures—the timing, the money changing hands, all the expectations and personalities—so that she would be able to sleep. Tonight, as she walked past the Liberty Bell, down through Old City, she could hear trucks rattling off the Ben Franklin Bridge, crossing the Delaware, and distant sirens, ignored car alarms. The darkness made the hot, thick air feel dirty.
Her apartment was on the fourth floor, and there was no elevator. She took off her shoes before climbing the stairs. When she unlocked the door, there was no one inside to meet her; there were no messages on the machine. She started to fill the bathtub before she turned on the lights, before she sifted through the credit card offers that constituted her mail. She poured herself a glass of wine, wished she’d thought to bum a cigarette from someone before she’d left work, and stood in the living room for a moment, listening to the water splashing in the bathroom. The empty echo of her apartment, the cleanswept and shining hardwood floors, pleased her.
In the bathroom, she unbuttoned and shed her clothes, which smelled of perspiration and food, every meal she’d served that night. The water almost scalded her; she slipped in an inch at a time, finally dunking her head so her black hair eased, smoothing the tightness from her scalp. And then, through the thickness of the water, she heard the faint ringing, the cordless phone left on the counter, next to the sink. Surfacing, she dried her hand on the towel behind her head, stretched out her arm.
“I’m calling about the poster,” a voice said.
“The dogs?” Kristine said.
“I got this number from the poster.”
A man’s voice, she thought, raspy and slow. She had hung the posters, with the help of her friend Seiko, all over town—a xeroxed photo of Uno and Rastus, sitting on the couch with her between them. TWO LOST DOGS, it read, and their names, and her name, her phone number. She had considered adding REWARD, but somehow that felt too desperate.
“Odd, how they both ran off at once,” the voice was saying.
“Have you seen them?” Kristine said.
“Would they have run off, together? It’s kind of romantic.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They never really got along that well.”
“But the fact that it’s more than one missing might lead you to believe that something entirely different has happened, like someone could have taken them.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you think maybe dogs are always filling in for something, that people own them to fill some lack they feel?”
“What do you know about my dogs?”
“What would a person want with someone else’s dogs? It’s curious, I agree. They’re not show dogs, are they? Could it be for breeding?”
“They’re both fixed,” Kristine said.
“What?”
“Neutered. They can’t breed.”
Kristine began to wonder if the voice might belong to a woman. It seemed possible, the pitch modulating from word to word. In the kitchen, her refrigerator shocked itself to life, then made a sound like a dog lapping water. She almost expected the jangle of collars, the clicking of nails.
“Is that a bandage on the big dog’s tail?” the voice said. “How did he get that? I’m not saying you’re to blame.”
“He knocked it on things,” Kristine said. “That’s all. Wagging it. You didn’t tell me your name, did you?”
“I was merely calling about the poster.”
“But not about my dogs.”
“Was there anything else wrong with them?” the voice said. “Did they suffer any other maladies?”
“Maladies?” Kristine said. “Rastus had distemper, once.”
“Is that physical or behavioral?”
“Both, I guess. He was cured.”
“That’s good. That’s fortunate when something doesn’t linger. And, you know, you shouldn’t consider it some kind of judgment that they left you.”
“Of course I don’t. What do you know about my dogs?”
“Only what you’ve told me, what I’ve learned from this poster. They’re lost. You, though; I do feel I know something about you.”
“How’s that?”
“Your face in the photograph, of course, how lonely it is.”
“My face?”
“Not as if something tragic happened to you,” the voice said. “More like nothing much has happened. Is that saying too much? Because I’ve known loneliness before, I’ve been lonely myself. I turned that around. I stopped reaching out and started making people reach out for me. And you were lonely even back when you had the dogs, in this picture; I can see it.”
All of Kristine’s toenails were painted dark red. As she listened, she turned the spigot with her toes, felt the hot water bleeding through the warm, seeping along her body. Her legs were sturdy; not fat, not muscular. Short, but in proportion to her body. Her hips flared out, solid, and her waist belled in. Her breasts were heavy, buoyant now, half beneath the surface of the water. Kristine liked the way she looked, compact yet not petite.
The line had gone quiet, the voice silent.
“Are you still there?” Kristine said.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about you, actually, and these dogs of yours. That’s why I brought the poster home with me. That’s why I called. Goodnight.”
Kristine dropped the phone onto the bathmat, then eased back under the thick, warm water, her eyes closed. Once, there had been another segment to these nights—she’d walk her dogs, then take her bath, then hope to sleep. Always ready to go outside, the dogs would chew on their leather leashes in anticipation. The two of them were no protection; they’d lift their snouts, wag their tails at rapists, muggers, and killers. Her boys, Kristine called them. Uno was thin and black, rangy, some cross between a Labrador and a hyena; low-slung hips, hair all bristle, his hard tail slapped the legs of tables and chairs, left bruises along her shins. Rastus was part Boxer and part Pug, with short legs and his smashed-in face, eyes bulging manic, breath wheezing—an ugly, affectionate, flatulent dog. She couldn’t imagine he would travel far.
