Andrew Graham Martin: HERE IN THE HEAT • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Andrew Graham Martin
HERE IN THE HEAT

He enters through the window. The family’s on the ground. Why? Slumber party? Who does this? It’s June. Maybe the only air conditioner is in here. Is he really doing this? Too late now. He scoots through them. Doesn’t lift his feet. Flips the upturned corner of the rug down with the toe of his sneaker. Would’ve bothered him otherwise. Continues. Their bodies make a maze. He thinks of tracing a crayon along a placemat map. The daughter looks to be about that age. Do they eat at restaurants? Sure, all families do. But they can only afford one A/C? Maybe just soup at the kitchen table. Every night. Maybe a restaurant’s a special occasion. He’s got to stop thinking like this. He’s tight too. Nothing tighter than being in the red.

He’s in the parents’ bedroom now. At least he thinks it must be. Doesn’t look any different than the living room. Smaller maybe. No mattress. Everything’s in the living room where the cool is. But there is a nightstand in here. And it does have jewelry in it. And now he’s holding it in his hands. And it’s glinting in the dark. A necklace. Looks like those Egyptian beetles, the ones that burrow under your skin. Heirloom? Got to be. Things this nice don’t belong to people this poor. Why’s he robbing poor people. He shakes his head. He’s poor. He hasn’t got jewelry. Not even heirloom jewelry. Have to be an heir to get heirlooms.

He grabs the dad’s (he assumes) PS2 from the floor and a jacket from the closet that looks like it could be real leather. He wipes his palm along a built-in shelf and it comes back caked in gray.

And now he’s in the kitchen. Most burglars don’t think of going in the kitchen. But he does. Kitchen’s where the cheese is. Microwaves go for three times a TV. Reason being TVs come and go. Think about how different TVs were when you were a kid. Think about how different TVs were last year, even. But microwaves? Microwaves stay the same. Picture your parents’ microwave. Lunchables spinning inside. White cheese melting with the yellow cheese. Pepperonis in the trash. Mom pouring you room temp Sprite in a glass with Alf on it. Okay now picture your microwave. Same microwave, right? Microwaves don’t change. Therefore, value remains constant. A microwave built in the 90s will go for the same as one built now. Can’t say the same for TVs.

Most burglars don’t know that. But he does. Only he doesn’t like to think of himself as a burglar.

Then there’s a creak. His throat gets tight. Shoulders up near ears. Don’t move. Don’t even gulp a little fish breath, his dad used to say to him when they’d go hunting up near Boone County. Don’t even gulp a little fish breath, James. Breathing makes noise. Deer hate noise. So just eat your breath like a plant does.

He hated the way the deer tensed when the crack went off. Couldn’t imagine them going limp on account of him. The ones his dad shot, he’d pretend to give them CPR. Push on their furry ribs with his little hands. His dad didn’t like that. His dad would tell him to knock that freaky shit off. But he wouldn’t. Not till he got dragged away. The doctors in shows never gave up pushing on the chests.

No other sounds. No more creaks. His shoulders lower. Old places make noise. They’re not put together right, is why. Pieces don’t fit flush with each other. Like how cheap jeans pop up in the crotch. That’s how you can tell they’re poor. His mom always told him that. Poor jeans get a little boner in them when you sit.

Now he’s in the bathroom. No cheese in the bathroom, traditionally. But why not check it out anyway. Only three rooms in the apartment anyway. Might as well check all three anyway. Right? Towel rack looks kind of nice. Screwed into the wall, though. Not worth it. Bathtub’s nasty. He wishes they had some Barkeep’s Friend under the cabinet he could sprinkle in there. It wouldn’t take much effort to keep this place nice but they aren’t putting in the effort. How hard is it to mop. How hard is it to Clorox the lid of a toilet seat. Doesn’t it drive them crazy, seeing the visible pubes on there like that. Ruining what could be white.

He considers the shower curtain but it wouldn’t fit in the bag with everything else he doesn’t think. Shower curtain rings? No. Isn’t that what they stole from Scrooge? He’s not stealing shower curtain rings. He’s not some Dickens scallywag. Crud on his nose. Heart of gold.

But he’ll steal their soap maybe. He needs soap at his place. Soap at his place is so watered down it’s like the dispenser is sneezing.

What’s he doing, he thinks. Thinking about stealing soap. CVS brand. Come on.

So now he’s back in the kitchen. Picking up the microwave, and the bag with the necklace and the PS2 and the jacket in it. The back of his shirt’s glued to him. The air’s so thick it’s like breathing in gauze. Something in the ceiling’s squealing.

