Keeper of the Keys

Although of course eventually, probably only a few minutes later, he did find his house, this house he was watching now, a few doors away.

The sirens faded but persisted, fretting, chronic complainers, echoing off the million tons of asphalt. They congregated somewhere nearby, weaving closer from different directions like a bunch of tired kindergartners assembling for snack time. Ray caught a whiff of smoke between hits of smoggy air. The engines were en route to a fire, nearby, upwind, but not near enough to concern him. Good. Maybe the commotion would keep the police busy, too.

Ray pulled back behind a juniper bush to give himself a minute to organize his keys, putting aside the ones he had already tried, just in time, as it turned out, because across the street, a woman with a blanketed baby snuggled up against her poked her head outside, examining the sky for smoke, sniffing. She stayed for only a few seconds before ducking back inside. She never even looked toward Ray.

If the police came-but don’t worry about them. Stay loose. Taking advantage of the neighborhood din, he continued sticking various keys in the lock a few times, then twisted the handle to the door, which slipped open with oily smoothness. He stepped inside the familiar foyer, closing the door behind him quietly, and listened.

Nothing stirred in the living room. He moved toward the dining area, reluctant to turn on a light. Was everyone gone? He didn’t know for sure. He stood for a long time listening, hearing only the creaking of an old house. While he listened, he looked in dismay around the room, experiencing some of the disorientation he had felt that first day of school when he went into the wrong house.

This house, their house, was all wrong. His mother had arranged the couch in front of the brick fireplace, giving the long room some balance and a focal point.

Hearing nothing, feeling excited, agitated, he took one end of the unfamiliar leather couch and hauled it, then the other end, until the couch was in position.

Better. But the two chairs needed to come in, and the coffee table, abandoned across the room, also needed a better home.

There. In the darkness, he remembered what it felt like to live in this house. He liked watching television in his bedroom. He loved the big backyard, with its yellow crabgrass, that he cut every other Saturday. He liked the way his mom had been at this house. She had a job in the back room of a florist shop. She liked the people there, and came home from work cheerful most days.

They had lasted seven months here.

In this house, his mother had hidden things behind some molding in the small back bedroom they had used as a den, where the L-shaped hallway turned.

The doorway to the hall was mercifully open, so he stepped into its murk, too nervous to use the small flashlight he had tucked into a pocket.

Feeling his way along the wall, he walked down the hallway, approached the room slowly, silently, and put his hand on the door frame. The door was open. An empty room awaited him. He went inside, needing only a few moments to complete his mission.

He found it behind the molding, another small plastic rectangle, shocks ru

Back into the dark hallway-

A light flashed on in the master bedroom to his right. “Who’s out there?” a quavering female voice yelled from inside. “I’ve got a gun!”

“Don’t shoot!” he cried. “I’m going!”

A blast whipped through the closed door to his mother’s old bedroom, splintering the wood trim beside him.

When the front door wouldn’t open, he crashed through the window.

9

A t work on Wednesday morning, Ray felt strangely alive. He had been shot at, broken through a window, escaped with a few scratches. He had obtained another prize.

Martin had greeted him this morning with what might be mistaken for warmth by an observer, but what Ray understood to be a kowtow. “Hey, you look like a guy who could use some TLC.”

“I’m fine,” Ray had said, not touching a nick from some glass on his cheek that felt particularly painful.

“Like a bum somebody beat, who walked away.” Ray waited for him to ask if Leigh had come home yet, but Martin knew better. He watched silently as Ray turned into his office.

Odd how, considering the recent brawl between them, the partnership between Ray and Martin continued to operate. Ray supposed you could put it down to the years of practice they had at suppressing their personal problems at work.

Hair flyaway, pulling at a blouse that didn’t quite cover her firm belly, Denise popped her head into Ray’s office and reminded him to remember to take his laptop home. Her husband was a former linebacker at UCLA and even Martin hadn’t dared to attempt a come-on, not that she would ever bow to his facile charm, something Ray had always admired about her. “I attached the Antoniou presentation on an e-mail. Tomorrow’s so crucial.”

Ray nodded.

“Are we ready?” she nervously asked.

“We will be.”

Her intrusion snapped him back. Along with whatever Denise had cooked up, he had drawings, schematics, and calculations to assemble. He organized his desk, feeling as immortal as a teenager, and as reckless. His work never stopped. For the first time in a long, long time-since he had built his own house-he was doing exactly what he wanted to do on a design.

All because he had said to hell with it.

Although it could come to nothing. No way to tell yet, while they were still in the fantasy phase of the Antoniou project. Strange how it took a crisis to make a person not give a damn, and therefore do some of his best work ever.

Work was an antidote to anxiety. You could forget things working. Spreading the large prints out on his cherry table, he thought, No mistakes.

In the afternoon, he hosted a difficult meeting. Four associates, all younger than Ray, in their mid-to-late twenties mostly, three men and a woman, waved their hands above the conference table, wary. News of his fight with Martin had obviously spread, causing universal consternation. Trust Suza

Who would they want to win?

A delicate seesawing of talent was necessary to make a success of an architectural firm like theirs: on the one side, Martin the sales guy with the accountants, Hal and Gary, who didn’t pay people until they begged, cried real tears, or threatened to sue; and balanced on the other side, Ray and the overblown assortment of tender artistic types.

The money guys disdained the artists as lightweights with a frivolous disregard for financial realities. The architect/artists hated the money guys back, not so much for forcing them to live within the numbers, but for their contemptible interest in such things. They all needed each other, that was the problem.

“The museum job is going well,” Ray a

Today, however, the glum faces of his staff did not reflect this mellow summer afternoon. They wanted to know they had jobs. Ray assured them they did.

Martin entered the room, twenty minutes late. His bloodshot eyes belied the hearty smile. He had probably been fortifying himself at the trattoria next door. He looked good, though, dark purple dress shirt, black slacks, black tie, black Nikes. Suza