It had been almost a month, now. She had let them loose to run at the dog park, had looked away for a moment, and they had never come back. That simple.

The two men entered the restaurant, taking mincing steps, as if their shoes were too tight. Their cheap black suits were definitely too small, binding here and there, exposing dark socks and white cuffs where golden cuff-links flashed. The two men followed Charles, the maitre d’, who led them to their table without speaking. They were white men, thin, one older than the other, both of their hair cut close against their scalps. They appeared to be foreign—German, perhaps Austrian—or as if they had been packed away and had then stepped out of a closet from some other time. If one leaned close to them, it seemed likely that they would smell of moth-balls, hair oil. And tonight, like every Friday night, these men did not even have to point at Kristine; it was understood that she would be their waitress.
“Gentlemen,” she said. “Good evening.”
They looked up at her with anticipation, as a kind of greeting, and then turned their attention back to their menus, pointing as they went, making certain that she could see.
Kristine waited as they decided; she studied the men. They did not seem to use sign language, or any complicated hand signals, but they were able to make themselves understood. She had never seen them smile, never even seen their teeth. The older man had flecks of gray in his hair, deeper wrinkles around his sunken eyes. The golden cuff-links at his wrists were scratched, tarnished. Both men had slender, hooked noses, thin-lipped mouths. Were they father and son? Lovers? As usual, they chose the most expensive entrees—the filet mignon, the apple bacon-wrapped venison.
“Excellent choices,” she said.
At first, the men’s weekly visits to the restaurant had aroused anxiety in Kristine, even dread; over time, these feelings had settled into a mixture of irritation and curiosity. Now she stood next to the kitchen door and watched as they simply sat there, gazing calmly across at each other. They did not look around themselves, at the other diners or at the linen napkins folded like origami; they ignored the flaming desserts and the special escargot plates, the curtains that took several men to hang. Kristine had tried speaking French to them—her accent decent after two years of college, six years ago, the classes providing a perfect restaurant vocabulary—but it did not change their response. She had asked them if they’d taken a vow of silence, once, and they’d gazed serenely at her, as if she were far from the truth or perhaps close to it. There was something sad about the men, something slightly threatening. She could understand, she wanted to tell them. She herself often grew tired of talking—just going out and making up the words to say to strangers could be exhausting.
She watched Vincent, the sommelier, perform his part of the charade, uncorking and pouring the wine without waiting for one of the men to taste it. They wouldn’t taste it; the thick red wine would remain unwavering until the men were gone and the bottle was taken to the kitchen, for the chef’s enjoyment. The silent men ordered only the finest vintages.
When their food arrived, the two men wouldn’t even lift their silverware. They would sit over the meal for half an hour, sometimes longer, the time it would take for someone actually to eat the meal they had ordered, and then—after selecting something from the five-tiered dessert cart—they’d rise, leaving all the food and their payment, in cash, behind them on the table. They’d tip Kristine fifty, maybe more, which went a long way toward strengthening her patience.
After the two men left, before the busboys swept in, she picked up the plates and carried them back through the kitchen, to where the dishwashers, Seiko and Hervé, worked in their white t-shirts, aprons around their waists.
“Friday night,” Seiko said, pulling a tray of glasses from the machine. Steam rolled up the wall, across the ceiling. “Damn! I never eat so well. My good, silent friends.”
“Absolutely,” Hervé said. He set the plate on the counter, began to saw at the steak.
Columns of stacked white china tilted slightly next to rows of hand-polished wine glasses. Fans blew hot air in and sucked it out, the door open to the dirty cobblestones of the alley. A battered AM radio played soft, almost inaudible salsa; the chef was always after the dishwashers to turn it down, fearing the sound would seep out and dilute the five classical CDs that rotated, playing from hidden speakers in the dining room.
“Those two,” Kristine said. “Sometimes it’s just frustrating.”
“They’re getting off on it,” Seiko said, his face wide and cheerful. “Some way or other.”
“It doesn’t seem like it,” she said.
He stabbed at the venison, cut a piece loose; he chewed, his right and then his left cheek bulging, a muscle flexing in his temple. Seiko ate no starch; he did not touch the garlic potatoes. Kristine ate them, quickly, since she had other tables, all the timing in her mind—how long each appetizer lasted, when the entrees would be ready.
“Any plans?” Seiko said. “After work tonight?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“It’s been a while since we did anything outside of work.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s just everything, lately, you know?”
She watched Seiko eat. He was slightly taller than she was, and twice as wide, a bodybuilder. His muscles stretched the fabric of his shirt and his dark hair was cut short, bristly, his bright scalp showing through when he angled his head. His name was a nickname from elementary school, a joke about someone’s wristwatch. He was Korean, not Japanese, but that was not a distinction nine-year-olds made. He didn’t mind the name, even introduced himself with it; his actual name, he claimed, could only be correctly pronounced by his parents.
“Yes,” he said. “Everything, lately. Any word on the dogs?”
Kristine almost mentioned the phone call of the night before, yet hesitated, uncertain how much to disclose. After all, the conversation had not exactly been about the dogs.
