I’m fast asleep; the window is open. I wake up to a sound that I think is Foot-Foot. He’s an inside cat but he must have gotten out. It’s summer and I’m sleeping in a T-shirt and cutoffs. I open the door and I walk down the stairs.
I go outside and I don’t see Foot-Foot. No cat anywhere and it’s two in the morning. I turn and I start to walk back up the stairs. A man clamps his hand tight on my mouth.
I try to scream. He shows me a knife. Drags me back up the stairs like I used to drag Binky, my stuffed polar bear. We get to the door and he opens it for me. We walk through the house like an old married couple. As if he and I just came home from the movies.
The bedroom, he says, and I take him to it. He is green-eyed and freckled and has wavy red hair. He does not seem concerned whether we are alone or that I’ve seen his face. He pushes me, gently, onto the bed. Playfully almost, as a lover might do. He pulls down my shorts. Pulls my T-shirt over my head. Smooths my hair back in place and unzips his pants.
When he’s finished, he asks if I have a cigarette. I point to a pack of Pall Malls on the nightstand. He takes one and lights it. You? he says. Yes, I tell him. He lights a Pall Mall and offers it to me.
He tells me he just got a job as a waiter, at a fancy new bistro that opened downtown. It’s swanky, he says and he laughs and explains that our little encounter is a sort of celebration; jobless and broke before he landed this gig, his girlfriend was about at the end of her rope.
He lights another Pall Mall and exhales. Puts on his pants, runs his hand through his hair. Takes a few more puffs, stubs it out in the ashtray. He tells me his girlfriend hates cigarette smoke.
There’s a clock on the nightstand. He looks at the time. It’s late, he tells me, I have to get going, as if he has other such calls he must make. You really should be more careful, he says, and reminds me to make sure the window is locked.