He stops and puts the microwave back down. Gasps. Just what he needs, is a herniated disc. Like he doesn’t owe the hospital enough already.

“Yeah, it’s actually me this time, doctor,” he hears himself in the future say. “It’s me who needs you instead of me who’s only paying you. I slipped a disc stealing a microwave to pay for all the shit I paid for for her. The heart meds and the back brace and the pain pills and the foot surgery and the skin cream and the upper respiratory infection medicine. Love’s expensive.”

And now she’s managing a Dollar General somewhere near South Bend. And her skin is soft and free of blemishes, and her spine is as calibrated as a thermometer on a spaceship.

He did that for her.

He takes a break from thinking by scanning the open shelves to see if there might not be something he’d like to snack on on his way home. He figures if he picks up McDonald’s on the drive back then he’ll barely wind up in the green for the night. What a hoot. So let’s see. What’ve we got here. Easy Macs, stacked to the ceiling. Some opened and empty. Who does that. Off brand Oreos. Vanilla wafers. Empty too. Why the fuck’s it still in the cupboard if it’s empty?

He starts pulling out the empty containers and stuffing them in the plastic Wal-Mart brand trash bin in the corner. He’ll think about it all night if he leaves this place the shithole that it is.

But the trash gets full quick.

So he takes the bag out of the bin and it catches on the side and he has to lift the whole thing and do a funny dance to try to get it to come off without dropping to the floor and making a tremendous clatter. He finally manages to do so and he ties the bag and goes and sets it by the door. He’d take it outside if he knew where the dumpster was. He’s only ever seen this house from the front, driving by on his way to and from Cummins. The only thing he knew about this house before coming in was that they left that window with the air conditioner unit in it cracked just a bit. Just enough for fingers to slip through.

There’s another creak but he ignores it. Old places, man. There’s no hope for them. Probably just gonna fall down someday when these Indiana streets get too hot. Mortar’s gonna melt and the shingles on the roof are gonna get gooey and slide, like sheets of Oreo crawling down the side of an ice cream cake in July. This house is gonna melt and it’s not gonna matter that he was here or that he did any of this.

He finds a new bag under the sink and puts it in the trash. It puffs up like a balloon and he waits for it to deflate before he starts cramming more trash in it. Crumpled paper towels. The plastic ring from a thing of milk. A couple empty Modelo cans. A two-liter bottle of R/C Cola, two-thirds empty. Flat and warm. A handful of salt. They can bill him later for his services, he thinks without laughing.

The kitchen’s better now. Not perfect but better. He runs his hand along the counter and it catches on the sticky spots. Those are gonna attract roaches. He wets a paper towel and scrubs at the sticky spots but they’re too ingrained. They’ve let this place go to hell. It was hell in here before he came and it’ll be hell in here after he’s gone.

He decides he’s got to be done now.

He puts his wrist through the handle of the bag, then bends down and tries to pick up the microwave this time using mostly his knees instead of his back, which has always seemed like a distinction without much of a difference to him. Your back gets involved in such matters no matter how much you try to uninvolve it.

He hears another creak, but it was probably him. He weighs more now than when he came in. All he’s carrying.

And he turns around and sees the kid.

Looking like she’s out of some Japanese ghost movie. How’s someone sleep so light. He didn’t make a peep. Maybe she just wanted water. Hair’s all matted. Probably baths are luxuries. What to do. She’s looking at him with her big blue Hanna Barbera eyeballs and she looks scared. Why shouldn’t she be? There’s a burglar in her kitchen. She doesn’t care how good a person he is.

And he’s doing it before he even knows he’s doing it. He’s putting down the microwave and the bag and rushing over to her and covering her mouth so she doesn’t scream, which of course just makes her scream. And she’s screaming into his hand and making his palm hot and it’s muffled but not quiet. He doesn’t need to be here. He doesn’t need to be doing this. Lots of people have been in the red before, have owed shit to people who did not care to be around them anymore, and they did not find themselves in some strange family’s kitchen, hand over the delicate mouth of a little girl.

So what makes him so special? What makes him king shit?

He’s making a shh-shh gesture with his free hand and trying to make his eyes look as non-threatening as possible. Which is hard to do with your hand over someone’s mouth. But then finally she must run out of breath or something because she stops screaming. And his palm is moist from her spit. And the parents aren’t moving in the living room so they must not have heard. How could they not have heard? So tired from working? What do they do, labor in coal mines? Maybe they’re social workers. Maybe the mom’s a teacher. Overworked and harried. Called a bitch behind her back. Maybe she’s off for the summer. Maybe this is her paradise he’s ruining.