“I’ve been thinking,” Seiko said, “of all those dogs who show up years later, after being lost, all skinny and happy and worn-out.”
“That’s a movie,” she said. “Or a story on the radio. That’s not my life.”
The night picked up, food cut and cooked, eaten and digested, Kristine too occupied to think of the dogs, or of her caller. This morning she’d gotten up after eleven, still hearing the voice in her head as she stood before the mirror, looking at herself. There was no arguing that she was thirty-four, despite the firmness of her chin, her steady brown eyes staring back. She braided her hair, clipped it up. Smiling, she turned to the left, then the right, flashing the straight gap between her front teeth that some people found sexy. She might say cheerful, or resourceful; she would never say she looked lonely.
The hours spun past. She did not pause to talk with Seiko, at the end of the night, did not really consider going with him, as she sometimes had—one time they’d even done it in the walk-in, all that cold air blowing down, the compressor’s copper coils trembling above. Seiko had been behind her, her skirt over her head. She’d opened her eyes and seen bulbs of leeks like white fists, long silver mackerel with sharp teeth, spines on their backs.
It wasn’t so much the look of Seiko’s muscles as it was the fact of them, the strength to pick her up, to bend her all around. He could be gentle, but he knew when not to be. Usually this all happened in the front of his jacked-up pickup, her legs kicking everything, her head against the metal ceiling with a rhythmic, dimpled sound. It surprised her, how many positions they could find in that tight space, how well they did, parked somewhere down along the river or in a corner of the WalMart parking lot, three in the morning. One time she’d even fainted; when she came back around, they were driving—Seiko running all the red lights, heading for a hospital. Her head was in his lap, her underwear still on the dashboard. She laughed, sitting up, and he’d almost hit a parked car.
Perhaps he expected her to want something more, to start meeting in the daytime; perhaps he was waiting for her. If that were the case, he would wait a long time. He had never even seen the inside of her apartment; she wasn’t even certain where he lived. He was a dishwasher, after all, with no real ambition—she knew that, but it was difficult, finding the right situation to meet someone, in a place where she could be recognized as the kind of person she actually was.

“You must miss them,” the caller said. “Have you checked the pounds?”
“Of course I have.”
Two nights had passed since the first call. Kristine was already out of the bath, lying awake in bed, her body loose from the hot water. She had begun to believe she’d sleep.
“Why are you calling me?” she said. “Where are you?”
“My body, you mean? That doesn’t matter. We’re having a conversation.”
“I’m kind of wondering why you’re not asleep. It’s almost three. I’m in bed.”
“Am I keeping you up? I apologize. I was under the impression that you’re something of a night owl.”
“It’s just kind of an intrusion,” Kristine said.
“Well, you have to admit that it’s a little odd, hanging your picture and phone number all over town. And sometimes it helps to intrude on someone else’s life to really see the edges of your own. That’s a notion I’ve been turning over.”
Kristine wasn’t sure how to respond, so she remained silent. If this voice were a man’s, would these words be threatening, sinister? Perhaps. Would she like to feel this person’s arms around her? She considered hanging up the phone, but the voice kept talking.
“Anyway, I’m calling to help, to sympathize. Don’t you remember all that I said about loneliness?”
“I do.”
“Maybe that’s what we’re trying to get to, here.”
“Are you a woman?” Kristine said.
“What do I sound like, a talking bird?”
“So you are a woman.”
“It really is such a strange situation. Do you miss them?”
“You already asked that,” Kristine said. “You already said I did. Let’s not talk about the dogs. Let’s not talk about whether I’m lonely. Why don’t we hear some more about you?”
“I like to walk around during the day,” the woman said—it was a woman, Kristine decided, without a doubt.
“I think it’s underrated,” the woman said, “the daylight; it’s every bit as mysterious when the sun’s out, all sorts of surprises happening. I close my eyes a little and look through my eyelashes. That helps me see some of the mysteries, it really cuts down on all the distractions, closes them out. You understand.”
“I’m not so sure I do,” Kristine said.
“You will, unless you stay lazy. And you know I’ve seen you out there, walking around. I recognize you from the poster. I’d recognize your dogs, but I certainly haven’t seen them.”
“If you believe all that,” Kristine said, “about the day and the daylight and mysteries and everything, why do you keep calling me in the middle of the night?”
“Because the distinction still means something to you. Besides that, I’m not trying to be mysterious. I’m interested in you, your situation.”
“Are you just trying to make me feel worse? It’s terrible, especially calling so late like this.”
“‘Terrible’ has its positive connotations,” the woman said.
“What?”
“Like the way they call dinosaurs ‘terrible lizards.’ Did you ever read T.S. Eliot? ‘Terrible’ was his favorite compliment.”
“I did not mean it as a compliment,” Kristine said.
“I just see your face on the poster and I want to talk with you,” the woman said, “but then I do talk with you and I don’t know if it does any good—so many things people don’t talk about, but even then the words don’t catch. Even myself, sometimes; I hear the words come out of me and I wish I’d stayed silent, that I never talked at all.”
