He kissed the Peters’
garage door opener.
Nobody knows why
we do these things.
Most people in re
search couldn’t
swear by the con
nection between
cause and effect,
symptom and di
agnosis. Ron,
born Rick (not
Richard) had
packed a few
plums in a Zip
lock bag for
breakfast. Oh,
how he missed
his dead wife.
Earlier, while
he was fiddling
with the razors
in a stranger’s
guest bathroom,
he wished for all
of the additions,
those presumed,
even those un
assumed, as he
directed his att
ention away from
the blades and on
to the dozens of
prescription pill
bottles in the
half-open cab
inet next to the
toilet. He tried
awkwardly and
slowly and stutter
ingly to pronounce
the names that app
eared on each bottle.
Not the names of the
Peters parents or the
names of the Peters
children. They would
remain strangers to
the end. But the med
icinal names – brand
names, generic names.
After about five minutes
of this, as the strange
syllables were bouncing
off the bathroom tiles,
he realized he was a little
turned on. Red-faced, he
attempted to close the
toilet closet, but it was
incapable of closure,
as if built for eternities
of ajar. He’d taken a
pill or two that he found
impossible to pronounce,
and as he left the house
he could never know – the
same way he’d come in,
through the antiseptic
hallway and the tidy
garage, he didn’t think
to peer around to scan
the neighborhood subtly,
stealthily, like a hawk, to
ensure none of the Peters’
neighbors were in view,
but he just walked out
as if he owned the place,
made a lot of specific man
ual garage door closing
sounds, and he began to
fell his symptoms going
away, dissipating, dis
appearing. He left the
red Bronco that was
once his in the drive
way, watching it as
if it were an old
dying friend as
he bypassed it,
crossed the little
neighborhood
avenue to the
other side, took
a moment to de
cide whether to
go left or right
once he got to
the opposite
sidewalk, went
left, walked about
five steps, did a
military about face,
having decided on
the other direction,
and marched his way
out of view, the view
being the imaginary
woman with the im
aginary camera at
the avenue end of
the Peters’ short
driveway, the hatch
back of the red Bronco
remained wide open,
and that was it. The
would-be thief was gone.