He whispers at the girl with his hand still covering her mouth:

“Go back to sleep. Forget you saw me.”

She shakes her head no.

“No, you won’t go back to sleep? Or no you won’t forget you saw me?”

She just shakes her head again. He has a rule about engaging with folks he’s robbing. The rule is don’t do it.

“Then I don’t know what to do,” he says. He looks down at her arm. That’s when he notices parts of it are covered in purple and yellow finger marks. Like a zebra hit by a car. But those aren’t his finger marks. He glances back toward the living room and sees the snoring lump under the sleeping bag.

“He do that?”

She seems confused by the question. She’s got a line of tears welling along the bottoms of her eyelids. What the fuck’s he doing. Talk about engagement. He’s not her guidance counselor. He’s only involved in her life because her parents were dumb enough to leave their window cracked open.

Because it’s hot.

And so now he gets to leave her here with the lump. The lump who can’t afford central air for his kid. The lump who’s probably still asleep cause he’s drunk out of his mind. There was a mostly empty Evan Williams in the bottom cupboard, now he thinks about it.

So. This is the way he figures things: he can leave her here in the heat or he can leave her here in the heat and take a few things of hers before he goes.

Or maybe there’s another way.

He looks back at her face. Notices she’s got crusted mud around her chin. A smudge of dirt or maybe food on her cheek like a thumbprint. Chocolate. And those purple and yellow marks on her arm, which are making him nauseous just looking at them.

So here’s what he’ll do: he’ll wash her up a bit. He’ll clean her off in the bathroom sink. Then he’ll leave here with her parents’ things. And he’ll leave with his soul weighing exactly the same as it did when he came in. 160 lbs, drenched in sweat.

Still with his hand over her mouth, he starts guiding her toward the bathroom. She’s resistant of course.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he says. “Just gonna wash your face off.”

The tears spill out like a water balloon bursting and her body goes limpish. She lets him guide her. Her obedience makes him carsick.

In the bathroom, he runs the water gently, trying not to make too much noise with splashing. He’s turned the light on to see better and the buzzing from the vent is a risk but so be it. In the new light he can see further imperfections in this place: yellow stains of spirals around the drain from the hard water. Flecks of hair from shaving plastered to the base of the faucet. Toothpaste splatters in the mirror.

He can barely see himself through the smudges.

He takes the hand towel hanging nearby and runs it under the water which is taking too long to get hot. The towel gets heavy and damp and he pushes it across the girl’s face and she resists and pulls back like a baby, refusing the generosity he doesn’t have to show her. But he forces it. Gets the crud off. All with his other hand over her mouth. The area around the sink looks like the splash zone bleachers at Sea World. His mom always wanted to take him to see a whale dance but his dad always refused for no reason other than to deprive joy. Joy deprivation makes muscles stronger. Like holding your breath when you run.

Somewhere in this world the lump still snores.

He takes the rag to her arm just in case. Just in case the purple isn’t bruises but, who knows, markers or makeup or something. Maybe she was playing dress up. Maybe she’s an actress to be. He used to know an actress. Might again, someday.

But she only winces when the cloth rubs against her.

“Sorry,” he says.

She glares at him.

“If I let my hand off your mouth, will you yell?”

She nods.

“But I’m—”

He can’t finish his sentence. After all this she still doesn’t realize who he is. Her mind is too narrow to accept that he could maybe be interested in doing something not awful for someone like her. She can’t wrap her tiny brain around the idea that he’s not defined by the way that he came into her life. She can’t see that he’s cleaned her home. She can’t see inside him and realize that he wishes he could grab her arm and untwist those bruises right off of her to get her skin back to how it looked before.

And he knows it’s not his job to make her see that. But he’d like her to know it anyway.

He glances through the bathroom window, where outside in the street his car is still parked. The hood’s got moon on it. The backseat’s got room in it. The car will breathe soon. He’ll put some life in it and it’ll roar away.

He looks back at her. Lowers his hand from her mouth. She stares, waiting, unsure.

“What do you think?”

She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t look grateful, or happy, or open to suggestion. But she doesn’t look so frightened anymore. So there’s that.

“See who I am?”

Then, she takes in a huge gulp of air.

“Don’t,” he says.

But part of him wants her to. So someone can wake up and see him.

Andrew Graham Martin’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Post Road Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Okay Donkey, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. He graduated from Purdue University in 2014 and currently lives in Indianapolis with his wife and baby daughter. During the day he works as a script writer for the children’s YouTube series Ryan’s World.