“That you never talked at all?”
“As if I spent my days in silence. Correct.”
“That’s very interesting,” Kristine said.

The silent men kept a very strict schedule. Since they’d first appeared, three years before, it had never varied. They dined on Friday nights, and they came in on Wednesday afternoons to make their reservation. They never called on the phone; they never spoke a word. Their presence added something to the restaurant, a certain mystery that the entire staff shared. Some looked on this odd relationship with a sort of pride, while others preferred to maintain a distance. Based on the men’s consistency—and their overtipping—Charles, the maitre d’, had tried to make it clear, several times, that they could have a standing reservation, that it could be understood that a table would be held every Friday night. But the men did not want this, or they did not understand. They continued to make their reservations in person, pointing at the same date and time in the book. They never left a name. In that space, Charles simply wrote The Silent Men.
“They’re not hurting anyone,” Seiko said, that Wednesday afternoon. “Why not let them be?”
“I don’t want you to do anything,” Kristine said. “Just follow them for an hour or so, find out a little more. They won’t even know you’re there.”
It was almost four o’clock; the restaurant was preparing for the evening’s dining. Seiko had been peeling potatoes; white starch marked the muscles of his forearms.
“You may have noticed that I’m at work,” he said.
“An hour or two,” Kristine said. “Hervé can cover things until then, no problem.”
Within half an hour, the two men appeared. They seemed to nod in Kristine’s direction, then leaned over Charles’s wooden podium, where a small light shone on the bound reservation book as if it were piano music. They pointed at the expected time and date, then turned to go.
The two of them passed in the large window, outside, walking in their way—it seemed they should be moving faster, with their arms jerking, their legs going like that, but their progress was decidedly slow. After a moment, Seiko passed; his walk had a muscular roll to it, his shoulders back. No one would suspect that he could have any relation to the two men, that he was following them. They seemed to be from another world.
Tables began to arrive. Dinners were served. Kristine checked the kitchen when she could, the dishwashing room where Hervé was barely keeping up. Seiko did not return in an hour, nor in two. He did not return to the restaurant at all. He had the next day off, and then she had an off day, and the results of his following remained as unknown as his own whereabouts. He had disappeared so quickly; she had looked away, and he had not returned.

For three nights, the phone did not ring, and this disappointed Kristine. She lay in the bath with only her knees and nose above the surface; she opened her eyes and stared through the burn of the water, at the cracks in the ceiling’s plaster. The lines looked like rivers, seen from miles above. She bent one leg over the tub’s edge and used the shower massage on herself, thinking all kinds of things. She lay there with the phone not ringing until the water went cool around her, and then she surfaced and walked still dripping to bed, the drain gasping behind her.
The phone rang on the fourth night after Seiko’s disappearance.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” Kristine said, answering it, “that you have my number and I don’t have yours.”
“You do have my number, Kristine. You just don’t ever choose to call it.”
It was her mother, far away in Colorado. Her mother, always ready to point out that waitressing could begin as a job and become a career. Kristine leaned forward in the tub; the cigarette in her hand sizzled as she jabbed its tip downward and water climbed to darken its paper.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought it was someone else.”
“Who?” her mother said. “Isn’t it extremely late there?”
“Exactly, Mom. I should get off the phone. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“So you are expecting a call.”
“No, I’m not. I’m expecting to be asleep, very soon.”
“I was just calling, thinking we could chat.”
“So we can do that during the day.”
“Well, I hope you’re in a better mood tomorrow, then.”
Kristine hung up, and slipped more deeply into the warm water. When the phone rang a minute later, she picked it up, but did not speak. Holding her breath, she listened.
“I keep thinking about those dogs of yours,” the caller said. “I mean, what could those two be doing? How far could they have gone? Do you think it’s possible they’re in another state by now?”
“Anything’s possible,” Kristine said.
“You’ve been on the phone. Who have you been talking to, in the middle of the night?”
“Jealous?” she said.
“Pardon me?”
“Do you know Seiko?”
“You were talking to whom?”
“How about the silent men?” Kristine said, and enjoyed the pause, the silence—was it uneasiness, or honest confusion?—that followed her questions. She reached for the wine glass, balanced on the edge of the tub. The wine was thick, red, cooler in her mouth than the bathwater around her.
“Let’s get back to basics,” the woman said. “I called you because I saw your lonely face hanging on a telephone pole, looking out at me. Simple as that. Some people things happen to, some make things happen.”
“That’s like a cliché,” Kristine said. “You could put it on a poster with a rainbow or some courageous animal.”
“You certainly could,” the woman said. “Some make them, some buy them. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Have you ever had a dog?” Kristine said. “Any pet at all?”
“I see people every day, out with their dogs, carrying the plastic bags and all that, talking on their cellular phones, impatient, just waiting for the dog to do its business. It’s not exactly an ennobling relationship, is it? We’re talking about animals who once were hunters, after all—it’s just that people project emotions onto dogs, and their brains are so small.”
As Kristine listened, she fantasized about someday meeting this woman, out on the street, of this voice in her ear and the arms closing around her from behind.
