hugh

And then the man opens his eyes to find himself standing at the kitchen island. He is studying the cereal bowl on the granite countertop before him through light textured like the static on a rabbit-eared TV set. It must be morning—four, four thirty: that's what he would guess. The cereal bowl, black, black or gray, is half full of granola and the man realizes there is something in his left hand and something in his right. An open carton of strawberry yogurt. A spoon with aerodynamic design. To the best of his knowledge, he is making breakfast.

This thought happens to him and the man hears a noise and raises his head. He thinks cat before he remembers there isn't any cat before he remembers there was no cat, but maybe now there is. A few seconds, and he settles on the idea of floorboards adapting, a breeze bothering things outside, even though it is summer and he knows there aren't many breezes at this time of day at this time of year.

He scoops the yogurt from carton into bowl and stirs the granola from the bottom up. On the counter beneath the paper towel holder is a large fruit dish, except it is a different one, chrome grid, not glossy Norway maple, maple or maybe it was fir, with different kinds of fruit in it. A pale white apple, which would appear green in daylight. One orange, which the man picks up, palms, sniffs, puts back down. Two bananas, one splotched with biomorphic stains, and he chooses the other. Opening drawers, closing drawers, opening drawers, he locates the silverware and selects a knife, a steak knife, no, just a regular blunt-end one, with which he cuts up the peeled banana over the yogurt and granola and listens to the wet sound of slices tickling into the mix.

Which is when he becomes aware of the spiky scent of ground coffee. He discovers a coffee maker beneath the cabinets near the microwave and the machine must be black because it blends in almost entirely with the countertop. He can see it and then he can't and then he can. The one they had was black, too. No, brushed aluminum. He would figure two tablespoons of ground beans in the wire mesh filter. He would figure the timer was set last night.

This thought happens to him and the man hears someone take a quick breath across the room and he raises his head: a stranger suspended in the doorway between the hall to the bedrooms and this place, the one the man finds himself occupying.

He is in the process of lifting a spoonful of granola and yogurt and banana slices to his lips, semi-thinking about how a glass of orange juice would taste good with it, possibly recalling and possibly misrecalling seeing a carton on the shelf in the refrigerator among the calamity of white light, possibly behind a yellow plastic mustard bottle, a pickle jar with two pickles in it wafting in cloudy pea-green brine, an open can of peaches in sugar water covered loosely with a sheet of Saran wrap.

A woman. The woman. She is scrutinizing the stillness the man has become. He wonders if she can really see him or if she can only sense the accumulation of his body in space. The certain density. Second sight. Should he remain motionless? Continue eating?

She is smallish and several years older than he is and maybe she wears glasses and maybe she has left them on the bedside table when she got up to investigate the noises coming from her kitchen. His kitchen. Her kitchen. It used to be his. Now it is this gray hair, this shoulder-length gray hair, and he thinks kindergarten teacher in a pink quilted robe. He thinks: I can easily take her.

He feels rather than sees her part her lips to speak and recalls he is wearing a t-shirt, a plain white t-shirt, and saggy worn jeans and a pair of new white sneakers. The t-shirt and sneakers glow in the dimness, giving away his position, and she is saying: You're doing exactly what here?

She adds something he can't make out.

What? he says.

The noise, she says.

Her voice is younger than she looks. Someone in her thirties. Forties.

I'm not the noise, he says. You're the noise.

I hear things. I come out to check. Only there's never anything.

She is holding an object in her hand. A modest pistol. What they call a what is the word subcompact, with names like Bobcat, Cobra, and the way she enunciates makes him wonder how many bridges and crowns and caps have re-organized her mouth.

The pistol is pointed at him.

I'm thinking: mice, she says. Squirrels. Animal sounds. I'm thinking maybe my house wears down around me a little every time I go to sleep. I know it does, but I'm thinking maybe I can actually hear it as it's happening.

No, he decides, a pack of cigarettes.

It's been months, she says. How many months has it been?

No, a pistol.

When did you buy? he says.

Buy? The house. When did you buy the house?

the heart is allways the least to go away

You're asking me the questions? I'm asking you the questions.

They are both quiet, he recalling his dentist once explaining to him that teeth are perpetually adrift in your gums, migrating and modifying continuously, no matter who you are, what you try to do about it.

Three months, she says. Three and a half.

No, a cellphone.

Three and a half, he says. Five, six. It's April, right?

He steps over to the sink, spoons the contents of the black or gray bowl down the drain, flips on the water, the garbage disposal; flips off the garbage disposal, the water.

You just come in? she says to his back. You just do this?

I don't take anything.

Food. You take food. And then ... what? You eat? Clean the plates? Put them away? What sort of burglary is this?

The man dries the bowl and spoon with the luminous dishtowel on the stove front, replaces the bowl in the cabinet, the spoon in the drawer.

I eat off the plates you've eaten off? she asks. Adds: The doors are locked. The windows.

The one that looks onto the deck? he says, facing her again, leaning back against the granite countertop. The lock only feels like it locks.

You know this?

The catch.

He is moving effortlessly. Her kitchen. His. He squints and she grows younger. Squints and she grows older. He experienced the same effect when he hovered over her sleeping body in her bed. Her face kept changing. He couldn't get over it. Her face kept becoming other people's faces as he watched. He remembers being mildly impressed by the resonance, the tenacity, of her snore. It wasn't loud, just persistent. She had a white scar over her left eyebrow suggesting a grain of rice or a flatworm. He can't make it out now, which is when he becomes aware that the light surrounding him is resolving toward what is the word legibility. The light surrounding him is resolving toward legibility. Colors rising out of the room's complex aspects.

No, her robe isn't pink. It is a difficult shade of blue. Blue or gray, but not pink or quilted.

Terrycloth.

The word for what it is is terrycloth.

He wants to say the woman is wearing matching slippers and all at once she isn't suspended anymore. She is planted on the floor just like he is, planted in this room, this neighborhood, speaking to him like he is speaking to her.

I've already called the police, she is saying.

Just so you know.

Do you like the house? he asks.

Before I came out. From the bedroom.

Its character. What do you think of its character?

They'll be here any minute. Like on...