May We Be Forgiven

knees, scrubbing. The blood is dark, dry, and flaky. Wet, it softens to a swirling pink, spreading like beet juice through the paper towels. I slice my finger open on shrapnel, a shard of porcelain that tears the skin, and my blood mixes with the mess. Later, I use a tube of Krazy Glue to seal the wound. As I am working I have the sensation of being watched, spied upon. I feel something pass over, brushing against my leg. When I turn to look, something sails over my body, leaping. I spin. I slip on the wet floor, landing on my ass. There is a cat, sitting on the dresser, staring, his tail flicking this way and that.
    “Motherfucker,” I say. “You scared me.”
    He blinks and looks at me, hot green eyes like emeralds shining.
    A creature of habit, I stop only when the job is done, the bloody water bucket emptied, the rags thrown away. I work, and then I look to see what’s for dinner. Standing inside the open door of the refrigerator, I pick at the leftovers, at what we had the night before. I eat random bites of things, thinking of Jane, of our evening snack, of our lovemaking. I make a plate and lie on the sofa in front of the television.
    The echo of gunfire wakes me. I come to thinking George has once again escaped and has come to kill me.
    Bang. Bang. Bang.
    A heavy knocking on the door.
    Tessie barks.
    The mattress has arrived.
    “Nice thing is, mattresses aren’t breakable,” one of the men says, as they wrestle it up the stairs. “I used to do plasma-screen televisions—that was a nightmare.”
    They take the old mattress and box spring without comment.
    As they exit, a flash goes off in the yard.
    “What the …” Flash, flash-flash.
    One of the men drops his end of the outgoing mattress and plunges into the darkness. I hear scuffling sounds from within the bushes. The mattress man comes up, holding an expensive camera.
    “Give me the camera,” a stranger says, pulling himself out of the flower bed.
    “Who are you?” I ask.
    “That’s my camera,” the stranger says.
    “Not anymore,” the mattress man says, hurling it towards the street.

    I have to go home. It’s almost 11 p.m. I lock up the house, lead Tessie to the car, give her a boost up, and head for the highway. Tessie shakes.
    “No shots,” I say. “No vet. We’re going to the city, Tessie.”
    The dog passes toxic gases. I pull to the side of the road, and Tessie explodes onto the edge of the highway.
    “Did you have a good trip?” the night doorman asks. I don’t answer. “Your mail, your packages,” he says, filling my arms, “your laundry.” He hooks the hangers over my crooked finger.
    “Thank you.”
    He says nothing about the dog, whose leash I’ve lashed around my wrist.
    The apartment has a certain smell, familiar yet stale. How long have I been gone? It’s as though everything is frozen in time, has been frozen, not only for the days I’ve been away, but maybe the entire decade preceding. What once was modern, sophisticated, looks like the set of a period piece, Edward Albee circa 1983. The phone is a push-button trim-line, rarely used. The sofa arms are worn. The carpet pile is uneven along a certain path, a well-traveled route from room to room. The piles of magazines are dated eighteen months back.
    And still I am grateful to be in a place where everything is familiar, where I could go blind and still find my way. I sink into it, want to roll in it, I want none of what’s happened to be true.
    The orchid is still in bloom. I water it, and, as if I were watching a time-lapse sequence, within the hour the petals fall off, as if suddenly released, springing to certain death on the cabinet below. By morning, only the bare stick will remain.
    The refrigerator seeps the curdled scent of sour milk, half of a dry grapefruit, a jar of ageless peanut butter, some brown bread white and furry on the edges, old rice pudding brewing a green bull’s-eye center in a plastic deli container. In a frenzy I open every cabinet and throw out what’s expired. I wonder, does everyone do it the same way—glasses here, dishes there, dry foods and cans together? Where do you learn it, the grouping of like things? I take the trash down the hall and order Chinese. The man recognizes my phone number and says, “You call late tonight, long time no see; hot-sour soup, fried chicken rice, moo-shu pork?”

    W hile waiting, I take the elevator to the basement, unlock the storage bin, and wrestle out an enormous ancient blue