“It’s not like your dogs planned it, or it was anything malicious. Not necessarily. They just wandered off, most likely, and couldn’t find their way back.”

The silent men came in as usual on Friday evening. Nothing strayed in their behavior, or suggested that they knew anything about Seiko, that they were aware of having been followed. Kristine felt she had betrayed them, somehow, by trying to find out about their lives beyond the restaurant—yet the men themselves would have to admit, if they were willing to talk, that the way they acted might give rise to curiosity.
She cheerfully served them; she accepted their tip; she gave their dinners to Hervé and Tom, the new dishwasher. The night was busy, all the timing in her head, all the choreography with trays and hot dishes, the spinning between tables and down narrow corridors.
Later, after work, she had walked less than a block when a man’s voice called out from a dark alleyway.
“Kristine, wait.”
She heard the footsteps, approaching on the cobblestones, but she did not slow. Her job meant she gave out her name fifty times a night. Anyone could know it.
“Wait. Hold on. It’s me.”
Only then did she recognize the voice as Seiko’s. He stepped out, under the streetlamp, wearing dark slacks and black cowboy boots, a clingy black t-shirt that showed off his muscles. He smiled at her.
“Where have you been?” she said. “When are you coming back?”
“I’m not coming back.” Seiko shrugged; he seemed relaxed, yet full of energy. Confident.
“Did they fire you?”
“No,” he said. “I quit.”
A cab passed, its driver slowing in case they were interested.
“It’s not the job, so much,” Seiko said, “but the way I’ve been going about things, you know?”
“So what have you been doing?” she said.
“Chasing some options down—there’s so much more out there than I ever thought.”
“Like what?”
“It was you who started it,” he said, “who sent me after those guys.”
“And you never came back.”
“Well, I’ve come back now.”
“But you haven’t been following them this whole time.”
“Oh, no,” Seiko said, laughing, his hands up, palms facing her. “No, no. I was only with them that one night.”
“You were with them?”
“Hold on,” he said. “If you stop interrupting, I’ll try to tell it right. Let’s find somewhere to sit down or something.”
At an all-night diner, she ordered a piece of cherry pie, and Seiko had a ginger ale. They sat at a table in a dim corner.
“Waitresses are always nicer to waitresses,” he said, after they’d ordered.
“Maybe so,” Kristine said. She looked across at him, waiting for the story. It was obvious that he sensed her anticipation. He seemed more formal, somehow, more composed than she remembered. She wondered if he was on something, but she had heard him denounce steroids and all other poisons so many times—she had never even seen him drink a beer—that she knew this could not be the case. Now he glanced around the diner, then closed his eyes for a moment, as if allowing the story to return to him. Finally, laying his hands flat on the table, he opened his eyes and began to tell it.
“It was easy to follow them. I got into it, actually—I mean, everyone at the restaurant wondered about those two, and I was going to find out their secrets. They didn’t walk fast, but they got on this bus I didn’t expect and I barely caught it. They sat together, legs crossed, barely moving, staring straight ahead. I sat two seats behind them and I thought they’d say something to each other, maybe, since they were away from the restaurant, but they didn’t.
“They got off the bus down by Rittenhouse Square, in a rich neighborhood, started walking down this street of red brick rowhouses. Locust? Anyway, I was behind them, and they didn’t look back, not even to the side. And then one of them reached out and lifted a brick from the wall—it was a fake brick, a tiny door made to look like a brick, and inside there was a key pad, the numbers lit up. The younger guy punched in a combination and this dark wood garage door jerked open, next to them, rising without barely a sound. I saw a Cadillac in there, and a Mercedes, shining. The men walked between those cars, then the door came down and I was left outside.”
“You couldn’t have followed?” Kristine said. She had already eaten half her pie, then forgotten it, listening.
“I almost went around back, to see if there was a way in off an alley, but then I also wanted to watch the front door of the house they went into. The front door was made of that same kind of wood, at the top of these curving stone steps. Up above the door were these black metal letters spelling V-E-N-E-Z V-O-I-R.”
“Venez voir,” she said. “‘Come and see.’”
“I know that,” Seiko said. “You think I’ve just worked in a French restaurant all these years?”
“Go on.”
“The windows were too high to see through,” he said, “and curtains were hanging there, anyway. I walked back and forth, a few houses up, a few houses down; above, on roof decks, green plants were hanging over. Across the street, in a high window, I saw a child’s face, watching me, but that was it.
“And then the front door swung open. One of those guys, then the other came out. They waved to me, then started pointing toward the open doorway. ‘You want me to come inside?’ I said, but I already knew I was going, I was climbing the steps. They just leaned so I could get past, then closed the door, and it was like the street outside was miles and miles away. Man. It was like a catalogue for rich people in there, or a magazine. Velvet and leather everything. I didn’t know what to do; I barely dared to step on the carpets. I was really nervous.
“‘You guys probably think I was following you,’ I said, but they didn’t even seem like they heard me.”
“What were they doing?”
“They were pointing at me, pointing at a table and chairs, like they were really relaxed and they expected me or something. And they had these rubber sandals on—and they still wore their white shirts, and ties—and the sandals made this slapping sound when they walked. That was all. There was a cart with crystal pitchers of liquor, and the young guy pointed at that, and I shook my head. It was weird—already I wasn’t speaking, just like them. I felt kind of sleepy, sitting there at this table on this fancy chair, and the two of them each pulled a chair aside and one sat on a three-legged stool, one on a milk crate. All the furniture was fancy, though; the tabletop was so shiny I could see my face in it, stretching away from me, flat, staring at the ceiling, and those guys were reflected there, too, so our heads almost touched, in the center of the table. And then the younger guy got out the Monopoly board and started passing out the money to me and the older guy—”
“Monopoly money?” Kristine said.
“Yes,” Seiko said. “And we just started playing. I mean, damn. The whole situation didn’t seem normal, but it didn’t seem dangerous, either. I thought if I acted like it was normal for me they might smile or let me in on their whole deal. It wasn’t like asking questions was going to get me anywhere.”
“Right,” she said. “So you played Monopoly.”
“The younger guy was the bank. He did all the math by tapping his fingers on the tabletop—some kind of method they used to advertise on TV?”
“Chisenbop,” she said, not wanting to interrupt, to slow Seiko’s story. She leaned across the table, closer. Something about the way he was talking—both how he told it, and how he’d acted—attracted her.
“They’re good players,” he said, “but they never really seemed to be having fun about it. They were serious, paying attention, just not competitive. It’s hard to explain. After about an hour, I had the railroads—that was about it. A couple utilities. The only sounds were the dice, and those tapping fingers, and our game pieces, and the whistling in the older guy’s nose, him breathing.”
“Do you think someone else could have been in the house?”
“No,” he said. “I mean, there could have been, but if there was I didn’t see them—I never really left that front room.”
“Right,” she said.
“So after a while they offered me a drink again and I had a cup of green tea. First I tasted the hot water, and I checked the foil wrapper of the tea bag, to be safe. Those two both had a glass of water on a cork coaster in front of them, but neither one took a drink. Instead, after a couple more moves, they started pointing at me, then pretending to unbutton their shirts, then at the rent I owed, back and forth like that.”
“Like what?” Kristine said. “Strip Monopoly?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to go along with them, to call their bluff, you know? So I pulled my shirt over my head and hung it on the back of my chair.”
“And then what did they do?”
“Nothing. They just looked at me, and then we kept playing.”
Seiko paused, smiling in disbelief, remembering. He drummed his fingernails against his teeth. Kristine imagined him there with his shirt off, all those muscles he worked for. Under the table, his calf rested alongside hers; she could not recall when they’d begun to touch. She did not pull away.
“Did you like it?” she said. “And then what did you take off?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “They didn’t ask any more than that. It felt all right, I guess. I was just trying to act like it was all normal, but then I just kept losing properties, and before long I was bankrupt. The older guy just picked up my piece, that little wheelbarrow, and set it back into the box. They didn’t gloat or anything like that.
“I stood up, like I was going to leave, and they both looked at me with no expression at all and I could tell I had to stay, so I sat back down until the game was finished. The younger guy had all the red, green and blue monopolies, so it was only a matter of time. I put my shirt back on, and they didn’t seem to mind. I didn’t mind watching, actually. I liked it, I guess. The whole situation was so ridiculous, it was kind of exciting and unreal to be in the middle of it. I had to keep reminding myself that I was actually there.
“And then I wasn’t there. I mean, it was fast. The older guy went bankrupt—and there wasn’t any celebration or complaining or anything, and then they carefully put the pieces back and fit the top on the box. We all stood up and walked to the front door, none of us saying a word. I stepped outside. It must have been close to midnight. I looked back, from the bottom of the steps, but the door was closed and those two guys were gone, inside.”
“What if they had made you do something?” Kristine said. “What if they’d had a gun?”
“Those two?” He laughed. “They’d never have a gun.”
Kristine leaned back, tapping her plate with her fork. She found the story hard to believe, though it was even more difficult to fathom why or how Seiko would make it up.
“They don’t have your dogs,” he said. “If that’s what you were thinking.”
“What?”
“Two men, two dogs,” he said. “I know it makes a kind of sense, but I think you have to let that go.”
“I didn’t think that,” she said. “Not exactly. Listen, though, I’m glad you came and told me. It’s good to see you.”
“Well,” he said, “it was kind of a strange evening, there.”
“Have you seen them again? Have you gone back?”
“No,” Seiko said. “I don’t know why I would.”
“It’s late,” she said, setting down the money for the bill, a generous tip. “What next?”
“Oh, man,” Seiko said, checking his watch. “I got all caught up, talking. I’m late, I’m really late.” He scribbled something on the paper placemat, tore off the corner, and handed it to her. Standing and leaning in, he kissed her cheek, then turned and walked away.
He moved quickly, his boots clocking along the checkered linoleum. Kristine, feeling surprisingly disappointed, watched him go. She opened her hand and unfolded the paper, revealing a telephone number.

In the days following her talk with Seiko, Kristine called the number, wanting to speak with him, to see him again; there was never any answer. It rang and rang. If he wanted to reach her, she knew, he could find her at the restaurant.
Her attention slightly shifted, her routines slipped. Some nights after work she did not even go directly home. Instead, she walked; she did not stay on the busy streets, nor under the lights; she wandered alleyways and dark corners, using the city like a maze, turning left, turning right, every decision as random as the last and yet she did not slow or waver, did not even seem to choose.
Sometimes she did not return home until near dawn. It was one of those mornings that she opened her door and the phone began to ring.
“You’ve been out,” the woman said. “Where have you been?”
“Very well,” Kristine said. “And how about you?”
“Did you ever see a lamprey?” the woman said, unflustered.
“Those things on sharks?”
“They’re like big leeches with sucker mouths ringed with teeth. That’s the kind of parasite a dog is—it’s been their whole evolution, learning how to manipulate us.”
“I imagine you have a fascinating life,” Kristine said. “All this mystery, and probably luxury and sex, all sorts of forbidden things. That’s how I think of you. It amazes me that you ever find time to call.”
“You’re growing stronger,” the woman said. “You’ll see mysteries in the daylight, if you keep this up.”

Tonight Kristine came across one of her own LOST DOGS posters—stapled to a telephone pole, stiffened and corrugated by rain—and she tore it down, shredded it. Hanging her name and photo all over the city had been a mistake. She didn’t need any more callers, wasn’t even certain she needed the one caller she did have. Yet she knew that the prospect of more callers was not the only reason; she also tore down the poster as an answer to the question that the woman’s late night voice had asked again and again—Did she miss her dogs?
If she missed them more, now, perhaps they would never have run away. Kristine knew that, and she realized that she did not want her dogs to be found. As she walked, she imagined them at the end of long leashes, Rastus and Uno standing heavy on the bottom of the ocean, their four legs down, fish swimming between them. Her boys. They look up, their sad eyes through the water, and she cuts the leashes, the anchor lines. She moves with the current, tearing on a riptide, walking the city.
The words catch in the corner of her eye; she almost walks past them; she could not have passed them. VENEZ VOIR, the black letters pounded into the white stone above the doorway. The street is empty, all the windows flat black rectangles against the night. Without hesitating, Kristine climbs the stone steps. The doorknob turns in her hand without a sound. She waits for a word, an alarm, a face in the opened gap. There’s nothing. She steps inside, into the hot air, the thick scents of leather and furniture polish.
The wall against her hand is soft, a hanging Persian rug. A pale streetlamp shines through the window; she stands for a moment, her eyes adjusting. There’s no sound except the ticking of the grandfather clock—its round glass face glints in the darkness—and a low wind that is not, she realizes, a wind at all. It’s breathing.
The two men sleep on the floor, on wooden pallets. Their bodies rise and fall; they breathe in synchrony, hands folded flat under their cheeks, legs drawn up so the four points of their elbows and knees jut out, the pale tips of their penises flopping there. Without their clothes, they don’t look so similar. The younger man is almost entirely hairless, his skin pink even in the dim light. A straight line marks his side, where he’d rested on the edge of the pallet. Folds of flesh hang along his waist, as if he’d once, not so long ago, carried much more weight, as if his skin does not have the elasticity to hold his new shape.
There is a gap of a few inches between the pallets. The older man is even thinner than the other. Skeletal, and his bones covered with whorls of hair. Kristine crouches behind a sofa, less than three feet from the men. The sofa is leather and stainless steel, and there are two matching armchairs on the other side of the men.
The grandfather clock sounds the half hour; the men stir and settle. They look so peaceful. Like children. Even the chance of waking them does not seem frightening. Had they ever appeared threatening, or merely odd? Was there a difference? She leans closer, barely holding back from reaching out and touching them. And then—slowly, silently—she stands. Stepping out of her shoes, she heads past the men, deeper into the house; turning around and leaving does not even occur to her. She climbs heavily carpeted stairs, under a chandelier that drips with shadowy glass tears.
Upstairs, it is even warmer, the air close. She enters a study, past shelves of leather-bound books, floor lamps with slender, bending necks, and passes through another doorway, into a bedroom which is empty, and covered in silk—she can tell simply by touch, the slippery smoothness against her fingers. The bed is a canopied four-poster; she walks around it, her reflection a dark ghost in the mirror over the dresser, and then she passes back into the hallway.
“Uno,” she whispers. “Rastus.” It’s a joke, a little joke for herself, and on the dogs, wherever they are—far away, underwater or running across a wide field.
At the sound of her voice she suddenly worries that perhaps she is not alone here, considers the possibility that the house might hold more than the two sleeping, silent men. Quietly, she continues. In the second bedroom, she turns on a small light. She has to risk it. The art on the walls, the paintings look real; nudes, mostly, heavy men and women, flesh stretched out. They seem familiar, as if she’d studied the artist in college, but she cannot quite remember. On a low table, photographs reflect the light, and at first glance she believes they are of Seiko—skin, and muscles, men’s bodies oiled and flexing—but they are not Seiko. It is a magazine, lying open; some of the men kneel on mattresses, bent at their waists and looking over their shoulders, while others grimace, gripping their long, curved cocks like scimitars. Kristine closes the magazine. She stacks it atop the copies of House Beautiful.
Designer suits hang in the walk-in closet, fifteen or twenty of them, the tags still attached. White shirts, ties, shining, unworn shoes. No one has ever worn any of this. No one has ever slept in these rooms. The bed here is low, king-sized, its frame a wooden sleigh; she runs her hand along its smooth, polished curves. She could so easily climb into one of these beds, strip down and slip between the silk sheets, wake up tomorrow and ask the men for breakfast.
As she leaves the room, another face startles her, another person that is only herself, her reflection in another mirror. Strands of hair have escaped her bun and hang loose, like a spider’s legs around her head. Her skin shines with sweat, her eyes manic and hungry, all wound up.
She descends a different, back stairway, into the kitchen. There are smooth ceramic tiles beneath her feet; heavy pans hang from the ceiling; long knives shine, sharp against the darkness, in a rack along the wall. Every counter top and appliance is stainless steel, still holding some of the previous day’s dull light. Inside the refrigerator there are wheels of brie, and paté, every rich thing—all untouched, just as she’d expected.
Kristine can see, through an arched doorway, the heavy table where the Monopoly game must have been played, the chair where Seiko had sat. His phone number is on her dresser, back at her apartment, under a charm bracelet. Beyond the table, she can see into the front room, the shapes of the men, still sleeping. It occurs to her that perhaps it is not Seiko’s phone number at all, there in her bedroom. He had never said it was his. The number could belong to the silent men, though she sees no phone here; they’d be unable to answer one if there was. With a shiver, then, she realizes that the number belongs to the night caller, the woman—Kristine has been calling at the wrong hours, during the day, to get through, to make the connection.
She turns and opens a white door next to the refrigerator. Cold air rushes up a dim, wooden staircase; the wind smells like dirt. She descends, stepping with one foot, then joining it with the other, pausing on each step. Her hands, out in front of her, tear cobwebs. At the bottom of the stairs, she stands in the darkness, the open doorway a pale rectangle above her. The floor beneath her feet is damp, gritty. A string swings along the skin of her face; she pulls it, and a bare light bulb snaps on.
She is startled by two headless, human shapes, and steps back, her hands up, stumbling on the stairs. It’s only the suits, hanging empty, awaiting the men.
Kristine pulls more light cords. Bulbs in metal cages illuminate the basement’s far corners, the mousetraps along the walls. She is careful where she steps. There are shelves, stacked with cans and bottles of cleaning solutions. A toilet with no seat or lid stands in the corner, not walled in at all, a sink nearby. A three-legged stool sits beside a plastic milk crate. Here, people have lived. The men live here. They do not sleep here, though; they need to be surrounded by temptation even while they sleep.
She holds herself still, holds her breath. She can’t tell if she’d heard something or if she’d made the sound herself. She realizes that when she had just seen the men, sleeping on the other side of the table, they seemed to have switched places. Had they? The sound above is the easing shut of the door atop the stairs, the click of a lock. No one will hear her if she calls, she knows this. No sound can escape this house.
She looks around herself, her black shadow bent at the neck, her body on the floor and her head on the wall. A dented saucepan hangs from a nail, there, a bent ladle next to it. A hot plate, a galvanized tub. Still, no sign of food, not even a loaf of bread, a can of soup. Through a doorway, she can see into the garage, the dark gleam of cars’ hoods.
The garage door does not open; there is a numbered key pad, glowing, its digits a riddle she can’t solve. Yet here, hanging from a pegboard, is a skeleton key, almost hidden.
Quietly, Kristine climbs the stairs, eases the key into the keyhole. It does not fit. But when she tries the knob it turns, and she feels that her thinking has unlocked it. When the door swings open, no one is there.
Kristine walks through the kitchen, down a hallway, past where the silent men still sleep, or pretend to sleep. Opening the door, she steps into her shoes and looks out onto the street. The wider she stretches her eyes, the more the shadows ease and dissolve, the more quickly light rises from the sky and street, the more the air shivers and opens. She feels wonderful, terrible. Once more, she looks over the pale bodies of the silent men, breathing together, and then she steps outside and gently closes the door.

It is three o’clock in the morning when Kristine returns to her apartment. She finds the scrap of paper atop her dresser, then the phone, and dials.
“Hello?” a man’s voice says.
“Who is this?”
“Kristine? It’s Seiko.”
“Seiko?”
“I hoped you’d call.”
“Some things happened.”
“What?” he says. “The dogs?”
“I went there. The house.”
“Where?”
“The silent men,” she says.
“What did they do to you?”
“Nothing. They were sleeping.”
“What are you talking about?” he says. “It’s late. I’ve missed you.”
“I want to see you,” Kristine says. “Can you come here?”
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I can.”
“Hurry,” she says, and then she tells him how.